Oxford University Press's Blog, page 548

How well do you know Black History?

First established in 1926 by historian Carter G. Woodson with the support of the Association for the Study for Negro Life, Negro History Week took place on the second week of February to coincide with the birthdays of Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln, two men whose actions greatly influenced the black population in America. It wasn’t until 1976 as part of the United States Bicentennial, that an expansion to Black History Month was formally recognized by the US government under President Gerald Ford. This Black History Month test your knowledge of African American history from the early 1800s to the 2000s.

 

Cover Image: US Senator Hiram Rhodes Revels. Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons. Madame C.J. Walker driving automobile. Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.

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Lead poisoning of Flint, Michigan—penny wise, pound foolish, and criminal

The tragedy of children poisoned by lead-contaminated water in Flint, Michigan is not an isolated incident. More than 11 counties in New Jersey have children with higher lead levels than those of Flint. Since 2008, drastic cuts in funding for public health programs across the board have slashed programs to educate parents and pediatricians to test young kids for lead poisoning or test water for its residues.

An invisible toxic metal that permanently dulls the brain of children, lead can enter the body from water, paint, air, food, toys, supplements, or cosmetics. In 1927, Harvard Professor Alice Hamilton warned the US Public Health Service that if lead were placed in gasoline this would expose millions to an agent known at that time to damage the brain. In 1967, California Health department expert John Goldsmith warned that Los Angeles air endangered its children because it contained twice as much lead as other areas.

Innovative studies of discarded baby teeth by Herb Needleman and others sadly confirmed these early predictions: Lead in American children in the 1970s rose with the amount of gasoline consumed; their tested intelligence and ability to control impulses were correspondingly diminished. The removal of lead in gasoline—finally undertaken in the 1990s—remains one of the most impressive public health victories of the last century. Left unsaid is the nagging question: Did Needleman’s studies prompt long overdue public action because they showed brain damage affected the mostly middle-class white children he had studied at Harvard?

EPA analysts in the 1990s calculated that the costs of remedial education for children with high lead levels from past use of leaded-gasoline ran into billions of dollars, while the benefits to better engine performance were at best exaggerated and paled in contrast. The National Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) revitalized state programs to ensure testing of children in the urban environment and other high-risk locales. Those programs are now, like much of public health programs, woefully underfunded and understaffed.

In fact, lead is an equal opportunity pollutant. Deprived communities in the US and around the world disproportionately suffer the impacts of environmental pollution. But middle-class kids living in poorly executed housing renovations, ingesting contaminated vitamins or water or attending schools near busy highways are also affected. Once in the body, lead competes with the essential mineral of calcium and enters the brain and bone, where it remains. Levels measured in the blood indicate exposures that have taken place a few months earlier; they cannot tell us how much has already become entangled into young growing brains and bones.

The facts of Flint are straightforward. The Governor negated local elections, appointing conservators to revamp the budgets of several Michigan cities. In a shortsighted and ill-advised effort to cut costs, and with the possibly unlawful concurrence of EPA, the Flint conservator switched the city water supply from the Detroit River which had provided treated water for half a century. On 23 April 2014, the citizens of Flint began to get their drinking water from the Flint River, despite the fact that it had been declared unfit for human consumption by the State’s own Department of the Environment. In an effort to make Flint River water safe, a sixty-year-old treatment plant was rushed into service, an action that violated federal environmental regulations. As dark, foul-smelling water began to drizzle from Flint taps, objections poured in. When General Motors grumbled that the new water supply corroded auto parts in their factory, they were provided with treated water from Detroit. Sadly, those living in Flint were not offered that option. They were told the water was safe to drink. It was not.

Some EPA employees spoke against the move. They were marginalized, ignored, and ridiculed. Within weeks a local parent and physician reported evidence of lead poisoning in children. They were also dismissed. Only after tests from Virginia Tech University confirmed that the highly corrosive water from the Flint River was leaching lead into tap water was the water supply switched back to Detroit.

As environmental health scientists with more than sixty years of combined experience, we look with horror on the unfolding disaster. The families of Flint will suffer for the rest of their lives from the short-sighted improper actions of the city custodians who ignored existing laws and compromised public health and safety. The fact that the poisoning of Flint took place under the guise of fiscal control provides a cautionary tale to us all. The cost of preventing more lead poisoning—by tapping the cleaner water supply from Detroit—pales compared to the projected costs of raising children who will live the rest of their lives with just a little less intelligence, a slightly greater propensity to criminal behavior, hearing difficulties, higher blood pressure, kidney disease, skin diseases, and other subtle afflictions.

More than six months after the city of Flint began drinking from this contaminated river, the poor quality of its intake water was noted in Consumer Confidence Report. “The Flint River source water intake is categorized as having a very high susceptibility to potential contaminant sources.”—City of Flint November 2014 Annual Water Quality Report.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation is on the case, as they should be.

Lead pipes, lead solder, and brass fittings with high lead content are common in drinking water supplies throughout the United States, particularly those with older homes, but even houses built in the early 1980s can have lead solder. When water is salty or acidic, lead is released. Since the water from the Flint River is both, it is 12 times as corrosive as the water from Detroit. The result has been lead poisoning of the entire city.

But lead is far from the only problem created. Three months after they began consuming Flint River water, tests found sewage in tap water and residents were advised to boil it. The rates of legionnaire’s disease, a rare and sometimes fatal water-borne disease rose dramatically during this same time. A city the size of Flint, according to data from the CDC, would expect to see one case of legionnaire’s disease every year. Since June of 2015, Flint has seen 87 cases, including several deaths, and the pathogen responsible has been found in the water pipes of the city’s McLaren Regional Medical Center. Now that the water supply has been switched back to Detroit no more cases have been reported.

Normally, sewage contamination in drinking water is addressed through chlorination. As one of us has described in detail in The Blue Death, adding chlorine to water that already contains high levels of organic matter is a recipe for a disaster. The process of chlorination of such soiled water can form dangerous levels of toxic chlorination byproducts that are tied with cancer and possibly birth defects. In other words, it is all but impossible to take water from the Flint River, given the hundred-year-old technology being used, and make it safe for human consumption.

More than a billion people worldwide lack access to safe, clean water. As demonstrated in Flint, some of those people live in the United States. The back-room deal whereby the State Department of Environmental Quality allowed the town of Flint to use contaminated water has saved no money. Instead, this ill-advised and probably illegal budget cut will result in tens of millions of dollars being expended to compensate those whose futures are diminished. The disaster in Flint should stand as a stark reminder of the consequences of putting economics ahead of public health.

More broadly across the nation there are a number of communities—in New Jersey, Alabama, Texas—where tested levels of lead in children are twice as high as those in Flint. For lead poisoning, as with climate change or pesticide poisonings, the best tactic is to create a system that prevents harm from happening, rather than depend on one that finds and repairs damage after it has taken place. Lead, like climate change, is one of those nagging environmental problems that can be lessened but can never be completely eliminated. No budget cut is worth the toxic legacy of robbing innocent children and their parents of their full potential.

Image credit: Flint River in Flint Michigan by U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.

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You smell dangerous: communicating aggression through sense of smell and body odor

During the search for scents of anger and aggression in human beings, several English idioms come to mind relating aggression to odors: ‘To be incensed’ describes somebody feeling angry with the related meaning of the word incense, a substance that produces a strong smell when burned. ‘To release steam’ paraphrases behavior to control angry intentions by emitting volatile substances. ‘To be in a huff’ transforms huff in the sense of a blast of air into a burst of angry feelings. However, whether ‘letting off steam’ produces a distinct scent – and if so – whether others can detect this signal, is an important piece of the puzzle that is about to be solved.

In humans, the most scented apes, one can find a very high number of sweat producing glands in the skin, and as a result, rather intense body odor. Researchers exploring psychological aspects of communication via human body odor are interested in the causes, means, and effects of chemosensory communication between humans. Similar to the term ‘pheromones’ (a term that is commonly used in animal olfactory communication), chemosignals are defined as chemical signals in humans that convey information via volatile substances. Initial studies have shown that the sense of smell influences the interaction between a baby and its mother, attractiveness development between mating partners, and the communication of identity information such as age, gender, and health status. Interestingly, many emotions can be communicated via chemosignals. Humans emit a specific body odor when they are stressed or scared; for example, right before a university exam or a parachute jump. Furthermore, human tears contain chemosignals that inform others about their sadness.

For more insight into the chemosensory communication of anger and aggression, we can reference animal research that indicates the importance of the sense of smell. Rodents with a defective olfactory apparatus have been seen to stop displaying aggression towards an intruder. Fruit flies release a distinct chemical substance – an aggression pheromone – when provoked. In humans, personality traits related to aggression and dominance can be detected by smelling individual body odor, while competitive behavior has been seen to produce fear-inducing chemosignals.

Individuals smelling aggression chemosignals have been observed as unable to differentiate them from exercise chemosignals alone, but the exposure to aggression chemosignals slightly altered their processing of anxiety cues. It is plausible that the ability to detect a person who represents a potential harm to us triggers a natural survival instinct, and that this ability might be a remainder from our evolutionary past.

 Olfactory information is only one facet of the complex and multisensory social interaction. When interacting with somebody, we do not only smell our counterpart, we also hear and feel them.

Besides chemosignals, odors originating from the human body were not the only odors shown to be related with human aggression. Cigarette smoke and polluted air have long been known to increase aggressive behavior, while rose odor is known to decrease aggressive behavior, raising the possibility of rose scent as an effective strategy in anger management.

Nevertheless, the impact of aggression chemosignals is rather limited. Olfactory information is only one facet of the complex and multisensory social interaction. When interacting with somebody, we do not only smell our counterpart, we also hear and feel them. Most importantly, we see that person. Humans acquire most information visually, which leaves less impact for the other senses. Additionally, western societies commonly suppress natural body odors. While we do not expect aggression chemosignals to act like releaser pheromones eliciting changes in behavior, we do think that they are able to act like alarm pheromones informing us of a potentially harmful situation.

Chemosignals actually have the important advantage of ‘taking a sniff of the past.’ A person only looks or sounds angry while he or she is experiencing the emotion. Visual and auditory cues are only able to convey information about the present state of a sender’s mind; those sensory inputs vanish as soon as the person calms down. Contrarily, chemosignals of aggression may still be present in a location after a person has experienced an angry outburst there, informing the receiver that a harmful person was close by.

It is possible to analyze single volatile compounds of odor samples that might explain the complex odor -cocktail in sweat. Steroid hormones like testosterone and androstenedione have been associated with aggression and body odor. Their quantification, however, depends on other non-volatile substances such as the stress hormone cortisol, the mood-dependent neurotransmitter serotonin, or the energizing hormone adrenaline.

Identifying and quantifying one or several chemical compounds that determine the chemosignal of aggression is a piece of that puzzle that has still not been solved.

Featured image credit: Angry Face by Ryan Hyde. CC-BY-SA 2.0 via Flickr.

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Music reference: Encyclopedias of the past, present, and future

How does one grapple with music research in the digital age? What are the changes and challenges therein? On 23 June 2015, a group of distinguished academics and editors came together for a panel discussion on “Referencing music in the twenty-first century: Encyclopedias of the past, present, and future” at a conference organized by the International Association of Music Libraries, Archives and Documentation Centers (IAML) and the International Musicological Society (IMS). The participants were Anna-Lise Santella, Editor of Grove Music Online; Don M. Randel, Editor of the Harvard Dictionary of Music; Harry White, Co-general Editor of Encyclopaedia of Music in Ireland; Hanns Werner Heister, Co-editor of the Komponisten der Gegenwart; Laurenz Lütteken, Editor in Chief of Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart; Tina Frühauf, Editor of Répertoire International de Littérature Musicale; and Álvaro Torrente of the Diccionario de Música Española e Hispanoamericana. The conversation was wide ranging and covered topics as diverse as Wikipedia, Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s early music dictionary, and Irish musical lexicography. The videos below cover some of the key themes raised by the panelists.

Introducing the speakers

Musicology and music reference

How are music reference texts reflective of the time they are written in?

The effect of Wikipedia on music encyclopedias

What are some challenges that music encyclopedias face?

Many thanks to RILM and the IAML/IMS Programme Committee for organizing such a successful event!

Headline image credit: Sara Levine for Oxford University Press.

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A history of the International Space Station [infographic]

The International Space Station was originally conceived as our base camp to the stars – the first step in a long journey of human civilisation exploring new planets, asteroids, and galaxies, and perhaps even helping us to meet other forms of life in the universe along the way. It is a place where fifteen different nations work together, observing how the human body is affected under unique and challenging conditions, and discovering ways to combat the negative effects, whilst also doing ground-breaking scientific experiments. For example, astronauts are now successfully growing edible flowers in space. As Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, the scientist who developed the theory of space flight, once stated:

“A planet is the cradle of mind, but one cannot live in a cradle forever.”

But space is a dangerous place. Not only do you have to account for the vacuum of space, extreme temperature changes as the station moves around the earth, in and out of its shadow, and radiation, but you also have to get there and back, through the protective bubble of earth’s atmosphere. Only recently did the crew aboard the International Space Station commemorate the crews of Apollo 1 and space shuttles Columbia and Challenger, who sacrificed their lives in the pursuit of furthering mankind.

We have collected together a brief history of this incredible feat in human engineering, politics, and bravery to create the below infographic.

Download the graphic as a PDF or JPG.

Featured image credit: Morning Aurora from the Space Station, CC0 public domain via NASA.

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Teaching the Hebrew Bible in the context of campus sexual violence

It is a disconcerting experience to watch Kirby Dick and Amy Ziering’s documentary The Hunting Ground or to read Jon Krakauer’s Missoula: Rape and the Justice System in a College Town and then walk into a classroom filled with college students. Both The Hunting Ground and Missoula take up the problem of sexual violence on college campuses. The disturbing narratives in the book and film are are born out by statistics: approximately 1 in 5 women, as well as 6% of men, experience sexual assault while in college. The problem is so pronounced that the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights has identified the failure to address sexual violence on campus as a violation of Title IX, the landmark law that guarantees equal access to education. And there, sitting in front of you, are twenty eager faces, not yet jaded by college, not yet disillusioned or hungover, ready to read, ready to learn.

Based on those same statistics, by the end of the semester, at least one—likely more—of these students will be a victim of sexual violence. Others may become perpetrators. What does it mean to teach in this context? What is a professor to do?

I am drawn to these questions for several reasons. I am a graduate of two schools now under investigation by the Department of Education for their failure to address sexual violence and sexual misconduct; I am also a college professor teaching college students. Furthermore, most of my classes are about the Hebrew Bible (or Old Testament). These are texts that are, as my students often point out, “pretty rapey.” They are right. Genesis alone contains multiple narratives of sexual violence and violation. Dinah, Jacob’s only daughter, is raped in Genesis 34. The story of Sodom and Gomorrah closely associates sexuality and violence (Gen. 19). Noah is naked before his son, and perhaps raped by him (Gen. 9); Lot is likewise raped by his daughters (Gen. 19). Even the narrative of Tamar and Judah (Gen. 38), often read as a story of comic sexual trickery, raises some uncomfortable questions about sex, power, and consent. This means that when I teach Genesis in a first year course, there are whole weeks when every class meeting involves a different incident of sexual violence.

The problem is hardly confined to Genesis. Instead, Genesis offers a clear and familiar example of the frequency of sexual violence in and across the canon. The question of teaching texts—including films and images—that involve sexual violence is often reduced to a debate over “trigger warnings.” I am personally more interested, however, in the question of what we can do beyond, or in addition to, offering advance warnings about the contents of a text. What can we do in the classroom to acknowledge and address campus sexual violence?

I am not suggesting that every class about an ancient text should be replaced with one about modern issues. I love the Bible, in all its beauty and strangeness, and I love sharing it with students. But I do not want to teach the Bible in a way that needlessly increases pain. This is why I begin with the recognition that ancient texts, including texts about sexual violence, intersect with the lived experience of the students facing me. Sexual violence is not simply a hypothetical. A classroom environment that does not acknowledge and take seriously this reality is one that is not equally accessible to all learners.

When I teach classes on the Bible, I inevitably feel that there is too much to cover. No matter how long the class period is, no matter how strategically I have spaced the readings, there is always something more to say, something additional point to raise of historical fact to introduce. In teaching texts that involve sexual violence, however, I have taken to slowing my teaching down. I have also begun introducing my students to the idea of “rape culture,” and what it means to bring this idea in conversation with the Bible.

Both The Hunting Ground and Missoula describe the struggle of survivors of sexual violence to have their experiences taken seriously by administrators, law enforcement officers, and Title IX Offices. Often, they express anger that they have not been heard. This suggests a parallel to Genesis. My students often note that in the story of the rape of Dinah, Genesis 34, Dinah’s voice is never heard. Dinah’s father, her brothers, and her rapist all speak, but she does not. Maybe she cannot talk. Maybe she has nothing to say. Or maybe the text cannot hear her voice. Scholars have analyzed the story in many ways; in the classroom, for this moment, it is enough for me for the students to notice the silences.

For more on these issues, see “Teaching about Sexual Violence in the Hebrew Bible” at Oxford Biblical Studies Online.

Image Credit: “Judas and Thamar” by Ferdinand Bol. Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.

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Fences, fortresses, and fortifications: What (not) to do about contemporary refugee flows?

In 2015, more people fled from persecution, war, human rights violations, discrimination, and other hardship than at any other time since World War II. UNHCR, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, estimates that worldwide more than 60 million people, or one in every 122, have been forced to flee their homes.

The vast majority of them have been displaced in countries such as Syria, Afghanistan, and Iraq and sought refuge in neighbouring countries including Lebanon, Jordan, Turkey, Iran, and Pakistan. As the conflicts in their home countries continue, or indeed worsen, many of them lose hope that they can return any time soon. The fact that international organisations such as UNHCR and IOM, the International Organisation of Migration, are given insufficient means to assist and accommodate the large number of displaced persons in refugee camps contributes to the desire of many people to seek protection elsewhere. Frequently, they use the assistance of migrant smugglers who, in the absence of legal avenues of migration, offer ways to cross international borders that would otherwise be insurmountable.

In an attempt to stop the flow of irregular migrants, most of them refugees, many countries in Europe and Australia have developed, and sometimes instituted, plans to re-introduce border controls, build fences, or stop migrant vessels from reaching their destinations. Australia’s infamous ‘turning back the boats’ policy, introduced in 2013, for instance, is one of a suite of measures adopted by the Australian Government to deny and deter the arrival of refugees and turn or tow the vessels in which they travel back to Indonesia, Sri Lanka, or other places from where they departed. The measures adopted by Australia, which also include the indefinite detention of asylum seekers in Nauru and Papua New Guinea, have come at great human and financial costs and violate international refugee and human rights law. The ‘turn-back’ measures are a way for Australia to evade its international obligations and, in effect, render its signature under the Convention and Protocol relating to the Status of Refugees meaningless. Preventing vessels of asylum seekers from reaching Australia frustrates the intention of the Convention and places refugees at risk of refoulement. Australia’s unilateral decision to return asylum seekers to the place of embarkation also undermines the cooperative spirit of the international protection regime and places additional burden on countries that have few resources to cope with the influx of irregular migrants.

Although European nations have—fortunately—refrained from adopting measures similar to those in place in Australia, there are ample calls from many far-right movements and by some political parties to close international borders around and between European Union Member States, reintroduce border controls within the ‘Schengen Zone’, and build fences along the borders to prevent the influx of irregular migrants. Austria’s Minister of the Interior explicitly stated that “we need to build a Fortress Europe.” Hungary, Slovenia, and other Eastern European countries have since also built fences and closed some borders to irregular migrants. Denmark, Germany, and Sweden, along with others, now conduct controls at borders which, until recently, could be crossed freely. With no end to the conflicts in Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq, and other countries in sight, it is likely that further and harsher measures will be adopted to prevent the entry of asylum seekers.

The rise in displaced persons worldwide poses a significant challenge to source, transit, and destination countries alike. “Never has there been a greater need for tolerance, compassion and solidarity with people who have lost everything,” notes the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Mr António Guterres. The suggestion here is not to abandon immigration controls and encourage the uncontrolled movement of large numbers of migrants, but to develop meaningful mechanisms that recognize the plight of refugees, provide them with protection and assistance in the country of first refuge, and offer resettlement and orderly, legal avenues of migration to those seeking protection elsewhere.

International migration, as has frequently been said, cannot be stopped and suppressed, but it can be planned and managed. The resettlement of people from refugee camps to destinations further afield is one such measure that provides refugees with a long-term solution and saves them from having to resort to the services offered by migrant smugglers. Refugee ‘centres’ in transit countries, like the one operated by UNHCR in Tunisia between February 2011 and June 2013, are another alternative that offers asylum seekers temporary reprieve and a way to apply for safe passage to Europe if they are found to be refugees. The so-called ‘hot spots’ that are being developed in Greece, Italy, and other locations along the outer border of the European Union, are based on a similar idea, but have the disadvantage that migrants face great dangers or have to resort to smugglers to reach these ‘hot spots’. A further measure to provide orderly alternatives for asylum-seekers is to enable them to apply for refugee status through embassies and foreign missions of the main destination countries, a practice that was in operation by some EU Member States and Switzerland until the mid-1990s. This would need to go hand-in-hand with better communication, cooperation, and burden-sharing between EU Members and other states willing and able to take refugees. It would also require the development of meaningful immigration laws and policies and national action plans that foster integration and prevent xenophobia.

To this end, the current challenges should also be seen as an opportunity to learn from past mistakes, to engage in forward thinking, and to develop sustainable, long-term policies and practices. The current crises in Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq, and elsewhere will not be the last time that large-scale displacement will occur. Refugee flows and forced displacement, however, generally do not occur overnight. They are predictable and manageable without having to build fences, fortifications, and fortresses.

Headline image credit: Syrians and Iraq refugees at Skala Sykamias Lesvos Greece 2 by Ggia, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons

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It’s fine to start sentences with “and”

I always see some shocked faces when I tell a classroom of college students that there is nothing wrong with beginning a sentence with the word and (or for that matter, the words but, because, or however).

I encourage them not to take my word for it, but to look it up, so I refer them to Ernest Gowers’ 1965 revision of Fowler’s Dictionary of Modern English Usage, which explains that the idea is “a faintly lingering superstition.” I also often suggest Garner’s Modern American Usage, which calls it a “rank superstition.” Superstitions don’t age well, apparently.

Even Wilson Follett’s stuffy Modern American Usage calls the rule “a prejudice [that] lingers from the days of schoolmarmism rhetoric.” William Safire included it in his book of “misrules” of grammar, and Strunk and White didn’t mention it as a problem at all. So there.

Yet the superstition persists, and it remains a common belief among students entering college.

The and style, which linguists sometimes call paratactic, is common in early middle and early modern English, as a look at the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, the Canterbury Tales, or the King James Bible will show. So how did this bit of folklore come about?



“Pencil Story” by Konstantin Stepanov. CC BY 2.0 via Flickr.

The idea that one shouldn’t begin a sentence with and was not one of the prescriptive dicta proposed by eighteenth century Bishop Robert Lowth or by his imitator Lindley Murray, but it did show up in some nineteenth century language commentary. As Dennis Baron first noted, George Washington Moon singled and out in his 1868 book The Bad English of Lindley Murray and Other Writers on the English Language.

Moon wrote that “It is not scholarly to begin a sentence with the conjunction and.” (He was referring to George Perkins Marsh, the scholar, diplomat, and environmentalist who penned Lectures on the English Language in 1860.) Marsh’s comment is telling, because he refers to sentence-initial and as “not scholarly,” suggesting that avoiding and is a matter of style or rhetoric.

The misconception that it is an error of grammar is a generalization of the reasonable rhetorical advice not to overuse coordination. If writers rely only on and, essays can become a mere sequential narrative: “It was summer and we went to the beach. And the sand on the beach was very hot. And after a while we got tired so we went home. And Mikey got sand in his bathing suit and the sand got all over the car.” You get the idea.

But what changed from the days of the King James Bible with its many sentence starting ands? One thing that changed was that scientific writing emerged as a genre with a great deal of prestige. Charles Bazerman’s 1988 classic study Shaping Written Knowledge traced the history of writing in The Philosophic Transactions of the Royal Society of London, noting that scientific writing shifted from observations of the natural world to proof-like test of theories. In fact, scholar Heidrun Dorgeloh compared the frequency of sentence-initial and in Modern English and Early Modern English narrative and scientific texts. She concluded that the use of and to begin a sentence “became associated with older, more narrative, and hence less professional style, and thus became increasingly stigmatized.” Her conclusion echoes George Washington Moon’s remark that beginning a sentence with and was somehow “not scholarly.”

Another thing that changed was mass education and the challenge of teaching sentence structure and writing conventions to large numbers of children. Several scholars have suggested that the supposed incorrectness of sentences beginning with and arose from efforts by school teachers to direct pupils away from the overuse of and. As linguist Arnold Zwicky put it:

Teachers quite rightly view this system of sentence connection as insufficiently elaborated, and they seek ways of getting students to produce connectives that have more content than vague association or sequence in time. At some point, I speculate…a blanket proscription, was born. Probably in elementary schools, from which it would have diffused to secondary schools and beyond.

But as students move beyond the elementary levels, we need to let them know that it is no error to begin a sentence with a conjunction. Professional writers and editors whom I have asked find sentence-initial conjunctions unobjectionable. One editor recently for a national publication put it to me this way: “As editorial director, I’m the decider. And I frequently use them in my own writing. And I allow them.”

And while we don’t know who first articulated the superstition that sentence initial conjunctions are errors, it is the sort of superstition we should be careful not to pass along to future generations.

Image Credit: “Blank paper with pen and coffee cup on wood table” by Karolina Grabowska. CC.0 via Pexels.

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What Can Political Philosophy Contribute to Policy Debates?

Political philosophy explores questions relating to the best organization of our collective political and economic institutions and policies. As such, one might expect that detailed discussion of policy issues would be commonplace in political philosophy. Just the opposite, however, is usually the case. Most political philosophy is pitched at a very abstract level. It may focus on the merits of egalitarian liberalism, libertarianism, or socialism or explain why we should prioritize the least advantaged or personal responsibility in thinking about our political institutions and policies. Yet, policy recommendations are usually discussed in only very broad and cursory ways. Some political philosophers do outline and defend alternative policy ideas, such as a universal basic income, but even these discussions tend to be very abstract and pay little attention to contemporary circumstances. In depth discussion of the philosophical issues involved in family policies, health care policies, old age pensions, and disability policies are relatively rare in the political philosophy literature. Why is this?

Part of the explanation can be traced back to political philosophers themselves. Individuals who have chosen political philosophy as a vocation or hobby are likely to be more interested in ideas than the details of social policies and circumstances. At least since Rawls published A Theory of Justice (1971), most analytical political philosophers have further adopted ideal theory as their preferred philosophical methodology. Ideal theory makes a virtue of abstraction by suggesting that too close engagement with existing social policies and circumstances may distract us from achieving a deeper understanding of justice.

Leaflet by Liberal Publication Department. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.

There are nonetheless some compelling reasons for political philosophers to take up careful policy analysis. First, some interesting and underexplored philosophical questions arise from a close look at social policies. The greatest barrier to equal opportunity in liberal democracies, for example, is the family. Children raised by parents of different socio-economic classes have very different real opportunities to achieve society’s goods as adults. Should, then, policy intervene into the family to equalize children’s opportunities? How far should it go and how effective can it be? A detailed exploration of health care policies raises similarly intriguing questions. Political philosophers have traditionally justified universal health care by claiming that it is essential for saving and extending lives. Recent social science research shows, however, that health care has a limited impact on these outcomes. Should, then, states continue to support national health insurance? If so, why? The elderly population is growing rapidly in all Western democracies, yet very few philosophers have addressed in any detail the question of what society owes the elderly. Should society guarantee old age pensions? If so, in what form? Should it also pay for long-term care, or should this be a personal or family responsibility?

A second compelling reason for philosophers to analyze social policy in more detail is to gain a deeper understanding of justice. Rawls assumed that some abstraction from existing policies and circumstances was necessary to gain a deeper understanding of justice. Attention to details, however, can also be enlightening. In discussing economic disadvantage, philosophers almost never explore the demographic characteristics of individuals living in or near poverty. Yet, a survey of poverty across Western democracies reveals that eighty to ninety percent of economically disadvantaged individuals in these countries are parents with young children, children, elderly, disabled, or sick, or caregivers of the elderly, disabled, or sick. Arguments for helping the economically disadvantaged and the policies needed to support this group take on a very different form in light of this information.

The most compelling reason for political philosophers to devote more direct attention to policy analysis is to contribute more directly to policy debates and policy-making. Existing political philosophy has had some general influence on policy debates and policy-making over the last thirty or forty years. Probably the strongest influence has come from libertarian theorists. Milton Friedman and Robert Nozick, in particular, have had a notable influence on the tenor of policy-making. Perhaps not coincidentally, these theorists have also been among the most directly engaged in policy analysis, even if only as in Nozick’s case by advocating for the rollback of all forms of social support. If the influence of these philosophers on policy-making is to be counter-balanced, other philosophers need to make a detailed case for more generous social policies.

Not all political philosophers are interested in influencing policy. Some even favor a separation of philosophy and politics. For those philosophers, however, who are interested in contributing to policy debates, a more direct engagement with contemporary policy issues seems advisable. Too often policy debates take place in contemporary societies without a full appreciation of all the important philosophical issues at play. Unless philosophers directly engage in these debates and make these issues explicit, they are likely to be overlooked. Political philosophers have a great deal to contribute to social policy debates by helping people to understand how existing arrangements support or do not support important values and by highlighting better ways to realize important social goods. Yet, political philosophers must first realize for themselves how enriching and philosophically exciting a closer engagement with social policy can be before they can perform this important function for society.

Headline image: Zoom zoom zoom by Brooke Hoyer. CC BY 2.0 via Flickr

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Which literary couple are you and your beau? [quiz]

Love and literature are perfect companions. Love has been, and continues to be, an inspiration for famous and celebrated authors around the world, who have written great literary masterpieces on romantic infatuations and passions. The characters they depict make a lasting impression on us, the readers – after all, who hasn’t dreamed of the Juliet to their Romeo, or the Ron to their Hermione?

From tempestuous flings to life-long romances, the couples we find in the pages of the books we read are a cast of diverse characters. From the pride and, well, prejudice, of Elizabeth Bennett and Mr. Darcy in Jane Austen’s classic work, to the through-thick-and-thin romance of Peeta and Katniss in the iconic The Hunger Games trilogy, we’ve all identified ourselves and our beau with one literary couple or another.

This Valentine’s Day, why not find out for yourself which literary couple you and your star-cross’d lover are most like with our quiz?

Featured image and quiz intro image credit: LOVE love by Usbkabel. CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

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