Oxford University Press's Blog, page 551

Mary Church Terrell: a capital crusader

When Mary Church Terrell died on 24 July 1954, at the age of 90, her place in civil rights history seemed secure. She had served as the first president of the National Association of Colored Women. She had been a charter member of the NAACP. And in 1953, she had won a unanimous decision from the Supreme Court that desegregated Washington, D.C. restaurants and paved the way to Brown v. Board of Education, the landmark school desegregation decision, a year later.

Not surprisingly, Terrell’s death led to an outpouring of grief in the capital. Mourners filed past her open coffin, which lay in state at the NACW’s headquarters. Several hundred people mobbed her funeral service at Lincoln Temple Congregational Church. Still more gathered in the church basement and outside, listening on loudspeakers. She was Rosa Parks before Rosa Parks: dignified, galvanizing, a veteran of decades of activism.

Terrell’s odyssey to the Supreme Court began on 27 January 1950. At the age of 86, she staged an outing to Thompson’s Restaurant, a cafeteria located a few blocks from the White House. Blacks were excluded from most downtown restaurants, with exceptions including Union Station and federal government cafeterias. Thompson’s refused to serve her and two of her companions because they were “colored.” She took the matter to court, seeking to enforce Reconstruction-era laws that barred discrimination by Washington restaurants. Three years later, on 8 June 1953, the Supreme Court released a unanimous decision in District of Columbia v. John R. Thompson Co., Inc., invalidating segregated restaurants in the capital. Terrell told the Washington Post she could “die happy” knowing that African American children would not grow up thinking they were “inferior” to white children.

“Mary Church Terrell” by Library of Congress. Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.

Terrell was the product of a rarefied upbringing. Born in 1863, the year of the Emancipation Proclamation, she lived as a young girl in Reconstruction-era Memphis. Her parents were former slaves. Her father, who won a test case of his own under the Civil Rights Act of 1866, amassed wealth from a billiard hall and brothels, which he owned, and from real-estate speculation. While still quite young, Terrell went north, studied in Ohio schools, and graduated from Oberlin College in 1884—the same day her future husband, Robert H. Terrell, graduated from Harvard College. They met as teachers in Washington and married in 1891; a decade later, President Theodore Roosevelt appointed Robert Terrell to a local judgeship, cementing the Terrells’ stature. They were an early twentieth century African-American power couple: accomplished, well educated, and politically savvy.

Because she lived in Washington, though, Terrell also lived with Jim Crow and the blunt force of racial prejudice. This was especially true after 1913, when the administration of President Woodrow Wilson segregated federal employees. In 1916, a drug-store clerk refused to serve Terrell at the soda fountain. A white property owner refused to sell her home to Terrell because she was black, according to Terrell’s memoirs, which she self-published in 1940. The Washington branch of the American Association of University Women denied her membership application in 1946, even though, as an Oberlin graduate, she satisfied the criteria for admission. Ultimately, after a protracted fight, she got in, but the experience drove her to spearhead the restaurant challenge.

Thompson was Terrell’s crowning achievement. At her 90th birthday celebration on 10 October 1953, Walter White, the NAACP’s executive secretary, hailed her as “a great American.” She received the Diamond Cross of Malta, whose previous recipients included Eleanor Roosevelt and Marian Anderson, and a Seagram Vanguard Award, alongside the second honoree, Thurgood Marshall.

Then, after Brown, the battle pivoted to the South. Rosa Parks helped spark the Montgomery, Alabama bus boycott in 1955, almost six years after Terrell had begun her Washington crusade. Sit-ins erupted at lunch counters in 1960, a decade after Thompson’s had first refused to serve Terrell. Ironically, she and Thompson had ushered in Brown, only to be eclipsed by the struggles that followed.

Terrell, long a student of her own press coverage, would probably be surprised by her relative obscurity. It’s a pretty safe bet that she wouldn’t like it. Still, her legacy resonates, especially while a new generation of activists confronts police brutality and racial bias on college campuses. As Terrell said more than 60 years ago: “We’re second class citizens because we sit idly by.”

Image Credit: “This undated photograph, from the early 1950s, features members of the Coordinating Committee, including Mary Church Terrell, who was seated in the center of the front row, third from the left, and Annie Stein, who was seated in the front row, on the far left.” Photo courtesy of the Stein family.

The post Mary Church Terrell: a capital crusader appeared first on OUPblog.

Mary Church Terrell: a Capitol crusader

When Mary Church Terrell died on 24 July 1954, at the age of 90, her place in civil rights history seemed secure. She had served as the first president of the National Association of Colored Women. She had been a charter member of the NAACP. And in 1953, she had won a unanimous decision from the Supreme Court that desegregated Washington, D.C. restaurants and paved the way to Brown v. Board of Education, the landmark school desegregation decision, a year later.

Not surprisingly, Terrell’s death led to an outpouring of grief in the capital. Mourners filed past her open coffin, which lay in state at the NACW’s headquarters. Several hundred people mobbed her funeral service at Lincoln Temple Congregational Church. Still more gathered in the church basement and outside, listening on loudspeakers. She was Rosa Parks before Rosa Parks: dignified, galvanizing, a veteran of decades of activism.

Terrell’s odyssey to the Supreme Court began on 27 January 1950. At the age of 86, she staged an outing to Thompson’s Restaurant, a cafeteria located a few blocks from the White House. Blacks were excluded from most downtown restaurants, with exceptions including Union Station and federal government cafeterias. Thompson’s refused to serve her and two of her companions because they were “colored.” She took the matter to court, seeking to enforce Reconstruction-era laws that barred discrimination by Washington restaurants. Three years later, on 8 June 1953, the Supreme Court released a unanimous decision in District of Columbia v. John R. Thompson Co., Inc., invalidating segregated restaurants in the capital. Terrell told the Washington Post she could “die happy” knowing that African American children would not grow up thinking they were “inferior” to white children.

“Mary Church Terrell” by Library of Congress. Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.

Terrell was the product of a rarefied upbringing. Born in 1863, the year of the Emancipation Proclamation, she lived as a young girl in Reconstruction-era Memphis. Her parents were former slaves. Her father, who won a test case of his own under the Civil Rights Act of 1866, amassed wealth from a billiard hall and brothels, which he owned, and from real-estate speculation. While still quite young, Terrell went north, studied in Ohio schools, and graduated from Oberlin College in 1884—the same day her future husband, Robert H. Terrell, graduated from Harvard College. They met as teachers in Washington and married in 1891; a decade later, President Theodore Roosevelt appointed Robert Terrell to a local judgeship, cementing the Terrells’ stature. They were an early twentieth century African-American power couple: accomplished, well educated, and politically savvy.

Because she lived in Washington, though, Terrell also lived with Jim Crow and the blunt force of racial prejudice. This was especially true after 1913, when the administration of President Woodrow Wilson segregated federal employees. In 1916, a drug-store clerk refused to serve Terrell at the soda fountain. A white property owner refused to sell her home to Terrell because she was black, according to Terrell’s memoirs, which she self-published in 1940. The Washington branch of the American Association of University Women denied her membership application in 1946, even though, as an Oberlin graduate, she satisfied the criteria for admission. Ultimately, after a protracted fight, she got in, but the experience drove her to spearhead the restaurant challenge.

Thompson was Terrell’s crowning achievement. At her 90th birthday celebration on 10 October 1953, Walter White, the NAACP’s executive secretary, hailed her as “a great American.” She received the Diamond Cross of Malta, whose previous recipients included Eleanor Roosevelt and Marian Anderson, and a Seagram Vanguard Award, alongside the second honoree, Thurgood Marshall.

Then, after Brown, the battle pivoted to the South. Rosa Parks helped spark the Montgomery, Alabama bus boycott in 1955, almost six years after Terrell had begun her Washington crusade. Sit-ins erupted at lunch counters in 1960, a decade after Thompson’s had first refused to serve Terrell. Ironically, she and Thompson had ushered in Brown, only to be eclipsed by the struggles that followed.

Terrell, long a student of her own press coverage, would probably be surprised by her relative obscurity. It’s a pretty safe bet that she wouldn’t like it. Still, her legacy resonates, especially while a new generation of activists confronts police brutality and racial bias on college campuses. As Terrell said more than 60 years ago: “We’re second class citizens because we sit idly by.”

Image Credit: “This undated photograph, from the early 1950s, features members of the Coordinating Committee, including Mary Church Terrell, who was seated in the center of the front row, third from the left, and Annie Stein, who was seated in the front row, on the far left.” Photo courtesy of the Stein family.

The post Mary Church Terrell: a Capitol crusader appeared first on OUPblog.

Blue planet blues

The Earth we live on was formed from a cloud of dust and ice, heated by a massive ball of compressed hydrogen that was the early Sun. Somewhere along the four billion year journey to where we are today, our planet acquired life, and some of that became us. Our modern brains ask how it all came together and progressed, and what shaped the pathways it followed. Was life, and the design of the Earth itself, more or less pre-ordained, a chain of chemical reactions and physical laws that just behaves that way when you start out with a given chunk of matter in a our particular universe? Or was there something more special involved? We don’t know yet, but we do know how to find out.

We can predict where that long evolutionary path is headed next. It is clear that the Earth, and its life forms like us, are not finished changing. Time passes relentlessly, carrying us forward into the future while we tame ignorance with hope, and ask of nature profound but difficult questions. Will humankind survive, and will our species grow and improve, eventually to move outwards from the Earth into a fabulous destiny in the wider universe?

We have already progressed to the point where we know that planets around other stars are commonplace, and it is almost impossible now to imagine life is a phenomenon that is unique to Earth. Somewhere out there we may meet other living things, and some of them may be like ourselves. At least a few will be more advanced in their technology and their societies; just think what we could learn from them. But the vast distances involved, the costs, the risks, and even hurdles like pollution, global warming, human conflict, and resource depletion, look pretty formidable. We can’t rule out the possibility that life on Earth, at least the human component of it, has no destiny at all beyond decline, failure, and ultimately extinction. Some would say that it is not just possible but actually probable that human civilisation will not last another thousand years; others think that we will muddle through somehow as we have up until now, forever, until we become omniscient and immortal.

Image credit: Asteroid Belt Around Sun Sized Star by NASA/JPL-Caltech. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.

How we wish we understood our place in the Universe, how our brains evolved, what the future holds, and what our chances of survival are! There is no oracle that will tell us, but we do have ways of peering forward and backward in time to piece together the evidence that may eventually lead to a complete picture. What stands out amongst these is exploration: using technology to see new things or to understand old things in a new way. Those of us now growing old witnessed an unprecedented leap forward in the last century, including pioneering journeys into space where we have found new frontiers on other worlds.

However, there are signs today that we are losing some of the momentum we once had. Astronauts have never gone back to the Moon, where they briefly walked before most of today’s scientists were born, and we are really no closer to achieving the first steps on the surface of Mars than we were 50 years ago. Some things have changed – that footfall, when it happens, may well be that of a woman, perhaps even one from India or China, when it finally comes to pass.

But will we go forward at all, or will civilisation collapse under the weight of rising populations on a crowded world with rising seas, droughts, and wars, before we ever understand our place in space? On the face of it, the history of the first half-century of the space age gives us very few clues about what will happen in the next half. But now, living on the Moon, or putting human explorers on Europa or Pluto, is no longer so much about inventing new technology, although some of that is needed of course, as it is about generating popular and political support. If we want to look for life below the surface on Mars, for example, in engineering terms we know how to do most of it already. Soon, we will even be able to send robot spacecraft to explore those Earth-like planets around other far-off suns, even though the engineers and scientists who build the probes may not live long enough to see the data.

It is tempting just to extrapolate the recent history of Earth observation and planetary exploration from the last century into the rest of the present one, and then the prospects look pretty exciting. But much of the recent leap forward was driven by the newness of it all, and underpinned by the resources being poured into globalisation and the Cold War. Things have changed, ambitions have cooled, and the realistic view forward is perhaps less wonderful. Do we have the time and the will to devote precious resources into understanding our origins, and can new technology overcome our problems and safeguard our survival? Or will introversion lead to decline and eventually extinction? In my career of planetary exploration, involving missions to all the planets of the Solar System, I have come to understand these questions much better, but that is not the same as knowing the answer. We’re on a knife edge, but we have choices, and we have opportunities.

Featured image credit: Moon & Space by Tydence Davis. CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

The post Blue planet blues appeared first on OUPblog.

Adolescents and adolescence: the glass really is half-full

Recently I was invited to be the guest clinician for a school district’s new young men’s choral festival. The original composition of the festival changed over the course of planning and, long story short, I ended up with a group of 79 fourth- through ninth-grade male singers. It was a diverse group of boys and young men who were (mostly) excited for a Saturday full of singing. We discussed vocal anatomy and voice change; we danced to music; we used our voices in a myriad of ways. The singers were loud and wiggly, raw and polished, playful and serious, and as the day progressed, the endearing odor of sweaty adolescent filled the space and we concluded the day with a wonderful concert brimming with adolescent sincerity.

However, one moment during the day was so poignant and powerful that, in my mind, it defined the entire experience. In the front row of chairs stood a very tiny fourth grade boy, whom we will call “James.” It was quite clear that James was overwhelmed by everything, especially the size of the other boys in attendance. He stood so still in the front row clutching his white three-ring binder of music with his Mickey Mouse winter coat zipped up to his chin long after rehearsal had begun, even after other teachers and I encouraged him to join in and make himself comfortable. At one point, James did remove his coat and was trying to follow his music, but was so lost. As I started to walk to him to provide some help, a seventh grade boy from the back row, “Alex,” emerged from nowhere, crouched beside James and said, “Can I help you? You seem like you could use a little extra help.” Alex stayed with James for a while and helped him get on track with his music before retreating to his place again in the back row. And every so often, Alex checked in with James to make sure he was okay.

I was so struck by the completely unsolicited help that Alex provided to James. Alex helped him because he needed help. It was simply the right thing to do. And it was executed in such a caring and sweet way that I couldn’t help but be reminded of my own small son and my hope that others are as kind to him when he needs help. As the day continued, I saw many additional moments when the boys took care of each other, from sharing music to helping others match pitch to applauding and high-fiving one another for little and big efforts. During the concert that evening, I made a point to tell the audience that they have amazing students who demonstrated numerous acts of humanity towards one another. I may or may not have said, “And anyone who says that adolescent boys can’t be compassionate…well….screw them” but it’s a bit foggy. I do remember the look on the faces in the crowd–grins and smiles and nodding “yes” with their heads and applause. They know what their adolescent students are capable of and they are proud of their adolescents. It was important for them to know that someone recognized it in their child as well.

When working with adolescents of all genders, I often see positive gestures and action towards others. These moments continually reinforce my admiration for the age group, for I know and believe that adolescents are capable of carrying out amazing acts of kindness and humanity, they know right from wrong, and they have much to offer the world. I have seen it in action. Unfortunately, these sorts of positive interactions and gestures are overwhelmingly eclipsed by stories of angst, risk-taking, and bad decision-making in the media and on television, reinforcing the stereotype that adolescents are generally troubled, challenging, and brooding people. Based on their reaction to my comments, that crowd at the concert knows what the larger society generally thinks about their adolescent child and it is unpleasant. Ian McMahan wrote the following in his book Adolescence:

I dropped by a large bookstore and browsed in the Parenting department. The books were arranged by age. On the first shelves, I noticed such titles as The Magic Years, How to Raise a Happy Baby, and Kids Are Worth It. The covers featured cute, smiling babies and attractive, smiling parents. Then I moved a few feet to the right, to the Adolescence section. Some of the titles caught my eye: The Roller Coaster Years, How to Keep Your Teenager Out of Trouble, How to Stop the Battle with Your Teenager, How to Keep Your Teenager from Driving You Crazy, Yes, Your Teen Is Crazy! Clearly, the idea that adolescence has to be a time of “storm and stress” is alive and well and living at Barnes & Noble! (McMahan 2008, 156)

I cannot count the number of times that I’ve received a negative reaction from someone when I tell them how much I enjoy working with adolescents–the instances are truly countless from over the years. So a large factor in my becoming a music teacher educator has been to change the minds of people about adolescents and adolescence. I am on a self-appointed mission to fight deficit perceptions of adolescents. To glaringly point out their senses of humor, wit, intelligence, innocence, wickedness, compassion and empathy to others so that they are viewed in different lights and more supported and celebrated. Adolescence is a remarkably wonderful and important time of transition, as the recent movie Inside Out, shows us. And although adolescence is not easy, navigating from child to adult can be a very positive experience if we continue to keep the perception glass half-full.

Image credit: “Sycamore High School March Orchestra Concert 2014” by Meredith Bell. CC BY-SA 2.0 via Flickr.

The post Adolescents and adolescence: the glass really is half-full appeared first on OUPblog.

The CISG: a fair balance of interests around the globe

Today the CISG has 84 member states. Nine out of the ten leading trade nations are CISG Member States, the United Kingdom being the sole exception. Already today the CISG potentially governs more than 80% of the world trade. By grouping the member states into the three categories of developed, transitioning and developing countries we find that each category roughly accounts for one third of the whole number of member states. This in itself suggests that the CISG is a suitable legal instrument for parties from countries around the globe without privileging the one or the other.

What features make the CISG such a unique international convention? The CISG tackles issues of the often-cited Common law-Civil law divide. The CISG achieved to reach successful compromises between the different approaches to legal problems in many core areas of sales law. Today it may be fairly called the “lingua franca” of sales law. Furthermore, the CISG balances the interests of the seller and the buyer in a better way than any domestic legal system. Finally, the CISG has a simple and lucid structure that makes it easily understandable to anyone.

Two core areas where the CISG aspires a fair balance of interests are the rules on conformity of the goods and the possible remedies for a breach of contract.

The CISG adopts a very broad notion of conformity. The key concept laid down in Article 35 CISG treats any defect in quality, quantity, kind as well as packaging alike. The starting point to determine the conformity of the goods is the contract itself. It is up to the parties to clearly specify the standard that the goods have to live up to. Such specifications make the expectations of both parties very predictable.

If the parties have not agreed to specific features in their contract the CISG provides for a balanced default system based on objective criteria. First of all, the CISG requires the goods to be fit for any particular purpose the buyer made expressly or impliedly known to the seller at the time of the conclusion of the contract. This leaves ample room to consider the individual facts of each case and to adequately balance the interests of the buyer and the seller. Furthermore, the buyer must have reasonably relied on the seller’s skill and judgement. This formula additionally provides the flexibility to take into account if the parties come from different parts of the world.

Two core areas where the CISG aspires a fair balance of interests are the rules on conformity of the goods and the possible remedies for a breach of contract.

Furthermore, the CISG has introduced a provision containing a notice requirement that is unknown to any legal system. In order to meet the concerns of developing countries the buyer is not precluded from any remedies if he manages to demonstrate a reasonable excuse for not notifying the seller about a lack of conformity. Although the buyer may not claim loss of profit in such a case, he still is entitled to all other remedies, namely the reduction of the purchase price and damages. Thus the buyer is granted at least minimum remedies to make up for the non-conformity of the goods.

Analysing the provisions on examination and notice reveals the CISG’s quest for fairly balancing the opposing interests of seller and buyer. Establishing an examination and notice requirement is, in the first place, in the interest of the seller. However, if the seller does not deserve such a protection the scale tips towards the buyer. And if the buyer itself is not blameworthy for not giving notice the loss that has ultimately been caused by the seller’s breach of contract is distributed between both parties.

The CISG’s simplicity of structure and balancing of interests is particularly evident in its remedy system. It abandons the common differentiation made in many Civil law countries between impossibility, late performance and defective performance and its subtle and often crucial differences which are not suited to today’s international business needs anymore. Instead the CISG follows the breach of contract approach of Common law descent without, however, preserving the intricacies that can be found in these countries. Rather, the CISG develops a remedy system of its own with clear rules being perfectly suited for international trade. Systematically, the provisions on duties of the seller are followed by the buyer’s remedies in case of breach of contract by the seller. Likewise the duties of the buyer are followed by the seller’s remedies. Avoidance of the contract requires a fundamental breach of contract but no fault. However, in case of an impediment beyond the sphere of risk of the breaching party, the CISG provides the possibility of an exemption.

The CISG may be called a true story of worldwide success which is not only proven by the ever increasing number of member states around the world but also by the fact that during the last 20 years the CISG has served as a decisive blueprint for law-making in the area of contract law on the international as well as on the domestic level. It is most of all its remedy mechanism that makes the CISG such an attractive international sales law. As has been shown, the rules of the CISG are flexible enough to accommodate the interests of the seller as well as the interests of the buyer, whatever economy in the world they may be located.

Feature image credit: ‘Doors on Life’, by GlynLowe. CC-BY-2.0 via Flickr.

The post The CISG: a fair balance of interests around the globe appeared first on OUPblog.

Another unpleasant infection: Zika virus

Over two years ago I wrote that “new viruses are constantly being discovered… Then something comes out of the woodwork like SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) which causes widespread panic”. The Zika virus infection bids fair to repeat the torment. On 28 January 2016 the BBC reported that the World Health Organization had set up a Zika “emergency team” as a result of the current explosive pandemic spread of the virus with up to four million cases predicted.

Why the concern? It can be summed up with these words: Global epidemic, Brazil, Rio de Janeiro Olympic Games, and microcephaly. The most dreadful consequence of Zika infection is microcephaly (small head) of babies born to women who are infected during pregnancy. But let us begin at the beginning.

In 1947 a novel virus was serendipitously discovered in blood taken from a monkey kept in a cage in the jungle of Zika Forest in Uganda as a sentinel for yellow fever infection – hence its name. The following year this same virus was isolated from Aedes africanus mosquitoes in that forest, showing that the virus was an arthropod-borne or arbovirus. Word of this discovery did not find its way into print until 1952 when the British virologist George Dick and two colleagues described the isolation of the virus and then Dick went on to report that 6% of 99 humans tested had antibodies against this virus in their serum indicating its transmission to humans. The virus itself was first isolated in Nigeria from a human in 1954, then two years later it was shown that Aedes aegypti could also be infected experimentally and transmitted the infection to a monkey.

This is a transmission electron micrograph (TEM) of Zika virus, which is a member of the family Flaviviridae. Virus particles are 40 nm in diameter, with an outer envelope, and an inner dense core. Public Domain via Public Health Image Library (PHIL).

During the next few years serological studies of populations found the presence of Zika virus antibodies over a wide area ranging from many countries in Africa through India to the Philippines. Zika virus was shown to be an RNA virus in the genus Flavivirus, a genus which also contains such viruses as yellow fever virus and dengue virus. Nevertheless, for six decades after its discovery Zika virus remained a curiosity and was consigned to the small print of textbooks; by 2007 only ten or so human cases had been described in Africa, Malaysia and Indonesia. It seemed to be a mild disease characterised by transient fever, lassitude, rash and aches and pains.

Change was in the air in 2007 when an epidemic of fever, conjunctivitis and muscle pains occurred in dozens of patients in the Pacific island of Yap in Micronesia. The infection then disappeared once more from view until 2013 when there was an outbreak affecting several thousand patients in French Polynesia which in turn was spread by travellers to other Pacific islands. Furthermore, some of these patients appeared to develop a complicating paralytic disease called Guillain-Barré syndrome (GBS). By 2015, the infection had appeared in a number of South American countries from whence it spread north to Mexico and the Caribbean. Studies of the virus in the Pacific and Americas showed that it was a strain that had originated in Asia.

A temporary flu-like illness is one thing. A prolonged paralysis with GBS is another and is consumptive of scarce health resources. But life-long microcephaly and its consequences is orders of magnitude worse. By 28 November 2015, 646 cases of microcephaly had been reported in Pernambuco state of Brazil. On 1 December 2015 the Pan American Health Organization issued an alert after finding a 20-fold increase in the rate of microcephaly in all of Brazil that year, with the virus being found in the amniotic fluid of two pregnant women whose fetuses had serious neurological malformations. Although the causation of microcephaly with Zika virus infection has not yet been conclusively proved, the association is so strong that health authorities in many countries are urging pregnant women not to go to endemic areas while countries in which infection is endemic are suggesting that women postpone pregnancy if possible.

Why has all this happened? We do not yet know but it may be that in recent times mutation has occurred in the viral genome which has facilitated its spread and enhanced its pathogenicity.

So what can be done? There is no specific treatment and there is no vaccine. People, and especially pregnant women, need to protect themselves from mosquito bites by using all available measures. Aedes mosquitoes are adapted for indoor and daytime biting in urban areas, especially during the early morning and late afternoon. They are known to breed in aquatic environments such as small puddles, pots, old tyres, and the leaf axils of plants. Unfortunately, decades of determined efforts to control the breeding of Aedes aegypti in Central and South America has had only limited success.

The post Another unpleasant infection: Zika virus appeared first on OUPblog.

Bang, bang — democracy’s dead: Obama and the politics of gun control

…. Tennessee State University, Northern Arizona University, Texas Southern University, Winston-Salem State University, Mojave High Scool, Lawrence Central High School, Umpqua Community College, Harrisburg High School, Sacramento City College, Savannah State University, Southwestern Classical Academy, Bethune-Cookman University, Frederick High School, Wisconsin Lutheran High School, Marysville Pilchuck High School…. the list school shootings goes on (and on). Over twelve thousand people died in the United States last year from gunshot wounds. Since the Sandy Hook massacre of 2012 there have been no fewer than 161 mass shootings. Does Obama’s frustration suggest that democracy is part of the solution or part of the problem?

It would seem that President Obama has a new prey in his sites. It is, however, a target that he has hunted for some time but never really managed to wound, let alone kill. The focus of Obama’s attention is gun violence and the aim is really to make American communities safer places to live. The New Year therefore brought with it an Executive Order from the President that requires all firearms sellers to seek a licence and initiate background checks on purchasers. There is no doubt that this will make the process of buying a gun a slightly slower and more cautious process but in reality it will do little to reduce the scale of gun crime. Obama knows this well and his measures are themselves borne from a frustration that has seen the Congress repeatedly block his attempts to push through more significant measures.

The killing of twenty school children in Newtown, Connecticut, in December 2012 fuelled a national discussion about gun control. Mass killings by gunmen in civilian settings, children covered in blankets, screaming parents rushing to see if their child has missed the carnage…the emotive politics of gun control turned from individual liberty and protection to individual responsibility and collective freedom but Obama’s attempt to limit the availability of semi-automatic assault weapons was defeated in the Senate. Body bags and public support, it seemed, was not enough to deliver change.

And yet crises – as political science frequently tells us – generally create ‘windows of opportunity’ into which radical new policy shifts can occur. Not, it would seem, in the case of gun atrocities in America.  The paradox of the American psyche is that Obama’s call for restrictions on the sale of guns actually stimulated the biggest spike in gun sales that the country had seen for nearly two decades (1.6 million guns sold in December 2015).

So is democracy the problem or the solution?

Democracy is, as Bernard Crick sought to underline in his Defence, inevitably slow and cumbersome. It is messy simply because it somehow has to squeeze simple decisions out of a vast array of competing and often intractable social demands. As a result the democratic process tends to contain multiple veto points that can stifle responsiveness; a smooth policy change is suddenly turned into a sluggish and grating process that too easily morphs into gridlock and inaction.

Could it therefore be that the problem with democracy is that it prevents the implementation of measures that look eminently sensible to the rest of the world?

To some extent this might be true and the interesting element of Obama’s recent move is that by using an executive order to promulgate gun control he is in effect circumnavigating elements of the democratic process. But even here his weakness shines through. First, in the sense that by adopting this approach he risks setting a precedent for future presidents who have a very different approach to gun control and wish to shift the balance via executive order in a very different direction. And (secondly) the significance of the measures are so far removed from any notion of actually disarming the country that they could be interpreted as a sign of weakness rather than strength.

Mr Obama is clearly using some of his final ‘lame-duck’ year freedoms to push the issue of gun control back onto the political agenda. But at the moment the lack of political will is making gun control look too much like ‘a sitting-duck’ for the National Rifle Association and other pro-gun groups who want to take it back off the agenda. Some opinion polls suggest that the mood of the American public is shifting away from unlimited ownership but the pace of change appears glacial. In some ways American gun control has regressed rather than progressed in recent years as the federal ban on military assault weapons and high-capacity magazines that existed between 1994-2004 has not been renewed by Congress. But it’s too easy to exaggerate the threats or to ridicule gun toting Americans but the reality is far more sad: most deaths occur from guns being used to commit suicide, or are found by children and toddlers who mistake them for toys with devastating effects. When it comes to gun control and American politics then maybe – just maybe – could there be a case for a benevolent dictator who understands that the ballot and bullets, just like guns and safety, just don’t mix?

…. Reynolds High School, Seattle Pacific University, Kennedy High School, Georgia Gwinnet College, Paine College, South Carolina State University, Purdue University, Los Angeles Valley College, Rebound High School, Widener University, Delaware Valley School, Berrendo Middle School, Magne High School, Arapahoe High School, Brashear High School, Carver High School, Massachusetts Institute of Technology….

Featured image: Gun Club by Peretz Partensky via Flickr.

The post Bang, bang — democracy’s dead: Obama and the politics of gun control appeared first on OUPblog.

How can we hold the UN accountable for sexual violence?

Cometh the new year, cometh the fresh round of allegations that United Nations peacekeepers raped or abused some of the most vulnerable people in the world. 2016 has just begun and already reports are surfacing of UN peacekeepers paying to have sex with girls as young as 13 at a displaced persons camp in the Central African Republic. UN peacekeeping operations have existed in that country for less than 2 years, but in that time the peacekeeping mission – MINUSCA – has been widely criticized for failing to investigate or to hold accountable personnel accused of raping women and children. Indeed, the problems were so severe within the first year that UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon fired the head of MINUSCA in August 2015 – a move that does not seem to have done anything to alter the situation on the ground.

But this is not a new problem. Sexual violence perpetrated by peacekeepers occurs time and again. From child prostitution in Cambodia to “food for sex” in Liberia to women trafficked into Bosnia and chained to beds in peacekeeping barracks, peacekeeping operations frequently are treated like the devil’s playground. And no matter how many investigations are undertaken, reports are written, or hands are wrung, the UN has failed adequately to address these atrocities.

Peacekeeping activities are a key mechanism by which the UN ensures international peace and security, and operations have expanded year over year. Of course, with that expansion, the potential is increased for misconduct. And that misconduct includes serious crimes such as bestiality, financial corruption, and murder. Throughout that time, sexual violence has remained prevalent if not endemic. And those crimes are committed with impunity because the vast majority of allegations are not investigated, let alone prosecuted.

The flaw at the heart of the failures to hold accountable perpetrators of sexual violence in peacekeeping operations is that the laws and structures focus on protecting peacekeepers rather than victims. The system is designed to ensure that individuals deployed on peacekeeping operations are protected from local police and courts in the countries to which they are sent.

The situation is further complicated by the different laws covering different types of personnel, leading to uncertainty about who, if anyone, is able to investigate or prosecute an alleged offence. Because peacekeeping was not conceived of by the UN’s founders, no specific legal framework was created to cover peacekeepers. Instead, what has occurred is the use of more general frameworks — often modeled on laws governing State diplomats — for some personnel and the development of bilateral and multilateral agreements for others.

Civilian personnel are international civil servants with immunity from jurisdiction of any national authorities. The UN officially agrees with the idea that immunity of such personnel under the Convention on Privileges and Immunities of the United Nations is functional as opposed to absolute, thus stating that no immunity will operate for actions that are not part of official functions. Sexual violence can never be part of official functions, so in theory any allegations against civilian personnel should immediately be handed to local authorities. However, in practice the UN conducts its own lengthy and opaque investigations prior to determining whether there is sufficient evidence to cooperate with local investigations. As such, the immunity operates as absolute unless or until the UN determines the likelihood of the guilt of an alleged perpetrator.

Military personnel are covered by agreements between their own country and the UN. While they cannot be prosecuted in the host State, the troop-contributing country commits to prosecute troops who commit criminal offences whilst on missions. Although these agreements are not immunities, they operate as such in the vast majority of cases. National laws frequently only cover crimes committed on national territory, and while some militaries do have extraterritorial reach this is not always the case. Even where they are able to prosecute troops, the reality is that those States rarely, if ever, prosecute their soldiers. That may be because of the problems of investigating crimes committed abroad and in fragile or conflict zones. Or it may be because of the national political implications of doing so, and the likelihood that such prosecutions would undermine national support for contributing troops to UN peacekeeping operations.

The culture of impunity is not only created by the laws that seek to protect peacekeeping personnel, but also by the frequent and systematic failures to deal with allegations of sexual violence. All-too often, allegations made to UN personnel are ignored, covered up, or not passed on to the people who are able to deal with them properly. The former head of MINUSCA insisted that such problems are systemic and that structural changes are required at the UN’s highest level in order to ensure that allegations are handled correctly. Until now, most information has come from outside of the UN; indeed, Amnesty International exposed the latest allegations against MINUSCA, following a long-tradition of NGOs being the main sources of information regarding sexual violence committed by peacekeepers.

The situation that we are in is that peacekeepers – who at the bare minimum should “do no harm” – are able to rape women and children with impunity. The system is flawed because it is designed around protecting peacekeepers rather than protecting victims. Moreover, the laws that do exist frequently are not implemented. Structural changes need to be made, but there needs to be willingness from Member States or the UN Secretariat, or both. Suggestions for radical reforms, such as an international tribunal for peacekeeping personnel, have been ignored or blocked by States wanting to retain control of their own troops. The UN’s zero tolerance approach to sexual abuse perpetrated by its staff has not materialized into anything beyond words and statements. We need more than promises to “name and shame” States that do not prosecute their troops, and we need more than promises of new policies or internal training of staff. What we need is a new system, and one designed by people who do not have vested interests in continuing to place protection of peacekeepers above protection of victims.

Featured image credit: “The UN battalion leading the parade during the Bastille Day 2008 military parade on the Champs-Élysées, Paris.” by Marie-Lan Nguyen. CC BY 2.5 via Wikimedia Commons. 

The post How can we hold the UN accountable for sexual violence? appeared first on OUPblog.

A history of the poetry of history

History and poetry hardly seem obvious bed-fellows – a historian is tasked with discovering the truth about the past, whereas, as Aristotle said, ‘a poet’s job is to describe not what has happened, but the kind of thing that might’. But for the Romans, the connections between them were deep: historia . . . proxima poetis (‘history is closest to the poets’), as Quintilian remarked in the first century AD. What did he mean by that?

From its beginnings, epic poetry in Latin was frequently based on actual historical events – so Naevius’ Bellum Punicum in the third century BC told the story of the first Punic War between Rome and Carthage, whereas the subject of Ennius’ Annales, from the second century BC, was the history of Rome from mythological times down to the poet’s own day. Evidently the Romans had no difficulty with taking a genre used by the Greeks mainly for the retelling of myth and employing it to celebrate their own national past, and indeed present. Even Cicero found the time to write an epic poem (complete with gods) about his own consulship (De Consulatu Suo) – after unsuccessfully attempting to interest some real poets in the job. Barely more than the first line has survived; and that verse, o fortunatam natam me consule Romam, ‘O happy Rome, born when I was consul’, is as inelegant (with its ugly repetition –natam natam) as it is immodest.

History was also written in prose, of course. Yet a glance at the opening words of some ancient historians may make us wonder whether the familiar division between poetry and prose is as meaningful as we might have thought. Take the opening to Tacitus’ Annals, from the early second century AD –

urbem Romam a principio reges habuere.

‘Kings first governed the city of Rome’

This statement opens a famous passage in which Tacitus describes how the government of Rome transitioned from monarchy, to aristocracy, back to a virtual monarchy again under the Emperor Augustus. What is not so apparent, at least until we read the words aloud, is that they form a perfect dactylic hexameter – the very verse that, since Ennius, had been used by the Romans for the writing of epic poetry. There is no chance that this is just a coincidence. Aristotle calls the iambic trimeter the closest metre to natural speech, remarking that we often utter trimeters in conversation by accident – whereas no-one, he says, would ever unintentionally come out with a dactylic hexameter. And an artist of Tacitus’ calibre just does not do things by accident.

Image credit: Jugurtha’s capture by Joachin Ibarra. Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.

Tacitus was in fact following a long tradition. At the start of his Jugurthine War (41-40 BC), Sallust writes

bellum scripturus sum quod populus Romanus . . .

‘I am going to write about the war which the Roman people . . .’

This, too, is a hexameter. And Livy, when beginning his monumental history from the foundation of the city of Rome (Ab urbe condita libri, late first century BC), opened his preface with the phrase

facturusne operae pretium sim . . .

‘Whether or not my task will reward me for my labour . . .’

which again starts off in dactylic metre.

By evoking at the start of their works distinctively poetic rhythms, and especially the rhythms of ancient epic, these historians were elevating their subject matter and intensifying their readers’ emotional response to it. Just as writers of verse could tackle historical topics, so too could writers of history incorporate poetry within their prose. But the use of metre signals not just emulation, but also the debt that prose owed to poetry – poetry came first, after all, and Latin prose historians were indebted to those earlier writers of national epics, just as they were indebted to the epic poetry of Homer which in one way or another had a profound influence on all subsequent ancient literature. The historians thus use metre to express their awareness of literary history as they pay tribute to their poetic forebears.

The keen sensitivity to prose rhythm that we can observe in these writers is not confined to the ancient world, or to ancient writers of history. The same technique was used by Sir Ronald Syme, when he opened his book History in Ovid (Oxford University Press, 1978) with the words ‘More history than Ovid, some will say’, which form a perfect beginning to an iambic trimeter: a characteristically subtle opening gambit by that most Tacitean of modern historians.

Featured image credit: View of the Colosseum by Walters Art Museum. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.

The post A history of the poetry of history appeared first on OUPblog.

Philosopher of the month: Plato

The OUP Philosophy team have selected Plato (c. 429 BC–c. 347 BC) as their February Philosopher of the Month. The best known and most widely studied of all the ancient Greek philosophers, Plato laid the groundwork for Western philosophy and Christian theology.

Plato was most likely born in Athens, to Ariston and Perictione, a noble, politically active family. Coming of age during the Peloponnesian War, Plato was educated by the ancient world’s most renowned thinkers, including Cratylus, Pythagoras, and Socrates. From c.407 BC he was a disciple of Socrates, from whom he may have derived many of his ideas about ethics. When Socrates was sentenced to death in 399 BC—as depicted in Plato’s Phaedo—Plato grew discouraged with political life and traveled to Italy, Sicily, and possibly Egypt, before returning to Athens around 387 BC where he remained for most of the rest of his life.

Shortly after his return, Plato founded the Academy of Athens—an open-air educational center generally considered the Western world’s first institution of higher learning. Admission to the Academy was granted exclusively to a small cultural elite. In Plato’s time, teaching at the Academy is thought to have consisted primarily of lectures and seminars, focusing on dialectics and mathematics. Among Plato’s many influential students at the Academy was fellow philosopher Aristotle.

Plato’s philosophical investigations took the form of dialogues, spoken mainly by Socrates, in which characters continually ask questions of one another. This form allows for the expression of various, evolving philosophic points of view. His dialogues address a broad range of subjects, including the nature of knowledge, the soul, perception, society, beauty, art, governance, and more. Plato’s dialogues are divided into early, middle, and late periods; among them are included Apology and Laws.

All of Plato‘s 36 works survive. His most famous dialogues include Gorgias (on rhetoric as an art of flattery), Phaedo (on death and the immortality of the soul) and the Symposium (a discussion on the nature of love). Plato‘s greatest work was the Republic, an extended dialogue on justice, in which he outlined his view of the ideal state.

After his death in 347 BC, educators at the Academy continued teaching Plato’s works into the Roman era. Today he is perhaps the most widely studied philosopher of all time.

Plato’s influence on Western thought is inescapable, reaching across entire fields of study—from philosophy, to linguistics, to Christian theology.

Featured image credit: Plato’s Symposium, depiction by Anselm Feuerbach. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.

The post Philosopher of the month: Plato appeared first on OUPblog.