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In memoriam: Lawrence Gushee

Oxford University Press is saddened to report the passing of noted jazz scholar Lawrence Gushee on 6 January 2015. A Professor of Music at the University of Illinois for over 20 years, he held the title of Emeritus Professor of Music at Illinois since 1997. Originally specializing in medieval music, Dr. Gushee turned much of his attention to jazz during his time at Illinois, writing frequently on the history of black American jazz musicians. A prodigious researcher and eloquent writer, his contributions to research on the origins of jazz and its early period simply cannot be overstated. In particular, his 2005 book Pioneers of Jazz, which Oxford is incredibly proud to have published, was a landmark work in jazz history. Bringing to light the hitherto untold story of the early New Orleans jazz band the Creole Band, Gushee revealed how this almost entirely overlooked group played a pioneering role in introducing jazz to America, and bringing about the jazz phenomenon that swept the nation during the 1920s. While he will surely be missed by the jazz community, his contributions to the telling of its history will continue to be of immeasurable value to scholars, students, and fans of the music for generations to come. On behalf of OUP, I offer our deepest sympathies to his family during this difficult time.

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Women’s contributions to the making of Motown: The Duets

On 12 January 1959, Berry Gordy, Jr. founded Tamla Records in Detroit, Michigan. A year later it would be incorporated with a new name that became synonymous with a sound, style, and generation of music: Motown. All this week we’re looking the great artists and tracks that emerged from those recording studios. Yesterday, we spoke to Charles Randolph-Wright, the Director of Broadway’s Motown the Musical, which closes on Sunday, 18 January 2015.

Perhaps no other record label in America’s music history performed a more significant role in fashioning Rhythm and Blues’ assimilation into the country’s popular culture than Motown Records. Founded by Detroit songwriter Berry Gordy, Jr. in 1959, Motown (originally named Tamla Records) began producing hit records almost from its inception and continued to do so throughout the sixties. During this period, Motown and its subsidiary labels recorded 110 top 10 hit songs and became the standard bearer for black music. As Motown evolved from a small African American record label into a colossal, international industry giant with unprecedented crossover appeal, several women played noteworthy roles in shaping its storied development.

While Motown carved out a niche for itself for effectively crafting successful girl groups, some female artists, notably Mary Wells and Brenda Holloway, triumphed as soloists. In addition, female artists contributed to the company’s overall success as writers and as background vocalists for fellow label artists. Many left a lasting impression through duets with male artists.

Kim Weston and Marvin Gaye

Kim Weston achieved success as a soloist but it was her duets with the legendary Marvin Gaye that etched her name in the annals of Motown. Her stint with the company began in 1961 with the single, “Love Me All the Way,” a high pitched, blues song that reached 24 and 88 on Billboard’s R&B and Pop charts respectively. In 1964, Motown released “What Good Am I Without You,” a moderately successful duet with Marvin Gaye. During the following year, in 1965, soulful dance hit “Take Me in Your Arms (Rock Me a Little While)” reached number 4 on the R&B and peaked at 50 on the pop chart. But “It Takes Two” was Weston’s greatest contribution to Motown. The song peaked at 4 on the R&B chart, 14 on the pop, and 16 on the UK. Released in 1966, the duet album with Weston was also Gaye’s most successful musical achievement up to that point and laid the basis for his subsequent duets with Tammy Terrell, who was hired by Motown after Weston left the label for MGM in 1967.

Gaye would perform with Mary Wells, Kim Weston, and Diana Ross but his best, most lasting material came from duets with Terrell. Born Thomasina Winifred Montgomery, Terrell and Gaye recorded three albums for Motown. United and You’re All I Need both reached the top five on Billboard’s R&B chart but, more importantly, the pair achieved a charismatic presence on stage that was augmented by numerous television appearances. While performing onstage at a concert in Hamden-Sydney College in October of 1967, Terrell collapsed in Gaye’s arms and was diagnosed with a malignant tumor shortly after. Terrell and Gaye recorded a third album titled Easy that was released in 1969.

By the end of the sixties, female artists would continue to play a defining role not only at Motown but also in the broader industry. No doubt, they would continue to face challenges, many of which their male counterparts didn’t have to face. Nevertheless, they should be credited with opening the doors for later female artists and ensuring black music’s ongoing impact upon global popular culture.

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35 years CISG and beyond

In the Preface to the 3rd edition of Commentary on the UN Convention on the International Sale of Goods (CISG), editor Professor Ingeborg Schwenzer notes:

“the CISG has enjoyed enduring success and continues to do so. Today, the Convention has 74 Contracting States. Most notably, on 19 June 2008, the Japanese parliament decided to adopt the Convention; the instrument of ratification was deposited on 1 July 2008 and the Convention came into force on 1 August 2009. Other important states such as Brazil, Turkey, and Portugal are expected to join the Convention in the near future.”

It is within this context that the University of Basel, the Swiss Association for International Law (SVIR/SSDI) and UNCITRAL are hosting a special conference which will mark 35 years of the Convention on the International Sale of Goods (CISG), from 29th-30th January 2015. In this conference, special focus will be given to open issues in regard to the CISG’s application and any possible further harmonization and unification of contract law.

The range of speakers at the Conference includes the world’s leading scholars on the CISG and comparative law, including fellow Oxford author Dr Pascal Hachem, who will be speaking on ‘Extending the CISG: Beyond Sales Contracts’. Among the speakers are members and rapporteurs of the CISG Advisory Council. Other speakers include Professor Dr. H. Flechtner, Professor of Law at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law; Professor Dr. S. Han, professor of Civil Law in Tsinghua University School of Law (Beijing) and a Fulbright Visiting Research Scholar visiting Harvard Law School and Professor Dr. B. Piltz, Partner of the law firm Ahlers & Vogel, Hamburg.

Basel in the morning, by dongga BS. CC-BY-NC-ND-2.0 via Flickr.

Other highlights from the conference programme include an economic analysis of the CISG, a focus on validity issues when extending the CISG and the future of unification of contract law. The conference dinner will be held at the Restaurant Safran Zunft, a location first documented in the 14th century.

The conference is hosted at the University of Basel in Switzerland, one of the leading universities in the country. Originally founded in in connection with the Council of Basel, it was officially opened in 1460, the deed of foundation having already been given in the form of a Papal bull in 1459 by Pope Pius II. The University of Basel was originally decreed to have four faculties—arts, medicine, theology and jurisprudence and The University Library of Basel has over three million books and writings and is the largest library in Switzerland.

Basel itself, Switzerland’s third largest city by population, is located where the Swiss, French and German borders meet. It has suburbs in France and Germany, and is situated in the north west of Switzerland on the river Rhine. Basel is an important cultural centre for Switzerland. The city houses many theatres and museums, including the Museum of Fine Arts, which contains the world’s oldest publicly accessible art collection.

Oxford University Press is proud to be a Gold Partner of 35 Years CISG and Beyond. If you are attending keep an eye out for the Oxford University Press stand, where we’ll be offering a discount on our renowned contract law commentaries and conducting demonstrations of our new online product Oxford Legal Research Library: International Commercial Law, which offers online access to both Commentary on the UN Convention on the International Sale of Goods (CISG) and Global Sales and Contract Law. If you’d like more information about CISG and the Global Sales Law Project ahead of the Conference, you can also watch Ingeborg Schwenzer introduce the topic.

Featured image credit: HerbstMesse Basel, by Niki Georgiev. CC-BY-2.0 via Flickr.

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Charlie Hebdo and the end of the French exception

Today many are asking why Parisians have been attacked in their own city, and by their own people. But for many years the question for those following the issues of foreign policy and religion was why France had suffered so little terrorism in comparison to other European states. After the bombs on the Paris Metro and a TGV line in 1995, there were no significant Islamist attacks until the fire-bombing of the Charlie Hebdo office in November 2011, and the killings of three French soldiers (all of North African origin) and three Jewish children (and one teacher) by Mohamed Merah in Toulouse four months later. These attacks turn out to have been a warning of things to come.

But why was France free of such attacks for over fifteen years, when Madrid and London suffered endless plots and some major atrocities? Given the restrictions placed by successive governments on the foulard (headscarf) and the burka, together with the large French Muslim population (around 10% of the 64 million total), the country would seem to have been fertile ground for fundamentalist anger and terrorist outrages.

One view is that the French authorities were tougher and more effective than, say, the British who allowed Algerian extremists fleeing France after 1995 to find shelter in the Finsbury Park Mosque — to the fury of French officials. Another line is that the French secular model of integration, with no recognition of minorities or enthusiasm for multiculturalism, did actually work. Thus when riots took place in 2005 the alienated youth of the banlieues demanded jobs, fairness, and decent housing — not respect for Islam or Palestinian rights.

A third possible explanation of the long lull before this week’s storm is that French foreign policy had not provoked the kind of anger felt in Spain and Britain by their countries’ roles in the Iraq war, which France, Germany, and some other European states had clearly opposed. Although France had an important role in the allied operations in Afghanistan, its profile was not especially high. Given the slow-changing nature of international reputations the image of France as a friend of Arab states and of the Palestinians endured, while Britain drew hostile attention as the leading ally of the United States in the ‘war against terror’. France, again unlike Britain and the United States, has tended to be pragmatic in negotiations with those who have taken its citizens hostage abroad, facilitating the payment of ransoms and getting them home safely. Its policy was that payments, and the risk of encouraging further captures, were preferable to providing the Islamists with global publicity.

Naturally no single explanation can account for the French exception, which has now come to such a dramatic end. It was a combination of factors that kept the domestic peace. Strong security measures put many jihadists in gaol, or forced them abroad. Civic nationalism emphasising Frenchness and discouraging the overt celebration of different languages and ways of life meant that unrest over deprivation never morphed into what Olivier Roy called an intifada. An adroit foreign policy emphasising distance from the United States despite quiet cooperation on many issues kept France out of the front line of Islamist anger. If any one of these three factors had been absent, things could have been very different.

So what has changed now? It may be that the security services simply got complacent. This seems unlikely given that when French counter-terror sources have always talked of an attack they have said ‘it is not a question of if, but when’. They are aware that the nature of jihadism is to plant operators wherever they can be hidden, without discriminating between good and bad societies – although it is notable that there have been relatively few attacks in Scandinavia, or in countries like Ireland, Italy, or Portugal.

Arrivée de la marche dans le quartier place de la Nation, à Paris, 11 January 2015. Photo by JJ Georges. CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

France must expect more plots, of which some will probably come to fruition. The threats may be increasing because of the lagged effects of alienation among those second and third generation young people, French by nationality but North African by family origin, who feel that the country has not lived up to the ideals of fraternity and equality, thus depriving them of the opportunity to get jobs, decent housing – and respect. A significant proportion of these youngsters, living well away from the stylish ‘centre villes’ admired by foreign tourists, have come to find their identity not in French secularism, as the official theory runs, but in Islam. And some, especially those with few personal or family strengths to hold on to, have found self-validation in radical, even violent, fundamentalism. It requires very few to take this path, in a Muslim community of around six million, to represent a serious threat.

But whom would they wish to attack, and why? It is to be doubted that they are like the Red Army Faction in Germany forty years ago, aiming to overthrow a whole decadent society and replace it with something radically different – even if they probably would like to live under Sharia law. However horrifying they seem they are not, with isolated exceptions, mad or merely criminal. To be sure they are capable of acts of violence against unarmed people, which most regard as psychotic, and they have to be dealt with under the criminal law – unless killing them is the only way to save other lives. But they are, in their own terms, rational actors. The Kouachi brothers said during their flight from the police that ‘we do not kill civilians’, despite having murdered twelve people working in the Charlie Hebdo offices, among them a maintenance man and a visitor. This was disingenuous and self-serving, but it revealed not only the familiar trope of the disaffected young that the police are their enemy, but also a consistent world view in which Charlie Hebdo had declared war on Muslims, and had to be ‘neutralisé’, in the euphemism employed by French ministers during the crisis.

This is where foreign policy comes in. Many Muslim citizens of European states are deeply offended, not only by what they see as the insulting blasphemy of Salman Rushdie or Charlie Hebdo, but also by the actions of Western governments in the Middle East. It is bad enough (in this view) that they effectively take Israel’s side against the Palestinians, but the launch of military attacks in Muslim countries that inevitably kill civilians, often in large numbers and with powerful images disseminated rapidly around the world, requires a response.

Most people, of course, of any religion and none, do nothing about the foreign policy events they see on television. A minority will engage in passionate but legal protest. A very small minority takes matters into its own hands, travelling to battlefields, receiving training in the use of arms or terrorism, and sometimes acting as sleepers in Western societies until they or some controller judges the moment to be right. By this point the values behind their view are beside the point; they see themselves as at war.

For some years France did not attract this kind of hostility, or if it did, the reactions took time to mature, and have only come to light since 2011. But in recent years both Sarkozy and Hollande have pursued a more ‘forward’ foreign policy, intervening first in Libya, then against Jihadists in Mali (after which one Malian jihadist said that ‘blood will run on the streets of Paris’), and in 2014 becoming involved in the bloody conflict which has engulfed Syria and parts of Iraq. This, perhaps together with the way the Arab Spring exposed France’s ties to autocratic Arab regimes, has predictably attracted attention from those whose targets had previously been other western states. France was the first US ally to join in air strikes against ISIL in September 2014, when Interior Minister Cazeneuve responded to threats to kill French citizens in retaliation by saying that the government was ‘not afraid’ and would protect its citizens.

Unfortunately no government can protect all its citizens all of the time. Furthermore the existence of a diverse, mobile, and fragmented society, containing groups sufficiently alienated to find identity in religion and a global movement of resistance rather than in the culture of their land of birth, represents a major source of vulnerability for France, as it does for Britain and others. When we add to the mix the seemingly endless wars in Muslim countries in which our governments are intervening, it becomes less strange that turbulence should boil over into tragedy.

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Transforming the police through science

Amidst the images of burning vehicles and riots in Ferguson, Missouri, the US President, Barack Obama, has responded to growing concerns about policing by pledging to spend $75 million to equip his nation’s police with 50,000 Body Worn Videos. His initiative will give added impetus to an international movement to make street policing more transparent and accountable. But is this just another example of a political and technical quick fix or a sign of a different relationship between the police and science?

At the heart of the shift to Body Worn Video is a remarkable story of a Police Chief who undertook an experiment as part of his Cambridge University Masters programme. Rialto Police Department, California serves a city of 100,000 and has just over one hundred sworn officers. Like many other departments, it had faced allegations that its officers used excessive force. Its Chief, Tony Farrar, decided to test whether issuing his officers with Body Worn Video would reduce use of force and complaints against his officers. Instead of the normal police approach to issuing equipment like this, Farrar, working with his Cambridge academic supervisor, Dr Barak Ariel, designed a randomised field trial, dividing his staff’s tours of duty into control – no video – and treatment – with video. The results showed a significant reduction in both use of force and citizen complaints.

Why is this story so different? A former Victoria Police Commissioner described the relationship between the police and research as a “dialogue of the deaf”. The Police did not value research and researchers frequently did not value policing. Police Chiefs often saw research as yet another form of criticism of the organisation. Yet, despite this, research has had a major effect on modern policing. There are very few police departments in the developed world that don’t claim to target “hot-spots” of crime, an approach developed by a series of randomised trials.

However, even with the relative success of “hot-spot policing”, police have not owned the science of their own profession. This is why Chief Farrar’s story is so important. Not only was Farrar the sponsor of the research, but he was also part of the research team. His approach has allowed his department to learn by testing. Moreover, because the Rialto trial has been published to both the professional and academic field, its lessons have spread and it is now being replicated not just in the United States but also in the United Kingdom. The UK College of Policing has completed randomised trials of Body Worn Video in Essex Police to test whether the equipment is effective at gathering evidence in domestic violence investigations. The National Institute of Justice in the United States is funding trials in several US cities.

This is the type of approach we have come to expect in medicine to test promising medical treatments. We have not, up to now, seen such a focus on science in policing. Yet there are signs of real transformation, which are being driven by an urgent need to respond to a perfect storm created by a crisis of legitimacy and acute financial pressures. Not only are Chiefs trying to deal with the “Ferguson” factor, but they also have to do so against a backdrop of severe constraint.

“Science can provide a means to transform policing as long as police are prepared to own and adopt the science”

As the case of Body Worn Video has shown, science can provide a means to transform policing as long as police are prepared to own and adopt the science. But for Body Worn Video not to be an isolated case, policing will need to adopt many of the lessons from medicine about how it was transformed from eighteenth century barber surgeons to a modern science-based profession. This means policing needs an education and training system that does not just teach new recruits law and procedure, but also the most effective ways to apply them and why they work. It means that police leaders will need to target their resources using the best available science, test new practices, and track their impact. It will require emerging professional bodies like the College of Policing to work towards a new profession in policing, in which practice is accredited and expertise is valued and rewarded.

Obama’s commitment to Body Worn Video will not, of itself, solve the problems that Ferguson has so dramatically illustrated. The Rialto study suggests it may help – a bit. However, the White House announcement also included money for police education. If that is used wisely and police leaders grasp the opportunity to invest in a new science-based profession, then the future may be brighter.

Headline image credit: ‘Day 126 – West Midlands Police – CCTV Operator’ by West Midlands Police. CC BY-SA 2.0 via Flickr

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An Interview with Motown the Musical Director Charles Randolph-Wright

On 12 January 1959, Berry Gordy, Jr. founded Tamla Records in Detroit, Michigan. A year later it would be incorporated with a new name that became synonymous with a sound, style, and generation of music: Motown. All this week we’re looking the great artists and tracks that emerged from those recording studios. To kick us off, we spoke to Charles Randolph-Wright, the Director of Broadway’s Motown the Musical, which closes on Sunday, 18 January 2015.

Can you name your top five favorite Motown songs?

No. They change daily and some of them are only album tracks that many may not know.

You’ve talked about how “What’s Going On” is one of your favorite songs from this project because of its message of hope and change. Do you see this theme of social justice reemerging in popular music today?

I hope that theme is remerging because it is necessary. Motown was more than just music. It was a movement. Music has the power to change, to encourage, to heal. We need that now more than ever.

How have some of the legends of Motown responded to the show?

They have loved it, and seen it several times, which attests to their feelings about it. It was most important to me that we honor them because they opened the doors through which we now all walk. Diana Ross, Smokey Robinson, Stevie Wonder, Gladys Knight, Mary Wilson, Martha Reeves, and so many others have been there supporting us—and not just the performers, also writers like Holland Dozier and people behind the scenes, people behind the records have given us their stamp of approval. That means everything to us.

Throughout the show you get to see a great number of female artists that came through Hitsville U.S.A. What role do you think women played in Motown’s growth and success?

Motown was one of the first companies where women were in charge. Many women at Motown were in key positions, including Berry Gordy’s sisters (who had a label before him). Women like Suzanne DePasse and Edna Anderson (both represented in the show) still continue to have a major voice in the entertainment industry. Motown opened so many different doors, and continues that legacy.

Brandon Victor Dixon and the Original Broadway Cast of Motown the Musical. Courtesy of Motown the Musical

The show has attracted many people from near and far, of all ages showing the power of good music. Do you think that a show like Motown serves as a gateway for younger individuals to learn about and appreciate classics from artists like Michael Jackson and the Jackson 5, Marvin Gaye, Diana Ross and the Supremes, Smokey Robinson, and other Motown artists whose influence are still heard in today’s music?

Absolutely, and it is an aspect that gives me great pride. Watching all ages, all colors, all political persuasions singing and dancing together gives me hope.

Can you describe Motown’s lasting legacy using lyrics from a Hitsville song?

The legacy of Motown can best be described using the lyrics from an original song that Berry Gordy wrote for the show:

“IT COULD HAVE THE GREATEST SOUND

BUT WHEN YOU PUT THAT NEEDLE DOWN

IT’S WHAT’S IN THE GROOVES THAT COUNTS!”

Stay tuned for new articles every day this week celebrating Motown.

Headline image credit: Marva Hicks, Brandon Victor Dixon, and the Original Broadway Cast of Motown the Musical. Courtesy of Motown the Musical.

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Ominous synergies: Iran’s nuclear weapons and a Palestinian state

“Defensive warfare does not consist of waiting idly for things to happen. We must wait only if it brings us visible and decisive advantages. That calm before the storm, when the aggressor is gathering new forces for a great blow, is most dangerous for the defender.”

–Carl von Clausewitz, Principles of War (1812)

For Israel, long beleaguered on many fronts, Iranian nuclear weapons and Palestinian statehood are progressing at approximately the same pace. Although this simultaneous emergence is proceeding without any coordinated intent, the combined security impact on Israel will still be considerable. Indeed, this synergistic impact could quickly become intolerable, but only if the Jewish State insists upon maintaining its current form of “defensive warfare.”

Iran and Palestine are not separate or unrelated hazards to Israel. Rather, they represent intersecting, mutually reinforcing, and potentially existential perils. It follows that Jerusalem must do whatever it can to reduce the expected dangers, synergistically, on both fronts. Operationally, defense must still have its proper place. Among other things, Israel will need to continually enhance its multilayered active defenses. Once facing Iranian nuclear missiles, a core component of the synergistic threat, Israel’s “Arrow” ballistic missile defense system would require a fully 100% reliability of interception.

There is an obvious problem. Any such needed level of reliability would be unattainable. Now, Israeli defense planners must look instead toward conceptualizing and managing long-term deterrence.

Even in the best of all possible strategic environments, establishing stable deterrence will present considerable policy challenges. The intellectual and doctrinal hurdles are substantially numerous and complex; they could quite possibly become rapidly overwhelming. Nonetheless, because of the expectedly synergistic interactions between Iranian nuclear weapons and Palestinian independence, Israel will soon need to update and further refine its overall strategy of deterrence.

Following the defined meaning of synergy, intersecting risks from two seemingly discrete “battle fronts,” or separate theatres of conflict, would actually be greater than the simple sum of their respective parts.

One reason for better understanding this audacious calculation has to do with expected enemy rationality. More precisely, Israel’s leaders will have to accept that certain more-or-less identifiable leaders of prospectively overlapping enemies might not always be able to satisfy usual standards of rational behavior.

With such complex considerations in mind, Israel must plan a deliberate and systematic move beyond the country’s traditionally defensive posture of deliberate nuclear ambiguity. By preparing to shift toward more prudentially selective and partial kinds of nuclear disclosure, Israel might better ensure that its still-rational enemies would remain subject to Israeli nuclear deterrence. Over time, such careful preparations could even prove indispensable.

Israeli planners will also need to understand that the efficacy or credibility of the country’s nuclear deterrence posture could vary inversely with enemy judgments of Israeli nuclear destructiveness. In these circumstances, however ironic, enemy perceptions of a too-large or too-destructive Israeli nuclear deterrent force, or of an Israeli force that is plainly vulnerable to first-strike attacks, could undermine this posture.

Israel’s adversaries, Iran especially, must consistently recognize the Jewish State’s nuclear retaliatory forces as penetration capable. A new state of Palestine would be non-nuclear itself, but could still present an indirect nuclear danger to Israel.

Israel does need to strengthen its assorted active defenses, but Jerusalem must also do everything possible to improve its core deterrence posture. In part, the Israeli task will require a steadily expanding role for advanced cyber-defense and cyber-war.

Above all, Israeli strategic planners should only approach the impending enemy threats from Iran and Palestine as emergently synergistic. Thereafter, it would become apparent that any combined threat from these two sources will be more substantial than the mere arithmetic addition of its two components. Nuanced and inter-penetrating, this prospectively combined threat needs to be assessed more holistically as a complex adversarial unity. Only then could Jerusalem truly understand the full range of existential harms now lying latent in Iran and Palestine.

Armed with such a suitably enhanced understanding, Israel could meaningfully hope to grapple with these unprecedented perils. Operationally, inter alia, this would mean taking much more seriously Carl von Clausewitz’s early warnings on “waiting idly for things to happen.” Interestingly, long before the Prussian military theorist, ancient Chinese strategist Sun-Tzu had observed in The Art of War, “Those who excel at defense bury themselves away below the lowest depths of the earth. Those who excel at offense move from above the greatest heights of Heaven. Thus, they are able to preserve themselves and attain complete victory.”

Unwittingly, Clausewitz and Sun-Tzu have left timely messages for Israel. Facing complex and potentially synergistic enemies in Iran and Palestine, Jerusalem will ultimately need to take appropriate military initiatives toward these foes. More or less audacious, depending upon what area strategic developments should dictate, these progressive initiatives may not propel Israel “above the greatest heights of Heaven,” but they could still represent Israel’s very best remaining path to long-term survival.

Headline image credit: Iranian Missile Found in Hands of Hezbollah by Israel Defense Forces (IDF). CC BY-NC 2.0 via Flickr.

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New lives added to the Oxford DNB include Amy Winehouse, Elizabeth Taylor, and Claude Choules

The New Year brings with it a new instalment of Oxford DNB biographies which, as every January, extend the Dictionary’s coverage of people who shaped British life in the late twentieth and early twenty-first century. This January we add biographies of 226 men and women who died during 2011. These new biographies were commissioned by my predecessor as editor, Lawrence Goldman, but having recently assumed the editor’s chair, I take full and appreciative responsibility for introducing them.

The new biographies bear vivid witness to an astonishing diversity of personal experience, individual achievement, and occasional delinquency; and they range from Claude Choules (b.1901), the last British-born veteran of the First World War, who died at the age of 110, to the singer and songwriter Amy Winehouse (b.1983), who died from alcohol poisoning aged just twenty-seven. The great majority of the people whose biographies are now added (191, or 84%) were born before the outbreak of the Second World War, and the majority (137, or 60%) were born before 1930. Typically, therefore, most were active between the 1940s and the 1980s, but some (such as Choules) are included for their activities before 1918, and several (such as Winehouse, or the anti-war campaigner, Brian Haw) only came to prominence in the 2000s.

The lives of Choules and Winehouse—the one exceptionally long, the other cut tragically short—draw attention to two of the most significant groups to be found in this new selection. A generation after Choules, many Britons served bravely during the Second World War, among them the SOE veteran Nancy Wake who led a group of resistance fighters and who killed German soldiers with her bare hands; SOE’s French section sent 39 women agents into France during the war, and Wake was undoubtedly among the toughest and most redoubtable. Her fellow SOE officer, Patrick Leigh Fermor, is best known for his capture, on Crete, of the German officer General Kreipe—an event that was retold in the film Ill Met by Moonlight (1957). In March 1942 Leslie Audus was captured by the Japanese and put to work in a slave labour camp. There he employed his skills as a botanist to create a nutritional supplement from fermented soya beans, saving him and hundreds of his fellow prisoners from starvation. After the war, Audus enjoyed a distinguished scientific career though, with great modesty, he made little of his remarkable prison work, which remained known only to former captives who owed him their lives.

The troubled creative life of our latest-born person, Amy Winehouse, is representative of a second significant group of lives to emerge from our new set of biographies. These were the entertainers for whom the celebrity-devouring world of show business was a place of some highs but ultimately of disenchantment and disappointment. Forty years before Winehouse came to public attention, the singer Kathy Kirby enjoyed a glittering career. Ubiquitous in the early 1960s with hit after hit, she was reputedly the highest-paid female singer of her generation. However, she failed to adapt to the rise of rock’n’roll, and soon spiralled into drug and alcohol abuse, bankruptcy, and psychiatric problems. The difficulties Kathy Kirby experienced bear similarities to those of the Paisley-born songwriter Gerry Rafferty, best known for his hit single ‘Baker Street’, which deals with loneliness in a big city; Rafferty too found fame hard to cope with, and eventually succumbed to alcoholism.

Of course, not all encounters with modern British popular culture were so troubled. One of the longest biographies added in this new update is that of the actress Elizabeth Taylor who shot to stardom in National Velvet (1944) and remained ever after a figure of international standing. While Taylor’s private life garnered almost as much attention as her screen roles, she’s also notable in pioneering the now popular association between celebrity and charitable causes—in Taylor’s case for charities working to combat HIV/AIDS. To that of Elizabeth Taylor we can also add other well-known names, among them Lucian Freud—by common consent the greatest British artist of his day, whose depictions of human flesh are unrivalled in their impact and immediacy; the journalist and author Christopher Hitchens, who made his career in the US; Ken Russell, the enfant terrible of British cinema; and the dramatist Shelagh Delaney, best-known for her play, A Taste of Honey (1958).

In addition to documenting the lives, and legacies, of well-known individuals—such as Freud, Hitchens, and Delaney—it’s also the purpose of each January update of the ODNB to include people of real historical significance who did not make the headlines. In creating a rounded picture of those who’ve shaped modern Britain, we’re helped enormously by more than 400 external specialists. Divided into specialist panels—from archaeology and broadcasting to the voluntary sector and zoology—our advisers recommend people for inclusion from long lists of possible candidates. And it’s their insight that ensures we provide biographies of many less familiar figures responsible for some truly remarkable achievements. Here is just one example. Leslie Collier was a virologist who, in the 1960s, developed a heat-stable vaccine for smallpox which made possible a mass vaccination programme in Africa and South America. The result was the complete eradication of smallpox as proclaimed by the World Health Organization in 1980. How many figures can claim to have abolished what was once a terrifying global disease?

Whether long or short, good or bad, exemplary or tragic, or something more nuanced and complex in-between, the 226 new biographies now added to the Oxford DNB make fascinating—and sometimes sobering—reading.

Featured image credit: Amy Winehouse, singing, by NRK P3. CC-BY-NC-SA-2.0 via Flickr.

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Words of 2014 Round-up

Word of the Year season closed this weekend with the annual meeting of the American Dialect Society. As usual, major news stories dominated selections, but there has been a notable uptick in social media-related choices. It is interesting to note how hashtags are becoming more prevalent with #IndyRef as a common runner-up, and #dirtypolitics and #blacklivesmatter winning the title.

In the English-speaking world: Oxford Dictionaries selected ‘vape’, an abbreviation of vapour or vaporize, given its increase usage with the rise in electronic cigarettes. Around the globe: Festival XYZ selected ‘médicalmant’ (a relaxant drug) and ‘casse-crotte’ (bad meal with a cheap drink) as mots nouveau pour 2014. (France) The Festival du mot selected ‘transition’ [jury choice] and ‘selfie’ [public choice] for Mots de l’année. (France) ‘Zei’ (税) is Kanji (Japanese character) of the year (poll sponsored by the Japanese Kanji Proficiency Society). It means ‘tax'; a proposed sales tax has been in the news in Japan throughout the year. The Gesellschaft für deutsche Sprache (German Language Society) selected ‘Lichtgrenze’ (border of light), in reference to the celebrations surrounding the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. ‘Fremmedkriger’ (foreign fighter) was selected by Språkrådet (Norwegian Language Council). Genootschap Onze Taal (Dutch language association) and listeners of De Taalstaat (The Language State) voted for ‘Rampvlucht’ (disaster flight), in reference to MH17 and several other air disasters this past year. The Van Dale Dictionary selected ‘dagobertducktaks’ (a tax for the rich) as the Dutch Word of the Year. It’s named after Dagobert — better known as Scrooge McDuck in English! Van Dale is also behind the selection of ‘flitsmarathon’ for Flemish Word of the Year: “an extensive operation (marathon) of speed checks (flitsen) carried out by police”. Viewers of the Belgian children’s television network Ketnet selected ‘OMG’. Listeners of the Danish radio programme The Language Laboratory voted the app name ‘MobilePay’ as Word of the Year. Porto Editora selected ‘corrupção’ (the act of becoming corrupt) as Palavra do Ano 2014 through a vote on the Infopédia.pt site. There have been a number of prominent corruption cases in Portugal this past year. Fundéu BBVA (la Fundación del Español Urgente) selected ‘selfi’ (selfie) as palabra del año. (Spain) ‘Selfie’ is the Zingarelli’s selection for le parole dell’anno 2014. (Italy) ‘Fǎ’ (法), meaning law, was selected as Chinese character and ‘anti-corruption’ was selected as Chinese word in a popular poll conducted by the Chinese National Language Monitoring and Research Center and the Commercial Press. The readers of Lianhe Zaobao in Singapore selected 乱 (disorder or chaos) as the Chinese character of 2014. People overseas could also vote through Zaobao.com. Språkrådet (Swedish Language Council) released a list of 40 new words. Chinese character of the year in Malaysia is háng (航), meaning aviation, organized by Malaysian Chinese Association and the Malaysian Chinese Cultural Centre. In Taiwan, United Daily Newspaper organized a reader poll that selected 黑, meaning ‘dark’, following media coverage of the ‘dark side’ of industry, politics, etc.

Are there any words of the year that I missed? Any translations that can be improved? Please leave a comment below.

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Ideology and a conducive political environment

The editors of Oxford Islamic Studies Online asked several experts the following question:

The world has watched as ISIS (ISIL, the “Islamic State”) has moved from being a small but extreme section of the Syrian opposition to a powerful organization in control of a large swath of Iraq and Syria. Even President Obama recently admitted that the US was surprised by the success of ISIS in that region. Why have they been so successful, and why now?

Shadi Hamid, fellow at the Brookings Institution, shares his thoughts.

ISIS is a “revolutionary” organization in a way that al-Qaeda and other like-minded extremist groups never were, and never really wanted to be. The “caliphate” — the historical political entity governed by Islamic law and tradition — might have been an inspiration as well as an aspiration, but it wasn’t actually going to happen in real life. The historical weight of the caliphate, and its symbolic power among even less Islamically-minded Muslims, was simply too much (and not only that, you needed a large enough swath of territory to establish one). ISIS, even if it was destroyed tomorrow morning, will have succeeded in removing the mental block of the “caliphate.” Now, anytime there’s an ungoverned, or ungovernable, space, a militant group will think to itself: should we try to capture a piece of territory and announce our own little emirate? And, well beyond the rarefied realm of extremist groups, ISIS has succeeded in injecting the word “caliphate” back into the public discourse. In Turkey, for example, various writers, while opposing ISIS’s particular version of the caliphate, have been willing to discuss the idea of a caliphate.

In this sense, the question of whether ISIS enjoys much popular support in the Muslim world — it doesn’t — is almost beside the point. ISIS doesn’t need to be popular to be successful. In June, around 800 militants were able to defeat an Iraqi force of 30,000 in Mosul, the country’s second largest city. Ideology, morale, and, crucially, the willingness to die are force multipliers. But ideology can only take you so far without a conducive political environment. ISIS itself was perhaps inevitable, but its rise to prominence was not. It has benefited considerably from the manifest failures of Arab governance, of an outdated regional order, and of an international community that was unwilling to act as Syria descended into savage repression and civil war.

Graeme Wood made an important point in one of the only pieces I’ve read that takes ISIS’s religious inspirations seriously: “ISIS’s meticulous use of language, and its almost pedantic adherence to its own interpretation of Islamic law, have made it a strange enemy, fierce and unyielding but also scholarly and predictable.” This is where ISIS’s aspirations to governance become critical, and where Obama’s description of the group as a “terrorist organization, pure and simple” seems both problematic and detached. Emphasizing the distinctive nature of ISIS — and getting it across — becomes difficult in a public discourse that is very focused on us and dealing with our Iraq demons.

This is part two of a series of articles discussing ISIS. Part one is by Hanin Ghaddar, Lebanese journalist and editor.

Headline image: Iraqi Army on patrol in Mosul, Iraq, February 2008. By Staff Sgt. Jason Robertson. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.

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