Posts tagged academia
Britain is in trouble,” he tells me. “Britain is in deep trouble. The privatising is out of the control, the militarising is out of control and the financialising is out of control. And what I mean from that is you have a cold-hearted, mean-spirited budget that the Queen just read; you have working and poor people under panic, you have this obsession with immigration that tends to scapegoat the most vulnerable rather than confront the most powerful. And it is not just black immigrants, but also our brothers and sisters from Poland and Bulgaria, Romania; right across the board.” He isn’t ranting. He doesn’t rant. He smiles, he growls gently, he leans in and whispers conspiratorily. There is an upside, he says. “Britain has a rich history of bouncing back too.”
…
“I think race matters deeply but it is in many ways denied,” he says. “The form of institutional racism and informal racism is very much there. White supremacy is very much alive in Britain. If you scratch below the surface you can still see how race matters. It is not as raw and coarse as it is in the US. You have 10,000 professors in Britain and 50 professors of colour. Ten women. This is pathetic; this is ridiculous. The ‘meritocratic’ brothers and sisters say: ‘It’s just a matter of merit and if they were doing the work you would have a higher percentage.’ And you say: ‘Please, get off the crack pipe.’ There are brilliant black and brown people who could gain access to these professorships. Something is happening.”
…
What of America? “We elected a black president and that means we are less racist now than we used to be. That’s beautiful. But when you look at the prison industrial complex and the new Jim Crow: levels of massive unemployment and the decrepit unemployment system, indecent housing: white supremacy is still operating in the US, even with a brilliant black face in a high place called the White House. He is a brilliant, charismatic black brother. He’s just too tied to Wall Street. And at this point he is a war criminal. You can’t meet every Tuesday with a killer list and continually have drones drop bombs. You can do that once or twice and say: ‘I shouldn’t have done that, I’ve got to stop.’ But when you do it month in, month out, year in, year out – that’s a pattern of behaviour. I think there is a chance of a snowball in hell that he will ever be tried, but I think he should be tried and I said the same about George Bush. These are war crimes. We suffer in this age from an indifference toward criminality and a callousness to catastrophe when it comes to poor and working people.
Brother West laying it down via the Guardian, as always, in the truest manner to humanity. The man is neither academic nor celebrity but a crusader for justice (LISTEN: Brother Ali - Letter to My Countrymen Featuring Dr. Cornel West).
“I wanna be like that too.”
Today I’m at the University from which I obtained both my Bachelor’s and my Master’s degrees. I also worked in this department as an administrative assistant for 2 years.
Being back today, I still feel like I’m a half-decent student. It’s amazing how a place will do that to you. I’m a year from being Dr Revolution Trainee; I travel the world interviewing the elite heads of global governance, and here, I’m still a poor student clawing their way into offices in an attempt to gain knowledge/get a job.
Some things never change.
All of this means that, without addressing the underlying decay in productive capabilities, Britain cannot fix its ailing economy. To deal with this problem, it urgently needs to develop a long-term productive strategy through a broad-based public consultation involving not just the government and private sector firms, but trade unions, educational institutions and research institutes.
…
John Maynard Keynes once famously said that in the long run we are all dead. But a lot of us have to live for a while yet. A series of short-run policies, whether based on the coalition policy of spending cuts and loose monetary policy or on the opposition policy of increased government spending, isn’t going to address the challenges facing the British economy. It is time to think for the long term.
What’s that? Just Ha-Joon Chang telling the coalition government how it is.
If you don’t know Ha-Joon Chang, educate yourself.
I love how political economy possesses the capacity to answer every single question about the future. Oh, political economy, I adore you.
The Guardian continues its excellent coverage of women in academia.
Kenyan playwright, poet, professor and activist Dr. Micere Mugo is honored as Distinguish Nyerere Lecturer at the fourth Julius Nyerere Intellectual Festival at the University of Dar es Salaam.
Mugo’s lecture (watch video) entitled, “Art, Artists, and the Flowering of Pan-Africana Liberated Zones” reflected on the role art and artist have played and must continue to play in African Liberation.
LOVE seeing female academics getting their ‘biggie ups’ (so to speak), also dynamicafrica - although not the original poster - is one of my newest tumblr favourites.
Last night, as I lay in bed extremely overtired from trying to polish the vast poo that is my new residence - and somehow replaying the Hunger Games (famine, scarcity of water, turn brother on brother) opening in my head - I thought about that ‘giant’ water source found in Africa earlier this year. In my half conscious happy, I thought how wonderful it would be if Africa became the world’s water source, and by Africa, I mean people like Dr Micere Mugo, the people whom have been forgotten/neglected in African policy making.
Warning: existential read.
Texas is a messed up place. I think, possibly, only a federated state which previous was its own country can be this messed up.
The first photo is from a petrol station toilet. I have no idea what a sexual ‘grab bag’ might include, although the Brit mates hypothesised over pints upon my return, as social science PhDs are wont to do.
The second and third photos are from a local favourite eatery, Sealand. Yes, it is the land of the delicious sea. Not making this up: while at dinner there with my partner, we overheard, “If the restaurant is called Sealand, why are there paintings of birds on wall?!” … they were herons. Anyhow, you can’t make this stuff up.
The last two photos are something I struggle with. Minnie was my grandma who died just after her 75th wedding anniversary two weeks ago. My grandpa said after their story was published in the local paper (see link), many people came to visit them in care home to say their story was a source of inspiration.
My grandma died just before her 99th birthday; she is buried next to her mother, who I am named after, who died in her early 90s. My grandma is also buried near her sister who also lived to a ‘ripe ole age’.
I MAY have been to church that day and had too much scotch on an empty stomach and had a massive breakdown at the cemetery for two reasons. First, this Christian ritual of burying the dead doesn’t sit right with me. In Britain, its become much less common (unless you want to be laid to rest near Karl Marx in Highgate), and I am much more comfortable with burning the dead. Just knowing their bodies are beneath my feet is a huge source of unnecessary, attachment-based grief. A counselor once asked me if I am Buddhist because it made all the death in my life easier to deal with. She was probably right, but I think this whole Christian burial is far too torturous. Second, I DO NOT WANT TO LIVE UNTIL I’M 90-something, and ALL the women on this side of my family do.
I’ve been through my fair share of ‘hard knocks’, and undertaking a PhD in a ‘foreign’ country has certainly exacerbated these, but this year I’ve learned one very hard lesson… I think. There’s not much purpose to life, to our individual lives… other than the old ‘Keep calm and carry on’.
My grands ‘pulled themselves up from their bootstraps’ (if this was a thing then, it certainly is not now); they went from Great Depression-broke to comfortable. They had a family, a close family; they worked hard in community service and were fortunate enough to enjoy 75 years with a partner who was truly a partner. This is outstanding. This is the best we can hope for. But, at the end of it all, we’re still alone. We outlive our partners, and we outlive our bodies. In our youth and middle age, we command our bodies. In our old age, our bodies command us, never knowing when the next emergency run to the toilet will interrupt our regularly scheduled programme.
I know my grands are just ONE example, but I honestly feel like their lives are the BEST example of a good life… and in the end, first-hand, its awful. When we are younger, we always wish the world would just PAUSE: for a nap, for time with family, for time to read, for time to relax. When we age, there’s nothing but time: time alone, time to reflect, time to regret, time to read but we can’t see, time to holiday but we can’t walk.
I guess this whole post is just my way of saying the human condition is a shit condition. I regret coming here for my PhD, a year before finishing I regret it almost 100%. And if you are considering one, I’d advise thinking twice. But a very kind friend recently sent me something from EE Cummings:
because you take life in your stride(instead
of scheming how to beat the noblest game
a man can proudly lose,or playing dead
and hoping death himself will do the same)because you aren’t afraid to kiss the dirt
(and consequently dare to climb the sky)
because a mind no other mind should try
to fool has always failed to fool your heartbut most(without the smallest doubt) because
no best is quite so good you don’t conceive
a better; and because no evil is
so worse than worst you fall in hate with love–human one mortally immortal i
can turn immense all time’s because to why
I think its meant to be encouraging. So reflecting on Texas being so messed up - the world being so messed up - my grands’ story and life, and my own regret and current personal hell that is elite education … I am certain there is no point in life, and I think that’s what Cummings is trying to say as well. That there is no point and life, as a state of being, is pretty awful - the good is the exception, not the rule - but the best we can try to do is keep challenging ourselves to endure the awful, the hardship, the regret.
To turn our cheek and try to silence the awful with drugs, sex, gluttony, envy, or such vices is to miss the nature of the experience that is life.
I think what I’m trying to say is, migration, war, genocide, discrimination, poverty, hunger… these are the rules, anything else is the exception. The purpose in living the unpurposeful life is to endure.
Illegitimi non carborundum
this is my only academic accomplishment this week.
I think we are in for a very serious situation worldwide.
Robert Thompson, a food security expert at the Chicago Council of Global Affairs from the Guardian on the ‘corn crisis’ and respective drought effects on US agriculture.
The International Centre for Trade and Sustainable Development (ICTSD) - the people who ran the (WTO) MC8 Parallel Symposium on trade and development I attended in Geneva in December - has produced a new ebook, The Future and the WTO: Confronting the Challenges, A Collection of Short Essays, with some BIG, BIG names contributing:
And this is just a sampling of the people I know! There are 30 contributions in this epic ebook that address the scope and difficulties in governing international trade. When I began my long labour of love to becoming a WTO scholar, I wish I had known things like this were out there. If you’re interested in more information on the 30 essays (topic, contributor, etc), send a message, and I’ll pass along the good word. THIS IS A NOT-TO-BE-MISSED FOR TRADE AND POLITICAL ECONOMY SCHOLARS!
le sigh.
I’ve just been to the library and was distracted for about 15 mins in the legal section of the ‘nook’ reserved for the UN and human rights literature.
Just like so many bitter medicines, it’s difficult to consume this critically engaging, performanced-based, normative literature knowing that THOUSANDS of academics, civil servants, state delegates working for international cooperation and peace has been perverted by a few who seised an opportunity during crisis in the name of nationalism and other bigotries, see Stephen Gill (2012) Global Crises and the Crisis of Global Leadership.
More than 140 countries have passed counterterrorism laws since the attacks of September 11, 2001, often with little regard for due process and other basic rights.
While every government has a responsibility to protect its population from attack, many have used the new measures to prosecute journalists, protesters, opposition politicians, and religious or ethnic groups under the guise of counterterrorism.
Summer prep for Introduction to International Relations.
…I think this could be an album cover (based on #s) but if Google don’t know, I don’t know ;-)
*TELL ME*
Its easy to conjure up nightmare scenarios of a globalized world controlled by self-serving elites working to depress wages and suppress local political autonomy.
…
Robert Keohane (2000) ‘Governance in a Partially Globalized World’, Presidential Address, American Political Science Association.
are we (already) living in this nightmare, or is it slowly forming with in a more realist, state-centric sphere?
I am one of those ‘stories’ of US student loans you read about. A promising PhD candidate in her final year, facing non-completion because of the crippling costs of education.
Without being self-propagating, I have a very achievable, publishable, genuinely contributory PhD thesis. I’ve just completed my 2013-2014 US student loan process for the final year of my UK PhD (Sept 2013-Sept 2014), and I’m short $20K (£13,000). I’ve reached the cap on student loans ($138,500) in completing the final year of my two BAs (political science and psychology), my MA (political science), and my UK PhD (politics).
I’ve always been a decent academic, but in this final year of my PhD, I can see that [this] (and my PhD thesis, not entirely updated) is something I am actually ‘good’ at - if one can be ‘good’ at academia. However, finding the words to express a feeling of finally, finally ‘arriving’ in academia, coupled with this crippling financial disability, is near impossible. So this is a post to express this indescribable despair and to ‘give’ my crippling anxiety to ‘the universe’. And perhaps, its also in the hopes that the very wonderful British Federation of Women Graduates (BFWG) checks my blog in the process of narrowing down candidates for funding.
Here I have complied some comments from my end of year review, in case anyone reading this (Ellen Degenerous??? spelling intentional) can help, in any way, towards $20K/£13K for the final year of my PhD.
Laura has had a difficult year…She has, nonetheless, made important intellectual and structural leaps that bode well for the construction of a first rate thesis. Moreover, the past few weeks have seen much resolved that has been affecting Laura’s capacity to progress and we look forward to a bright and successful final year. Laura is bright, keen, industrious, willing and hardworking as well as eminently capable, so I have no doubt that the obstacles that have confronted her this year will cease to pose a problem. Her work is really beginning to lay strong foundations for a stellar thesis. We just need to make sure she has all of the support mechanisms she needs.
Laura’s plans are rightly ambitious and perfectly realisable.
I have no doubts that by Christmas we will be dealing with a substantially complete first draft that we can continue to mould ahead of submission by Sept 2013.
I think Laura is more clear now on her near and longer term objectives and contribution, and mode of thesis organisation, which represent very significant steps forward. She will complete a very good thesis on time.
The proposal is clearly written and focussed. I can see why the project is worth pursuing. I can see why the method is designed in the way it is, and that it is designed to generate the kinds of data that will help Laura answer her primary research question. And, if she succeeds in generating the kinds of generalisable conclusions she hopes to, Laura will have made a genuine contribution to scholarly knowledge.
Another issue concerns money. Laura’s project is designed in such a way that several intensive periods of fieldwork are required. And, as she herself emphasises, this comes at a significant financial cost.
I am a full-time PhD in the UK/EU. I am not a UK/EU citizen. I will not be returning to my ‘home’ country (US) after completion, but it is increasingly unlikely I will be staying in the UK/EU. These are the factors that impact my ability to secure private/external funding. If you have ANY ideas/sources, please message me or contact me at via the University of Manchester (see second link for ‘PhD thesis’).
May the force be with me?
For a few hours last week, I’d planned to write a column about the “five-second rule.” Scientists at Manchester Metropolitan University in England had released a study showing that some foods (ham, cookies) were safer to eat than others (dried fruit, pasta) after being left on the floor to collect germs. The Huffington Post picked up the story, as did Gizmodo and Good Morning America and the TODAY Show. But the research—if that’s even the right word to use here—was rotten from the start.
(see bottom for commentary)
Dodgy Boffins: What’s wrong with science journalism in the U.K.? [Slate]
It doesn’t get better,
When I contacted Manchester Metropolitan University for more details, I learned that the “researchers” and “scientists” described in media reports amounted to one person—a lab tech named Kathy Lees, who did not respond to my inquiries.
As a scientist, according to me, I can confirm via studies that 60% of the time, it works every time.
(via thenoobyorker)
Does it mean that I have Manc/Brit spirit if I’m defensive of this? …
I mean (practically) everyone at Uni of Manc has a little go at Man Met, but they are still proper researchers … no matter where you earn your PhD you’re earning the right to not be referred to as a “researcher” in the press, right?
I know LOADS of PhDs doing much sillier research (and the ‘silliness’ of research isn’t concentrated in Britain as the author would like to assume) … they’re still proper researchers … I noticed the article was written by Daniel Engber, not Dr. Daniel Engber, so suck on that bit of judgmental failure NOT-Doctor. Less ye forget Britain - NOT ENGLAND - is home to THE BEST research institution in the world, or was that another bit of silliness Engber didn’t learn in his non-existent postgraduate studies.
If feedback on future publication paper from supervisor has three ‘very good’s and a ‘terrific’, I can has afternoon off?
…no, but just TRY to cage this enthusiasm!
Hello, academia, I am arriving.
Page 1 of 5
inspired by the work of SAUL BASS, ART GOODMAN and DAVE NAGATA.
hitchcock typeface by MATT TERICH. tumblr theme by MATTHEW BUCHANAN.
