Image via Wikipedia
Image via Wikipedia
Image via Wikipedia
Image via WikipediaPalestinian Membership as a State in UNESCOM Jay Rosenberg has the wind up about this one, calling the statement 'incoherent.' As well it must be, when you consider that effectively Washington and Tel Aviv are operating under the delusion that they are independent of their creator : Whitehall.
The point is, of course, to prevent any sort of recognition of Occupied Palestine as a state with a legitimate government : which is why Hamas is branded as 'terrorist' while regular military forces with all their equipment and weapons are not. They...wear uniforms ! They represent a certified combatant ! This is in contrast to a missing term : victim.
As for 'contractors'...they aren't covered in the 'media.' Corporate Personhood has its perks, especially when it comes to communications.
Globalisation and its Impact on Higher Education in Developing Countries: the role of UNESCO
Various initiatives were taken after the horrors of World War II to ensure that it would be followed by a lasting peace. The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO), was one organisation that emerged from this process of international soul searching and its constitution, approved in 1945, begins with the words:
‘… since wars begin in the minds of men, it is in the minds of men that the defences of peace must be constructed; … ignorance of each other’s ways and lives has been a common cause, throughout the history of mankind, of that suspicion and mistrust between the peoples of the world through which their differences have all too often broken into war.’
After noting that lasting peace depends on the ‘intellectual and moral solidarity of mankind’, the signatories to the Constitution stated that they believed ‘in full and equal opportunities for education for all, in the unrestricted pursuit of objective truth, and in the free exchange of ideas and knowledge’ and were ‘agreed and determined to develop and increase the means of communication between their peoples and to employ these means for the purposes of mutual understanding and a truer and more perfect knowledge of each other’s lives.’
I stress three ideas in this extract from the UNESCO constitution: first, ‘the unrestricted pursuit of objective truth’; second, ‘the free exchange of ideas and knowledge’; and third, ‘increasing the means of communication between peoples’. These three ideas define a healthy vision of the globalisation of intellectual life and echo the evolution of the academic dogma, the academic mode of thinking and the principle of academic freedom over eight centuries.
By academic dogma I mean the simple statement that knowledge is important. It is a dogma, because you cannot prove it, but many believe that it is a basic tenet of humankind.
By the academic mode of thinking I mean the appeal to reason, the formulation of hypotheses, the search for evidence – in short, the scientific method in the broadest sense.
By academic freedom, to quote the conclusions of a conference organised by UNESCO in 1950, I mean the ‘right and the freedom to research science for its own sake, wherever that research leads, the tolerance of opposite views and independence of any political interference’.
As a charter for globalisation UNESCO’s constitution was fifty years ahead of its time, but in universities these were not new ideas.
Not long ago the UNESCO Courier devoted an issue to the question of the freedom of university research with the title Politics and profit: Scholars at Risk. It stressed, of course, the difficulties encountered by academics in countries whose regimes tolerate neither opposition nor freedom of speech.
But most of the articles were about the dangers created by large firms that fund work in universities. This funding often includes tight restrictions, either on the publication of research results or, more generally, on the research activities of the department in receipt of the funds. The authors quote cases where university authorities kowtowed only too readily to commercial pressures. They explained that universities were turning to the private sector for support because of the decline in the public funding of universities in many countries.
How are we to view this issue? I suggest to you that preventing the publication of research results is a shortsighted policy, especially for any organisation that hopes to take advantage of scientific progress. As Albert Einstein said, ‘Restrictions on academic freedom only hinder the circulation of knowledge and therefore bias the judgements that countries make and the actions that they take’. I also quote Arnold Toynbee who said, in the same vein, ‘self-criticism and self-correction are all too rare in human affairs. They are the sign of a maturity and of a spiritual force which provide hope for the future’. In summary, such restrictions are ineffective in commercial terms and are a drag on human progress.
Globalization has many far-reaching implications for higher education which may cover many aspects including its structure, form, development, quality etc. According to Slaughter (1998) globalization has at least for far-reaching implications for higher
education:
1. The constriction of monies available for discretionary activities, such as post-secondary education.
2. The growing importance of technoscience and fields closely involved with markets.
3. The tightening relationship between multinational corporations and state agencies.
4. The global intellectual property strategies.
5. Mobility of persons and profession and its impact on structure, character and policy from framework.
Due to increased global competition many developed countries responded with certain economic policies shifting public resources from social welfare programmes to economic development efforts, primarily through tax-cuts for the business sector, reduction of
government expenditure, but also through programmes that stimulated technology innovation, whether through military or civilian research and development (R & D).
As supply-side economic and debt reduction policies were instituted, entitlement programmes, especially education, expanded enormously, largely in response to
demographic change.
Another implication lies in the fact that due to the resulting policies mentioned above less public money is available and is concentrated in technoscience and market related fields. In other words higher education is directed away from its traditional concern with the
liberal education of undergraduates.
UNESCO, Where Culture Becomes Propaganda
It was supposed to be a conference dealing with cultural issues. But the United Nations gathering in Mex ico City last July turned into the kind of three-ring political circus that is now the modus operandi of the United Nations Education, Science, and Cultural Organization known as UNESCO.
At the conference, called Mondiacult '82, French Cultural Minister J ack Lang, though not mentioning the United States by name, blasted the U.S. with charges of "financial and intellectual imperialismu1 in the export of American cultural products ranging from films to fashions. The Arab nations attacked Israel for invading Lebanon. Argentina attacked Britain for invading the Falkland Islands. Mexico took a political potshot at the U.S. by introducing a resolution to guarantee welfare rights for all migrant workers, legal or illegal In sum, as in the case of the Education an d Social Science components of UNESCO activities, the Mexico City conference served mainly as an arena for communist and Third World political machinations. There were no limits on the speeches in the plenary sessions. Resolutions were delivered to delegat ions only hours before the vote-=without translations.American Ambassador to UNESCO, Jean Gerard, described the whole conference as llprocedural chaos.Il A Dutch delegate was heard to remark that UNESCO meant IIU never eat, sleep, or cogitate.I In the mid st of the political pandemonium at Mondiacult, Soviet bloc and Third World delegates predictably managed to attack the United States, the Western nations, and multinational corporations for Itcultural imperialism11 and Vieocolonialism. II Cuba submitted a classic Moscow-brand resolution called IICulture and the Control of 1nformation.Il Co-sponsored by Madagascar, Angola, Vietnam, Nicaragua, Grenada, and Sao Tom6 and Principe, the original version of this resolution blamed cultural problems worldwide on We s tern capitalism. It asserted that I 2 transnational corporations largely control the cultural industries, distort the identity process of the developing nations and affect the cultural and educational context through their policy of indiscrimi nate consum p tion, ignore the cultural values of the so-called Third World countries, and promote behavior patterns alien to their legitimate traditions, derive more than 50 percent of their income from foreign sales and are basically concerned with profit and not wit h the cultural and socio-economic advancement of the developing countries
It is a pleasure to present this publication on Private Higher Education as one of the
background documents for the 2009 World Conference on Higher Education
(WCHE), held under the overarching theme The New Dynamics of Higher Education
and Research for Societal Change and Development.
One of the clearest trends to emerge since the World Conference in 1998 is the
growth of many private/non-government providers of higher education in response
to the strong demand for access and the need for a greater diversity of curricula and
approaches.
Focus on training children in emergencies : Afghanistan ( 'Training' is a euphemism for conditioning too )
Arabic Education for Our Children
I’m talking about a training program for our Arabic and Islamic studies teachers where they learn to turn into animated, imaginative characters making stories jump off the page in the class room giving our children the feeling that they’re standing at the edge of a cliff watching water part as they can hear enemy horses charging towards them and a cloud of dust rising behind them! The teacher tells this AMAAAAZING story, builds this incredible suspense and then says, “and you know what happened next….”. At this point the children have their eyes bulging out of their sockets, the look of concern and curiosity invading their facial expressions. Some can’t help themselves and cry out “tell us teacher!” The teacher recites the ayah in an animated fashion bringing its words to life in the classroom without translating. “The End.” “What?” the children exclaim. “What does that mean?” “You mean you guys don’t know what that means? OHOHOHHHO…Let me tell you!” The teacher takes a word from the ayah and builds a story around it and every few seconds asks, “What was that word again?” The class screams out the answer making the principal nervous about what’s going on in the class.
The Taliban: Friend to Education?
Since the Taliban was driven from power in 2001, some 5.4 million Afghan children have been enrolled in schools, including 1.6 million girls. But a devastating campaign of intimidation through school burnings and the killing of teachers has forced the closure of many schools in the southern provinces where the insurgency is strongest. "How can the Taliban say they want to build schools when they have already burnt 180, closed 396 and prevented the youth of the country from going to school?" says Education Minister Hanif Atmar. "What they are really talking about building is madrassahs [religious schools] and terrorist training grounds. They will take young boys and train them in killing and suicide attacks on our country."The Taliban says its schools will offer an Islamically correct education, and will provide students with Taliban-era textbooks. Some of those textbooks, which can still be found in curio shops and bookstores in Kabul, teach children to count with Kalashnikovs, and to subtract by killing off members of rival groups.
The Taliban has long combined its armed actions with a campaign of intimidation aimed at preventing government institutions, such as schools, from functioning. But Sunday's announcement marks the first time since 2001 that the Taliban has promised its own social services to the population, in what appears to be a direct response to the Coalition and government reconstruction projects. "They really are masters of propaganda*," says Joanna Nathan, Afghanistan analyst for the International Crisis Group.
* Yes. Well, what are you selling; chicken soup ?
UNESCO : Its Purpose and Philosophy
.taking the techniques of persuasion and information and true propaganda that we have learnt to apply nationally in war, and deliberately bending them to the international tasks of peace, if necessary utilizing them -- as Lenin envisaged - to 'overcome the resistance of millions' to desirable change
INTERVIEW WITH NICK BOSTROM AND DAVID PEARCE
Dave and Nick are the co-founders of the World Transhumanist Association
Forest of the Dead
Inside Higher Ed reporter Dan Berret summarizes the core of Ginsburg’s argument as follows:[U]niversities have shifted their resources and attention away from teaching and research in order to feed a cadre of administrators who, he says, do little to advance the central mission of universities and serve chiefly to inflate their own sense of importance by increasing the number of people who report to them. “Armies of staffers pose a threat by their very existence,” he wrote. “They may seem harmless enough at their tiresome meetings but if they fall into the wrong hands, deanlets can become instruments of administrative imperialism and academic destruction.”On the other hand, anonymous community college administrator Dean Dad coincidentally today attributes much administrative growth to regulation and the expansion of information technology, which is at least partially the case as well.
Both accounts, however, seem to leave out the faculty incentive structures that promote bloat, particularly outside the rarefied R1 air at Johns Hopkins and Cornell that Ginsburg has breathed in his career. Simply put, for most tenured faculty at regional comprehensives and other lower-tier institutions, the only route to a higher salary is to join in the administrative featherbedding. The vast majority of faculty post-tenure don’t have the research record to compete for tenured lines at flagships, even if they had the interest in pursuing such an agenda in the first place, and a move up the status hierarchy into a non-tenured position—effectively starting over—is precluded by norms that emphasize, particularly at top-level institutions, gambling on the potential upside of a newly-minted PhD rather than taking on faculty with demonstrated, but perhaps unspectacular, experience balancing teaching and research.
So, the only way out is administration.
Obama's medical marijuana policy going to pot
The folks at Reason have been keeping a rather keen eye on the escalation of the Obama administration’s war on medical marijuana; the latest salvo is apparently going to involve aggressive prosecutions of those advertising dispensaries, along with targeting landlords and other property owners whose tenants are dispensing pot, regardless of state licensing.
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