I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. On academic boycotts

Previous posts on this issue can be found here, here, here, and here.

Limiting academic freedom is poor and morally inconsistent way to further the growth of constructive communication.  And constructive communication is precisely what is needed in the Israel/Palestine conflict.  If an academic body wants to put their spoon in there are moral and cosntructive ways to do that that preserve academic freedome and further the growth of communication and the pursuit of knowledge.  For example, the University and Colleges Union could issue a statement in in support of Palestinian education and academic pursuits, or the UCU could twin with a Palestinian university, or could offer scholarships for Palestinian students, or could offer resources for Palestinian educational institutions.

The UCU has recently passed Motion 25 which effectively advises members to boycott Israeli academics, but does not use the word “boycott” (unlikely previous UCU attempts to pass policy of this kind).  The full text of the motion is here.  In particular, among it’s resolutions is the following:

colleagues be asked to consider the moral and political implications of educational links with Israeli institutions

There is now debate on whether the motion violates the Race Relations Act of 1976.  More about that here. (Via Normblog.)

Via Engage, I also learn that St Peter’s College, Oxford, has passed a resolution against Motion  25.

–IP

HMO quotas revisited

I’ve blogged briefly about HMO quotas before. In a nutshell: the Scottish Parliament has been wanting to introduce quotas for multiple occupancy houses/flats. Obviously, this has serious implications for certain demographic groups, namely: immigrants, students, young professionals, and generally any unrelated people who share accommodation. A year and a half ago, when this was an issue, I blogged this about it:

The Scottish Parliament ammendment to introduce Houses in Multiple Occupancy (HMO) quotas in certain areas was withdrawn. Students are rejoicing. Discussing with friend about the issue. On the one hand I dislike the anti-HMO crowd’s battlecry of “It’s social engineering!” After all, I support affirmative action, which is some degree of social engineering. But on the other hand, I don’t see how HMO quotas would have helped. Friend argues that some areas of university cities have been almost exclusively populated by largely homogeneous and transient demographic group (namely, students). This is obviously bad for poorer people, and they can no longer afford to live in these areas. Friend argues that HMO quotas would address this problem by spreading students around the cities and resulting in a more evenly distributed population in cities. Maybe I’m missing something but I can’t see how HMO quotas would address what Friend quite rightly highlights as a real problem. But the fact is that flats in “student-heavy” areas are expensive and most people can’t afford to rent one unless there in the higher economic brackets. This leads to people sharing flats. Undoubtedly it would be a good thing if HMO quotas could address the problem in the way Friend thinks they would. But I’m concerned that instead of making “student-heavy” areas more diverse, the opposite would happen. High prices would mean that only the wealthy would be able to afford flats in these areas, so instead of being student-heavy, these areas would now simply be where the wealthy people live. Ie, one largely homogenous population would be exchanged for another. And I don’t see how that would benefit poor people.

Further to this, I would now add the following thoughts, both positive and negative:

• There is no price premium on HMO flats. It’s cheaper per person to rent a large flat between several people than a small flat between a few people. This means that accommodation that is currently HMO-licensed (or for which the landlords seek HMO licenses) and which lose the HMO license will not become cheaper in ceasing to be HMO-licensed. Thus there is no reason that previously HMO-licensed accommodation should suddenly become affordable to other demographic groups (elderly people, young families, poor people, etc) who are currently in competition for accommodation with students/young professionals/etc.
• There may well be a price premium on HMO flats if quotas are introduced. This would introduce a financial penalty for precisely the people who need to share flats because they couldn’t otherwise afford their accommodation. This seems morally flawed.
• If students can no longer afford HMO accommodation, HMO flats will start being let by professionals and other more wealthy people. Thus swapping one homogeneous population for another, and not alleviating the situation for poorer people who will not be able to afford HMO accommodation either.
• Unless it’s proposed that a number of currently HMO-licensed accommodations would lose their licenses, I can’t see how the quota would be at all effective, especially in areas that are already “student heavy”.
• On a local authority level, I’m not aware of proposals for alternative proposals for increases in HMO accommodation and facilities in areas that are not currently “student heavy”. If you decrease the HMO accommodation in some areas, there has to be suitable accommodation elsewhere for other people to move into. HMO accomodation is high sought after precisely because lots of people need it due to their financial circumstances. There are two ways of getting around that that I can see: (1) provide lots of subsidised (ie low cost) non-HMO accommodation for people who currently share flats due to financial circumstances; or (2) distribute HMO accommodation more evenly (and any necessary facilities/services in line with that, such as public transport). I don’t think HMO quotas are the most effective and constructive ways of addressing the problem, because of the other reasons I’ve discussed.
• “Student heavy” areas are usually going to be areas that have the right kinds of flats for student needs — flats with a largish number of bedrooms, nearby shops and public transport, etc. There is a reason these areas are popular with students. Other areas might be less suitable for students — they might not have nearby shops, public transport, easily cyclable routes, or they might have other associated problems. HMO quotas doesn’t take this issue into account. That said, the same facilities would benefit other demographic groups (eg, elderly people, poor people, etc). Similar to the above point though, I think there are more effective ways of addressing this issues — namely providing suitable accommodation at low cost elsewhere.

Anyway, I am prepared to be convinced about HMO quotas, but I think basically I’m anti (although with reservations). For more information, you can check out the Right to Rent campaign, where you can sign a petition in opposition to HMO quotas. –IP

Green card as sexual coercion tactic

A US immigration official is charged with coercing sex in exchange for offering to provide a green card to an immigrant woman.  It is alleged that he used the offer of the green card combined with threats of deportation and detention of her and her family, to coerce sex acts.  According to the article, corruption in the immigration agency is “rampant”.

–IP

I’m sorry, I haven’t a clue

Someone I know is studying for a British citizenship test. Interested as to the level, format, and subject matter of the test, I attempted two practice tests last night from the study guide that was sitting on this person’s coffee table. On the first test, I got 19 questions correct out of 24, which is a pass; but on the second I got only 16 correct, which is a fail. To pass, one must get 18 questions correct.

Among the questions I got wrong*:

According to the 2001 Census, what percentage of the UK population reported that they had a religion?

My answer: 65%
Correct answer: 75%

How many Members of the Scottish Parliament (MSPs) are there?

My answer: 105
Correct answer: 129

During the 1950s, Britain set up bus driver recruitment centres in which location?

My answer: I’m sorry, I haven’t a clue
Correct answer: West Indies

What does Boxing Day celebrate?

My answer: having an extra day off work and/or shopping in sales (ok, that wasn’t really one of the multiple choice options)
Correct answer: Appreciation of work by servants and trades people.

What is the role of the Council of Ministers?

My answer: what is the Council of Ministers?
Correct answer: Propose new laws and decisions regarding the EU

As it happens, I am a British citizen because my father was born in the UK. So I didn’t have to pass the test to acquire citizenship. When my family moved to the UK from the US (where I was born), I was able to get a British passport, so I have dual nationality.

Having been to school and university in the UK and lived in the UK for years, I would say that I am “integrated into British society” or whatever Brownite/Blairite term is. I would say that I manage perfectly well to go about my daily life, do my job, contribute to society, etc, unhindered by culture shock (although I will never understand the Scottish fascination with deep-fried Mars bars, but I didn’t see that on the citizenship test).

Seriously though, I would say that I am reasonably informed about the way things work in the UK. I read newspapers, I vote in elections, and so on. I happen not to have a detailed understanding of the way European law works because I just don’t care enough to find out, except in cases of specific issues or peices of legislation that interest me. I don’t care what percentage of the population have a religion. I don’t care how many MSPs there are (and yes, I have voted in Scottish elections recently). I fail to see how knowing these things would add to my ability to contribute to society.

But more pressingly, if I am entitled to British citizenship without knowing these things (and without needing to know these things to function in society), but candidates for naturalisation are required to have more knowledge of British history, politics, and society than most non-naturalised British citizens. Yes, I do suspect that most non-naturalised British citizens would not receive perfect scores on the test, which they should do if the knowledge on it were really essential to functioning in British society. And that is discriminatory, plain and simple.

–IP

* All questions and correct answers are quote from Henry Dillon and Alastair Smith (Eds) British Citizenship Test Study Guide: The essential study guide for the Life in the UK test (Second Edition). Red Squirrel Publishing, London. 2006. pp 106-15, 191.

Proposed reforms to Scots sexual offences law

The Scottish Legal Commission has concluded consultation on its most recent report concerning the reform of rape and sexual offences law in Scotland (NB, rape and sexual offences law in Scotland differs from the rest of the UK). Yours truly wrote a response to their first consultation document on this document in 2006, and also wrote a response to the report and draft bill this year, and can now report back on the proposed changes.

There are a number of interesting changes:

1. The SLC is recommending that a statutory definition of consent be introduced. There was previously no statutory definition in Scots rape and sexual offences law. The draft bill proposes a definition expressed in terms of “free agreement”, and proposes a non-exhaustive list where agreement is presumed not to have been free (eg, if a person agrees to sexual activity because he or she has been subjected to violence or threat of violence, or if a person is asleep or unconscious, or if a person is intoxicated and as a result lacks capacity to consent, and several other situations).
2. The SLC is recommending that the definition of rape be widened to include non-consentual penetration of the mouth and anus. Previously, only non-consentual penile penetration of a vagina was covered by the definition of rape. This change in the definition means that men can be victims of rape, and women can be perpetrators. However, note that under the old and new definitions, a woman cannot rape another woman (this would be classed as sexual assault), and only some case of female-on-male rape are classed as rape (other non-consentual female-on-male acts would be classed as sexual assault).
3. The SLC is recommending changes to law applied to sexual offences committed with children aged under 16. It is proposed that there will be two categories of children — younger children (children under 13) and older children (aged 13 to 16). There will be different permissible defences for offences committed with younger and older children. It is not a defence that the accused was mistaken as to the age of a younger child, for example, or that a younger child agreed to the activity. The SLC recommend that in the case of older children however, there should be a defence that the accused was less than two years older than the child.
4. The SLC is recommending the introduction of the category of “sexual assault” and several categories of coerced sexual activity. These include: causing someone to be present during sexual activity without their consent, causing someone to look at an image of sexual activity without their consent, sexual communication with a person without their consent, as well as a few others. Sexual harassment per se is not included in the draft bill, but the categories of coerced sexual activity pretty much cover it anyway.

There are still some fairly major problems with the Draft Bill — for example, the proposed general statutory definition of consent does not mention capacity for consent, and the definition of rape excludes some acts which should be considered rape rather than sexual assault. But despite the problems, I’d say that the Draft Bill is substantially better than the existing law.

–IP

Blaming the victims

Seumas Milne hits it right on the button.  Go read.

–IP

On Sharia law and the Archbishop of Cantebury

[NB: I know, I know, I'm late to the party. I've been sitting on this post for ages.]

He’s good at provoking argument, is the Archbishop. He’s said, in a lecture to the Royal Courts of Justice as a contribution to a series on Islam and English Law, that he believes that adopting certain aspects of Sharia law would help social cohesion:

The problem here is that recognising the authority of a communal religious court to decide finally and authoritatively about such a question would in effect not merely allow an additional layer of legal routes for resolving conflicts and ordering behaviour but would actually deprive members of the minority community of rights and liberties that they were entitled to enjoy as citizens; and while a legal system might properly admit structures or protocols that embody the diversity of moral reasoning in a plural society by allowing scope for a minority group to administer its affairs according to its own convictions, it can hardly admit or ‘license’ protocols that effectively take away the rights it acknowledges as generally valid.

Addressing the Synod, the Archbishop said of his speech:

it posed the question to the legal establishment of whether attempts to accommodate aspects of Islamic law would create an area where the law of the land doesn’t run.

This, I said, would certainly be the case if any practice under Islamic law had the effect of removing from any individual the rights they were entitled to enjoy as a citizen of the UK, and I concluded that nothing should be recognised which had that effect.

So I gather that the proposal is for Muslims to be able to resolve certain sorts of disputes, such as divorce and custody, in Muslim courts, in a similar manner to the way Orthodox Jews may do if they wish, by going to a Beth Din.

The first thing to note is that Dr Williams’s comments have been met with a great deal of hostility by the British press, including all the usual anti-Muslim sentiment that one would expect. The other thing to note is that as far as I’m aware, Muslims in the UK are not in fact clamoring to be able to appeal to Sharia courts.

That said, it does seem to me inconsistent to have religious courts for some groups but not others (not to mention the fact that “secular” law in the UK is based on Christian values, and is not totally secular as a result).

On the other hand, I’m not sure I see a value in having a Beth Din or other religious equivalents. As an aside, I think it is slightly misleading to cite the example of Beth Dins resolving divorce issues, since some of the technicalities of Jewish matrimonial law are not issues to which civil law could ever apply (I don’t think it appropriate for civil law to govern how people practice religion). That said, I’m not sure to what extent Beth Dins deal with purely religious matters, and to what extent they can deal with matters of civil law.

It seems to me that if the fairness of a civil court ruling depends on the religion or lack of religion of the parties involved in the legal proceedings, then we have a problem with our civil legal system. That problem might be with the law or it might be with the setup of legal system (that is, with the way courts run and so on). But if a court ruling is unjust to those in a particular circumstance (eg, the circumstance of having or not having a particular religion), then that legal system is potentially unjust for everyone. That is, the adequacy of that legal system depends entirely on the circumstance of the individual, and that’s not a just system.

I don’t think the solution to that is to have different religious legal systems for people of different religions (and presumably a civil system as well).  But I do think there might be mileage to be gained out of seeing whether our civil legal system is indeed just in this respect, and ammending it to make it just if it is not.

–IP

US and Israel to boycott UN meet on Gaza blockade, while Gazans rush to Egypt

Border crossings into the Gaza Strip have been closed for a week, stopping shipments of all imports except “emergency supplies”, resulting in shortages of fuel, food, and medicines.

A section of the fence at the Rafah crossing was toppled early this morning, and some 200,000 Gazans crossed into Egypt to get supplies.

From the NYTimes article:

Aid officials had warned earlier this week that Gaza, gripped by fuel and electricity shortages, was two or three days from a health and food crisis.

The United Nations Relief and Works Agency, which provides assistance to Palestinian refugees and their descendants, announced Monday that it would have to suspend its food aid to 860,000 Gaza residents by Wednesday or Thursday if the crossings from Israel into Gaza were not reopened, because the group was running out of the nylon bags it uses to measure and distribute staples, like flour.

Fuel shortages in Gaza will quickly precipitate a health crisis, since electricity is relied upon for pumping water — power cuts mean disruption in clean water supply. At present, 40% of Gazans lack running water.

In the meantime, the US and Israel are expected to boycott a special meeting of the UN Human Rights Council on the Gaza blockade. I’m not sure how Israel expects to maintain any moral credibility when claiming it has no partner for a negotiation dialogue when they themselves cut off Palestinian supplies and then refuse to engage in a dialogue regarding the humanitarian situation that the blockade precipitates.

–IP

Crossposted at SJJP.

The presidential race don’t prove nothin’

Gloria, you’re a bright cookie, but this got up my nose (to use a technical term), I’m afraid.

So why is the sex barrier not taken as seriously as the racial one? The reasons are as pervasive as the air we breathe: because sexism is still confused with nature as racism once was; because anything that affects males is seen as more serious than anything that affects “only” the female half of the human race; because children are still raised mostly by women (to put it mildly) so men especially tend to feel they are regressing to childhood when dealing with a powerful woman; because racism stereotyped black men as more “masculine” for so long that some white men find their presence to be masculinity-affirming (as long as there aren’t too many of them); and because there is still no “right” way to be a woman in public power without being considered a you-know-what.

I’m not advocating a competition for who has it toughest. The caste systems of sex and race are interdependent and can only be uprooted together. That’s why Senators Clinton and Obama have to be careful not to let a healthy debate turn into the kind of hostility that the news media love. Both will need a coalition of outsiders to win a general election. The abolition and suffrage movements progressed when united and were damaged by division; we should remember that.

[...]

But what worries me is that he is seen as unifying by his race while she is seen as divisive by her sex.

What worries me is that she is accused of “playing the gender card” when citing the old boys’ club, while he is seen as unifying by citing civil rights confrontations.

What worries me is that male Iowa voters were seen as gender-free when supporting their own, while female voters were seen as biased if they did and disloyal if they didn’t.

The thing is, while Steinem claims not to be “advocating a competition for who has it toughest”, her article is devoted to analyzing who has it, in her view, toughest. It’s certainly true that race and gender are treated differently by the media and the electorate, and that experiences of opression in the form of sexism often do differ from experiences of opression in the form of racism. But that doesn’t establish that it is meaningful to talk about whether gender “trumps” race.

Steinem’s concerns are selective. She is careful to isolate the assumption that male Iowa voters are seen as gender-free — an observation I believe to be accurate. But she doesn’t, for example, comment on the fact that white voters are also seen as race-free, and it is black voters who are seen as biased if they support black candidates and disloyal if they don’t. I also disagree with Steinem in that I think Obama has not been universally seen as “unifying by his race” — a number of op-ed have appeard on my RSS news reader in the last few months along the lines of “Is Obama black enough?” and other similarly incomprehensible (to me) titles. Steinem does not comment on Obama’s “unifying” nature being dependent on his being “black enough” (a racist stereotype), whereas Clinton is expected not to be too feminine in order to be “unifying” (a sexist stereotype). Both candidates face prejudiced stereotypes, but I don’t see what basis Steinem has for concluding that one is “worse” than the other.

I’m also not convinced that once can conclude that racism is negligible in the US when compared the sexism, purely from the media treatment of two people, when there are other variables. It’s equivalent to saying that sexism was negligible in the UK when Margaret Thatcher was elected, which is totally bogus. It’s just not as simple as saying “a black candidate beat a female candidate in the Iowa caucus so racism is secondary to sexism”.

Talking about whether black men or white women are more opressed is meaningless. But people who face racism and people who face sexism may experience opression differently, and the intersection of different kinds of opression is interesting and worth talking about.

For more good commentary on this topic, see Pinko Feminist Hellcat, and BrownFemiPower has a roundup of more good responses to the editorial.

–IP

Lakota Indians withdraw from treaties with US

Full article:

The Lakota Indians [...] have withdrawn from treaties with the United States.

“We are no longer citizens of the United States of America and all those who live in the five-state area that encompasses our country are free to join us,” long-time Indian rights activist Russell Means said.

A delegation of Lakota leaders has delivered a message to the State Department, and said they were unilaterally withdrawing from treaties they signed with the federal government of the U.S., some of them more than 150 years old.

[...]
The new country would issue its own passports and driving licences, and living there would be tax-free - provided residents renounce their U.S. citizenship, Mr Means said.

[...]

“We have 33 treaties with the United States that they have not lived by. They continue to take our land, our water, our children,” Phyllis Young, who helped organize the first international conference on indigenous rights in Geneva in 1977, told the news conference.

Very interesting.  I don’t really know what this will mean though, in terms of reactions an diplomacy and so on. I suppose we shall see.

Hat tip  Lucky White Girl, who also has some good commentary and a map of the Lakota Nation.

–IP

And this will be my only word on The Subject

Because quite frankly, The Subject is not something I find terribly interesting.

“What is The Subject?” I hear you cry. I’m glad you asked. The Subject is nutcase-ness (Nutcasery? Nutcaseitude?) about religion and politics. Viz, the state of allowing your religious stance to contaminate your politics. Let’s talk, just this once, about the OUT campaign.

So it seems that Richard Dawkings et all think that atheists are opressed and closeted, or at least his use of language would give that impression. We have to stand against evangelism! We must stand against Intelligent Design! Religion is the downfall of humanity!  That’s a call to action I’m not too impressed by.

You know, I’m no fan of the imposition of religious beliefs. But equally, I think Richard Dawkins et al and the OUT Campaign are misguided. Yes, religion is an easy excuse for bad politics. Religion makes people feel they can’t criticise people or policies that they would otherwise have no qualms about calling them on their shit. Religion is a socially-acceptable excuse for bad behaviour.

Religion doesn’t have to be those things of course, but it frequently is.

But is religion per se to blame for the nonsense that it is used to justify? Not really. A religious person may be motivated to do good things by there religion, as well as bad things. It seems to me that what is bad about religion is the bad stuff that we accept because it’s religion. For example, slavery was justified on religious grounds for centuries. Was it the religious justifications that made slavery bad? Of course not — it’s slavery itself that is cruel and wrong. (For that matter, the abolishment of slavery was also religiously justified).

Yes, religion may be used to justify atrocities, but the atrocities are bad in themselves, not through the religious motivation. Their religious justification doesn’t make them worse.

I think it would be of huge benefit to society if we could call the shit on stuff that is bogus or immoral without that being interpreted as “oppression of religion” or whatever the Eagle Forum are calling it these days. But the social change required for that is the logical and free debate of ideas.

Saying that religion is automatically evil and its followers are stupid is not a logical and free debate of ideas — it’s a pointless ad hominem. Furthermore, it’s not necessarily true. Religious people are not automatically stupid, irrational, gullible, or willing to accept any atrocity just because that atrocity is religiously motivated (nor are they automatically religious in their politics — it is possible to be religious and to be secular in one’s politics or moral views). You have to be misogynist to accept misogynist religious doctrines, and in that case the doctrine is wrong because it is misogynist, not because it’s religious.

Frankly, I think criticising religion or religious people as a source of evil is a pointless ad hominem. Criticising dogma is a different kettle of fish entirely, and one that might be worth pursuing. Criticising bad politics is definitely worth doing. Crap politics is crap politics is crap politics, whether its motivation is religious or secular. So let’s criticise policies that are unfair or wrong because they are unfair or wrong rather than because they are religious.

–IP

More vegetarian maoism

Continuin in this vein, I made a brisket last night. Meat is addictive, man. In my first year I hardly ate any because I kept looking at the price. Then I calculated how much I spent on fruit and veg, and decided that if one buys cheap meat, it is possible to spend no more than if one were being veggie. But once you start eating the damn stuff, you keep craving it. I blame the Existentialist, who is The Original Carnivore(TM).

Anyway, I digress. I was talking about brisket. If you are a hadcore brisket chef, you don’t follow the recipe I am about to disclose. You do some cunning thing with a barbeque and extremely slow cooking a day in advance.

I am hardcore about many things, but brisket-chefing is not one of them, alas. I used a rolled brisket from the supermarket (just over £3 for just under 1kg of meat). Here’s what I did:

1. Preheat oven to 150 degrees C (for a fan oven)
2. Thinly slice one large onion, cut a small onion in half, and shell aproximately one head of garlic.
3. Rinse the brisket and pat dry with paper towel.
4. In plenty of olive oil, fry the sliced onion and garlic cloves with a bit of fennel seed and paprika. When onion is transparent, add one bottle of ale, or enough to completely submerge the brisket (I used Wychcraft because that was what I happened to have at the time), and bring to a boil.
5. Add a teaspoon of honey, a bay leaf, a few cloves, salt, and peper to taste.
6. Place the brisket in a deep casserole dish or oven-proof pot, and place the halved onion with it. Pour the ale mixture over it, cover, and place in the oven.  Remember, the brisket must be completely covered in liquid or it will dry out.
7. Cook for aproximately 4 1/2 hours, turning the brisket over from time to time.
8. When tender, remove from oven and allow the brisket to sit for 20 minutes or so.
9. Place the brisket on a carving board, and pour the sauce into a saucepan.
10. Bring the sauce to a boil and wisk in one teaspoon of flour or cornstarch or a flour-and-fat mixture to make a gravy Simmer til it thickens, and optionally boil it to reduce it.
11. Slice the brisket thinly and serve with the gravy.

I made roast sweet potato and carrot-and-neep mash to go with, and fresh bread to mop up the gravy.

–IP