Daily Archives: October 13, 2023

MACON Mercers Jack Tarver Library will unveil the latest installment of ancient artifacts from the Holmes Collection, titled Setting the Ancient Table: Dining and Drinking in Antiquity, on Oct. 19. The exhibit, the first-ever to be curated by students, will offer a unique glimpse into how people in the ancient world ate and drank.

The new exhibit from the Holmes Collection, curated by Mercer students Emily Bacallao and Sydney Logan, showcases the kind of archaeological research that is possible at Mercer University because of the generosity and loyalty of Mercer alumnus Dr. Yulssus Lynn Homes and his wife Elizabeth, said Dr. R. Scott Nash, Columbus Roberts Professor of New Testament in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and curator of the exhibit, who will serve as master of ceremonies for next Thursdays event.

The Holmes Holy Land Ancient Artifact Collection comprises more than 1000 pieces. The latest exhibit features a diverse array of artifacts, including jars, jugs, plates, bowls, cups, lamps and even a spoon, offering valuable insights into the dining customs of the ancient Holy Land.

Mercer University continues to benefit from the Holmes Holy Land Ancient Artifact Collection, a timeless and generous gift from Dr. and Mrs. Y. Lynn Holmes, said Jeffrey Waldrop, vice provost for University Libraries. The University Libraries are honored to once again host the unveiling of this valuable exhibit, and are excited about this years chosen theme, Setting the Ancient Table: Dining and Drinking in Antiquity.

Dr. Charlotte Thomas, professor of philosophy in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and director of the Great Books program, will be the speaker for the evening. Her lecture is titled Xenophons Symposium as a Feast for All Senses.

The event begins at 6 p.m. on the librarys second floor and is free and open to the public. There will be light refreshments available after the lecture. For more information on the exhibit or the events, contact Daniel W. Williams, University archivist, head of archives, special collections and digital initiatives at 478-301-2493, williams_dw@mercer.edu.

About the Holmes Collection

Dr. Holmes, born in Vidalia, graduated from Mercer in 1962 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in English. His interest in ancient artifacts developed during his time at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, where he earned a Bachelor of Divinity degree. He began collecting artifacts during his graduate work at Brandeis University while earning his masters and doctoral degrees in ancient history and ancient linguistics. Multiple trips to the Hebrew University as well as leading a group of students from the University of West Georgia to Israel for an archaeological excavation deepened his passion for collecting artifacts. Professionally, he has served as a teacher, scholar and administrator, holding posts ranging from research fellow to professor to college president. He has published numerous scholarly papers on ancient history and the modern Middle East.

Mrs. Holmes was born to Christian parents in Palestine. She studied in a French Catholic school in Jerusalem and became fluent in four languages. She also studied at the University of West Georgia and Brewton-Parker College. She is a community speaker on the cultures, customs and people of the Middle East.

About the Holmes Collection

The Holmes Collection resides at Mercer to serve as a resource on the ancient world for students, faculty and staff, as well as for the residents of Central and South Georgia. The first installment of artifacts from the collection was displayed in the spring of 2009.

Read more:

Tarver Library unveils student-curated exhibit, Setting the Ancient ... - Mercer University

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers are advised this article contains the names and images of deceased people.

We have had compelling accounts from Indigenous activists of the long road to Uluru. But another perspective on the Voice debate can also be gleaned from the political insiders especially Coalition leaders who engaged with Indigenous communities, learned from them, sought to develop consultative and policy solutions, yet failed to close the gap.

The furious opposition of the current Coalition parties to the Voice disowns their own history and an initiative that was arguably their own creation. So it is illuminating to explore their divergence from some of their former leaders who were passionate about trying to fix Indigenous disadvantage.

Paul Hasluck, journalist, historian, and diplomat was elected for the Liberals to parliament in 1949. Growing up in country Western Australia with Indigenous friends, he empathised with their connection to Country.

Curiosity stimulated his masters thesis, Black Australians, an account of 19th century relations between Indigenous people and colonists in Western Australia, published in 1942. He was appointed minister for territories in 1951.

He sought first to work with the states but faced resistance: they insisted they were already doing everything possible for native welfare and that it was a minor problem. Hasluck tried to bring change to the Northern Territory, hoping success would induce states to follow his lead. The difficulties were considerable: a department whose efforts were desultory, an administration that dragged its feet, a lack of bureaucratic and economic infrastructure in the Territory.

Hasluck persisted, aware of key factors driving policy failure in settler-Indigenous relations: racism, inequality, disparity in administration across states, inability to ameliorate Indigenous disadvantage, denial of agency. He sought to address this through cooperative federalism.

But his was a vision of assimilation, limited by inherited patterns of thought. It discounted the affiliations that tied Indigenous people to social and group identity.

Hasluck eventually understood that he had been captured by tunnel vision.

My outlook on aboriginal welfare [] influenced by the evangelism of mid and late Victorian England [] placed emphasis on the individual. The individual made the choice and made the effort and as a result was changed. This influence [] meant that we did not see clearly the ways in which the individual is bound by membership of a family or a group.

In the 1950s and 1960s, widespread recognition of the need for change led to bipartisan support for and success in the 1967 constitutional referendum.

Prime Minister Harold Holt then established the Council for Aboriginal Affairs. His successor, Billy McMahon, signalled policy change. McMahon said Indigenous peoples

should be encouraged and assisted to preserve and develop their culture, their languages, their traditions and arts so that these can become living elements in the diverse culture of Australian society.

McMahon tried to bridge divisions in his Coalition by offering a Northern Territory Land Board that could grant 50-year leases to Indigenous groups that could prove a long and continuing connection with land, rather than the land rights Indigenous groups were demanding. The fallout was such that it sparked the establishment of the Aboriginal Tent embassy in 1972.

So it was that Gough Whitlam picked up the baton, making land rights a centrepiece of Labor policy. Among his initiatives were the Racial Discrimination Act (1975) expunging state laws restricting the rights of Indigenous people. He also established a royal commission into land rights in the Northern Territory. The Whitlam governments Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Bill (1975) was drawn from its recommendations.

However, it was Liberal Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser who, in 1976, passed the Land Rights legislation that Whitlam had developed, but had been unable to progress in the Senate before his 1975 dismissal. He also passed the Aboriginal Councils and Association Act, allowing Indigenous bodies to register as corporations for community purposes.

This was the foundation for hundreds of Indigenous corporations, a springboard for community development that stimulated the emergence of Indigenous social entrepreneurs. Once a staunch assimilationist, Fraser had visited remote communities, met with impressive Indigenous leaders such as Galarrway Yunupingu, and now Indigenous policy reform became part of his broader Human Rights Agenda.

Fraser established an Aboriginal Development Commission, directed by Charlie Perkins, and a National Aboriginal Conference, (NAC) chaired by Lowitja ODonoghue. His Administrative Appeals Tribunal (1977) and Human Rights Commission (1981) provided additional avenues for Indigenous scrutiny and appeal against decisions affecting them.

All of these were opposed from within the Coalition parties themselves. Their carriage required resolute action. They were radical initiatives in conservative circles. Yet, reflecting later, Fraser rued that he was too timid, that he should have acted on an idea raised by the NAC: to negotiate a treaty.

John Howards policy initiatives were the next significant Coalition incursion into Indigenous conditions. He provoked Indigenous leaders by refusing to apologise for the actions of past governments. He abolished Bob Hawkes Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders Commission (ATSIC) the first legislated attempt to combine consultation and program management under Indigenous leadership announcing the experiment in self-determination had failed.

His legislative response to the Wik High Court decision enabled him to amend the Keating governments landmark Native Title Act, itself a response to the High Courts Mabo decision.

Finally, he endorsed the Northern Territory Emergency Response (NTER), a remarkable attempt to address dysfunction and restore order in remote communities by mobilising army and police intervention where Indigenous responsibility had failed. Significantly, it was also Howard who first raised the prospect of Constitutional recognition.

Read more: Ten years on, it's time we learned the lessons from the failed Northern Territory Intervention

Howard had a clear rationale for each of these steps. Apology, Howard argued, could only be offered by the perpetrator of wrongs. ATSIC, despite research now confirming the extent of its achievement under the indomitable Indigenous public servants Lowitja ODonoghue and Pat Turner, had later fallen under heavy scrutiny before being abolished in 2005. It was also subject to incandescent critique by Indigenous leaders and lost the faith of the Labor Party which had created it.

The Wik decision, like Mabo, demanded legislative address. The NTER was a response to a devastating report of domestic violence and child abuse, and had followed advice, and was supported, by influential Indigenous public intellectuals such as Marcia Langton and Noel Pearson.

Read more: Many claim Australias longest-running Indigenous body failed. Heres why thats wrong

It was these Indigenous advisers, too, who persuaded Howard to support Constitutional recognition. Nonetheless, major initiatives proceeded hurriedly, without explanation or consultation with the Indigenous communities affected.

It is striking, if one leaves aside the inadequacy of Tony Abbotts Indigenous Advancement Strategy (which again ignored the necessity of community engagement), or the Coalitions outsourcing or offloading to states of Closing the Gap arrangements, that the next significant initiative was fostered by a bipartisan meeting on advancing reconciliation between Abbott (with Bill Shorten) and Indigenous leaders.

There followed a Referendum Council established by Abbotts successor, Malcolm Turnbull, with a sub-committee of the same Indigenous leaders tasked with creating a dialogue on reconciliation with Indigenous communities nationwide. It led directly to the National Constitutional Convention that delivered the Uluru Statement in 2017.

The Uluru Statement then, responding to years of lobbying by those most closely engaged with Indigenous disadvantage, was developed by Indigenous representatives with the encouragement of successive Coalition administrations.

Yet it was Turnbull who declared that its proposal for a Voice referendum was not politically feasible. Turnbull has since endorsed the current referendum, arguing a lot has changed since then [] the Indigenous community has backed this in for six years [] we should be listening to how they want to be recognised.

Some of these engaged politicians looked back with remorse and saw how they had been constrained by their own political frameworks (Hasluck), hobbled by their colleagues policy priorities (McMahon, Turnbull), or too cautious (Fraser).

Above all, they recognised that their failure lay in not having heard what Indigenous communities told them. One might have expected the cumulative knowledge of these policy leaders to have influenced their peers. Yet what they had learned was rarely understood by their successors.

Partly it was a symptom of endemic short-termism. More significant, however, was another strand, exemplified by Haslucks rueful recollection: a settler liberalism that takes its own commitment to a particular form of individualistic liberal freedom so much for granted that it is blind to collective forms of social relations, and to the structural and institutional consequences of colonisation.

Howard and Mal Brough, the minister who so energetically drove the NTER, were undoubtedly committed to better outcomes for remote communities. They were, unlike Hasluck and Fraser, not remorseful about the trauma and dismay that is still evident as a consequence of the intervention. Instead, they were frustrated that successors had not seen it fully developed to address dysfunction in the manner proposed. Their conviction is a manifestation of the persistence of settler liberalism, now so much embedded in the contemporary Coalitions engagement in the Voice debate.

So here we are, cycling back decades while the remorse of Liberal innovators about the limitations on what they could achieve is forgotten. With it, settler liberalism is reincarnated as a salve that Hasluck, Fraser and others would have thought discredited in their day.

Continued here:

'We should be listening': the long history of Liberal innovation and ... - The Conversation

A preliminary function of a liberal education must be to serve as a purgative, a cleansing, of those who wish to be free. By its means we can cleanse ourselves of our undigested and unconscious prejudices.

When it first came home to me that I would not be a tutor at the Graduate Institute in Liberal Education this summer, I felt great twinges of regretregret that I might not see some of you again and regret that I was not to be a part of that exhilarating exercise taking place up here, on the slopes of Sun Mountain. So I was only too glad to accept the Directors invitation to come at least for this occasion, and in the dead of an Eastern winter I sat down to compose my ticket of admissionthis commencement address.

I had a suspicion that I knew just why he had asked me to come; namely, precisely because I had found last summer so thoroughly exhilarating and, on the whole, successful. So it seemed to me that I was called upon to examine the ingredients of that excitement and that success.

Of course, as I face you now, I realize what a risky undertaking that will be. After all, I have not been with you through this summer, so what do I know of who grew disenchanted with what or with whom, when and for what reasons? Therefore, I have to make my speech in the blind hope that most of you have had, when all is said and done, three or four grand summers.

Let me start my analysis from the outside (as it were), from the most external aspect of this enterprise, and go from there to what I think of as its center.

This outside aspect is the location of the institute in New Mexico, in the Southwestfor many of us a strange and even fabulous part of the United States.

Last summer, one of our students, now a graduate, was a man who was an experienced pilot. A number of us had the good fortune to be taken by him for weekend flights over the four-corner country, where New Mexico, Utah, Colorado and Arizona touch. We swooped about like mechanized gods in a ridiculous flying contraptiononcewe were forced down by a bumble bee which had clogged our speedometer ductand saw a country whose vast-scaled features can only be taken in from above; no ordinary earth-crawling mortal could see enough of it to apprehend its shape. So our view and our scale expanded and expanded. It was a truly fabulous land insofar as every account of it must appear like a fable. For here, nature herself had taken to the arts, to building, sculpting, painting. We saw a rock lying on the desert like a majestic ship: Shiprock of the Navahoes; we saw a land covered with the most delicately colored ripple design: the Painted Desert; we saw an enormous park of magnificent columns and arches: Monument Valley.

But the ship had no destination, and the painting no intention, and the monuments commemorated nothing. From this point of view, each natural panorama appeared as a stupendous mockery of human work whose soulless, unchanging shapes, with their violent and yet predictable moods, seemed repellent and hostile to the human spirit. We began to understand why the local painters so often produce such dreadful, lurid picturesit is because they have been anticipated and outdone by the very nature they are supposed to inform with meaning. So in defense, we drew in on ourselves and seemed to become particularly attentive friends during that adventure.

I thought I noticed something similar here on the campus: at first we were all avid and wide-eyed sight-seers, but once we had seen the sights, we stayed home and made music and conversation. It reminded me of a Platonic dialogue, namely, the Phaedrus, the only dialogue which takes place in the country, outside the walls of the city. In this setting, Socrates behaves like a well-informed foreigner. I am a lover of learning, he explains, and trees and open country wont teach me anything, while the people in town do. And so it seems to me in general, that the enterprise of education needs enclosure and density, and that the very expansive grandeur of this skyand this land, by driving us inward, makes a perfect summer setting for the kind of learning Socrates means. So much for our surroundings; what about the people who belong within this enclosure of learning (I am referring to the Graduate Institute), the people who, Socratessays, are his teachers?

What is most striking about the members of the Institute is their variety and distinctiveness.

The distinctiveness is largely the result of age. Our students here are adults when they come, as they are adults when they leave. For a teacher used to undergraduates this makes for a noticeable difference. The difference is not in the way classes gothey are remarkably like those in the winter school, since the advantages older students have in experience are often cancelled by their reserve; and the advantages younger students have in freshness are balanced by the better application of the graduate students. The difference is much more in what the students are. Young students are distinguished from each other by the adventures they have had, but older students are distinguished by the moral decisions they have made. It takes a while to learn of these, but I have met people here who have changed their profession because they learned that their advanced training required them to do what they considered indecent, and others who had devoted the last ten years of their lives to the laborious acquisition of a night-school degree, and still others who have deliberately committed their next ten years to the great plan of founding a school which would be exactly what their children needed.

The variety of the Institutes students, on the other hand, is much more immediately striking, especially to me, because I have this last winter visited a number of good liberal arts colleges and observed the wisely fed, well-doctored, regularly exercised, casually expensive normality of shape and dress that is prevalent among their undergraduates. In contrast we here come broad and narrow, tall and short, gaudy and drab, elegant and dowdy. That variety is, of course, a sign of the variety of our origins: Our summer community up here is a community-in-diversity.

Like all my fellow-tutors I found these differences in our students not only invigorating but peculiarly appropriate to our undertakingto graduate liberal education.

I am probably about to say what some of you cannot agree with at all. But to say what everyone agrees with is to say nothing at alland it would seem almost like adding insult to injury to make you sit here in your black heat-absorbent gowns to listen to nothing. Perhaps I can at least make you feel nostalgic for those many seminars which you have left feeling deeply dissatisfied with the opinions of your more vocal fellow-members.

So let me begin by saying that I do not believe that everyone in this enormous republic should be like everyone else or should be with everyone else, because that can only be done in terms of the lowest common denominator.But that denominator is so low that all character is lost, since only those traits can be kept which offend no one. The compulsory public schools in very large systems are sad examples of this effectShakespeares Merchant of Venice is removed because it offends some Jews, prayers disappear because religious libertarians object, discipline is adjusted to suit progressive parents. Everything has to be composed very carefully and inoffensively or made up anew while boredom and irritation grow. It would seem to me better that people should have alternative places to go, places where they need not be so careful not to tread on each others toes, where they can live loudly and merrily or silently and soberly, in tribes or alone, as suits them.

In stating this preference, I may seem to be ripe for certain modern movementsthose toward individual liberation on the one hand and ethnic identity on the other. But in fact, I have the greatest doubts about them both. For I think we have, all of us, together, gone much too far toward losing our innocence for such crude salvations. And I think that this Institute, because of its setting, its people, and finally and most centrally, its program, is the place to come to terms with this fact. Here we live together in a comfortably temporary suspension of our working opinions and in friendly compromise of our living habitsfor example, I confine my squeaking flute practice to an inoffensive hour and my neighbor kindly turns down her radio to an inaudible volume. Here we can think about what ought to be common and what ought to be separate.

Now it is easy to know what makes us all utterly the same and equal. If we came here overland we all travelled over well-numbered routes, keeping to the right of a white line and going, I trust, at exactly 55 miles per hour, that being the national speed limit. If we stopped to eat we knew what kind of standard stuff would come with our hamburger, like it or not. (I have a friend, a little boy, the joy of whose life it is to bring a certain imperial hamburger dispensary to a dead halt by asking for his hamburger without a pickle.) If we go to the drugstore in the Coronado Shopping Center, 1500 miles from home, we can home in on the paper clips without the least hesitation, because they are always in the stationery department.

De Tocqueville says in Democracy in America that Americans are, without knowing it, Cartesians in action. He is referring to the way they direct their minds toward managing their affairs. Those of you who have read Descartes Rules in the Mathematics and Natural Science seminar, or even the Meditations in the Philosophy tutorial, will remember what way that is: just such a rational, departmentalizing, engineering way as has produced the well-organized, convenient sameness of our lives. We certainly owe our sameness largely to Cartesianprinciples.

But people get tired of this rule-ridden, rationalized, homogeneous world, and so they try to construct differences and distinctions. Merchandise, for instance, is personalized, so that you can order a mug, say with your initials on it. Of course, those initials are stamped on before you ever order the mugmany Js and Ms and very few Xs and Ys, because few people are called Xavier and Yolanda and many people John and Mary. All kinds of individualization are, I think, only sophisticated sameness.

It seems to me to be at least partly the same with the ethnic movements as well. They are a reaction to our homogeneous lives, but a reaction on the same level and from the same source. The paraphernalia that go with them are certainly merchandise like any other. But what is more essential is that they were invented at the universities and think-tanks by people who have subjected the world to rational analysis. The very learnedness of the term ethnic shows this, as does its generality. The scholars who constructed the concept took the Greek word used in the New Testament to name the heathen nations and to make an invidious distinction between them and the People of the Covenant. But they took the derogatory sense out of it. Anyone (except perhaps those poor Wasps) can be equally an ethnicit is a difference without distinction.

Here is the point I want to make: It is too late for us to make an innocent and naive return either to youthfully spontaneous individuality or to venerably traditional ancestral ways. We are too much caught in the regularity, efficiency, and rationality of our Cartesian world. That is why our enthusiastic attempts in those directions always look a little like a costume party.

And yet I believe in some such return. I think most of us have a feeling that some sort of a new beginning is needed, and I have never heard of a true beginning which was not a return. What I want to claim is that a liberal education, like ours, here, this summer, is the beginning of that beginning.

Some people say that the correct meaning of the phrase liberal education is food for the free. Liberal means suitable for free people, and the word education has its root in common with our word edible. I dont know if this etymology is correct, but I will use it to help me say something opposite: It seems to me that in modern times a first, preliminary function of a liberal education must be to serve as a purgative, a cleansing, of those who wish to be free. By its means we can cleanse ourselves of our undigested and unconscious prejudices, most of which turn out to be associated with just that rationalized sameness I was describing before. Isnt that just the effect which the study and discussion of Descartes, Rousseau, Hume, de Tocqueville, and Marx had, if they had any?

But while such study sets us free from the sameness of our regulated environment, it also reveals to us what we have both truly to ourselves and truly in common: our common human nature. Let me give two examples taken from my experiences last summer.

The first will mean most to those of you who have taken the rewarding leap of doing the Mathematics and Natural Science, and who have studied Euclidean and Non-Euclidean geometry. The Euclidean figures came very naturallyevery child who draws stick-figures already implicitly sees their properties, and anyone, when asked a series of skillful questions, can, like Menos slave boy, make Euclidean discoveries by consulting his imagination. But when we came to Non-Euclidean Geometry, although every figure and every theorem was perfectly thinkable, not one of us could honestly report that we were able to imagine a single Non-Euclidean property. For instance, we all understood that in this geometry no figures could be different in size and yet preserve the same shape, but we could not imagine this impossibility. Then we had a very lively discussion in which we concluded that the very ability to make images and figures different in size but the same in shape, was so deep and common a human characteristic that humanity might almost be tested by the presence of an image-making faculty, which would, by its very nature, be Euclidean. We concluded that human beings must have Euclideanism in common.

The second example comes from the Politics and Society seminar where we read Thomas Aquinas Treatise on Law. To my happy surprise, it turned out to be the summers most influential reading. I often wondered why that was so, and finally thought that it must be because our relation to eternal, natural, human, and divine law was recognized by the members of the seminar as being both more their own and at the same time more a common concern than other, apparently exciting and current, social preoccupations. Thomas had evidently taught us terms which could become our common reference.

This then seems to me to be what liberal education is for, and what should happen in the course of liberal learningand should continue to happen when its formal requirements have long since been completed.

First, that we should find ourselves enabled to break out of the web of learned slogans and engineered solutions in which we are enmeshed. Next, that we should search for the true roots of our own humanity in hopes of discovering common questions, establishing common terms and formulating possible common answers. And finally, that we should be moved to make a deep-felt, thoughtful return to our own affairs and take up our narrower loyalties to ourselves, to our ancestry, or just to our daily associations, not by being helplessly and witlessly driven into them, but by free choice.

So I think I can summarize the ingredients of the summers exhilaration in this way: There was the grandness of our setting, which made us expand and yet pay more attention to one another; there was the variety and distinctiveness of our participants, which made them the best sort of partners in learning; and finally there was that commonality, rooted in single human souls, which is the beginning and the end of this program of liberal education.

You have completed the formal requirements of this program, and are about to enter the degree of Master of the Arts which make a liberal education possible. That degree is given for practical and professional purposes, and you certainly have, through three or four hard-working summers, earned that reward. For my part, I have never been able to see why a thing that is good in itselfa liberal educationshould not also have ordinary profitable consequences. I therefore wish you the very best of luck in your careers and I earnestly hope that your plans may work out and that your expectations may be realized.

Still, speaking among ourselves, good as it is to have a Master of Arts, it would be ridiculous to claim to beone, for the free arts are exactly such as can have no masters only devoted practitioners. And therefore let me now welcome you, who are about to be alumni to the permanent part of St. Johns College, not as Masters but as Fellow-lovers of liberal learning.

This essay was given as the commencement address for the graduate institute in liberal education at St Johns College in August 1975. It appeared in the St. Johns Review (Volume 27, Number 4, 1976) and is republished here with gracious permission of the author.

This essay was first published here in February 2016.

The Imaginative Conservativeapplies the principle of appreciation to the discussion of culture and politicswe approach dialogue with magnanimity rather than with mere civility. Will you help us remain a refreshing oasis in the increasingly contentious arena of modern discourse? Please considerdonating now.

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Some Advice to Fellow Lovers of Liberal Learning - The Imaginative Conservative

But the forces unleashed in Israel last week, and the response from progressivisms more strident and literal-minded pupils, cant simply be written out of the story of what the far left stands for, or what it might become. Here is Levitz, for instance, trying to read terrorisms apologists out of True Leftism:

What we actually witnessed was not the Palestinians mounting a violent struggle for justice but a far-right theocratic organization committing mass murder in the name of blood-and-soil nationalism. Hamass project is antithetical to the lefts foundational values of secularism, universalism and egalitarianism. And it is also completely at odds with the progressive vision for Palestinian liberation. Western radicals predominant prescription for resolving the Israel-Palestine conflict is a one-state solution, in which Israelis and Palestinians all enjoy democratic equality in a single binational state. Hamass atrocities have not advanced this ideal but set it back, lending credence to those who insist a one-state solution is a recipe for ceaseless civil war. This weekend was not a triumph for the lefts project in Palestine but a disaster.

I endorse the moral sentiments but not the ideological analysis. Who is to say, definitively, that a fully realized left vision for Palestine necessarily involves Israelis and Palestinians living in harmony in a single multiethnic state? If Israel is really a society of settler-colonialist villains inhabiting stolen land, why shouldnt the left side with those Palestinian activists who dont think Jews deserve any place in the glorious future achieved through the revolutionary struggle of the dispossessed? Why must Palestinians be expected to share the postcolonial utopia, the land justly reclaimed, with the children of the imperialist oppressors? And if the struggle to be free of those oppressors is being led, for the time being, by religious nationalists rather than secular egalitarian universalists well, the leftist rationale might be, sometimes you cant make an anti-imperialist omelet without a few religious extremists to break the eggs.

My point is not that these are the sentiments of most progressives; they are not. But they are impeccably left-wing sentiments, commonplace in the not-so-distant past, with a long pedigree in the Marxist-Leninist and anticolonial visions that exerted so much sway (and killed so many people) across the 20th century. Indeed, as Shullenberger notes, some of these visions even anticipated the therapeutic style in which they are presented to us nowadays but they did so while insisting, as in the work of Frantz Fanon, that revolutionary violence itself was therapeutic, a means by which the colonized can achieve self-assertion, dignity and wholeness.

Of late there has been a lot of attention paid (including in this newsletter) to the infiltration of far-right ideas and influences into mainstream conservatism the return, under populist auspices, of Nietzschean and vitalist ideas once buried in the rubble of 20th-century fascism. This attention is reasonable; the decay of Western liberalism has revived a variety of right-wing impulses, and the sleep of American Christianity may breed post-Christian monsters.

But with the left, where similar temptations are at work, it doesnt make sense to talk in terms of Donald Trump-enabled infiltrations or seduction by pseudonymous internet philosophers. The revival of the ideological perspective that once romanticized Lenin and Stalin, and later Mao and the Khmer Rouge and a host of lesser-known dictators, has happened in plain sight, across many of our finest academic institutions and prominent foundations. Its just been accompanied by a huge asterisk, a promise that all the rhetoric is therapeutic and psychological, that when we talk about stolen land and ending whiteness and decolonizing everything, we are, of course, merely speaking culturally, symbolically, metaphorically.

However comforting you may have found that asterisk, it should feel less comfortable now.

Read the original post:

Opinion | When 'Decolonization' Isn't Just Academic Rhetoric - The New York Times

For many Australians, 2023 was the year of the Voice to Parliament referendum.

As the last voters head to the ballot boxtoday to have their say, here's a look back in pictures at how we got here.

WARNING: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers are advised that this article contains the nameandimage of an Indigenous person who hasdied.

On March 23, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese fronted themediato announcethe wording of the question Australians would be asked attheVoice to Parliament referendum.

Choking back tears, andsurrounded by Yes campaign advocates including Thomas Mayo and Marcia Langton, he also announced the constitutional changes that would be made if the Voice succeeded.

"For many, this moment has become a very long time in the making," he said.

After, Opposition Leader Peter Duttonspoke alongsidehis then-shadow attorney-general and IndigenousAustralians minister Julian Leeser.

They called for the solicitor-general's advice on the wording to be made public.

But Mr Dutton said the Liberals had not yet decided their stance on the Voice, despite Coalition partners the Nationals announcing their opposition back in November.

That changed just a few weeks later. In April, Mr Dutton announced the Liberal Party's formal opposition tothe Voice proposal.

Mr Dutton said while the opposition supported recognition of First Nations people in the constitution, it did not support a constitutionally enshrined consultative body.

"It should be very clear to Australians by now that the prime minister is dividing the country and the Liberal Party seeks to unite the country," he said.

TheLiberals' decisionled toformer Indigenous Affairs minister Ken Wyatt quitting the party the next day,and Mr Leeser quitting the Liberal frontbench a week later.

Both went on to becomeprominent advocates for the Yes vote.

Party politics on the issue also had an impact on the left,whenLidia Thorpe resigned from the Greens earlier in theyear over the party's support for the Voice.

In April, following Mr Leeser's resignation, Mr Dutton announced his new shadow frontbench, which included Northern Territory senator and prominent Nocampaigner Jacinta Nampijinpa Price as the new shadow minister for Indigenous Australians.

The pair had recently returned from a visit to Ms Price's hometown of Alice Springs, which hadbeen suffering from skyrocketing crime rates.

In late May, the billto set up the referendum passed the House of Representatives, with 121 members voting in support and 25 against.

It passed the Senate the next month, following passionate debate 52 votes for and19 against.

The Senate chamber erupted in applause as president Sue Lines announced the result.

June sawIndigenous Australians Minister Linda Burney attendtheBarunga Festival in the Northern Territory.

The event marked the 35-year anniversary of Indigenous leaders presenting the Barunga Statement to then-prime minister Bob Hawke,calling for a treaty and formal recognition of the rights of Indigenous people.

In a nod to that statement,the territory's four Aboriginal land councils presented Ms Burney withthe Barunga Voice Declaration, a document urgingall Australians to support an Indigenous Voice to Parliament.

At Australia's other major First Nations festival, Garma,in early August, Mr Albanese promised the Voice referendum would be held in 2023.

It was the first Garma Festival since thepassing of event co-founder and Aboriginal land rights leader Yunupiu in April.

There, Mr Albanese met with the Dilak Council a decision-making body made up of senior Yolu leaders representing 13 clan groups from the regionwhich he saidcould be a model for a Voice to Parliament.

Later that month, the Liberal Party launched theirNo vote campaign in Perth, attended by morethan 1,000 people.

Ms Price, prominent No campaigner Warren Mundine, Shadow Attorney-General Michaelia Cashand Shadow Minister for Child Protectionand the Prevention of Family Violence Kerrynne Liddle were all in attendance.

"This proposal is about dividing on the lines of race," Ms Price told the crowd.

At the end of August, the Yes campaign ramped up when Mr Albanese announced the referendum date October 14 at an event in Adelaide attended by hundreds of Yes supporters.

"On that day, every Australian will have a once-in-a-generation chance to bring our country together and to change it for the better," he said.

In September, Marcia Langton gave an address at the National Press Club, callingout abuse directed towards Yes campaigners in the lead-up to the referendum.

She made headlines around a week later forhittingback against claims she said No voters were racist.

Ms Langtonsaid her comments, which were made at a voters'forum, had been misreportedand she hadinstead said tactics used by the No camp were "based in racism and stupidity".

Later that month, Ms Price delivered aspeech at the National Press Club in which she said theVoice to Parliament proposal was "flawed in its foundations".

But her assertion there were "no ongoing negative impacts of colonisation" received significant backlash.

Beyond the official Yes and No campaigns, grassroots movements were takinghold across the country in the lead-up to the referendum.

Australian of the Year Local Hero Amar Singh drove from Sydney to Darwin to engage with multicultural communities for theYes campaign, whilethe Yarrabah community in Far North Queensland called for a Yes vote through art and fashion.

On the No side, community events were held, and some prominent Indigenous leaders such as Djiniyini Gondarra came out against the Voice.

As the wait for the referendum entered its final weeks, both sides took to the streets to spread their message.

Crowds of up to 30,000 people gathered in cities across Australia for 'Walk for Yes' rallies in September.

The following weekend, unofficial No vote rallies hit the streets inSydney, Brisbane, Perth, Adelaide, Melbourne and Canberra, as well as regionally in Casino, Yeppoon, Cairns and Mackay.

That same month, while many people in big cities and towns were still making up their minds, those in Australia's remotest communities many of them Indigenous had already started voting.

The Australian Electoral Commission began rolling outits remote voting system from September 26, using helicopters, planes, boats and four-wheel drives to traverse rugged terrain.

Nearing the finish line on October 14, Ms Price cast her vote inAlice Springs on Friday, while her fellow No advocate Warren Mundine attended polling booths in Sydney on Saturday.

Nationals leader David Littleproud campaigned for a No vote in Brisbane, where the rest of his campaign is set to join him on Saturday night.

Ms Thorpe cast her vote in Melbourne's northern suburbs on Saturday morning, before speaking to media.

All of the most prominent members of the Yes camp were in Sydney for some last-minute campaigning on Saturday morning, MrAlbanese.

Leading Yes campaigner Thomas Mayo joined Labor politicians Malarndirri McCarthy and Tanya Plibersek at the National Centre of Indigenous Excellence in Redfern.

Ms Burney cast her ballot with New South Wales Premier Chris Minns and Yes campaign director Dean Parkin in Sydney's south.

Excerpt from:

In pictures: The Indigenous Voice to Parliament debate of 2023 - ABC News

New Yorks Jewish community is the largest outside of Israel, and it is often polarized, particularly regarding Israel and its treatment of Palestinians. Since the brutal terror attacks on Israelis last Saturday, many New York Jews said they have put aside those differences.

This week, thousands of Jews from across the political and theological spectrum gathered outside the United Nations, many wrapped in blue and white Israeli flags, coming together both to grieve and to condemn the assault.

It was a show of unity that would have been hard to imagine previously, said Eric Goldstein, chief executive of UJA-Federation of New York. To a large degree the Jewish community has come together in this moment.

New York City has long had uniquely close emotional bonds with Israel, which strengthen in times of crisis a relationship forged through the atrocities in Europe that led to the countrys founding and created much of New Yorks Jewish community. Jewish New Yorkers have looked at Israel as an emblem of home and survival in a hostile world.

Tens of thousands of New Yorkers have relatives in Israel, Mr. Goldstein said. When Israel comes under attack, Jewish New Yorkers including those who might rarely think about Israel feel the threat.

One measure of this relationship: Gov. Kathy Hochul, Mayor Eric Adams and Attorney General Letitia James all addressed the crowd outside the United Nations, supporting both Israel and the citys Jewish community.

Yet that relationship has had its divisions, with many progressive congregations and secular Jews strongly criticizing Israel. This polarization has increased since the rise of the far-right government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and a judicial reform program aimed at weakening Israels court system.

Amichai Lau-Lavie, an Israeli-born rabbi who has been vocal about both his criticisms and his love for Israel, said it was time to put aside divisions and focus on shared grief.

Right now people are hurting, and we just want to hold each others hand and let the divisions be in the back, he said. Our political position now makes no difference. Left, right, pro-occupation, anti-occupation, dont know about it were hurting and were shocked and were horrified and we want Israel to get through this.

Particularly for liberal congregations, the attacks have prompted a reconsideration of the language they use in discussing Israel, said Rabbi David Ingber, who leads the progressive Romemu synagogue on Manhattans Upper West Side and is the senior director of the Bronfman Center for Jewish Life at the 92nd Street Y, New York.

The rabbi said that many progressive Jews, who tend to support a free Palestinian state, are starting to confront the navet of some of the tactics the progressive community has engaged in.

This has laid bare for many in the liberal community the dangers of anti-Israeli and anti-Zionist ideologies that are being waged in many liberal institutions, on college campuses and so on, he said.

At Rabbi Lau-Lavies small, progressive congregation, Lab/Shul, members held a Zoom conversation to discuss, among other things, how to reconcile their grief and anger with their criticisms of Israels government.

Speaking a few days afterward, Stuart Himmelfarb, 71, who runs a small Jewish nonprofit agency, said he had been very critical of Israel, and of religious Jews going to the Temple Mount, which is also the site of one of the most holy mosques in Islam.

All of that, on Saturday morning, got parked, Mr. Himmelfarb said. The blame game as well. His focus now, he said, was How in the world can the hostages be saved?

Betsey Nevins-Saunders, 53, who runs a criminal defense clinic at Hofstra Universitys law school on Long Island, said she was not willing to put aside her criticisms of Israel. But because of the scale and scope of the attacks, she said she needed some time to separate her grief from those criticisms.

Right now we do not have to say, Yeah, but Sorry for the pain in Israel, but, she said. We need some time to grieve, and that grief has a legitimacy and right to exist. And sometimes were so quick to go to the but part that we negate that opportunity to grieve, which might be a place for coming together in grief. If we felt we could just have a moment of grief, we might not have to be so polarized about it.

For some in the congregation, the attacks have meant wrestling with internal conflict. Sarah Sokolic, Lab/Shuls executive director, said she grew up being taught that Israel was good and Palestinians were bad, and has worked for the last two decades to promote more nuanced, progressive views.

Now, she said: I find myself asking, How can I be a Zionist and be a person who does anti-oppression work at the same time? How can I teach my children about power, oppression, equity, empathy, otherness while also teaching them that Israel is our homeland, and that Israel has a right to exist and defend herself? As she wrestles, she said, I find myself leaning into my Zionist roots.

Some of the most contentious conversations this week took place on college campuses, or among students on online platforms. Student groups at New York University School of Law and Columbia University issued statements supporting Palestinians and blaming Israel for the attacks, leaving many Jewish students feeling disillusioned and very isolated, said Yuda Drizin, the rabbi for the Chabad community at Columbia.

Thats the main thing loneliness, the rabbi said, adding that students he had never spoken with before had approached him. Its across the political spectrum, he said. They say they walk through campus and they dont know who thinks they deserve to be dead.

Gabriel Weintraub, 21, a junior majoring in philosophy, said the campus climate since the attack had brought him closer to other Jewish students and to Israel. The schools vaunted core curriculum, he said, included anti-colonialist texts that students were using to condemn Israels treatment of Palestinians.

I live with mostly non-Jews, and they dont understand what Im going through, he said. Thats not their fault. Its comforting to have people here that I can relate to, who identify with Israel. Particularly when other people I follow on social media are posting that this meaning the attack in Israel is what decolonization looks like. I feel very isolated, because people are not supporting me.

He added: Ive turned into an activist, which is not something that I ever identified as.

Jack Lobel, 19, a Columbia sophomore, said that since the attacks, he had felt compelled to be more visibly Jewish. He started wearing his Star of David pendant outside his shirt and observing Jewish rituals more than previously. Until last Saturday, he said, My reaction to seeing Jews around me was always, Oh, cool, theyre one of me. Now I see Jews around me and I think, Thank God. It makes me feel safer.

At a somber prayer gathering on Thursday afternoon in the heavily Hasidic neighborhood of Borough Park, Brooklyn, the atmosphere was reserved, without talk of politics or the Israeli government. Residents addressed Israel not as a political entity but as the spiritual Holy Land under attack.

In good times you can come with me and sit on my dining room couch and speculate how to make Palestinian life easier, said Alexander Rapaport, 45, a neighborhood activist who runs a network of soup kitchens. In good times you can come and speculate and say maybe Netanyahu should have term limits or whatever.

He added: But thats not an appropriate conversation in these days.

Claire Fahy and Wesley Parnell contributed reporting.

Audio produced by Jack DIsidoro.

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Attack on Israel Reverberates Through Jewish New York - The New York Times

Septembers record-breaking temperatures are a stark reminder: climate change is here, now. Whether in northern communities, a small agricultural town or a bustling city, every Ontarian felt climates wrath this summer. The smoke from raging wildfires in northern Ontario and Quebec filled my lungs thousands of kilometres away in Mississauga.

Government action cannot be a distant aspiration; it's an immediate necessity. Mississauga has championed aggressive climate action, introducing the citys first climate action strategy and setting ambitious emissions reduction targets on the road to achieving net zero by at least 2050.

My mission started when I was elected the city's mayor in 2014. I earned a mandate to transition a suburb into a thriving, densified, urban landscape. Recognizing the need, we transformed carbon-heavy sectors like buildings, transportation and energy.

By ending exclusionary zoning in our downtown and promoting infill development and gentle density, we have made Mississauga a more walkable, livable community. Weve remediated brownfield and contaminated sites and underused shopping malls, transforming them into thriving, mixed-use neighbourhoods. One of our proudest feats? One of North Americas first net-zero firehalls.

Alongside urbanization, we are massively investing in public transit. The Hazel McCallion Line will be the spine of our LRT network integrated with expanded GO Train service and improved local bus and bus-rapid transit systems. Weve lowered fares to make eco-friendly commuting convenient, replaced 41 diesel-powered city buses with hybrids, and installed over 70 municipal EV-charging stations.

In addition to reducing emissions from fossil fuels, weve made tremendous progress on protecting nature with the creation of new parks, trails and green spaces. I helped lead the charge to protect our Great Lakes as a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve. Our council was one of the first to oppose Doug Ford's removal of protected land from the Greenbelt to build a highway because I will always stand up for our green spaces and agricultural lands.

While cities like ours are surging ahead, there's a distressing lack of provincial leadership. Premier Ford doesnt have a plan. Hes cancelled programs that could reduce pollution, clean the air, improve our health and create green jobs.

I have a different approach. I'll make combatting climate change a central operating principle of the next Ontario Liberal government so we can set up future generations for success just as I have as mayor of Ontarios third-largest city.

Ontario deserves better than what we see today. Under my leadership, we will make Ontario a net-zero province by 2050 and lead by example by transforming the public sector itself by 2040. We will protect 30 per cent of Ontario's land and water by 2030, including the Great Lakes, Lake Simcoe and other major bodies of water. This interconnected action includes permanently protecting and expanding the Greenbelt not swapping pieces out to benefit well-connected, wealthy friends.

Partnerships with Indigenous communities on all matters related to their land and water rights will be foundational. We will encourage Indigenous Protected Areas and responsible development of critical mineral deposits. We will electrify transportation, make homes more energy-efficient and roll out EV infrastructure.

With a focus on a sustainable economy, we will also target doubling waste diversion rates in a decade, invest in clean technology, revitalize public transit and implement sustainable urban planning initiatives like protected bike lanes and green spaces.

The overarching goal? Make Ontario climate-change resilient, healthy and thriving.

We owe action to future generations its a moral imperative. Engaging with young people and communities across Ontario this summer fortified my resolve to protect nature, clean our energy sources, improve transit and invest in climate-resilient infrastructure.

Bonnie Crombie is mayor of Mississauga and a candidate for leader of the Ontario Liberal Party.

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Bolder climate action in Ontario. Now | Canada's National Observer ... - Canada's National Observer

Debate

07:00

by Aris Roussinos

The frost is melting. Credit: Getty

Like the melting of permafrost, the waning of empires awakens long-dormant ethnic conflicts, already defining the international politics of the 2020s. Russias war to deny Ukraine nationhood was launched on the pretext of protecting ethnic Russians from Ukrainian domination. In the past few weeks alone we have witnessed Azerbaijans invasion and ethnic cleansing of Karabakh, Serbias sabre-rattling over Kosovo following the appearance of suspiciously well-armed ethnic Serb militants, and now Hamass bold and unprecedented incursion into southern Israel.

Not all ethnic conflicts, based on the rival aspirations of different peoples for control of the same territory, end in war. But once blood is spilled, it is hard to return the damaged polity to the banal concerns of everyday governance as long as final mastery of the land remains unresolved. Even where attempts at democratic politics are imposed on the warring parties as in Lebanon, and Northern Ireland ethnic rivalry swallows the democratic process whole, freezing armed conflict but causing stagnation and deadlock as each side coalesces around its perceived protectors, anxiously tracking threatening changes in the demographic balance.

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Yet for observers in liberal democracies, such unsatisfying conclusions are difficult to place into our operating moral framework because they are almost psychologically incompatible. Ethnic conflicts rarely display clear heroes or villains, merely intricate claims and counterclaims to the same contested territory: in their absence, we are often forced to create them to justify our interest.

The Syldavians will appeal to the better natures of international onlookers, casting their ethnic self-interest as the embodiment of the highest moral aspirations, and the rival Bordurians will reach back into the unfalsifiable mists of history to stake their prior claim to the land. Yet for all the swirling appeals to justice and morality, the reality is that when these conflicts are finally settled, it is generally by the facts of hard power alone, with the only enduring results resulting from one side accepting its defeat, or an external arbiter separating the two according to its own interests.

Torn between noble ideals and realpolitik, in practice the American empire at its height quelled ethnic conflicts through favouritism, justifying its Solomon-like judgements in moralising terms. During the Pax Americana, the ethnic conflicts of Bosnia and Kosovo were frozen by Nato airpower, and the formation of imperial protectorates masked by dysfunctional democratic systems.

The ethnic conflict in Israel-Palestine, accidentally created by Britain through a combination of liberal idealism and World War One expediency, was partly frozen by Americas firm favouring of Israel over Palestinian aspirations, and by financial and military inducements to her Arab neighbours not to disturb the status quo: the illusory peace process latterly provided moral cover. A temporary, fragile order was imposed by American military power, with clear winners Israel, like the Bosniaks and Kosovo Albanians and bitter losers the Palestinians like the Serbs. Yet neither accepted their defeat, and as Americas unchallenged dominance wanes, its fragile order is again being contested by the losing parties and their sponsors, Americas geopolitical rivals.

Just as the 1990s saw a wave of ethnic conflict and cleansing, the shifting global balance of the 2020s has already initiated a wave of human suffering at the interstices of the rival empires. Many will lose their homes and livelihoods through no fault of their own, just as followed the two World Wars and the fall of the Soviet Union. The great gears of history are shifting again, and like the Armenians of Karabakh, the weak and helpless will be ground down. There is, as yet, no global arbiter, just or otherwise, and no prospect of one on the horizon. In the absence of imposed order, there is only victory or defeat.

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There is no liberal answer to the Israel-Palestine conflict - UnHerd