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Post #5 in our symposium on Joanne Yao's The Ideal River, from Dr Giulia Carabelli. Giulia is a lecturer in Sociology and Social Theory in the School of Politics and International Relations at Queen Mary, University of London. She is interested in affect theory, nonhuman agencies, and social justice. Her current research project, Care for Plants, … Continue reading What Difference Does a River Make?

What would Masterpiece have looked like with Justice Kennedy still on Court?

The post Making a Difference: Women in the Legal Profession appeared first on Völkerrechtsblog.

Bias in academia can often be difficult to pinpoint and separate out from difference. Responding to a recent call from the journal Nature to set new guidelines for studies dealing with race and ethnicity, Vincent A. Traag and Ludo Waltman, outline how concepts from causal inference can clarify approaches to studying gender bias in higher … Continued

Kindergarten enrollment at California's public schools fell dramatically in 2020–21. Examining the trends for specific kindergarten ages—as well as the impact of transitional kindergarten (TK)—is key to understanding the broader decline in public school enrollment.

He'd be a stronger candidate if he applied that thinking to situations that don't involve former President Donald Trump.

We need dynamic and diverse leaders now more than ever. Worsening storms, more frequent floods and heatwaves, longer droughts, faster coastal change, significant species loss and greater pressures on water, land and air – climate change is happening now. We …

Appreciation of differences, more so than of common interests, is essential to maintaining most meaningful relationships over time. It's odd and a bit unfortunate, therefore, that common interests often limit the frame of reference for ...

Reader Bruce Hall writes: The interesting thing is that since the PCE runs consistently 2pp below CPI. This struck me as a surprising stylized fact, at variance with what I knew from various analyses I'd conducted. I wrote that the difference was about 0.45 ppts over 1986-2019. Mr. Hall then cited a MorningStar report notes: […]

California's overall poverty rate rose between fall 2021 and early 2023, according to the most recent California Poverty Measure. We look at how poverty differs across the state and how it is linked to race, education, and other demographic factors.

The two are not the same, and may sometimes be in conflict with each other.

So Dear Old Brum has gone bust. At which point there are those crying out that the assets must not be sold: "As the process of balancing the council's books begins, local communities are rightly concerned about the fate of publicly owned historic places and buildings and arts and culture venues," the letter states. "Birmingham's financial reconstruction must not come at the cost of its priceless heritage."The letter lists sites including the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, Aston Hall, Moseley Road Baths, Symphony Hall and Cannon Hill Park as "precious, publicly owned places" that should be saved.Neil Mendoza, the chair of Historic England, said: "Cultural and heritage assets are incredibly precious and important parts of communities. They're not things to be bought and sold."This is a serious situation, and heritage and community considerations need to be taken into account as well as the obvious legal ones. People in Birmingham are really upset at the idea these things might even be considered as assets to be sold."They are assets and it should be considered, that sale of them. It's entirely possible that the sale doesn't make sense, just as it is possible it does. But the point we want to emphasise, insist upon, is that selling an asset does not mean destroying that asset. That, say, Moseley Road Baths is privately, not council, owned does not make Moseley Road Baths disappear. It just changes who owns the place. This is, to us, part of a larger mistake more generally made. We often hear of demands to "save an iconic company" when what is meant is to save the particular and current legal form of it. The underlying economic asserts do not cease to exist if a particular legal wrapper goes bust. What changes in bankruptcy is who owns those assets, not the existence of the assets themselves. That is, don't get hung up on the legal or form of ownership. The things themselves, sure, they might well be worth saving. Or not, as the case might be. But the form of ownership, or even who owns, isn't the thing that must necessarily be preserved. That's to reify the current legal arrangement which is an absurdity. Even if we do want to save the thing itself it's the thing that is to be considered, not the who or how.

ThemeThe author, a former Director General of Israel's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, lays down the reasons for recognising the State of Palestine in order to create the conditions for a sustainable peace between Israelis and Palestinians. SummaryThe '7 October War' is a strategic turning point for the Israeli-Palestinian bilateral relations, as well as for Israel's […]
La entrada Spain's recognition of the State of Palestine can make the difference se publicó primero en Elcano Royal Institute.

By ROBERT SPOO

Review of Reading the Obscene: Transgressive Editors and the Class Politics of US Literature, by Jordan S. Carroll, and A Matter of Obscenity: The Politics of Censorship in Modern England, by Christopher Hilliard

Next month, President Biden could hold two separate meetings with Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.


These meetings, which reporting suggests could happen at both the UN General Assembly in New York and the G20 in India, represent an opportunity to kickstart a lackluster U.S.-Brazil relationship. Past tensions between the U.S. and Brazil, exemplified by the fallout from the 2010 Tehran Declaration, serve as a cautionary tale to the Biden administration to not let a difference in perspective on Ukraine cloud other areas of potential collaboration.


Disagreements over the war in Ukraine have put the U.S.-Brazil relationship in hot water in recent months. On the campaign trail, Lula suggested, with some controversy, that Ukraine and Russia are equally responsible for the conflict. Once in office, Lula's visit to the White House in February was short and understated; Biden initially only offered $50 million to the Amazon Fund, a figure so low it was omitted from the official joint statement.


Additionally, Lula's proposal to create a peace club of nonaligned countries appears to have been a nonstarter in Washington. In a particularly heated back and forth, Lula said the U.S. should stop "encouraging" the war and start talking about peace. U.S. National Security Council spokesman John Kirby responded by accusing Lula of "parroting Russian and Chinese propaganda."


Most observers agree that Ukraine has become something of a flashpoint for U.S.-Brazil relations and soured expectations of a more expansive reset in the wake of former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro's 2022 electoral defeat.


Despite this international criticism, Lula has continued to speak about the need for a negotiated peace settlement in Ukraine. Just last week, the Brazilian Ministry of Foreign Affairs said this week's BRICS summit should be used to debate the war in Ukraine. Lula sees a universalist foreign policy as crucial to becoming a major global player in an increasingly multipolar world, which involves taking on global issues of international security like Ukraine that have historically been left to the great powers.


In other words, Biden isn't going to change Lula's mind on Ukraine, and Lula doesn't seem likely to give up on what has become one of his signature foreign policies. As a result, the two presidents shouldn't allow disagreements over Ukraine to spill over into other areas of cooperation.


The fallout between the U.S. and Brazil over the 2010 Tehran Declaration, an event both Lula and Biden will remember well, can serve as a cautionary tale.


In 2010, Lula and his advisers sought a fuel-swap agreement between Turkey and Iran intended to facilitate Iran's nuclear cooperation. Initially, then-President Barack Obama pledged that the United States would "support and facilitate action on a proposal that would supply Iran with nuclear fuel using Iran's enriched uranium." Only when that proposal was successful did the United States — and its European allies — change course. Just a month later, the United Nations Security Council imposed a series of harsh sanctions on Iran.


From this, Brazilian diplomats concluded that the U.S. did not think Brazil would succeed and even sought to privately press against the behind-the-scenes negotiations. Then-Minister of Foreign Affairs Celso Amorim summarized Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's attitude in his memoir as, "I have not read (the Declaration). But I don't like it."


When the U.S. dismissed the Tehran Declaration in 2010, it led to what Federal University of São Paulo professor Cristina Pecequilo has labeled the "low point of Lula's foreign policy" for complicating the U.S.-Brazil relationship. According to Pecequilo, this was part of Obama's "changing US policy from accommodation to containment of emerging nations." Brazil, in response, distanced itself further from the United States. The new "reset" of bilateral relations didn't come until 2014 when then Vice President Joe Biden visited Brazil during the World Cup.


These events should offer a warning to Biden. Oliver Stunekel, an associate professor of international relations at the Getulio Vargas Foundation, writes that "[j]ust as Brazil's ambitious Iran initiative failed because it lacked Western buy-in — and ultimately complicated Brasília's ties to Washington — Lula's desire to negotiate a peace deal in Ukraine could have the same fate."


Rather than disengage with Brazil over Lula's comments on Ukraine, Biden should look to areas of more natural potential collaboration such as energy, deforestation, jobs creation, and trade. The two presidents recently shared a 30-minute phone call that suggested some positive signs of doing just that, even discussing a joint initiative focused on improving labor conditions. A congressional delegation of progressives also spent several days in Brazil last week, meeting with key Lula advisers and carving out another blueprint for constructive engagement between the two countries based on shared domestic priorities.


Even if Ukraine is a flashpoint for the current relationship, that doesn't mean Biden should ignore other thorny questions of international security with Lula. But doing so requires recognition that any U.S.-led proposal will inevitably look different from a joint initiative or Brazil-led proposal. At the G7 in Japan, Lula expressed interest in working to resolve other conflicts outside of Europe.


"Israelis and Palestinians, Armenians and Azerbaijanis, Kosovars and Serbs need peace," Lula exclaimed. "Yemenis, Syrians, Libyans and Sudanese all deserve to live in peace. These conflicts should receive the same degree of international mobilization." If Lula takes on these issues, Biden should work with him on areas of mutual interest rather than view it as a challenge to U.S. hegemony.


Another potential area of collaboration could be in Latin America. Relations between the U.S. and Venezuela have shown some signs of thawing, but the U.S. still refuses to formally recognize Nicolás Maduro as the president. The Biden administration has also restored some engagement with Cuba, yet Cuba remains on the State Department's state sponsors of terrorism list. These complicated realities make Brazil a valuable potential partner for possible backchannel talks or track II diplomatic efforts, given Brazil's positive relations with the two countries.


Brazil has occupied this role before, attempting to mediate the Cuban Missile Crisis and broker U.S.-Cuban reconciliation during the 1960s. As Obama once acknowledged, according to Amorim, "we need friends who can talk to countries that refuse to talk to us."


One of the lessons of the Tehran Declaration should be that the U.S. needs to sometimes accept taking on a smaller role when it serves its interests. Brazil brings many strengths as an outsider and a diplomatic heavyweight, but also simply by not being the U.S. As Camila Feix Vidal, professor at the Federal University of Santa Catarina, points out: "Brazil is respected internationally…Countries don't have a negative history with Brazil so it can be easier for Brazil to arbitrate, unlike the United States."


For instance, Brazil's success as an advocate against nuclear weapons is taken more seriously given that it renounced interest in nuclear weapons in the 1990s. By contrast, the U.S. today has well over 5,000.


Nearly a decade and a half on from the Tehran Declaration, the United States is operating in a more multipolar world. That may require more compromise, especially with emerging powers such as Brazil as they gain more leverage. Even if the two countries are at an impasse on Ukraine for the time being, the U.S. should heed the lessons of 2010 and consider the benefits of pursuing a more constructive partnership with Brazil.