Does Our Cultural Obsession With Safety Spell the Downfall of Democracy?
By Thomas Chatterton Williams, NYT
THE SPLINTERING OF THE AMERICAN MIND Identity Politics, Inequality, and Community on Today’s College Campuses
By William Egginton
263 pp. Bloomsbury. $28.
THE CODDLING OF THE AMERICAN MIND How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure
By Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt
338 pp. Penguin Press. $28.
In this review Thomas Chatterton Willliams frist refers to the so called "How-To"-affair of THE NATION and goes on to remark:
If it feels as though we no longer know how to speak or listen in good faith to one another, it’s because we don’t. This is the kind of controversy that might have seemed overblown as recently as the start of the Obama administration. Today it arrives with frequency and fervor — a marker of the country’s rapidly shifting mores, which are the product of new generations increasingly fluent in, in thrall to and in fear of the hyperspecialized language and norms of academia. Whether you even find the above exchange intelligible reveals a great deal more than merely your political bent, touching on aspects of age, education and geography — not to mention distinctions of race and class.
The mighty China seems to be so fragile and vulnerable that it not only censures academics at home, teachers, students, advocates, journalists, to gain and keep total control (as a kind of total war), it also haunts persons who dare to express themselves freele or criticise the paradise China. An example is the graduation address by a Chinese student. Here a short report by THE GUARDIAN as well as the video of her address.
Chinese student abused for praising 'fresh air of free speech' in US
Nationalists in China seize on remarks by Yang Shuping, accusing her of ‘demonising’ it in backlash fuelled by state-run media.
A Chinese student has faced abuse from nationalists in China after she used her graduation address at a US university to celebrate “the fresh air of free speech”.
Yang Shuping, a psychology and theatre graduate from Yunnan province,
came to study at the University of Maryland five years ago, as a
dramatic clampdown on civil society and academia began back home under Xi Jinping.
Student campaigns for 'inclusive' courses are undermining academic freedom.
‘Why is my curriculum white?’ This provocative question is the title of a film being made by University College London’s (UCL) Black and Minority Ethnic Students’ Network. The film, produced in conjunction with academic staff, is part of a campaign ‘pushing for the most inclusive, well-rounded and progressive learning environment possible’. UCL students are acting on recommendations from the National Union of Students (NUS) and Universities Scotland that state ‘institutions must strive to minimise Euro-centric bias in curriculum design, content and delivery, and establish mechanisms to ensure this happens’.
Many people wish to bestow someone a book but are insecure concerning their selection. What should be given away as a gift? What is proper, beautiful, enteraining, worthwhile etc.?
I recommend the latest publication by the British author, artist and art critic John Berger:
A meditation, in words and images, on the practice of drawing, by the author of Ways of Seeing.
The seventeenth-century philosopher
Baruch Spinoza—also known as Benedict or Bento de Spinoza—spent the most
intense years of his short life writing. A sporadic draughtsman, he
also carried with him a sketchbook. After his sudden death, his friends
rescued letters, manuscripts, notes—but no drawings.
For years, John Berger has imagined finding Bento's sketchbook
without knowing what its pages might hold, but wanting to see the
drawings alongside his surviving words. When one day a friend gave
Berger a beautiful, virgin sketchbook, John said “This is Bento's!” and
he began to draw, taking his inspiration from the philosopher's vision.
The result is Bento's Sketchbook—an exploration of the
practice of drawing and a meditation on how art guides our gaze to the
world: to flowers, to the human body, to the pitilessness of the new
world order and the forms of resistance to it.
Hardback, 176 pages
ISBN: 9781844676842
May 2011
£14.99
Writer and critic John Berger donated his archive to the British Library in 2008 but it was not possible to thank him officially for his generosity until he came on 23 May 2011 to give a reading from his latest book, Bento's Sketchbook.
John Peter Berger (born 5 November 1926) is an English art critic, novelist, painter and author. His novel G. won the 1972 Booker Prize, and his essay on art criticism Ways of Seeing, written as an accompaniment to a BBC series, is often used as a university text. Wikipedia
John Berger was born in London in 1926. His many books, innovative in form and far-reaching in their historical and political insight, include To the Wedding (published in a rejacketed edition in April 2009), King, and the Booker Prize-winning novel, G. Amongst his outstanding studies of art and photography are Another Way of Telling, The Success and Failure of Picasso, Titian: Nymph and Shepherd (with Katya Berger) and the internationally acclaimed Ways of Seeing. He lives and works in a small village in the French Alps, the setting for his trilogy Into Their Labours (Pig Earth, Once in Europa and Lilac and Flag). His collection of essays The Shape of a Pocket was published in 2001. His latest novel, From A to X, was published in 2008.
About Looking, published by Bloomsbury in April 2009, is the follow-up to the seminal Ways of Seeing, one of the most influential books on art.
Berger is a Marxist, an advocat of dignity and freedom. He not only is an art critic but a critic generally, politically. He took explicit stands against Israel concerning their suppression of Palestinians. He is outspoken and courageous.
John Berger: a life in writing
'I wanted to write about looking at the world, so this book is about helping people to see what is around us, both the marvellous and the terrible' Nicholas Wroe, The Guardian, 23 April 2011
John Berger: A und X Ein Gespräch gegen die Abwertung der Welt
Worte sind stärker als Trennungsschmerz: Der englische Schriftsteller John Berger erzählt in „A und X“ eine Liebesgeschichte - und verrät sein Vademecum gegen die Verwundungen der Moderne. Thomas David, FAZ, 28.01.2011
