Nèdeem Elmahjoub's blog

"The women were demanding an end to the indefinite detention of asylum seekers, minors, pregnant women, and survivors of torture, rape and trafficking, a practice that is sanctioned in no European country apart from the UK; in the US, it was introduced under the post-9/11 Patriot Act and signed into law under President Obama. The political philosopher Howard Caygill goes so far as to argue that violence at the borders of the modern nation-state has been the chief means by which modernity has contained and denied the violence of its own civility: ‘The possibility of feats of extravagant and unrestrained violence at and beyond the border [have historically] contrasted with the constraints of rational management of violence within the borders of nation-states.’ To put it simply, violence at the border serves a purpose, and so does the shock it provokes. It obscures the violence of the internal social arrangements of modern nations, which fight to preserve the privilege of the f

s  North  China  Campaign  of  1860  was  not  unex- pected;  most  immediately,  it  followed,  and  was  partly  inspired  by,  wars  in Algeria  and  India  in  the  preceding  decades.  Yet,  there  might  seem  to  be a  contradiction  between  the  liberal  character  of  the  leaders  of  the  cam- pai gn  and  the ir  T ali ban -li k e  dem oli tio n  of  the  pal ac es  and  gar den s  a t Y uanmingyuan.  Ringmar ,  how eve r ,  disputes  tha t  a  contradiction  exis ts . Liberalism  in  the  mid-19th  century  championed  free  exchange.  When  the liberal ’  free-market  policies  met  with  resistance,  such  as  in  China,  violence, and  sometimes  barbarism,  became  a  natural  course  of  action s  North  China  Campaign  of  1860  was  not  unex- pected;  most  immediately,  it  followed,  and  was  partly  inspired  by,  wars  in Algeria  and  India  in  the  preceding  decades.  Yet,  there  might  seem  to  be a  contradiction  between  the  liberal  chara

Can Violence Ever Be Legitimate?

"Big issues transcend Brexit." Indeed. I remember when in late 2018 I asked someone who works in Parliament: with or without Brexit, will there be an end to obscene inequality, exploitation, austerity, tuition fees, support of dictators...? He replied: "No," with a strange look at me as if I had asked him questions that either he never heard of or they were irrelevant. Ken Loach

ore corporate management models, they increasingly use and exploit cheap faculty labor ... Students increasingly fare no better in sharing the status of a sub ‐ altern class beholden to neoliberal policies and values’ (Giroux, 2014, p. 20). The implications of this go far beyond the university itself, resulting in what Giroux, one of the leading writers on this topic, has called ‘the near‐death of the university as a democratic public sphere’ (p. 16). In these assessments, neoliberalism, in its impact on Higher Education, is associated with a range of other terms or ‘discourses’: The ascendancy of neoliberalism and the associated discourses of ‘new public management’, during the 1980s and 1990s, has produced a fundamental shift in the way universities and other institu ‐ tions of higher education have defined and justified their institutional existence. The traditional professional culture of open intellectual enquiry and debate has been replaced with an

"A Quiet Revolution" by Leila Ahmed I personally disagree with the word veil and hijab because they are not specific. They both mean a cover, but they don't specify what is covered. "Hijāb" in Arabic means "to cover"/"to hide". "Headscarf" is a more accurate term. 

Members of the Kurdish Women's Protection Units A photo by Delil Souleiman (AFP and Getty)

"Over the past few years a number of brilliant scholars have been hounded out of the academy because of their political convictions, their commitments to struggles for Palestinian rights and against white supremacy. At the same time, cowardly administrations repeat right-wing talking points about free speech. It’s indicative of this capitalist, upside-down world that tells us that corporations are people but people are disposable, that we live in a knowledge society but facts, learning, and education are simultaneously devalued and commodified, that success brings freedom when in fact it brings debt and entrapment in the service of the capital accumulation of the very rich." Which side are you on? The Comradely Professor

The biggest threat to the U.S. is not China, Russia or the enemy within (Muslims, socialists, etc); it's another emerging super power with a larger economy, bigger military power and higher productivity, and it's a few miles away. Cuba. U.S. sanctions on Cuba

Supported the 2011 uprising from the beginning Fadwa Souleiman May Skaf