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"Freedom to debate is essential to the development of critical thought, but on university campuses today free speech is restricted for fear of causing offense. This book surveys the underlying factors that circumscribe the ideas tolerated in our institutions of learning"--
What is "cancel culture." A new phrase in popular circulation for less than two years, it has provoked passionate denunciations from observers concerned with civil liberties, especially rights of free speech and expression, and apologetic defenses from opponents who advocate equity and accountability in light of new mores. Still others deny that "cancel culture" exists at all, while many claim never to have heard of it. In Cancel Culture: Tales from the Front Lines, noted historian and critic Paul du Quenoy presents a series of case studies that reveal the new phenomenon known as "cancel culture" as experienced or claimed in media, academia, the arts, public space, and other areas of ideological controversy. More than a bald denunciation or frustrated description of an unfamiliar new concept, this groundbreaking approach seeks to understand "cancel culture" as a process - how it starts and stops, where it comes from and leads, and how and, indeed, whether it might one day end. This penetrating and highly original analysis sheds light on a society grappling feverishly with fundamental issues of freedom and liberty.
"Born in Tashkent, raised in Moscow and New York City, an editor in Odessa, a correspondent in Paris, there seems nowhere Davidzon hasn't been, no one he hasn't met. The result is a distinctive voice and eye, an eclectic mix of the cultural critic, the political analyst and the liberal cosmopolitan, evident from the first page of this delightful book" - Mark Galeotti, University College London and Royal University Services Institute The Tashkent-born Russian-American literary critic, editor, essayist, and journalist Vladislav Davidzon has been covering post-Soviet Ukraine for the past ten years, a tumultuous time for that country and the surrounding world. The 2014 "Revolution of Dignity" he...
In 2013, the journalist Julie Burchill wrote a mischievous newspaper column defending a friend against political extremists. She was pursued by an outraged mob, denounced in Parliament and never published in that paper - or any other - for many years. Welcome To The Woke Trials is part-memoir and part-indictment of what happened to her between then and now, as the regiments of Woke took over; an irreverent and entertaining analysis of the key elements of a continuing and disturbing phenomenon. Raised in a Communist household and a lifelong Labour voter, Burchill also makes the case for a progressive future politics, a time when we see ourselves as a common humanity with similar hopes and visions - rather than a childish world of villains and victims.
Based on newly available documents and others translated for the first time, physician Nicholas Kadar sheds important new light on the thinking of the celebrated Hungarian doctor Ignaz Semmelweis (1818-1865) at the Vienna School of Medicine, where he discovered the cause and prophylaxis of childbed fever, one of the greatest findings in the history of medicine. Drawing a portrait of an era open to the possibilities of antiseptics - vitally important in a world facing Covid-19, Kadar explodes the opposition Semmelweis faced from his contemporaries and explains many aspects of Semmelweis's hitherto unexplained actions. Kadar's detailed study demonstrates that supposed champions of Semmelweis's work destroyed his career prospects in Vienna, and did more harm to his highly effective medical doctrine than any of proclaimed opponents ever did. Step by step, Kadar traces the presuppositions and the deductive logic that led Semmelweis to his discovery of the cause and prophylaxis of childbed fever, giving it proper place in the history of medicine.
In 1806 an anonymous Greek book called for a republican government, patterned upon that of the young United States, to be established in Greece, then long the rule of the Ottoman Empire. The "Americanization" of Greece presupposed independence. The book's author, Count John Capo d'Istria, was carried away by his own version of the "American Dream," but was also in touch with another inspirational power, Russia, which made him its foreign minister despite his attraction to the ideas of revolutionaries, Russia's Decembrists, who wanted democratic government in their country. Capo d'Istria was only identified as the early author of calls for a Greek Republic in the 2010s. In this revelatory new book, Dimitris Michalopoulos follows his career and that of Alexander Hypsilantis, a Greek who became a general of the Russian army and tried to attract Russia's interest in a democratic revolution for Greece.
It is often claimed that belief in God is based on faith, while non-belief is grounded in rationality. This claim is inaccurate. Moral philosopher Carlo Alvaro takes the reader through his philosophical journey-a journey taken with the absolute absence of faith. Through reasoning alone, and with an objective assessment of the classical theistic arguments, Deism takes the reader from disbelief to a particular version of deism. Deism discusses such arguments as the Kalam Cosmological, the asymmetry against the evil-god challenge, the anthropic principle, and the moral. Such arguments lead to the undeniable conclusion that there exists a timeless, space-less, wholly good, and infinitely powerful being endowed with freedom of the will, who brought the universe into existence a finite time ago. An objective appraisal of such arguments leads to the conclusions that atheism is an irrational philosophical position, that God does not interact with humans, at least not during our physical existence on earth, and that God is the best explanation of the objectivity of moral value and duty.
Trumplandia: Populist Nationalism in America is a collection of essays about the transformation of America, which has turned from a united nation to one more divided than ever under the presidency of Donald Trump. Some pundits predict that if things don't change another civil war could occur. Have we reached a point of no return? Author and attorney Tiberiu Dianu writes in the hope that America is mature enough to learn from its mistakes and avoid further scars along its evolving history.
The Role of Customs in International Treaties concentrates on issues of friction between member states of the United Nations. In view of the role played by the United Nations in resolving international disputes, Dimitris Liakopoulos hypothesizes that "practical guides" based on custom often catalyze the positions taken by states, courts, scholars, and other actors, constituting an "orthodox" position against which formulaic legal opposition will become predictably more difficult. In addition to reiterating what some would say are obvious, on some particularly controversial issues, the United Nations has essentially chosen not to take a position and allowed customs to define conflict resolution.