World Lawyers’ Pledge on Climate Action

The World Lawyers’ Pledge on Climate Action is an open letter from and to the global legal community, calling for the mainstreaming of climate concerns throughout the law and legal profession. It seeks to rethink and redefine the role and responsibilities of lawyers in the climate crisis, and invites lawyers of all kinds –including practitioners, judges, scholars, civil servants, law students, and lawmakers –to integrate climate concerns into their respective areas of expertise and work. The magnitude and urgency of the climate crisis require all lawyers, not just environmental lawyers, to be part of the solution and contribute to climate-protective legal development. The Pledge can be endorsed and signed at http://www.lawyersclimatepledge.org.

“Why Me?”– Questions of Racial Equity and Institutional Racism in Academia

Beginning with the necessary question “Why me?,” I look at a system which bars BIPOC bodies and theory. In her open letter to the US Black Studies academic community, Sylvia Wynter (1994 ) spoke about the problem of “no human involved” (“NHI”) in the policing and incarceration of Black bodies as being pertinent for how Black studies was positioned institutionally. This same white supremacist governance and surveillance “NHI” exists in universities on both sides of the Atlantic. There is something very wrong with the system of which I am a part that persistently and consistently bars BIPOC bodies and theory and only avails our presence and thought a marginal position on the proviso that the status quo of whiteliness ( Yancy 2008 ) is not disturbed. Nothing really changes in terms of anti-BIPOC racism. Rather, it remains strangely the white supremacist (settler) colonial same within Canadian race-evasive multiculturalism and UK ‘post-race’ racism.

Антиколыбельная песня Егора Буджалова в аспекте пародии Морхаджи Нармаева: «Ɵдгǝ цага саатулин дун» — «Буджала Егор залуд»

Introduction. So far, the genres of lullaby and poetic parody in the Kalmyk poetry of the twentieth century have not attracted much attention. Born in the late 1920s — early 1930s, the tradition was short-lived. While their genres were explicitly or implicitly marked, the works of Kalmyk poets in question were primarily oriented towards the Russian literary tradition. However, they expanded the genre paradigm of Kalmyk poetry in the intercultural dialogue. The relevance and novelty of the article is apparent, granted its focus on the two innovative works by Egor Budzhalov and Morkhadzhi Narmaev; these are single works that belong to the genres of anti-lullaby and satirical parody as part of the 1990s literary polemics of the contemporaries. This article aims to introduce these little-known poems of the two poets as representative of their contributions to the genres. Materials and methods. The sources for the study, Budzhalov’s “Ɵdgǝ tsaga saatulin dun” (“Modern Lullaby Song”, 1991) and Narmaev’s “Budzhala Egor zalud” (“To the man Egor Budzhalov”, 1991), were published in the local newspaper “Halmg unn”. The study of historical-literary milieu and realia, comparative-contrastive and hermeneutic approaches were employed to examine the poetic pieces in the context of literary, socio-political, ideological, and social processes on the eve of the country’s collapse; also, the biographical data of the poets that belong to different generations was helpful in the analysis of their ideological positions, as well as the authorial voices in the texts under study. Results. The study shows the innovative character of the poets’ efforts at creating a lullaby for adults, or an anti-lullaby song, and a satirical parody; these were to remain single samples, granted that the Kalmyk lullabies are mainly addressed to infants, and parodies are of a friendly character. Their works reflect the authors’ polar views on the realities in the 1980s and 1990s: criticism, on the one hand, and the defense of socialism, communist ideas, on the other hand. Conclusions. Budzhalov’s poem may look like a lullaby for children at first sight while, in fact, it is a lullaby for adults or rather an anti-lullaby, with the formulaic chorus baiu bai, a marker of the genre, acquiring in his piece the opposite message: wake up, do not sleep, act. Narmaev enters the dialogue with his younger contemporary, his poem also representing a synthesis of genres: a message, an open letter in verse, and a satirical parody. However, his parody is also transformed when the author parodies not so much his fellow poet’s style but the authorial implications concerning the Soviet reality. The tradition of literary polemics was not continued in Kalmyk poetry.

AN OPEN LETTER FROM AN AFRICAN WOMEN SCIENTIST TO RESEARCH ETHICS COMMITTEES

Con antecedentes inspiradores, desafíos, experiencias ricas y diversas, las mujeres científicas africanas han demostrado que el género no importa siempre que tengas la voluntad y la pasión. Pero ¿cuántas de estas mujeres son reconocidas en su trabajo diario? Desde la dificultad de evolucionar en un entorno dominado por los hombres hasta los desafíos de adentrarse en un campo nuevo, son muchos los desafíos que las mujeres africanas deben afrontar para encontrar su lugar en la ciencia. Las científicas africanas se enfrentan todos los días a las dificultades de ser científicas, y de ser consideradas el sexo más débil. Sería muy útil fortalecer las redes de mujeres científicas facilitando su acceso a la información y promoviendo que se apoyen entre sí y a las más jóvenes que quieran seguir una carrera científica. Las científicas africanas merecen protección en sus actividades científicas mediante textos aplicables y vinculantes. La autora leyó esta carta a los integrantes del Comité de Ética de la Investigación de Aragón y de los Comités Éticos Nacionales de Benín, Guinea Bissau, Guinea Conakry, Malí y Senegal en la apertura del 2.º International Congress on the Harmonisation of Gender Mainstreaming in West Africa, liderado por la Universidad de Zaragoza.

The Criminals in Vilnius

On 29 April 1930, the premiere of Ferdinand Bruckner’s The Criminals (original title Die Verbrecher) directed by Aleksander Zelwerowicz took place at the Teatr Wielki na Pohulance in Vilnius. After two performances, the play was cancelled by the mayor of Vilnius. The authorities of the city were outraged by the ‘drastic amoral scenes (homosexual love, abortion)’. Zelwerowicz submitted his resignation, which he withdrew a few days later. A performance combined with a debate on the drama was organised. One of the Literary Wednesdays was also devoted to a discussion about The Criminals. The Słowo daily published an open letter to the director Zelwerowicz ‘supporting his repertoire policy’. Eventually, The Criminals was cancelled. Based on the unique documents I have found, publications in the press, photographs, and reminiscences of the participants, I will try to reconstruct these events and, above all, to describe and reinterpret the performance that was to ‘introduce the cultural Vilnius to the truly modern and European track’.

The Index of Evidence: speculative methodologies in response to the post-truth era

The past year has shown that even the fundamental idea of ‘evidence’ – in health contexts, but also more broadly - is coming under increasing strain. This open letter argues that the current crises of evidence and knowledge in which we find ourselves demands new speculative methodologies. It introduces the Index of Evidence – a Beacon Project funded by Exeter University’s Wellcome Centre for Cultures and Environments of Health - as one example of such a methodology, outlining its theoretical foundations and process. The key innovation of this project is to rethink the form and presentation that research can take. Using the conceptual and material affordances of the index, it merges the creative and critical in ways that aim to make an important contribution to more inter-connected, theoretically sophisticated thinking around evidence.

Technical assistance: a practical account of the challenges in design and implementation

Technical assistance is provided to country governments as part of international development programmes to support policymaking or strengthen state capability. This article presents the conceptual evolution of ‘technical assistance’ linked to capacity development, starting with programmes aiming exclusively to enhance individual capacity in the 1950s to 1970s and progressing to complex systems approaches in the past ten years. It also presents some of the frequent challenges in designing and implementing technical assistance, drawing from the existing literature and the authors’ experience in international development. The article summarises the latest thinking about delivering more effective development, including the adaptive management practices and the initiatives to strengthen evidence about what works. Finally, we complement this article with a follow-up open letter reflecting on the current policy options and opportunities for change.

“I Must Honestly Confess That I Am Afraid of You”

Fear is a global phenomenon that impacts individuals, institutions, and nations. Fear is associated with the experience of some form of threat, for example, the fear of a specific enemy. The increase in socio-political uprisings in many contexts around the world is contributing towards an environment of violence, insecurity, and fear. Such situations, challenge preachers to preach in ways that the Christian tradition characterises as “prophetic preaching”. This article argues that, in instances of institutionally induced fear, letter writing could serve as a powerful and effective means of public theological engagement. The authors employ an advocacy research paradigm to critically engage Allan Aubrey Boesak’s open letter to Alwyn Louis Schlebusch entitled, “A Letter to the South African Minister of Justice.” This letter was written in 1979 as South Africa was entering one of the darkest periods of the apartheid state’s brutality against its citizens. This article discusses the socio-ecclesiastical motivation(s) that underpin Boesak’s courageous and public proclamation of Christian theological truth, in a “prophetic mode”, in spite of the fear that characterised South Africa during that period of its history. Furthermore, we argue that this letter can be characterised as a form of public theological engagement. This paper offers a novel perspective on letter writing, amid threat and fear, as a form or prophetic preaching public theological engagement.