Book Review: Towards the Compassionate University: From Golden Thread to Global Impact

Towards the Compassionate University: From Golden Thread to Global Impact Editor: Katherine Waddington Oxford: Routledge If you are not employed in, or have little engagement with, universities, you might wonder if this book is relevant to you. I’d agree with the authors – compassion is everybody’s business and the exploration of compassion as ‘love in action’ in this book has something to offer to learners, practitioners, educators, students and policymakers alike. The book is structured in three parts: context setting in Part 1: ‘The need and foundations for compassion’; Part 2: ‘Compassion in action’; and Part 3: ‘Towards the compassionate university’. I found the book theoretically dense, with a use of unfamiliar concepts that may seem a little inaccessible to some readers. There are several places where I believe more explanation would have been helpful and there is little consistency in the way the chapters are presented. However, where there are scenarios and ‘real’ examples, the theoretical content comes to life. I imagine the book will lend itself to ‘dipping in and out’; there is clear signposting within the chapters that will make this possible and, although the result is some repetition, this will not be a problem for the occasional visitor to the book.

Conceptual Developments in Environmental Law: An Interdisciplinary Approach

This paper’s point of view is that environmental law translates this particular evolutionary point in time into principles and rules, and highlights that given the extent and significance of the grave issues we are confronting, concepts that come from other sciences need to be dealt with carefully to ensure these are interpreted and implemented effectively. The grave concern about conservation of the environment and the urgent need for effective measures to protect it is a sign of the times, and it is growing deeper in view of the rapidly worsening climate crisis. Environmental law studies demonstrate that there is a line of force based on fluid, fruitful dialogue between different fields of knowledge. Lawyers are aware of the achievements made in environmental law, as well as its manifest deficiencies and limitations, and, just like Theseus who momentarily loses the golden thread offered by the bold Ariadne, they must find a way out of that labyrinth.

The Threefold Cord of Ecclesiastes

This lecture explores the book of Ecclesiastes as a kind of exemplar of the proverbial saying in 4:12 that ‘a threefold cord is not quickly broken’. The first strand of the book – a ‘black thread’ – is the thesis in Kohelet’s teaching, that all human endeavour amounts to nothing but transience and insubstantiality. The second strand – a ‘white thread’ – is the antithesis in Kohelet’s teaching, that value can be discovered in eating, drinking, and finding enjoyment in one’s toil. And the third strand – a ‘golden thread’ – is the synthesis in the book, that one should walk a middle way, recognising the manifold vanities of life on the one hand and the value of the simple pleasures of life on the other, and striving to be neither too wicked and foolish nor too righteous and wise for one’s own good.

An Old/New Vision of Europe. National Responsibility and Cultural Otherness in Emine Sevgi Özdamar’s Play Perikizi

Emine Sevgi Özdamar’s play Perikizi (2010) is a particularly significant migration story because of its shrewd exploration of European integration, specifically in Germany. The protagonist is a girl who undertakes an adventurous journey from Turkey to Europe in order to realize her dream of becoming an actress. The play thus delves into the problem of integration in Europe from both the internal and external perspective of a young woman from a country whose culture and history are deeply intertwined with Europe’s, but are exotic enough to represent the cultural ‘other’ in the eyes of every European. I focus on an issue that is a golden thread throughout the play: the connection between genocide, nationalism and xenophobia, a thematic complex told from the perspective of a character who discovers the chance for change on her journey from East to West. I demonstrate that Perikizi’s journey highlights some structural parallels between East and West with respect to these issues. The play opens up a space in which national responsibility and the relationship with cultural otherness are problematized through different aesthetic strategies. At the end, it depicts a vision of Europe that is an alternative to a past, and a present, of nationalist and racist crimes.

BIM-enabled facilities management (FM): a scrutiny of risks resulting from cyber attacks

Purpose Building information modelling (BIM) creates a golden thread of information of the facility, which proves useful to those with the malicious intent of breaching the security of the facility. A cyber-attack incurs adverse implications for the facility and its managing organisation. Hence, this paper aims to unravel the impact of a cybersecurity breach, by developing a BIM-facilities management (FM) cybersecurity-risk-matrix to portray what a cybersecurity attack means for various working areas of FM. Design/methodology/approach This study commenced with exploring cybersecurity within various stages of a BIM project. This showcased a heightened risk of cybersecurity at the post-occupancy phase. Hence, thematic analysis of two main domains of BIM-FM and cybersecurity in the built environment led to the development of a matrix that illustrated the impact of a cybersecurity attack on a BIM-FM organisation. Findings Findings show that the existing approaches to the management of cybersecurity in BIM-FM are technology-dependent, resulting in an over-reliance on technology and a lack of cybersecurity awareness of aspects related to people and processes. This study sheds light on the criticality of cyber-risk at the post-occupancy phase, highlighting the FM areas which will be compromised as a result of a cyber-attack. Originality/value This study seeks to shift focus to the people and process aspects of cybersecurity in BIM-FM. Through discussing the interconnections between the physical and digital assets of a built facility, this study develops a cyber-risk matrix, which acts as a foundation for empirical investigations of the matter in future research.