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Second plenary meeting of the Ad Hoc Committee on Artificial Intelligence (CAHAI) – Council of Europe

Posted on July 12, 2020 by Danzig

The second plenary meeting of theAd Hoc Committee on Artificial Intelligence (CAHAI)will be held from 6 to 8 July 2020, bringing together representatives of the 47 Council of Europe member states, observer states (Canada, USA, Holy See, Israel, Japan, Mexico) as well as civil society, academia and the Council of Europe's Internet partners.

The CAHAI observer group is expanding with the participation of Israel for the first time and 12 new stakeholders. Other international organisations (EU, OECD, UNESCO) will also contribute to CAHAIs work.

CAHAI members will make concrete proposals on the feasibility study of a future legal framework on artificial intelligence (AI) based on human rights, democracy and the rule of law. In this connection, they will address issues such as the mapping of legal instruments applicable to AI and the opportunities and risks arising from the design, development and application of AI on human rights, rule of law and democracy, which have already been subject of a preliminary analysis.

Other issues such the scope and main elements of the above-mentioned legal framework will also be discussed.

This will provide the necessary impetus for the preparation of the first draft of the feasibility study, which will be presented at the CAHAI plenary meeting in December 2020.

COVID-19 and Artificial Intelligence: How the pandemic has re-ignited a focus on the software – Savannah Morning News

Posted on July 12, 2020 by Danzig

The COVID-19 pandemic brings with it increased focus on Artificial Intelligence ("AI") as developers rush to create software, such as contact tracing software, that can help businesses reduce the risks for employees returning to work. Before businesses acquire AI technology, owners and human resources professionals must consider how to balance being proactive with protecting employee privacy. There are numerous provisions they should incorporate into their contracts with their software developers. Some of these provisions include:

Comprehensive Testing

When contracting for AI, the customer should be particularly focused on documenting the level of testing to be provided. Generally, the more robust the description of the testing, the better. At a minimum, this description should include: the number of rounds of testing, the process for testing, what the minimum sample size will be for each round of testing, and who is involved in creating the test environment. In addition, the customer should ask the vendor to contractually commit to describing the remedies if the testing does not result in adequate work product. The parties need to define exactly what constitutes acceptance, and whether ongoing testing is necessary or appropriate, particularly as the AI adapts and learns from itself.

Security

Security is currently one of the fastest evolving areas of information technology law. When contracting for AI, it is important to have standards that can adapt to this ever-changing environment. In order to do this, it is helpful to incorporate a requirement that the vendor comply with industry security standards such as ISO-27001 and OWASP-Top 10 (for web applications). Businesses should also state any specific technical requirements related to security necessary to protect the customers IT environment, as well the whereabouts and other data associated with its employees and the locations of its customers. Finally, requiring adequate cyber-insurance that meets the risk level of the environment is also prudent.

Data Privacy

Customers should be wary that AI may transform data that was once anonymous into data that is decipherable. Also, there is a complex set of data privacy laws in effect in the United States and even more so globally. All vendors should contractually agree to comply with any such applicable laws. Customers should also consider putting limitations on how vendors can use data, particularly outside of providing the services to the contracting customer.

Minimizing Risk

Most vendors require a cap on consequential damages, but in AI contracts this provides additional challenges as much of the risk to the customer lies with items commonly considered to be consequential damages. There are several ways to address this problem. One way is to redefine what constitutes direct damages. A second way is to negotiate exceptions to caps for specified items such as: breaches of privacy/data security, failure to comply with threshold requirements, and allegations of bias due to algorithm data use.

This article is meant to share a few ideas for contracting for AI. As with any contract, you should contact a lawyer understanding the nuances of the subject matter particular to your situation prior to signing it.

For more information, please contact Diana J.P. McKenzie, partner & chair, Information Technology & Outsourcing Practice Group at HunterMaclean, dmckenzie@huntermaclean.com or Nicole Pope, attorney at HunterMaclean, npope@huntermaclean.com.

For other expert advice on taxes, retirement accounts, benefits, and liability insurance, go to savannahnow.com/beacon.

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COVID-19 and Artificial Intelligence: How the pandemic has re-ignited a focus on the software - Savannah Morning News

Local weather Change Dilemma: Rescuing Nature By way of Assisted Migration vs Invasive Ecosystem Disruption – The Shepherd of the Hills Gazette

Posted on July 12, 2020 by Danzig

Guest essay by Eric Worrall

Scientists trying to help species migrate North far outside their natural range, to help the species survive global warming, are encountering objections from people who think it is wrong to disrupt ecosystems by introducing new species. But supporters of the scheme are worried the climate is changing too fast for nature to keep up.

Playing the hand of God: scientists experiment aims to help trees survive climate change

Scientists use a strategy called assisted migration in an attempt to rescue tree species from inhospitable conditions

AshleyStimpsonPublished onWed 8 Jul 2020 20.00 AEST

Since 2013, TNC has planted more than 2,000 longleaf pine seedlings in fields not far from the Delaware state line. Today, clumps of longleaf stand together like gangly kids at recess, their eponymous green needles shooting out like pompoms in every direction.

But longleaf is not native to Maryland, and many scientists believe they should not be planted at Plum Creek, or anywhere outside of theirnatural range. These relatively young trees are part of an experiment to determine if human intervention could help the pines migrate north as climate change alters its natural range.

Not everyones onboard. Assisted migration has been accused of being expensive and risky, a case of humans playing God.

But I do not believe longleaf pine could move quickly enough at the rate the climate is changing, explains Dr Deborah Landau, a TNC restoration ecologist.

Landau says that, on Facebook, TNCs longleaf project has been accused of playing the hand of God. She dismisses the criticism. Theres so little nature left that we havent already had a heavy hand in, she says.

Despite the detractors, Landau has seen a shift in attitudes about assisted migration in the decade since Ricciardi and Simberloffs article was published.

Now that climate change is here, people are more open to the prospect of aiding species that wont be able to keep up, she says. Its happened. Its happening. We need to respond.

The suggestion nature cannot keep up with climate change is not supported by historical evidence.

The Younger Dryas was an abrupt multi-degree Northern Hemisphere return to ice age conditions which occurred 12,800 years ago and lasted around 1,300 years. The initial cooling may have occurred in as short timeframe as a few months, certainly no more than a handful of years orders of magnitude faster than todays global warming.

Until now, it was thought that the mini ice age took a decade or so to take hold, on the evidence provided by Greenland ice cores. Not so, say William Patterson of the University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon, Canada, and his colleagues.

The group studied a mud core from an ancient lake, Lough Monreagh, in western Ireland. Using a scalpel they sliced off layers 0.5 to 1 millimetre thick, each representing up to three months of time. No other measurements from the period have approached this level of detail.

Carbon isotopes in each slice revealed how productive the lake was and oxygen isotopes gave a picture of temperature and rainfall. They show that at the start of the Big Freeze, temperatures plummeted and lake productivity stopped within months, or a year at most. It would be like taking Ireland today and moving it up to Svalbard in the Arctic, says Patterson, who presented the findings at the BOREAS conference in Rovaniemi, Finland, on 31 October.

The multi-degree return to warm conditions which followed the Younger Dryas was also extremely rapid (see the graph at the top of this page).

My point is, most Northern Hemisphere species alive today survived past abrupt climate shifts both up and down, of far greater magnitude and pace than todays gentle global warming. The abrupt Younger Dryas climate shift was disruptive, but it was not a significant extinction event. Nature is resilient, it does not need our help.

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LI startup predicts where COVID-19 will spike – Newsday

Posted on July 12, 2020 by Danzig

A Long Island artificial intelligence startup has built software aimed at pinpointing U.S. counties where the COVID-19 outbreak is likely to be most deadly.

In a June report, the data-mining company, Akai Kaeru LLC, forecast spiking COVID-19 mortality with the heaviest concentrations in counties of the Southeast, including Mississippi, Georgia and Louisiana, said co-founder and chief executive Klaus Mueller.

Nationwide, the software found 985 out of all 3,007 U.S. counties are at risk.

"These patterns identify groups of counties that have a steeper increase in the death-rate trajectory," he said.

Closer to home, the software found Nassau and Suffolk counties are likely to be relatively stable, but Westchester and Rockland counties are potential tinderboxes that could tip into crisis, said Mueller, a computer science professorat Stony Brook University.

The factors making Westchester and Rockland more vulnerable to a spike in mortality include areas with more crowding and fewer residents with access to cars, he said.

"They need to be very careful with reopening," Mueller said of the northern suburbs. "It just takes a spark for there to be a second wave."

At the same time, he said, Long Island "is not out of the woods" and abandoning policies like social distancing could lead to a new surge.

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The software analyzes more than 500 attributes related to demographics, economics, infrastructure, race and ethnicity as well as deaths and other health data directly related to COVID-19.

Dr. Isaac Weisfuse, an epidemiologist and adjunct professor at Cornell University's public health program, said that data-mining software is used by public health departments.

If the software provides sufficient warning, he said, preventive measures like screening and mask-wearing policies can be instituted.

"It's more valuable if it's accurate two months before, but it's still valuable two weeks before," he said.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention aggregates mortality forecasts from about two dozen software programs and expects 140,000 to 160,000 total reported COVID-19 deaths in the United States by July 25.

While many COVID-19 models provide specific fatality forecasts at the state level, the Akai Kaeru software is one of the few that assesses risk at the county level.

Mueller said that based on the one-month snapshots, the software is finding that counties at the highest risk have a death rate that grew two- to three times more than the United States,overall.

In June, the fatality rate for U.S. COVID-19 related deaths was 24.1 per 100,000 population, he said.

Aside from finding geographies in jeopardy, the software is able to unearth specific and sometimes surprising combinations of factors that appear to be connected to counties with higher death rates.

For instance, counties with low poverty levels, high homeownership rates, but high levels of housing debt were found to be at high risk.

"The more housing debt you have, the more death you have," Mueller said.

Other counties at risk had a combination of residents who were sleep-deprived (according to data from the CDC) and had low levels of education and low rates of health insurance coverage.

Another group of counties had few Asian residents but high overall minority populations, including impoverished Black children.

Rural counties with high poverty rates and an aging population also were deemed at risk.

"One of the defining characteristics is we focus on explainability," said Eric Papenhausen, chief technology officer and co-founder of the company. "You can create a narrative around it," which can lead to changes in public policy.

Akai Kaeru is based at the Center of Excellence in Wireless and Information Technology on the Stony Brook University campus.

The 4-year-old company, whose name is Japanese for red frog, has raised $1 million in funding from the National Science Foundation's Small Business Innovation Research program and about $200,000 through the New York State Strategic Partnership for Industrial Resurgence program and the New York State Center for Advanced Technology.

The COVID-19 software is a demonstration project for the company, whose data-mining software can be applied to a variety of tasks, including assessing mortgage risk, speeding drug discovery and investment analysis.

Another startup, Manhattan-based Dataminr, is seeking to use social media posts as a leading indicator of COVID-19 infections at the county level.

Artificial intelligence refers to the ability of software programs to learn and perform actions previously reserved for humans.

Mueller said his company's "explainable AI" is not a black box and can provide insight into how the software reached its conclusions.

Ken Schachter covers corporate news, including technology and aerospace, and other business topics for Newsday. He has also worked at The Miami Herald and The Jerusalem Post.

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LI startup predicts where COVID-19 will spike - Newsday

The enormous opportunity in fintech – VentureBeat

Posted on July 12, 2020 by Danzig

Take the latest VB Survey to share how your company is implementing AI today.

Fintech has dominated the news cycle this year. Bold headlines celebrated large exits (Plaid, Credit Karma, Personal Capital)and venture-capital investment poured in.

While the category has heated up quickly, the sheer size of the fintech opportunity suggests that these exits are just the tip of the iceberg. In the next five years, fintech will drive some of the biggest VC exits.

In 2019, US software businesses raised $43.5 billion in an environment where global enterprise software spending reached $456 billion. Meanwhile, fintech businesses raised $17.6 billion while revenue for the top four US banks alone hit $461 billion! By that measure, fintech is not yet overinvested.

In 2018, US banks claimed a total market cap nearing $2 trillion with 22 individual banks had market caps exceeding $20 billion (see below). No one talks about disrupting KeyCorp, but becoming the 20th largest bank in the United States would mean a market cap in excess of Twitter, Snapchat, and Pinterest at the time of IPO.

Fintech companies addressing seemingly arcane parts of our economy are big businesses. Below Ive listed a few areas of the fintech ecosystem that are often overlooked but present massive opportunities for disruptors:

Exchanges: The New York Stock Exchange is an iconic American institution. Its parent company, ICE, boasts a market cap above $50 billion. But its not the most valuable exchange in the country. That honor belongs to the CME Group, the worlds largest derivatives exchange, clocking in at a $65 billion market cap.

Payments: While Stripes rise looms large in Silicon Valley, consider that Visa has a market cap of $385 billion and regularly posts profit margins exceeding 50%. Discover Financial has a market cap of $12 billion. No offense, but when was the last time you saw that card? Theres clearly room for a disruptor here.

Infrastructure: Fiserv is a $70 billion business that provides banking core systems, payment processing, and other commercial plumbing to banks.

Data providers: Verisk ($25 billion), FICO ($10 billion), and Experian ($21 billion) might not be the most admired companies in the world, but businesses in this category benefit from network effects and generate immense value by collecting and monetizing consumer data and predicting risk across the financial system.

Mortgage/Insurance/Corporate finance: Technology providers to specific areas of finance have created significant businesses. Across the insurance ecosystem, Guidewire, Applied Systems, and Vertafore capture $10 billion of value. BlackKnight, the leading analytics provider to the mortgage industry, is an $11 billion business. Are you thinking about managing financial documents for your public company? You may turn to Broadridge, which makes a pretty penny in this business, boasting a $13 billion market cap.

While these are massive markets, it is not easy to disrupt incumbents. A combination of regulatory hurdles, entrenched behavior, low risk-tolerance, and the benefits of larger balance sheets have kept upstarts at bay for decades. However, as venture capital supports the ecosystem, modern technology creeps into the sector (cloud, APIs), connectivity and data exchanges improve, and consumers grow tired of incumbents, the tide continues to shift.

This shift and the challenge to the status quo by fintech upstarts will have lasting effects. Even when incumbents acquire their biggest disruptors, such as Visas acquisition of Plaid, innovations pioneered by those startups become integrated into the system and help move the industry forward. And it also leaves room for the next challenger to stake their claim.

While I dont expect a wholesale disruption of the ecosystem anytime soon, if VC-backed disruptors can bite off even a fraction of the value now owned by legacy business, returns would easily eclipse all other sectors of venture capital.

Steve Sloane is a Partner at Menlo Ventures.

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Tough days ahead: How COVID-19 will impact Indian sports ecosystem: Here’s what experts say – Moneycontrol

Posted on July 12, 2020 by Danzig

'Phygital' has become a trending buzzword in today's world. But how feasible it is to implement the philosophy in the sporting sphere, especially with the COVID threat looming large?

The Indian sports ecosystem, with cricket as its crown jewel, is staring at an uncertain future in the post-COVID world. The global sporting activities are limping back to normalcy but for Indian sports lovers, it is highly unlikely that they will be able to witness any live sporting action in the next four months.

Where does this put all the stakeholders, especially non-cricket sports disciplines dependent on government largesse?

Although the Olympics has been postponed, the preparations of the athletes have been badly hit and sports federations are struggling to tackle the issue.

Sports broadcasters, an important cog in the set-up, have been dealt a body blow by the coronavirus outbreak.

With no live domestic sporting action to showcase and huge investments already made in efforts to popularise non-cricket sports, they can only look forward to resumption of international sporting activities as a solace.

But with fans not present at the stadiums, the feel of watching an enthralling game is missing and broadcasters need to think out of the box to ensure they are not left out.

This philosophy is what is going to help them survive this tumultuous phase, and they realise the gravity of the situation.

Sanjog Gupta, Sports Product Head at Star India and Chair, FICCI Sports Committee, at a webinar at FICCI Frames, said this period can also be used to rebuild the structures in place and usher in more professionalism.

"The structures and models of governance should be carefully looked at. The health of the sports depend on fans, we need to put the fans at the centre of things. There is immense opportunity to use this time to use it to reset the structures of the sports ecosystem," he said.

Just as non-cricket sports disciplines were beginning to make a mark, the COVID-19 pandemic struck and has now put a big question mark over its future prospects.

"It is unfair to expect the government to continue funding. Business houses can adopt one sport which has Olympic potential. Only then we can excel in the Olympics. A broadcaster should also concentrate on other sports and devote 10 percent airtime," said Indian Olympic Association President Narinder Batra.

Although Batra has called for unstinted corporate support, industry sources said it is highly unlikely they are going to loosen their purse strings anytime soon.

"It will almost take four to eight months for the sports sponsorship industry to rebound," said an official of an international sports media giant.

So, how are sports associations going to tackle this financial crunch?

"Apart from cricket and football, other sports bodies have to depend on government support and they were anyway never in a good financial position," the person quoted above said.

Bhairav Shanth, co-founder and Managing Director, ITW Consulting, an agency specialising in sponsorship management of sports events, feels it is a chicken and egg situation.

"Sponsors may play the wait-and-watch game looking for some sport to resume and sports may be delaying resumption in the hope of finding more sponsors. I foresee a V-shaped kind of recovery towards the last quarter of this year because if a couple of the big events slated get the go-ahead, confidence will immediately return and we can expect a quick turnaround, he told Moneycontrol.

Shanth said the COVID-19 disruption, perhaps, will leave more of a mark on the ground.

"Kabaddi had thriving attendance at the venue other than amazing TV viewership. The fan base they have established is fairly loyal and solid. We have seen that during internal research we conducted for our clients who are involved with Kabaddi. If these sports make a behind-closed-doors return like cricket has, they will find that fan base ready, eager and waiting," Shanth said.

But, for a country like India, will sporting activities find traction amidst economic upheaval?

"Historically, sports has been a unifying force and a welcome break from hard times, whether it be in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War, or after a tragedy like 9/11 or even closer home, after the terror attack on Mumbai in November 2008. In all those cases, sports have rebounded back to the pre-disruption levels. Economic crises, on the other hand, tend to slow leisure consumption down, so the market may remain flat for just a little bit, but Indian viewers and fans love their sport and sports will find traction but in new ways. I am of the view that digital media will be highlighted strongly and the way fans will consume sports will change," Shanth said.

A recurring question which has always haunted the Indian sports sphere has been the aversion of corporates to support sports disciplines other than cricket.

JSW Sports CEOMustafa Ghouse put the blame on the lackadaisical attitude of some of thesports bodies.

"JSW has been supporting Olympic sports disciplines because of the passion of the promoters. I can understand the reservations other corporate houses have about supporting these sports disciplines because many sports federations resist changes. At JSW, we have a dedicated team to look into these issues but not every corporate would have the wherewithal or patience to deal with them," he said.

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Tough days ahead: How COVID-19 will impact Indian sports ecosystem: Here's what experts say - Moneycontrol

How Innovation is Changing the Artificial Intelligence in Telecommunication Market – 3rd Watch News

Posted on July 12, 2020 by Danzig

This report presents the worldwide Artificial Intelligence in Telecommunication market size (value, production and consumption), splits the breakdown (data status 2018 and forecast to 2025), by manufacturers, region, type and application.

This study also analyzes the market status, market share, growth rate, future trends, market drivers, opportunities and challenges, risks and entry barriers, sales channels, distributors and Porters Five Forces Analysis.

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The report firstly introduced the Artificial Intelligence in Telecommunication basics: definitions, classifications, applications and market overview; product specifications; manufacturing processes; cost structures, raw materials and so on. Then it analyzed the worlds main region market conditions, including the product price, profit, capacity, production, supply, demand and market growth rate and forecast etc. In the end, the report introduced new project SWOT analysis, investment feasibility analysis, and investment return analysis.

The major players profiled in this report include:IBM CorporationMicrosoftIntel CorporationGoogleAT&T Intellectual PropertyCisco SystemsNuance CommunicationsEvolv Technology SolutionsInfosys LimitedNVIDIA Corporation

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On the basis on the end users/applications, this report focuses on the status and outlook for major applications/end users, sales volume, market share and growth rate of Artificial Intelligence in Telecommunication for each application, including-Network SecurityNetwork OptimizationCustomer AnalyticsVirtual Assistance

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For comprehensive understanding of market dynamics, the global Artificial Intelligence in Telecommunication market is analyzed across key geographies namely: United States, China, Europe, Japan, South-east Asia, India and others. Each of these regions is analyzed on basis of market findings across major countries in these regions for a macro-level understanding of the market.

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Table of Contents of Artificial Intelligence in Telecommunication Market

1 Study Coverage

1.1 Artificial Intelligence in Telecommunication Product

1.2 Key Market Segments in This Study

1.3 Key Manufacturers Covered

1.4 Market by Type

1.4.1 Global Artificial Intelligence in Telecommunication Market Size Growth Rate by Type

1.4.2 Hydraulic Dredges

1.4.3 Hopper Dredges

1.4.4 Mechanical Dredges

1.5 Market by Application

1.5.1 Global Artificial Intelligence in Telecommunication Market Size Growth Rate by Application

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2 Executive Summary

2.1 Global Artificial Intelligence in Telecommunication Market Size

2.1.1 Global Artificial Intelligence in Telecommunication Revenue 2014-2025

2.1.2 Global Artificial Intelligence in Telecommunication Production 2014-2025

2.2 Artificial Intelligence in Telecommunication Growth Rate (CAGR) 2019-2025

2.3 Analysis of Competitive Landscape

2.3.1 Manufacturers Market Concentration Ratio (CR5 and HHI)

2.3.2 Key Artificial Intelligence in Telecommunication Manufacturers

2.3.2.1 Artificial Intelligence in Telecommunication Manufacturing Base Distribution, Headquarters

2.3.2.2 Manufacturers Artificial Intelligence in Telecommunication Product Offered

2.3.2.3 Date of Manufacturers Enter into Artificial Intelligence in Telecommunication Market

2.4 Key Trends for Artificial Intelligence in Telecommunication Markets & Products

3 Market Size by Manufacturers

3.1 Artificial Intelligence in Telecommunication Production by Manufacturers

3.1.1 Artificial Intelligence in Telecommunication Production by Manufacturers

3.1.2 Artificial Intelligence in Telecommunication Production Market Share by Manufacturers

3.2 Artificial Intelligence in Telecommunication Revenue by Manufacturers

3.2.1 Artificial Intelligence in Telecommunication Revenue by Manufacturers (2019-2025)

3.2.2 Artificial Intelligence in Telecommunication Revenue Share by Manufacturers (2019-2025)

3.3 Artificial Intelligence in Telecommunication Price by Manufacturers

3.4 Mergers & Acquisitions, Expansion Plans

More Information.

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How Innovation is Changing the Artificial Intelligence in Telecommunication Market - 3rd Watch News

Plant Breeding and CRISPR Plant Market Size By Product Analysis, Application, End-Users, Regional Outlook, Competitive Strategies And Forecast Up To…

Posted on July 12, 2020 by Danzig

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Pseudorabies Virus Vaccine Market Size By Product Analysis, Application, End-Users, Regional Outlook, Competitive Strategies And Forecast Up To 2026 -…

Posted on July 12, 2020 by Danzig

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The Roger Tory Peterson Institute is set to reopen next week, July 18 | News, Sports, Jobs – timesobserver.com

Posted on July 12, 2020 by Danzig

Photo submitted to the Times ObserverAbove is the Roger Tory Peterson Institute. The museum reopens its doors on Saturday, July 18.

Closed since March 16, the Roger Tory Peterson Institute will reopen its museum on Saturday, July 18.

My first official act, says Arthur Pearson, on my first day as the new CEO of the institute, was to close the museum to the public. It will be a relief and a joy to reopen our doors and welcome back our many friends and supporters.

Technically, the museum could have reopened June 30 thats the day Governor Cuomo announced Phase IV reopening for Western New York. However, RTPI has taken extra time to ensure the health and safety of staff and visitors.

Health and safety is our number one priority, Pearson said referring to the detailed reopening plan he and his staff have developed in accordance with guidelines provided by the CDC, the state of New York and the American Alliance of Museums, among others.

The plan lays out enhanced measures for minimizing risk while still providing for an engaging museum experience.

Initially, the total number of visitors allowed in the museum will be limited to one-third capacity to ensure everyone can maintain required social distancing. There will be signs posted limiting the number of people allowed per gallery. All visitors will be required to wear masks at all times and to wear them right. Pearson and his staff have developed information signage that reminds visitors to wear masks over mouth and nose, using Roger Tory Petersons famous field guide art to demonstrate.

Peterson was a great artist, Pearson said. He also was a great teacher. Were repurposing his iconic bird images throughout the museum to inform and instruct our visitors how to be safe while visiting us.

Pearson hopes visitors will notice other things about the museum, as well.

Being closed for four months was a huge strain, financially, Pearson says. But it also gave us time to rethink and retool a few things.

As one example, RTPI conducted an analysis of museum sales over the past three years, leading to a complete refresh of its museum store.

Everything came off the shelves, said Jane Johnson, director of museum operations. We restocked with new and priority items that better celebrate Rogers legacy at the intersection of art and nature. We even adopted a new name: The Snowy Owl Museum Store.

Emphasizing health and safety first, Pearson plans to roll out a schedule of programs and events to complement the refreshed and reopened museum.

Our museum extends outdoors, as well, where we plan to host regular bird walks in our preserve and yoga classes on the back patio. We installed a picnic area in view of our new pollinator meadow and cafe tables in our outdoor courtyard to encourage visitors to spend time with us safely surrounded by the beauty of nature, architecture and art, Pearson said.

The Roger Tory Peterson Institute of Natural History is home to the largest, most comprehensive collection of Petersons artwork and related archival materials. Peterson, the only artist-naturalist to receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom, is best known for his field guides. The first A Field Guide to the Birds published in 1934, sparked a worldwide movement to connect people with nature as never before. Peterson authored and illustrated dozens of guides for birds, plants, insects and other natural flora and fauna selling millions of copies and becoming an international ambassador for protecting our natural resources.

Today, the Peterson Collection anchors a exhibition schedule that also features the artwork of some of the worlds most revered nature artists. The collection is available to artists, researchers and scholars, and is used to anchor an array of education and research programs all geared toward fostering an enduring love, appreciation and protection of our natural world.

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The Roger Tory Peterson Institute is set to reopen next week, July 18 | News, Sports, Jobs - timesobserver.com

The Times recommends: Strom Peterson for the 21st Legislative District, Position 1 – Seattle Times

Posted on July 12, 2020 by Danzig

State Rep. Strom Petersons pragmatic legislative record and experience as a local government official and retail business owner make him the best candidate to return to Olympia for a daunting task.

The Edmonds Democrat is running for his fourth term representing the 21st Legislative District, which includes Lynnwood, Mukilteo, Edmonds and Everett.

The COVID-19 pandemic has sent the states economy and state revenues tumbling. The state could face as much as a $9 billion shortfall over three years, which means course corrections are required. Peterson disagrees with Gov. Jay Inslees recent decision not to call the Legislature back for a special session so lawmakers could get started combing through the budget and crafting solutions.

While some of his colleagues want to use this crisis to advocate for tax increases only, Peterson says he will be pushing solutions that also include program cuts. Its going to be a combination, he said during an endorsement interview.

As chair of the Commerce and Gaming Committee, he ushered a bill through that legalized sports gambling in Washington. This editorial board disagreed with its limit to only tribal casinos.

Neither of Petersons challengers make the case that he should be replaced. Republican Brian Thompson is a fire protection engineer who said he was compelled to run because of the recent crisis. He is averse to tax increases and opposes Petersons support of the measles vaccine mandate, sex education law and proposed assault weapons ban.

Democrat Gant Diede is a student working in network technology. His solution for the states budget crisis is to tax the wealthy and take on more debt. The way to get out of crisis is spending, he said. His criticism of the Legislature is that it is not bold enough on climate change.

Peterson has served his district well, and voters should send him back to Olympia.

The Seattle Times editorial board members are editorial page editor Kate Riley, Frank A. Blethen, Brier Dudley, Jennifer Hemmingsen, Mark Higgins, Derrick Nunnally and William K. Blethen (emeritus).

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The Times recommends: Strom Peterson for the 21st Legislative District, Position 1 - Seattle Times

Leicester: Up to 10,000 could be victims of modern slavery in textile factories – Sky News

Posted on July 12, 2020 by Danzig

As many as 10,000 people could be working in slave-like conditions in textile factories in Leicester.

Leicestershire MP Andrew Bridgen has told Sky News a "conspiracy of silence" has allowed factories in the city to continue to exploit workers over many years.

"You've got a systemic failure of all the protections in Leicester that would prevent this from happening," Mr Bridgen said.

"I've estimated it's around 10,000 individuals who are effectively in modern slavery providing garments for internet retailers."

The claim comes on the same day a report based on police records found that across Britain there are at least 100,000 slaves.

The study by the Centre for Social Justice think-tank and the anti-slavery charity Justice and Care claims the issue is likely to intensify in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic.

A spike in COVID-19 cases in Leicester that led to the first local lockdown has drawn attention to the city and claims of widespread exploitation.

Leicester City Council estimates there are around 1,500 textile factories across the city.

Most are small businesses - workshops housed in crumbling buildings that are in desperate need of repair.

Smashed windows are patched up with cardboard. Fabric is draped so it's impossible to see inside.

For decades there have been claims some factories pay workers well below 8.72 per hour, the national minimum wage.

The government's Health and Safety Executive is investigating allegations some factories forced people to work in unsafe conditions during lockdown.

"The internet retailers have flourished during the COVID crisis because their competition has been shut down. So we've seen a huge extra demand for the products," said Mr Bridgen.

Many of the factories lie within the Leicester East constituency of MP Claudia Webbe.

She says she has been contacted by anonymous workers who are too scared to speak out publicly because many are in the country illegally.

"Machinists are being paid 3 an hour, packers are being paid 2 an hour. That is what seems to be the standard," she said.

Outside one factory a worker who asked not to be named told Sky News she is paid between 5 and 6 an hour.

"Very little money" she said, in broken English.

Immigration officers patrol the streets outside the factories and a multi-agency investigation is under way.

Many feel it is long overdue.

When asked if claims of widespread exploitation in the city are an "open secret", deputy mayor Adam Clarke replied: "You call it an open secret. It's just open.

"There are doubtless workplaces in the city that are unsuitable.

"We've been aware of this for a very long time and have been working with enforcement agencies to try to ensure that there is effective regulation enforcement.

"The network of agencies that have responsibilities is just too complex.

"There are just too many organisations, HMRC [HM Revenue & Customs], the GLAA [Gangmasters and Labour Abuse Authority], the HSE [Health and Safety Executive] and others have enforcement responsibilities. There needs to be one enforcement body and that needs to be set up as quickly as possible.

"This is a systemic issue that is borne out of poor regulation, poor legislation and exploitation at every level.

"You have to ask yourself who actually has the power to change this? And that buck stops with government."

A Home Office spokesperson said: "We take all allegations of modern slavery extremely seriously and are determined to ensure ruthless criminals who exploit vulnerable people face the full force of the law.

"The National Crime Agency and others are looking into the appalling allegations about sweatshops in Leicester and the home secretary has been clear that anyone profiting from slave labour will have nowhere to hide."

Immigration vans patrol the streets. The atmosphere is tense.Becky Johnson, Midlands correspondent

On East Park Road in Leicester among a row of shops, cafes, a bank and a police station stands the imposing Imperial Typewriter building.

At first glance it looks like a run-down relic of a bygone era.

But as you walk into the courtyard behind the building, it's like entering a land that time has forgotten.

Many of the windows have been smashed and patched up from the inside with cardboard. Fabric is draped across any windows that still have panes of glass. It's impossible to see in.

There's rubbish everywhere. The fact it's raining doesn't help.

Some people appear on a staircase, only to see me and run back inside.

There are several doors into the building, each with multiple names of clothing manufacturers above them.

I venture through one of the doorways and find myself on a rickety metal staircase.

I go up several floors before I find a door to knock on. When a man answers and I tell him I'm from Sky News he doesn't want to talk to me.

Other doorways lead to a maze of corridors. It's not clear which doorway belongs to which business.

It's the same story at the other factory buildings.

People are on edge as soon as they see we have a TV camera. They start to film us on their phones.

"The workers are all frightened," a delivery driver told me.

When I try to ask workers what they're paid, most simply reply that they don't speak English.

A Home Office immigration van patrols the streets. A police officer in plain clothes and an inspector from the city council leave a factory. The atmosphere is tense.

A man stops me and tells me he has information for me, then darts a look over his shoulder, sees something and runs off.

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Leicester: Up to 10,000 could be victims of modern slavery in textile factories - Sky News

The founding fathers and the fexing question of slavery | New York Carib News – NYCaribNews

Posted on July 12, 2020 by Danzig

The date marking the birth of any nation is a cause for celebration.July 4, 2020, marked 244 years since the United States threw off the yoke of British colonization.The victors gathered in Philadelphia not just to celebrate but to write a constitution that institutionalized the democratic process.

The constitution reflected the historical period and included sacrosanct rights such as the Bill of Rights that has withstood the test of time.That would include freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, the right to due process, and certain stipulations that were reserved for the states in the federal system.

The original constitution defined African Americans and indigenous Americans as three-fifths of a man.Only white men with property were given the right to vote.Property-less whites were initially excluded from the political process.

Many of the founding fathers were slaveholders like George Washington and Thomas Jefferson.Slavery was more widespread in the South but merchants in the Northern States were engaged in the slave trade as they owned many of the ships that transported Africans in the onerous Middle Passage.

Not every African who was captured made it to the Caribbean or to the United States.W.E.B. DuBois in his research estimated that millions of Africans died during the horrendous conditions during the Middle Passage, the voyage from West Africa to the New World.

Thomas Jefferson who served as Ambassador to France and as President of the United States had a long-lasting relationship with a female slave, Sally Hemmings, who became the mother of Jeffersons offsprings.Jefferson was not just a founding father but the author of the Declaration of Independence that all men are created equal.

At the time of Americas independence and the writing of the constitution, not much of any discussion dealt with the contradiction of slavery and the notion of equality.

The crop that buoyed production in the West Indies was sugar and in the United States, the crop essential to early capital accumulation was cotton and less so, tobacco.

Dr. Eric Williams, the historian and former Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago wrote the classic, Capitalism, and Slavery.

Williams thesis is that abolition that took effect in the Caribbean in 1833 had nothing to do with just humanistic efforts in the Mother country but was propelled that the capitalist developmental process which needed slavery in the early stages of capital accumulation, slavery was indispensable but as capitalism moved from mercantilism to industrial capitalism, free labor was necessary for further expansion.

Slavery became an impediment to the further development of capitalism in Britain and thus emancipation synchronized not with the weakened planter class but with the political hegemony of burgeoning capital industrialists.

In the case of the United States where industrial capitalism was concentrated in northern states, northern capitalists were willing to co-exist or look the other way on the question of slavery.Where the tension boiled over is on the question as to whether slavery would be allowed to expand to the western region and thus diminish the political influence of Northern states and expand the power of the slave states.

This contradiction of plantation slave labor and industrial capitalism with the need for free labor began exploding in the middle of the nineteenth century.

There is the saying that the unexamined life is not worth living.Normally this saying applies to individuals but it is also applicable to a nation-state. Often in a nation, extreme nationalism becomes the traditional line of march, and there is an absence of introspection.

Such reflex action of repeating ad nauseum about the greatness of the nation becomes more of a weakness than it is representative of strength. The boasting of American exceptionalism and that America is the greatest nation on the planet thwarts the developmental process.

What the movement Black Lives Matter is communicating not that just all lives matter but it is necessary for America to come to terms with slavery, with Jim Crow, with the Confederacy, and with systemic racism.That kind of intellectual honesty and introspection is essential to making America a coveted city on the hill.

Even after the thirteen amendments were incorporated into the Constitution, conventional historians like Ulrich Bonnell Phillips were writing works making the case that the slave system in America was comprised of the happy darkies.This falsehood was rejected by non-conventional historians like Herbert Aptheker, Eugene Genovese, Herbert Gutman, W.E.B. DuBois, and John Hope Franklin.

Slavery is by its very nature a vicious, exploitative, and malicious system.Despite its undemocratic nature, the sons and daughters of the confederacy were willing to wage a Civil War to preserve such an evil way of life.

Over 600,000 lives were lost in the bloody civil war yet when the remnants of the Confederacy were allowed back into the Union the Federal Government looked askance and allowed them to establish a system of racial dehumanization.

The Trump administration in celebrating Americas independence defines patriotism and the love of America in the most simplistic way possible.Even more frightening in celebration of 244 years of independence the focus was not on the humanity of the American people but on the arsenal of advanced weaponry that as a country we have assembled.

Trump engaged in typical intellectual dishonesty and defined the Black Lives Matter Movement as constituting folks who do not love America.

We have arrived at a momentous moment in American history that entails Truth and Reconciliation. There are times when a nation must fight in wars but a nation has to be mindful that it does not develop a praetorian culture that glorifies death and war and is oblivious to health care and a runaway pandemic as we are experiencing in the United States.

The country cannot deny the prevalence of systemic racism and police brutality.This entails intellectual honesty not the perpetuation of mythology.The country must learn from the Movement Black Lives Matter and put behind us the worst aspects of frontier capitalism.

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Faith: Visions of peace – Lifestyle – The Intelligencer

Posted on July 12, 2020 by Danzig

Leaders like Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King Jr. and Gandhi embodied compelling visions of peaceful progress.

On Independence Day last weekend, we celebrated the unification of 13 former British colonies into an independent and sovereign nation.

The fateful moment is enshrined in a document, the July 4, 1776, Declaration of Independence.

This was a transcendent vision, a dream worthy of risking everything to achieve: Government by consent of those governed. It would take years to evolve the details and enshrine them in our national Constitution, and that quest has never ended.

As our nation matured, amendments and a body of interpretive law have documented the ongoing realization of that vision. In service of our vision we ended slavery, gave women the vote, and banned segregation. And were not done yet.

Great leaders come to embody transcendent vision. This week we celebrate Nelson Mandela. We credit him with leading South Africa out of apartheid. He was a man of character, conscience, and big ideas.

His life was one of service to humanity. He sought to bring people together, to find constructive solutions, to make peace. His power was not grounded in fear of his strength; he did not "speak softly and carry a big stick." He was not physically imposing. But he had vision and courage.

Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. also embodied compelling visions of peaceful progress. Their vision, like Mandelas, rallied millions to rise up in non-violent rebellion against things as they were. The dream of things as they could be inspired individuals to place themselves in harms way to make real the dream of freedom, dignity, equality and peace.

Newtowns Edward Hicks, a celebrated Quaker, was and is known by his paintings of a vision in which lions and oxen are at peace with each other. The paintings symbolize our aspiration to achieve a world where people no longer prey upon each other, where fear and violence are replaced by loving communities that resolve differences amicably.

Today, we face a deep rift in American society that is an affront to our national vision of equality and justice.

Each of us is confronted by the realization that all Americans do not share equally in the blessings of liberty.

Privilege is accorded to those who are raised with wealth, and especially to those who are born of wealthy white parents. As a nation, thats not our dream for America. It doesnt square with the example and teaching of any of our spiritual leaders.

We need to learn to wage peace. Waging peace starts with a vision that transcends our individual need for comfort and inspires us to take personal risks for the greater good. Peace is a neglected vocation. West Point and Annapolis teach the art of waging war, but nowhere do we have great institutions that teach us the arts of peace. Locals may point to Langhornes Peace Center, but you cant go there for professional credentials.

Learning to wage peace requires spiritual self-awareness. Certainly there are peace techniques, tactics and strategies. But these are not what empowered King, Mandela and Gandhi. These leaders possessed an inner guiding light. They acted with dignity and humility. They spoke of and served a vision that overshadowed their personalities a transcendent vision for humanity that called them to take risks and endure hardships.

Now, in these troubled times, each of us is called to examine what matters most and to ask, "What vision of America is bigger than I and more important than my life and my comfort? What social or political norms encumber me? What spiritual insights inspire me?

"How, with divine assistance, can I personally wage peace in service to my vision?"

Richmond Shreve is a member of the Newtown Friends Meeting and lives in Newtown. From a Faith Perspective is a weekly column written by members of local faith communities.

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Faith: Visions of peace - Lifestyle - The Intelligencer

ASI exposed to Boohoo slavery investigation via ethical funds – Portfolio Adviser

Posted on July 12, 2020 by Danzig

Updated: ASI divests from Boohoo with damning assessment of its response to slavery investigation

An Aberdeen Standard Investments fund that invests in UK companies with good employment practices is one of four responsible investment products that hold Boohoo, which now is under investigation for slavery in its supply chain.

Boohoos shares dropped 13.9% by midday Monday after The Times revealed over the weekend that UK workers were paid as little as 3.50 an hour to make clothes destined for the fast fashion business. The minimum wage in the UK for people over 25 is 8.72.

The National Crime Agency is now investigating modern slavery in the Leicester factories involved at the direction of the home secretary.

It is not the first time substandard working conditions have been exposed among Boohoos factory workers with a Channel 4 investigation in 2017 revealing similar findings.

See also: A global systemic issue: the risks of modern slavery

Boohoo is the largest holding in Lesley Duncans ASI UK Impact Employment Opportunities fund, which has an objective to investment in companies that promote and implement good employment opportunities and practices.

It represents 3.4% of the portfolio, according to FE Fundinfo. The IA All Companies fund launched in February 2018.

Several other Aberdeen Standard funds with broader responsible investment mandates also invest in the company: the ASI UK Ethical Equity fund, also run by Duncan (pictured), has a 4.7% allocation and the ASI UK Responsible Equity fund has 3.6%.

The Premier Ethical fund also has a 3% allocation to Boohoo, according to FE Fundinfo.

The ASI allocations come despite the fact Standard Life Aberdeen stated in its modern slavery statement that it could drive change by taking environmental, social and governance factors into consideration when investing.

An Aberdeen Standard Investments spokesperson said the business had been engaging with Boohoo on its supply chain management for some time and would be speaking to management in light of the slavery allegations to understand what action they are taking in response.

We continue to monitor the appropriateness of all the holdings in our values-led funds on an ongoing basis, the spokesperson said.

Premier Miton said it had been in contact with Boohoo and will assess their response.

See also: Will investors call time on fast fashion?

But the responsible investments are not the funds with the largest holdings.

The Merian UK Mid Cap fund has a 12.5% weighting while the Quilter Investors Equity 1 fund, also run by Merian, holds 11.2%. Merian UK Dynamic Equity holds 10.7%.

A Jupiter spokesperson, speaking on behalf of the Merian funds, said the company had done site visits to several of Boohoos UK suppliers and had been engaging with the company over supply chain management. We have been given strong assurances by management that any suppliers found to be in breach of the companys strict code of conduct will be terminated immediately and we will continue to engage with the firm regarding this situation.

Both Jupiters and Premier Mitons modern slavery and human trafficking statements focus on their own supply chain with no mention of the companies they invest in and therefore deem themselves low risk.

The Global Slavery Index, which Jupiter uses to determines the countries, goods and services most at risk of being involved in slavery, states 136,000 people in the UK suffer under modern day slavery.

See also: Investors lose patience over slavery in supply chains

By Jessica Tasman-Jones, 6 Jul 20

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ASI exposed to Boohoo slavery investigation via ethical funds - Portfolio Adviser

Saira Khan: It’s time to stop the dreadful slavery to 3.50-an-hour fashion – Mirror Online

Posted on July 12, 2020 by Danzig

The way we conduct ourselves and treat others has been thrown into sharp focus recently, due to the coronavirus and the Black Lives Matter movement.

So when you hear of vulnerable people being exploited in order to line the pockets of billionaires, it makes you sick to the core.

There were allegations this week that workers in garment factories that supply fashion chain Boohoo were being forced to come into work while sick with Covid-19.

Claims also emerged that they are paid as little as 3.50 per hour, and work in squalid and dire conditions.

It all came to light when Leicester was singled out to stay in lockdown because of a recent spike in Covid-19 cases.

The outbreak seems to be concentrated around the citys clothing manufacturing centre, where it is claimed many of the factories and workshops failed to properly shut down during national lockdown.

Local councillor Mustafa Malik said: Certainly, there are factories that abided by the regulations, but there were some which were just breaching all those rules.

Thulsi Narayanasamy, a labour rights researcher, investigated conditions in Leicester earlier this year and noted: Ive been inside garment factories in Bangladesh, China and Sri Lanka, and I can honestly say that what I saw in the middle of the UK was worse than anything Ive witnessed overseas.

Im particularly enraged by the fact that the majority of workers in this industry are of BAME backgrounds the most vulnerable to Covid-19.

They often live in multi-generational homes, so can easily pass on the virus to their loved ones, some of whom will have underlying health issues.

Campaign group Labour Behind the Label focused a recent report on Boohoos influence in Leicester, where 75-80 per cent of its garments are reportedly produced.

It is a national disgrace that vulnerable people are being paid less than the minimum wage while business owners such as Boohoos Mahmud Kamani and Carol Kane have become billionaires by selling cheap fast fashion.

Ordinary people in the UK do not want to be associated with brands that ignore the welfare of workers and this was clearly demonstrated when 2billion was wiped off Boohoos value.

Thats what you get if you put profits before values.

Saira Khan: It's time to stop the dreadful slavery to 3.50-an-hour fashion - Mirror Online

‘We don’t want words, we want action’: Black student activists call for ‘a comprehensive culture shift’ at the University – University of Virginia The…

Posted on July 12, 2020 by Danzig

Editor's Note: This article is part of a series by The Cavalier Daily exploring a list of demands submitted to President Jim Ryans racial equity task force by a group of Black student activists and also a separate list of demands published by the Black Student Alliance. The full series of articles is linked below.

After gathering over 1,900 signatures from University community members and 180 signatures from student organizations on an initial draft of a letter and list of demands to be sent to University President Jim Ryan, a group of predominantly Black student activists submitted a revised statement and list of demands June 12 to the new racial equity task force recently formed by Ryan.

The group of students had initially published their statement and list of demands June 1 in response to a statement released May 31 by Ryan addressing nationwide protests in response to the murder of George Floyd and police brutality. In their response, the students expressed disappointment towards Ryans initial statement and called upon him and the University to not be complacent when it comes to fighting against systemic racism and inequality, which the University regularly fails to do.

Ryans initial statement released May 31 was met with criticism from community members for what they saw as its failure to sufficiently address the underlying causes of ongoing national protests. Ryan subsequently released a follow-up statement June 3 in which he recognized his previous statement as having been inadequate and announced the formation of a new racial equity task force assembled to address the growing list of recommendations, suggestions and demands regarding the subject of racial equity at the University. Based upon their findings, the group will present to Ryan in August a concrete and prioritized set of recommendations about the best steps forward, including actions that can be implemented right away.

The students list of demands is divided into 13 short-term, mid-term and long-term goals, including the following four mid-term goals and two long-term goals upon which have been elaborated.

MID-TERM GOALS

Replace the current implicit bias module offered to incoming students with a new module focused on the history of U.Va.:

In fall 2017, the University implemented a requirement for all first-years to take upon arriving on Grounds an implicit bias module, designed to make students aware of their own subconscious biases and prejudices. However, the student authors of the petition argue that the module is insufficient.

Frankly, from interacting with non-people of color on campus and white folks, I dont think that the [implicit bias training] is enough, said Sarandon Elliot, a rising fourth-year College student and one of the letters authors.

In lieu of the implicit bias module, the students call for complete engaging modules that present a nuanced detailing of the history of racism at U.Va. and that are focused on the macro and micro levels of racism as it pertains to systemic racism at the University and beyond.

In their list of demands, BSA also included the [expansion of] current curriculum and increase[d] funding of initiatives committed to combating racism.

Provide comprehensive anti-racism training for all residential advisors, senior advisors and Housing and Residence Life staff members:

The students call for not only the implementation of reading requirements for Housing and Residence Life staff members but also training for residential advisors to lead group discussions on cultural competencies and implicit biases. Furthermore, the students urge the Universitys administration and the Housing and Residential Life leadership to work to increase the amount of [Black, Indigenous, and People of Color] residential advisors and senior advisors on Grounds.

Currently, approximately 43 percent of residential advisors identify as white, 16 percent as Black, 18 percent as Asian American and 9 percent as Latinx. Among senior advisors, 44 percent identify as white, 12 percent as Black, 28 percent as Asian American and 4 percent as Latinx.

Elliot described how the University environment can be so overwhelming for Black students in particular.

The last place you want to feel like youre being judged or that you cant talk to anyone is when you go back to your dorm your home, she said. I think it would be really important for Black students to see another Black or Brown face and be like, I feel like I can speak to them about any issues I have.

Provide required, comprehensive programming at New Student Orientation regarding the Universitys history of slavery and racial injustice:

The students call upon the University to provide a comprehensive program to incoming first-year students known as Unpacking Privilege that would act as a crash course for students before later completing a more in-depth module on race and the University as highlighted in a previous demand.

Although the students recognize efforts made to make orientation the best experience possible, the students also argue that orientation programming is currently lacking dialogue of race and racism in order to gain a better understanding of place. The recommended curriculum for the crash course includes three sessions revolving around the history of slavery at the University, systemic racism and privilege.

I think that one of the biggest things with history is that it can be used as either a teaching tool or propaganda, [such as with] Confederate monuments, Elliot said. I think its really important to tackle [history] honestly.

New Student Orientation sessions for incoming first-year and transfer students will be conducted online, and programming will occur throughout July.

Among the Orientation Leaders working this summer, approximately 32 percent identify as Black, 24 percent as Asian American, 22 percent as white, 7 percent as Latinx and 5 percent as multiracial.

According to an email statement to The Cavalier Daily from Sarah Dodge, assistant director for Orientation and New Student Programs, their team take[s] a critical eye to [their] program each year and assesses how they have accomplished outcomes aligned with their three core principles of discovery, development, and diversity.

We acknowledge that context matters and that the individual stories of new students and their experiences matter, Dodge said. As an office we work to amplify the voices and stories of our new students. We aim to create an environment where new students can engage across differences and share their perspectives with one another.

Create more professorships, fellowships, and tenure-track opportunities for Black faculty entering the University and endow the Carter G. Woodson Institute, specifically the Fellowship program, and expand the Institute to occupy all of Minor Hall:

With regards to the number of Black faculty members at the University and resources for classes focused on Black politics and history, the two separate demands call for the University to increase the number of full-time, tenured Black faculty in all schools and for the establishment of an endowment for the Department of African American and African Studies, the Carter G. Woodson Institute.

As of 2019, there are 108 African American faculty members across all schools at the University, or about 3.7 percent of all faculty members. While the number of African American faculty members has increased in the past decade, their overall representation among all University faculty has only grown from about 3.5 percent in 2009 to 3.7 percent in 2019. While the University does not release specific data regarding the number of African American faculty members with tenure, people of color made up about 26 percent of all tenure and tenure-track faculty in 2019 as compared to 20 percent in 2015.

Amidst claims of potential racial bias and inconsistencies in the process, Assistant Curry School Professor Paul Harris was denied his chance at achieving tenure this past spring by the Curry School Tenure and Promotion Committee a decision which Harris, who is Black, appealed but was also denied by University Provost Liz Magill.

The students also ask for additional course opportunities for undergraduate students relating to the history of Black activism and Black politics at the University. During the fall semester, the University currently plans on offering about three dozen courses across several academic departments relating to a variety of historical, social and political topics relevant to African American and African studies.

For the Woodson Institute specifically, the students call for the establishment of an endowment as means of securing long term and consistent funding for the department and its endeavors, adding that similar endowments have already been created for other departments at the University such as the Department of Politics and the School of Music.

With regards to the physical space in which the Woodson Institute is housed currently occupying several office spaces in Minor Hall the students ask that the department be given the entirety of Minor Hall to better accommodate more space for additional faculty, fellowships, and professors.

The Institutes Pre and Post-11 doctoral Fellowship programs have produced over a hundred scholars who have gone on to be employed in many prominent institutions throughout the country, the demand reads. Thus, the Woodson Institute is a crucial source for the training and distribution of Africana Studies The current political climate has exposed the underlying presence of systemic racism and injustice worldwide. Therefore, now, more than ever, there is an increasing need for students to be equipped to facilitate conversations regarding race.

Elliot said that symbolic initiatives by the University to recognize its racist history such as the recently-completed Memorial to Enslaved Laborers are insufficient in addressing deeper, systemic racial disparities.

I think that U.Va. in particular has been trying to deal with their legacy of slavery on campus and the effects of it, Elliot said. When you look at higher ed in general, why is it that there are [fewer] Black and Brown professors? Its because of the legacy of slavery, its because of the legacy of Jim Crow its all built up on one another.

She added that current University leaders must take a meaningful role in addressing the current impacts of this legacy by actively supporting Black students.

Jim Ryan and the administration can build all the fancy monuments they want, but until they recognize that this is our legacy, and this is how we still continue to play into it today [through] not hiring Black faculty or not giving Black students voices and places to be creative and express themselves, [theyre] not supporting the Black community, and theyre a part of the problem, Elliot said.

The BSA statement also reiterates the longstanding demand for increasing funding for the Woodson Institute and African American and Afrian studies and programs at the University more broadly, including dramatic increases in Black, full-time faculty at the University that is at least proportional to the approximately six percent of Black students that currently make up the University population.

Established in 1981, the Woodson Institute achieved department status in the fall of 2017 after years of advocacy from members of the institute. At the time, Prof. Deborah McDowell, director of the Woodson Institute and Alice Griffin Professor of English, said she hoped that institutes new status would allow it to receive a greater budget allocation from the University to fund a graduate program and fellowships. By the fall of 2018, the institute had hired two new faculty members and observed substantial increases in enrollment for classes offered in the department. At that time, 56 students had declared a major in the department.

In 2018, the Woodson Institute had an annual budget of $1,378,442 and by 2020, it has grown to nearly $1.7 million a roughly 23 percent increase. By comparison, two other academic departments in the College that tend to offer classes relating to historical, social and political topics relevant to race relations and African American and African studies the Department of Sociology and the Department of History received $3,126,830 and $4,929,779 in 2018, respectively. In 2020, the History Department budget has grown by roughly seven percent to $5,284,480, while the Sociology Departments budget has increased by two percent to $3,174,784. For the 2019-2020 academic year, the College had a combined total of $381,435,265 at its disposal for covering its expenses.

Across the three departments, there were 66 tenure-track and general faculty members in August of 2017, increasing to 82 positions by August of 2019. In 2017, 11 of these individuals identified as Black of African American, increasing to 14 in 2020. It is unclear how many of these individuals have full-time tenured positions.

Prof. McDowell did not respond to requests for comment for this article.

LONG-TERM GOALS

Require all students to take a course on race and ethnic relations in America as a requirement to graduate throughout the University

The students argue that the incorporation of anti-racist teachings into University-wide curriculum requirements is fundamental to transforming the overall embodiment of the Universitys values because of the Universitys history and relationships with enslavement and Confederate values.

The students recommend the courses should be modeled after existing race and ethnic relations courses to avoid politicizing the content.

A lot of people at this school...dont know how race functions, and they dont know how to get uncomfortable about talking about race, said Lauren Cochran, a rising third-year Batten and College student and one of the demand authors. You really have to make sure that these people are educated before they graduate on race and ethnic relations.

With the Universitys transition to the New College Curriculum, most incoming first-year College students in the fall of 2020 will be required to take one two-credit course in each of the four Engagements, one of which is entitled Engaging Differences. According to information provided on the Colleges website, through the Engaging Differences courses, students can expect to consider how we encounter one another across social boundaries, perform and express our differences, clash, develop prejudices and construct forms of discrimination.

The other schools of the University do not have similar requirements for a course with an explicit focus on addressing prejudice and discrimination.

Cochran highlighted how students in all professions will encounter people of different races and therefore everyone should know what a microaggression or other acts of prejudice and discrimination might look like.

Scholarship programs specifically for students who are descendants of enslaved laborers who built the University and surrounding Charlottesville community:

Among the recommendations included in the Presidents Commission on Slavery and the Universitys 2018 report presented to then-President Teresa Sullivan was the creation of African American scholarship programs. The Commission asserted that, despite being barred by a 4th Circuit Court decision from using race as a factor in admissions, the University should still make a visible commitment to increasing the number of African American students who enroll.

In their statement, the students stressed that the University should not only contact already known descendants of enslaved laborers at the University to inform them of scholarship opportunities but also continue to seek out records of unknown descendants in order to inform them of the scholarship opportunities as well.

According to Elliot, this particular demand is significant because of the historical obstacles to education that Black people have faced in the wake of slavery and the Jim Crow era.

It wasnt until the summer of 1950 that the first Black student matriculated at the University. Gregory Swanson, a graduate of Howard Law School, applied to take graduate school law courses at the University but was denied. Swanson sued the University, and his case was successfully appealed in the US Circuit Court of Appeals thanks to the help of NAACP lawyers Thurgood Marshall and Charles Houston.

Swanson dropped out in 1951, but in June 1953, Walter Ridley received a doctorate degree from the Universitys school of education, and one month later, E. Louise Stokes-Hunter became the second Black person and first Black woman to earn a degree at the University, also receiving a doctorate in education. In 1959, Engineering student Robert Bland became the first Black undergraduate student to earn a degree at the University.

To Elliot, creating scholarship programs for the descendants of enslaved laborers who built the University and were not paid for their labor is the least we can do for folks.

They never got those reparations, Elliot said. Their ancestors never got a paycheck. They couldnt send their kids to school.

With regards to shifting the broader culture at the University, Elliot emphasized that the students work on their statement and list of demands is a continuation of work done by previous students at the University.

People have been fighting this fight long before us, like BSA and Living Wage [Campaign], and I think there is still so much work to be done, Elliot said. Sometimes I feel like progress at U.Va. is almost like a facade, like were not really getting to the root issues of things.We dont want words. We want action.

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How to dismantle an entire nation in 12 easy steps – The Herald-News

Posted on July 12, 2020 by Danzig

Whether or not you believe in making America great again, it's pretty clear right now that things, they ain't so great.

From a sputtering economy to burgeoning racial unrest, from a spiking pandemic (if you believe in that sort of thing) to a worsening climate (ditto), from our present-day divisiveness to our uncertain future, one can only wonder: how did it come to this?

The mess we're in now didn't start this year. And, believe it or not, it didn't start four years ago. No, today we're reaping a harvest of problems that have been swept under the rug for decades, if not centuries. And that rug is falling apart.

It took a long time to build up this country. Yet our efforts to tear it apart seem to be moving at a much faster pace. So how, you may wonder, does one destroy America? Here, then, is a primer on how to dismantle a nation in 12 easy steps:

Create the greatest country the world has ever known, but compromise on one key issue: slavery. And then allow the injustice that springs from that decision to continue to haunt the nation for the next two-and-half centuries.

Create a country built on tired, poor huddled masses yearning to breathe free, a system which works pretty well for the first 100 or so years, then spend the next 100 or so trying to figure out how to close the barn door a bit, and, finally, the last four unable to find a compromise between opening it up completely to let everyone in and building a wall across it to keep everyone out.

Defeat Germany and Japan in World War II. Then rebuild their countries. Keep South Korea from being overrun by the North. Then rebuild their country. Bolster up South Vietnam with billions in arms, material and cash. Then lose the entire investment. Invade Iraq. Then rebuild their country. Invade Afghanistan. Then spend the next 19 years rebuilding and policing their country. All this over the course of 75 years, while our own infrastructure slowly falls apart.

Allow more and more of the nation's wealth to trickle into the pockets of fewer and fewer people. Then establish laws to make sure it stays there. Put more and more of a tax burden on the middle class, forcing it to blame either the entitled rich or entitlements to the poor for its ever-diminishing slice of the American pie.

Cut pay and benefits of workers in the private sector to a minimum, all while compensating CEOs at a rate nearly 300 times higher than the wage of an average employee even when that company is losing money, downsizing or going bankrupt.

Create fabulous pay and benefits for workers in the public sector, along with mathematically unsustainable pension packages that will enable them to retire years earlier than their private-sector counterparts. Have circuit and state supreme court judges (who draw pensions from those same plans) uphold them as constitutionally inviolate.

Raise children to take great pride in their own uniqueness, but neglect to teach them humility. Shelter them from competition while praising them for mere participation. Above all, provide them with instant gratification for all their wants and needs. And then wonder why they turn on you when they become adults.

Ignore or ridicule any scientific explanation of how the increase in temperature, pollution and population is affecting the environment. Downplay this current pandemic thing as nothing more than the common flu. Dismiss mask wearing and social distancing as unpatriotic and stupid.

Create a culture of divisiveness that highlights only the differences between men and women, old and young, right and left, black and white, straight and gay and any other category that can be exploited. Dismiss the concept of "one nation, one people" as another relic of our failed past.

Judge those who came before us by today's standards without fully understanding their challenges. Rewrite the past without reading history. Preserve myths that are blatantly false. Condemn those who shouldn't be condemned; defend those who shouldn't be defended.

Allow political activity to be dominated by fringe elements from the far right and far left, and force the rest of the country to choose between one or the other. Label all Republicans as fascists and all Democrats as communists. Discourage any interaction between the two camps. Dismiss compromise as weakness.

Finally, utilize the greatest advances in history technologies raising science, medicine and communication to unimaginable heights merely to spread lies, rumors and cat videos via cell phone.

And it's those damn cat videos that will finally do us in.

Bill Wimbiscus is a former reporter and editor at The Herald-News.

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How to dismantle an entire nation in 12 easy steps - The Herald-News

Take It Down!: Symbolic Politics Is Just That – Common Dreams

Posted on July 12, 2020 by Danzig

At this moment faculty, students, and administrators at our universities are busily meeting to discuss the renaming of buildings. At Emory in Atlanta, there is a call to rename Longstreet Means residence hall. The case against the name is this: Augustus Longstreet fought for the confederacy and Alexander Means supported the confederacy and wrote about his familys slaves in his journals. William & Mary has begun a working group of administrators, alumni, students, faculty and staff to develop principles on the naming and renaming of buildings, spaces and structures on campus. While these are new efforts emerging in the wake the murder of George Floyd and the protests that followed, they are also part of an ongoing effort by universities to address the sins of the past.

In 2011 Emory made a very public apology for the universitys ties to slavery. Emory regrets both this undeniable wrong and the universitys decades of delay in acknowledging slaverys harmful legacy, then-President James Wagner said. In 2015 William & Mary worked in earnest to remove the most visible manifestations and iconography of the Confederacy from campus. Every version of the argument for redressing faults in the past takes a similar form (in President Wagners words): society must admit its mistakes [in the past] so it can deal with future challenges. Emory, Wagner says, must live by those words as well.

Emory and William & Mary are anything but unique in this ongoing process of atonement. Statues are coming down across the United States and in Europe. Christopher Columbus, Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson, the Confederate War Memorial in Dallas, Silent Sam in Chapel Hill have all come down, confederate flags are no longer welcome at state capitols and sporting events. To this we say: good riddance.

Perhaps more disturbing is the fact that students at the University of Wisconsin are calling for the removal of the Abraham Lincoln statue on the Madison campus. Not only did Lincoln lead the United States in a civil war against southern traitors and their slave economy, but the statue was paid for in part by freedmen, a celebratory dedication to a hero. At this moment, debate is swirling around the fate of a statue in Washington, DC. The statue depicts Lincoln holding a copy of the Emancipation Proclamation. Kneeling at his feet is an unshackled black man. This week the Boston arts commission voted unanimously to remove a replica of the statue that stands in the Boston Common. What is the argument against the sculpture? Some say it diminishes the agency of black people in securing their own liberation. Others suggest it promotes white supremacy. Like the Lincoln statue in Madison, the Boston and DC statues were paid for by donations from freed slaves. When the statue was unveiled in 1876, Frederick Douglass delivered his most famous speech, the Oration delivered on the occasion of the unveiling of the Freedmens Monument. And if the Freedmens Monument is up for destruction, what do we do about Douglass himself? It was Douglass who, on his travels to Ireland to meet with the great abolitionist Daniel OConnell, came to the conclusion that the main cause of the extreme poverty and beggary devastating Ireland during the potato famine was Drunkenness. Even Douglass repeated the colonial powers racist rationale for dominating and starving a colonized people. If our monuments are memorials to moral purity, then our streets may end up very clean.

From the sublime heights of statue iconoclasm, to the more mundane business of commodity rebranding, name changes are under way for some commodity icons including Aunt Jemima, Uncle Bens, Cream of Wheat, Mrs. Butterworths. All of these products are in the process of a rebrandand of course a new rolloutin light of their dubious racial associations. Consider as well the fact that several Realtor groups are dropping the master bedroom and bathroom terms from their listings, and the owners of a popular Jewish deli will implement new training and have changed bagel names that referred to Black athletes and musicians on the menu.

No doubt every moment of protest and unrest is accompanied by confusion and mistakes as well as progress and success. Some of these actions are a long time in coming and bring about positive changes. Others, less so. But what we want to address here is the fact that all of them are politics in the symbolic register. Consider, for instance, the logic of Wagners claim; it is basic to every version of the naming controversy: society must admit its mistakes so it can deal with future challenges.The thought is right, but the logic is unclear.

We are inevitably invited to read it as saying white people must admit to their racist past and to their current (unconscious or institutionally supported) racist actions. The implicit claim that slavery is motivated by racism and that the problem is that white people have not taken responsibility for it.Whom does this mea culpa serve? Since virtually everyone in the audience for this statement, and those in support of renaming efforts, is certainly antislavery and antiracist (however imperfectly), there is a real danger that the aim of these efforts is to bask in our own disapproval of the past, to broadcast our superiority to past racists, while leaving unaddressed exploitation occurring in the present. This formulation misidentifies the historical wrong by substituting racism for slavery. It likewise substitutes whiteness, an ascriptive category, for slaveholding, which is an activity. Both moves render the actual historical wrong harder to see. What ends does this confusion serve?

"A symbolic politics has meaning of a certain kind, but no urgency.Scrubbing ignominious names off buildings is progress, but whatever symbolic efficacy it holds should not displace the immediate aim of confronting the exploitation that occurs within and around the walls of our newly named buildings."While the renaming campaign goes forward it might also be worth asking a few questions about actually existing minorities (so to speak)rather than the long dead racistsat our universities:Were your custodial and food-service staff paid a living wage before COVID?Did they receive good healthcare? And job protections? Were they paid throughout the shutdown?Will cleaning crews be supplied proper PPE, and a living wage, as they clean our classrooms every day? Did contingent faculty lose salary and healthcare to protect an endowment (or because an endowment was so heavily invested in risky, illiquid funds that the university suddenly experienced a cashflow problem)?These are the questions that determine who gets to put food on the table and whether the way they do it is fair to them and conducive to general wellbeing.

Adolph Reed Jr. reflected on the last round of monument controversy as it swept through his hometown of New Orleans. Reed was happy to see confederate monuments come down, but as he also observed, removing them is ultimately a rearguard undertaking and one entirely compatible with the dominant neoliberal ideal of social and racial justice. As in that earlier moment, so it is today that antiracist activists believe that struggle over symbolic residues of an obnoxious past can fuel or condense challenges to inequalities in the present. But if the aim is to address inequalities in the present, Reed writes, then it cant be the case that white supremacy was the problem. Rather, the monuments [themselves] were about legitimizing a social order by displacing its political-economic foundation and imperatives onto a celebratory narrative of white racial-cultural heritage. That being the case, then the antiracist critics todaythe ones in charge of the destruction and renaming processaccept that [legitimizing] narrative, that orders ideological halo, on its own terms and demand only that its nonwhite victims and opponents be acknowledged and celebrated instead in the interest of righting past wrongs at the level of symbolic recognition.

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The question were asking here is what kind of work is renaming doing and supposed to do? What aspects of racism and discrimination is it addressing, what does it exclude, and what do these controversies aim to exclude? Black people remain disproportionately exposed to the worst of capitalisms exploitation, so the real question going forward is will there be further exploitation or will there be fair labor practices?A symbolic politics has meaning of a certain kind, but no urgency.Scrubbing ignominious names off buildings is progress, but whatever symbolic efficacy it holds should not displace the immediate aim of confronting the exploitation that occurs within and around the walls of our newly named buildings.

What does symbolic politics distract us from? In spring 2010, students at Emory began raising concerns about contract labor, roughly 10 percent of the universitys total nonacademic workforce, while part-time employment is around 20 percent. In response, a Committee on Class and Labor was convened to study labor issues at the school. In its Report and Recommendations, the committee concludes that the challenge is to find ways to honor positive dimensions of class differencessuch as increased diversity of experience and backgroundwhile minimizing their inappropriate and unjust impact on the quality of our work life together. What could they possibly mean by positive dimensions of class difference? They can only mean what we think they mean: poverty is an identity, being rich is an identity, vive la diffrence. The point about class differenceversus race, gender, cultureis to get rid of it, not to celebrate it. But the report assumes class difference is intractable and recommends we combat an attitude rather than exploitation, focus on an identity rather than our policies.

When we turn to Appendix D, class difference is once again about money. There, employee compensation is broken out into segmentsminimum, maximum, and the deciles that separate the two. (Executive administrators are palpably absent from the data.) The weighted average minimum compensation figure is $23,510. The first decile is $26,246. A comparison between each segment and the Atlanta labor market follows, which shows that, while Emory stacks up against the local economy better the higher up the compensation scale one travels, it is roughly equivalent to the local labor market.

The problem is that Atlanta is the current and perennial champion of income inequality in the United States. Atlanta scored a Gini coefficient of 0.57 in 2018. A Gini coefficient of 0.0 indicates a perfectly even distribution of income; a 1.0 indicates a perfectly uneven distribution. The U.S. as a whole scored a 0.38 in the same year. Norway received a 0.25. Atlanta came in right between Namibias 0.55 and South Africas 0.58, among the countries studied the number one and number two most unequal countries in the world. To assuage fears that youre exploiting your workers by pointing to your parity with the wider Atlanta labor market is a sordid strategy. It is quite literally to reassure those protesting workers unfair compensation by saying its every bit as just as South African labor, and nearly as good as Namibian.

A few years after the 2013 study was submitted, the university reported on IRS forms 990 compensation paid to its vice president of investments and chief investment officer, Mary Cahill, of $1,750,936 (fiscal year 2016) and $3,300,143 (fiscal year 2017, which includes severance and other compensation in excess of base pay and bonuses). Assuming that the compensation of the least well-paid workers at Emory remained roughly flat between the report and fiscal year 2016, Cahills compensation was about 74 times that of the lowest paid workers. In 2017, the year of her windfall, its more like 140 times.

What came of the Committee on Class and Labors report? Its hard to say. It arose from students concerns about contract laborspecifically concerning the food-service contractor Sodexo. Sodexo was removed and replaced in 2015 by Bon Apptit Management Company. So how do things stand now under the new regime? Under Sodexo, with their historic commitments to union-busting and low wages, full-time workers still typically received 40 hours and overtime. Under Bon Apptit, as one cook described the new situation, They cut you off at 37 or 38 hoursthey make sure nobody works overtime. Bon Apptit management seemed to confirm the new reality. According to their communications director, while the company tries to give its full-time employees 40 hours per week, it must also focus on balancing the needs of our business. The general manager at the dining hall described the reduced hours as an effort to provide staff with a sustainable lifestyle. According to Bon Apptits mission statement, they aim to provide sustainable foods, a mission that is apparently made possible by the enforcement of a sustainable lifestyle among their employees on the floor. A healthy lifestyle that does not include benefits, overtime, or a living wage.

Sean Connelly, CEO of ConAgra, the company that owns the Mrs. Butterworths brand, one of the consumer products undergoing a precipitous rebranding campaign, made about $14.4 million in 2019, which is about 550 times what a laborer at ConAgra makes. Thats much worse than Cahills multiple of 140, but its the same order of magnitude. Of course, if we wanted to calculate the multiple using the compensation of a Bon Apptit worker, the task would be of a different kind. Apparently, even the Bon Apptit worker doesnt know what the months wage will be.

Why do we bring up these facts and figures? Because they describe a problem to which our symbolic politics offers not a solution but an alternative. No one had to protest to convince Connelly that Mrs. Butterworths needed a rebrand. Whoever made that decision understood it was about selling a product, and not about improving the lives of its employees.

No one can right the wrongs perpetrated in the past. At best, we can revise the way we represent our relation to them. What we can set right is the injustice committed here and now.

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Take It Down!: Symbolic Politics Is Just That - Common Dreams

What the National Review Gets Wrong About Deconstruction – The MIT Press Reader

Posted on July 12, 2020 by Danzig

A misguided article in the conservative magazine blames the concept for the powerful cultural transformations were seeing today. Thats about all it gets right.

By: David J. Gunkel

The monuments of Western literature came tumbling down long before confederate statues. In fact, a baffling article recently published in the National Review goes as far as to suggest that the root cause of cancel culture can be attributed to efforts to deconstruct the literary canon and its traditions. These efforts, argues the author, took up residence at elite institutions of higher education in the late 20th century and empowered generations of students to multiply, go forth, and make the world woke.

What the article gets right is that deconstruction was specifically formulated to confront the venerable monuments of Western thought with an explicit challenge and alternative way of thinking that contests the status quo. What it gets wrong, like so many other complaints before it, is the assumption that any challenge like this must be negative and the epitome of a youthful nihilism run amok. Nothing could be further from the truth.

I cant think of a better time to revisit and more accurately define the concept of deconstruction and its significance.

Deconstructing Deconstruction

The word deconstruction, despite initial appearances, does not indicate to take apart, to un-construct, or to disassemble. Despite this widespread and rather popular misconception, which has become something of an institutional (mal)practice in both the popular and academic press, deconstruction is not negative. As Jacques Derrida, the progenitor of the concept, emphasized on more than one occasion: Deconstruction, lets say it one more time, is not demolition or destruction.

Deconstruction is a kind of thinking outside the box that exceeds the grasp of the existing conceptual order.

But to declare that deconstruction is not negative does not mean that it is something positive either. The de- of deconstruction, Derrida explains, signifies not the demolition of what is constructing itself, but rather what remains to be thought beyond the constructionist or destructionist schema. Deconstruction, then, seeks to identify a third alternative. It is a kind of thinking outside the box that exceeds the grasp of the existing conceptual order.

This is because deconstruction works as a corrective to the binary oppositions that organize common ways of thinking; its a complex, rigorous approach to critical thinking that cant be reduced to a buzzword. We typically make sense of ourselves and our world by deploying sets of binary oppositions good/bad, white/black, right/left, male/female, mind/body, etc. The underlying logic of this way of thinking is the principle of non-contradiction. This principle, sometimes called the law of non-contradiction, has been, at least since the time of Aristotle, perhaps the defining condition of Western thought. As proof of this, we only need to consider what has already transpired here: We have employed the law of non-contradiction in the very process of characterizing deconstruction by way of distinguishing it from what it is not.

The Principle of Non-Contradiction

Binary oppositions are undoubtedly useful and expedient. They not only help us make sense of the world; they appear to be a fundamental principle of thought itself. Despite this, there are profound systemic problems.

On the one hand, binary oppositions restrict what is possible to know and to say about the world and our own experiences. Opposites push things toward the extremes. As the late literary critic Barbara Johnson insightfully wrote in her book A World of Difference, If not absolute, then relative; if not objective then subjective; if you are not for something; you are against it. Although this kind of exclusivity has a certain functionality and logical attraction, its often not entirely in touch with the complexity and exigency of things on the ground. Its for this reason that we are generally critical of false dichotomies the parsing of complex reality into a simple either/or distinction. The current political situation, which has been described as more polarized than ever, stands as just one instance or symptom of this problem.

On the other hand, these conceptual opposites arrange and exert power. For any logical opposition or binary pairing, the two items are not typically situated on a level playing field; one of the pair has already been determined to be the privileged term. Or as Derrida explains, we are not dealing with the peaceful coexistence of a vis--vis, but rather with a violent hierarchy. One of the two terms governs the other (axiologically, logically, etc.), or has the upper hand.

Rather than simply tearing down the monuments of the past and leaving them in ruins, deconstruction provides students with the tools for remixing the past for the sake of shaping the future.

Conceptual oppositions, then, are neither neutral nor objective. As the science and technology scholar Donna Haraway argues, certain dualisms have been persistent in Western traditions; they have been systemic to the logics and practices of domination of women, people of color, nature, workers, animals in short, domination of all constituted others, whose task it is to mirror the self. Dualisms, then, are expressions of power. They are always and already hierarchical arrangements that are structurally biased. And it is this skewed hierarchical order that installs, underwrites, and justifies systems of inequality, domination, and prejudice.

So what does this have to do with dismantling the monuments of Western literature and wokeness? The troubling dualisms that are the critical target of deconstruction do not just float around in the ether; they take form and are formalized in texts. The great books of Western philosophy, literature, and science utilize and codify these conceptual formations and therefore stand as solid monuments to a particular way of seeing, thinking, and acting in the world. Deconstruction empowers students to confront, question, and critically respond to these conceptual formations. Rather than simply tearing down the monuments of the past and leaving them in ruins, deconstruction provides students with the tools for remixing the past for the sake of shaping the future.

There are, then, good moral and political reasons to question the hegemony of conceptual oppositions and to challenge the usual and inherited structural arrangements. As Hannah Arendt writes, We all grow up and inherit a certain vocabulary. We then have got to examine this vocabulary. And deconstruction names not just the examination of vocabulary but a general strategy for seeing, thinking, and doing otherwise.

Two Steps to Deconstruction

The deconstructive effort begins by deliberately overturning the two terms that make up an existing conceptual order. This flipping of the script, or what Derrida also describes as bring low what was high is, quite literally, a revolutionary gesture. But inversion, in and by itself, is not sufficient. It is only half the story. Revolutionary inversion whether it be social, political, or philosophical actually does little or nothing to challenge or change the existing system of power. In merely exchanging the relative positions occupied by the two opposed terms, inversion still maintains the binary opposition in which and on which it operates albeit in reverse order or upside-down. Simply turning things around is necessary but not sufficient.

Deconstruction provides a way forward into possible futures that are not beholden to a repetition of what has gone before.

For this reason, deconstruction necessarily entails a second phase or operation. We must, as Derrida describes it, also mark the interval between inversion, which brings low what was high, and the irruptive emergence of a new concept, a concept that can no longer be, and never could be, included in the previous regime. This new concept that is the product of the second phase occupies a position that is in between or at the margins of a traditional, conceptual opposition or binary pair. It is simultaneously neither-nor and either-or.

Perhaps the best example and illustration of this two-step operation is available with the term deconstruction itself. In a first move, deconstruction flips the script by putting emphasis on the negative term destruction as opposed to construction. In fact, the apparent similitude between the two words, deconstruction and destruction, is a deliberate and calculated aspect of this effort. But this is only step one the phase of inversion. In the second phase of this double gesture, there is the emergence of a new concept. The novelty of this concept is marked, quite literally, in the material of the word itself. Deconstruction, which is fabricated by combining the de of destruction and attaching it to the opposite term construction, produces a strange and disorienting neologism that does not fit in the existing order of things. This new concept, despite first appearances, is not negative. It is not the mere opposite of construction; rather, it exceeds the conceptual order instituted and regulated by the opposition situated between construction and destruction. It is only on this condition, Derrida concludes, that deconstruction will provide itself the means with which to intervene in the field of oppositions that it criticizes.

Thinking Otherwise

I can already hear the complaints and moans of the skeptics skeptics like those given voice by the National Review: Whats the point? Why mess with the status quo when everything seems to be working just fine? Or perhaps even more critical: Isnt this kind of mental gymnastics just an exercise in navel contemplation reserved for privileged elites?

This last item is less a question and more of a containment strategy. What those in power want and need is for this kind of academic super-power to be restricted and locked-up in ivory towers. They know that problems begin when this stuff gets out in to the world and starts making trouble. And deconstruction is, if nothing else, another name for making trouble. Although informed by and made possible through a direct engagement with the literary monuments of the past a veritable whos who of dead white male authors deconstruction provides a way forward into possible futures that are not beholden to a repetition of what has gone before.

So go ahead, blame deconstruction for the social, political, and cultural transformations breaking out all over the place. Thats the point.

David J. Gunkel is Distinguished Teaching Professor of Communication Technology at Northern Illinois University and the author of, among other books, The Machine Question: Critical Perspectives on AI, Robots, and Ethics, Robot Rights, and the forthcoming (Fall 2021) Deconstruction, in the MIT Press Essential Knowledge series.

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