Because there is no civil war, no epidemic, no oil and no Al Qaeda – just crippling poverty – this will continue to fly below the radar.
Many Quebecers have advocated for interculturalism as opposed to multiculturalism, and Quebec espouses a distinctly French model of secularism.
Since the charter was announced, a group of Francophone academics released a manifesto for a “Quebec Inclusif” (Inclusive Quebec) opposing the PQ’s project and its two million dollar campaign, signed by more than twenty-one thousand people in the span of a week.
An Islamic bloc is indeed emerging, but more than an occulted project of Islamization, it is a process of activation of the material and moral resources of a conservative middle class summarily excluded until the 2011 revolution.
The development of culture-specific research measures takes time, but adding the dimension of human insecurity and distress to quality of life measures is a vital step.
Just as the wandering elites of Damascus, Cairo or Tripoli seek salvation in London, the peripatetic poor and needy of the very same countries are drowning to the distant putting sound of an indifferent life-boat.
Jim Sleeper's criticisms of Yale (his home institution) in Singapore or NYU in Abu Dhabi might be right on the mark. His criticisms of the University of Wisconsin's involvement in Kazakhstan, however, are misguided.
Competition and wisdom are two different paths that will never intersect. As future academics and intellectuals, we need to seek wisdom rather than playing games and politics against our peers to get status and power.
The good news is that there is a growing network of campaigners and academics who are not just focused on preventing more wars but also on understanding the longer term effects of war on the way we live.
War shows the limits of parliamentary democracy and the crisis of democracy is far too deepseated to be compensated for by parliamentary deliberation on military intervention in Syria.
