Key Issues Facing Trustees of National Research Universities in the Decade Ahead

[Excerpt] Trustees of public and private research universities have a fiduciary responsibility to act in the best interest of their institutions. However, actions that appear to be in the private interests of their institutions may not be in the social interest and these institutions are also expected to serve society as a whole. In deciding what optimal policies are for their institutions, trustees must weigh their institutions’ private interests against the interests of society as whole. In the next section, I discuss seven examples of areas in which trustees will need to make these judgments. Privatization is occurring at both public and private research universities, in the sense that the institutions are becoming more dependent on revenue streams generated from third parties. Examples are increased external funding of research, attempts to commercialize research findings through start-up companies and licensing of patents, increased external support through individual, corporate and foundation giving, and increased revenue from big-time athletics. The third parties providing the funding may push for activities or decisions that are not consistent with the underlying academic values of the institution and the trustees. Section III discusses three examples of how such problems may arise and stresses the importance of the trustees retaining fundamental authority. A final section provides some concluding remarks

Peace Education and Conflict Resolution at Wayame Village Teluk Ambon District

The article was to determine how the pattern of peace education and peace resolution and its impact after the conflict in Wayame, Teluk Ambon District, Ambon City. This research was qualitative, and the data collection technique used interviews, observation, and documentation. Data analysis consists of three streams of activities that coincide, namely data reduction, data presentation, and data verification. The results showed that the pattern of peace education carried out in Wayame Village, the first inter-religious dialogue, to build harmonious relations between the Muslim and Christian communities, especially during the communal conflict in Ambon City in 1999. The second was the esponsive to issues that mingle with conflict, forming 20 social referral team consisting of tenMuslim and ten Christian leaders. The third was Muslims conduct internal education to extraordinary Muslim communities to always maintain harmony between the people. The impact of peace education in Wayame Village, namely there was no conflict during the two years the conflict took place in Ambon City, the establishment of places of worship permanently, and the cultural preservation Keywords: Peace Education, Conflict Resolution, Peace Education Conflic

Autumn’s Fragrant Afterthought

This creative nonfiction essay is an excerpt from a book length study that I have recently completed on the seasons. My manuscript was inspired by the Medieval Book of Hours, particularly its Labours of the Months calendar. This essay is a portrait of November. My setting is northeastern Nova Scotia, where the Medieval model of agrarian labour is still remarkably preserved. The essay is also a reflection on time: the rhythmic, seasonal flow that counters the accelerated pace of modern, urbanized life

Luther’s Mysticism, Pietism, and Contemplative Spirituality

To ask, “Why church?” certainly stirs multilayered theological, missional, ecclesial, and pastoral reflection. The question also has spiritual ramifications. To explore some of them, we will trace a thread of the Lutheran spiritual tradition from Martin Luther’s own “faith mysticism” through particular aspects of German pietism. That overview will provide a foundation for engaging the contemporary contemplative movement, in order to discern how its concepts and practices might provide insight for the practice of spirituality. Our conviction is that deepening the interior journey through a living, active faith leads not to withdrawal but to an awareness—even a vulnerability—that welcomes a healthy struggle with the realities of our world

EMERGENCY CARE: EMOTIONAL CONTROL An exploration of what constitutes emotional labour for a UK paramedic

This thesis draws on a small-scale, mixed-methods study of paramedics working for the North East Ambulance Service NHS Trust in order to extricate whether the performance of emotional labour is significant for the paramedic role. A depth in meaning is created through the development of a generic quadripartite integrated framework of the process of emotional labour contextualised for use by this inquiry through exposure to the prehospital emergency care discourse. This framework explains how performances triggered by antecedents carry consequences that can be mediated through interventions whose significance has previously been overlooked. It transposes into a deductive ‘a priori’ codebook / template within which data stemming from both qualitative and quantitative data streams is both organised and explained. As the voices of the paramedics, released from interview transcripts, mingle with observed scenarios they create a richly layered account highlighted by the judicious use of descriptive statistics offered by two self-reports. In addition to addressing the principal research question that inquires ‘what constitutes emotional labour for the UK paramedic’ this thesis also enlarges the sociological imagination on organisational emotionality by exposing how the framework fuses the interactional demand on a role with the individual process of emotional labour previously theorised separately

The merger that led to the formation of the Milky Way's inner stellar halo and thick disk

The assembly process of our Galaxy can be retrieved using the motions and chemistry of individual stars. Chemo-dynamical studies of the nearby halo have long hinted at the presence of multiple components such as streams, clumps, duality and correlations between the stars' chemical abundances and orbital parameters. More recently, the analysis of two large stellar surveys have revealed the presence of a well-populated chemical elemental abundance sequence, of two distinct sequences in the colour-magnitude diagram, and of a prominent slightly retrograde kinematic structure all in the nearby halo, which may trace an important accretion event experienced by the Galaxy. Here report an analysis of the kinematics, chemistry, age and spatial distribution of stars in a relatively large volume around the Sun that are mainly linked to two major Galactic components, the thick disk and the stellar halo. We demonstrate that the inner halo is dominated by debris from an object which at infall was slightly more massive than the Small Magellanic Cloud, and which we refer to as Gaia-Enceladus. The stars originating in Gaia-Enceladus cover nearly the full sky, their motions reveal the presence of streams and slightly retrograde and elongated trajectories. Hundreds of RR Lyrae stars and thirteen globular clusters following a consistent age-metallicity relation can be associated to Gaia-Enceladus on the basis of their orbits. With an estimated 4:1 mass-ratio, the merger with Gaia-Enceladus must have led to the dynamical heating of the precursor of the Galactic thick disk and therefore contributed to the formation of this component approximately 10 Gyr ago. These findings are in line with simulations of galaxy formation, which predict that the inner stellar halo should be dominated by debris from just a few massive progenitors.Comment: 19 pages, 8 figures. Published in Nature in the issue of Nov. 1st, 2018. This is the authors' version before final edit

Dharma and religion in Tagore’s views

Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941), one of the greatest contemporary Indian thinkers, discussed the problem of religion and faith on the ground of global pluralism and religious diversity. He presented his views in numerous poetical works (including Gitanjali, a collection of Song offerings translated into English, for which he was awarded with the Noble Prize in literature in 1913), but he also delivered many speeches, mostly addressed to the Western audience (e.g. The religion of Man). In his writing, Tagore often uses the terms “religion” and dharma interchangeably. This article focuses on both key terms and on the question whether they may be seen as equivalent according to him. Does he really equalize both terms? or, How was his understanding of “religion” and dharma influenced by his cultural background? The article opens with the analyse of the dictionary definitions of both key terms. Next, at the basis of dictionary explanation the main question is raised: whether “religion” and dharma could be treated as equivalents in their whole range of meanings or should their understanding be limited to a chosen definition or definitions? In the following section, Tagore’s concept of the so called “Man the Eternal” and “Divinity in Man” is briefly described. Final comments include some remarks on both terms explained in the light of Tagore’s view on comparative methodology. He claims that “religion” and dharma are close in meaning, since they both stand for the rational description of the individual experience of divinity. Therefore, they may ultimately lead to the common end, regardless their different cultural roots and various circumstances in which both concepts developed. Tagore argues for freedom as the preliminary condition for understanding of the phenomenon of transcendence of human nature towards the experience of divinity. He understands freedom as perfect harmony realized in this world but not merely through our response to it in knowing but in being. Only when such an approach is accepted the experience of “Man the Eternal” can be achieved. In this respect all human beings may meet, regardless they come from Western or Eastern culture. Such an exposition of the core of religious experience allows us to use the terms of “religion” and dharma interchangeably, and thus contribute to the comparative methodology in religious studies

Culture clash: Ojibwe identity in Erdrich’s Tracks

This essay focuses on the three main characters in Tracks, who illustrate the confusion and dangers of the loss of cultural heritage. The first part of the essay provides an historical overview of the Ojibwe to familiarize readers with why cultural duality has become a pervasive component of their history. The second part of the essay is a character analysis that reveals the various manifestations of this duality

Metascientific views: Challenge and opportunity for philosophy of biology in practice

In this paper I take evolutionary biology as an example to reflect on the role of philosophy and on the transformations that philosophy is constantly stimulated to do in its own approach when dealing with science. I consider that some intellectual movements within evolutionary biology (more specifically, the various calls for 'synthesis') express metascientific views, i.e., claims about 'what it is to do research' in evolutionary biology at different times. In the construction of metascientific views I see a fundamental role to be played by philosophy, and, at the same time, a need to complement the philosophical methods with many more methods coming from other sciences. What leads philosophy out of itself is its own attention to scientific practice. My humble methodological suggestions are, at this stage, only meant to help us imagine metascientific views that are built with a more scientific, interdisciplinary approach, in order to attenuate partiality, subjectivity and impressionism in describing the scientific community. And yet, we should not be naïve and imbued with the myth of 'datadriven' research, especially in this field: other complex issues about metascientific views call for a serious, constant philosophical reflection on scientific practice