Between Dialogue and Denunciation: The World Council of Churches, Religious Freedom, and Human Rights during the Cold War

While the historiography on the religious Cold War has tended to focus on Christian anticommunism, the World Council of Churches (WCC) sought to transcend the Cold War while simultaneously advancing religious freedom in the Soviet Union. This article connects the WCC's ecclesiastical diplomacy to the wider story of human rights, from which religion has too often been excluded. The WCC's quest for Christian fellowship led it to integrate the Russian Orthodox Church into its membership, but this commitment generated tensions with the rise of Soviet dissidence. Moreover, the WCC's turn towards the left and the Third World contrasted with newly ascendant voices for human rights in the 1970s: Amnesty International's depoliticised liberalism, evangelical anticommunism, and the Vatican under John Paul II. Thus, the WCC, an early and prominent transnational voice for human rights, ran afoul of shifts in both the Cold War and the politics of protest

Universal rights in a divided world: the human rights engagement of the World Council of Churches from the 1940s to the 1970s

This dissertation traces the human rights engagement of the ecumenical movement through its most important institutional embodiment, the World Council of Churches (WCC). In doing so, it contributes to the historiography on human rights, on the WCC, and on religious internationalism. The first part of the dissertation argues that from the 1940s to the 1960s, the WCC’s human rights engagement was strongly focused on religious freedom and extended well beyond the United Nations. Scholarship on the WCC had addressed its advocacy against curtailment of religious freedom communist states in some detail, a story that this dissertation retraces in relation to recent work on human rights, using the case of the Soviet Union. But the ecumenical movement also saw two other major opponents, Islam (especially in the context of decolonization) and political Roman Catholicism, which led it to lobby and campaign for religious freedom in countries including Indonesia, Nigeria, and Spain. The second part of the dissertation considers the expansion of the WCC’s human rights agenda. Over the course of the 1960s, the cause of antiracism invited piecemeal expansion of the WCC’s human rights agenda. Only in the early 1970s, however, did the WCC develop a radically new conception of human rights, shaped above all by the need to respond to military dictatorships in Latin America. It sought to develop a conception of human rights that could be effective in addressing not only questions of political repression but also the structural causes underlying it. Whereas the historiography on human rights has thus far focused on secular liberals and conservative Catholics, this dissertation brings into view the transnational activities of the predominantly Protestant ecumenical movement. The WCC’s human rights engagement, which refracted but also impacted on the Cold War, decolonization, and secularization, represented an important strand of postwar internationalis

Outraged, yet moderate and impartial: the rise of Amnesty International in the Netherlands in the 1960s and 1970s

This article contributes to the recent historiography on human rights by analysing the rise of Amnesty International in the Netherlands. It uses the Dutch section’s archives extensively for the first time and explores how, despite the first section’s failure to gain traction, upon its second founding it quickly grew into one of the largest national sections of Amnesty. Apart from highlighting differences in approach between the first and the second group of organisers, this article explains the remarkable success of the latter. It focuses on the interaction between Amnesty’s ‘model’ and the Dutch cultural and political context, discussing how the national section’s leadership mediated this. The organisation capitalised on the idealism of the 1970s while steering clear of radicalisation and political polarisation in both the national and international spheres. In addition, the Dutch section’s approach and message spoke directly to memories of World War II, while organisational innovation allowed it to tap into growing reserves of volunteers and members, contributing to a more general shift in Amnesty’s work

Neutral dissociation of methane by electron impact and a complete and consistent cross section set

We present cross sections for the neutral dissociation of methane, in a large part obtained through analytical approximations. With these cross sections the work of Song et al. [J. Phys. Chem. Ref. Data, 44, 023101, (2015)] can be extended which results in a complete and consistent set of cross sections for the collision of electrons with up to 100 eV energy with methane molecules. Notably, the resulting cross section set does not require any data fitting to produce bulk swarm parameters that match with experiments. Therefore consistency can be considered an inherent trait of the set, since swarm parameters are used exclusively for validation of the cross sections. Neutral dissociation of methane is essential to include (1) because it is a crucial electron energy sink in methane plasma, and (2) because it largely contributes to the production of hydrogen radicals that can be vital for plasma-chemical processes. Finally, we compare the production rates of hydrogen species for a swarm-fitted data set with ours. The two consistent cross section sets predict different production rates, with differences of 45% (at 100 Td) and 125% (at 50 Td) for production of H₂ and a similar trend for production of H. With this comparison we underline that the swarm-fitting procedure, used to ensure consistency of the electron swarm parameters, can possibly deteriorate the accuracy with which chemical production rates are estimated. This is of particular importance for applications with an emphasis on plasma-chemical activation of the gas

From religious freedom to social justice: the human rights engagement of the ecumenical movement from the 1940s to the 1970s

This article contributes to the historiography on human rights and (religious) internationalism by tracing how the ecumenical movement in the post-war decades sought to protect the religious freedom of its co-religionists in Catholic and Muslim countries, specifically Italy, Nigeria, and Indonesia. In co-operation with local actors, the Commission of the Churches on International Affairs sought to anchor international human rights in the domestic sphere through constitutional provisions. These activities constituted a significant strand of Christian human rights engagement from the 1940s to the 1960s, which intersected with the Cold War and decolonisation. The article then contrasts this with the turn to a more pluralistic and communitarian conception of human rights in the 1970s, animated by liberation theologies. As the World Council of Churches embraced a ‘revolutionary’ tradition and worked to resist military dictatorships, racism, and global inequality, it gravitated towards Marxism-inflected and anticolonial strands of human rights discourse

Preoperative anaemia and outcome after elective cardiac surgery:a Dutch national registry analysis

Background: Previous studies have shown that preoperative anaemia in patients undergoing cardiac surgery is associated with adverse outcomes. However, most of these studies were retrospective, had a relatively small sample size, and were from a single centre. The aim of this study was to analyse the relationship between the severity of preoperative anaemia and short- and long-term mortality and morbidity in a large multicentre national cohort of patients undergoing cardiac surgery. Methods: A nationwide, prospective, multicentre registry (Netherlands Heart Registration) of patients undergoing elective cardiac surgery between January 2013 and January 2019 was used for this observational study. Anaemia was defined according to the WHO criteria, and the main study endpoint was 120-day mortality. The association was investigated using multivariable logistic regression analysis. Results: In total, 35 484 patients were studied, of whom 6802 (19.2%) were anaemic. Preoperative anaemia was associated with an increased risk of 120-day mortality (adjusted odds ratio [aOR] 1.7; 95% confidence interval [CI]: 1.4–1.9; P<0.001). The risk of 120-day mortality increased with anaemia severity (mild anaemia aOR 1.6; 95% CI: 1.3–1.9; P<0.001; and moderate-to-severe anaemia aOR 1.8; 95% CI: 1.4–2.4; P<0.001). Preoperative anaemia was associated with red blood cell transfusion and postoperative morbidity, the causes of which included renal failure, pneumonia, and myocardial infarction. Conclusions: Preoperative anaemia was associated with mortality and morbidity after cardiac surgery. The risk of adverse outcomes increased with anaemia severity. Preoperative anaemia is a potential target for treatment to improve postoperative outcomes

Business Models Tooling and a Research Agenda

During the Bled conferences, Business Models have attracted a lot of attention. The discussion has moved from understanding the core concepts towards designing and implementing business models. Business models have become a common topic, with concepts and approaches becoming main stream, and connected to more generic research approaches and design perspectives, and business model tooling is becoming more important. In this paper, we provide examples of tooling with regard to Business Model road-mapping, Business Model stress-testing, Business models and Agile software development, and Business models and financial tooling. We also illustrate future research by combining Business Model analysis with Enterprise Architecture. The aim of this paper is to show how business model research is complemented by tooling and to develop an outlook for a research agenda that may be relevant to participants to the Bled conference

Liraglutide for perioperative management of hyperglycaemia in cardiac surgery patients: a multicentre randomized superiority trial

Aims: Most cardiac surgery patients, with or without diabetes, develop perioperative hyperglycaemia, for which intravenous insulin is the only therapeutic option. This is labour-intensive and carries a risk of hypoglycaemia. We hypothesized that preoperative administration of the glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor agonist liraglutide reduces the number of patients requiring insulin for glycaemic control during cardiac surgery. Materials and methods: In this randomized, blinded, placebo-controlled, parallel-group, balanced (1:1), multicentre randomized, superiority trial, adult patients undergoing cardiac surgery in four Dutch tertiary hospitals were randomized to receive 0.6 mg subcutaneous liraglutide on the evening before surgery and 1.2 mg after induction of anaesthesia or matching placebo. Blood glucose was measured hourly and controlled using an insulin-bolus algorithm. The primary outcome was insulin administration for blood glucose >8.0 mmol/L in the operating theatre. Research pharmacists used centralized, stratified, variable-block, randomization software. Patients, care providers and study personnel were blinded to treatment allocation. Results: Between June 2017 and August 2018, 278 patients were randomized to liraglutide (139) or placebo (139). All patients receiving at least one study drug injection were included in the intention-to-treat analyses (129 in the liraglutide group, 132 in the placebo group). In the liraglutide group, 55 (43%) patients required additional insulin compared with 80 (61%) in the placebo group and absolute difference 18% (95% confidence interval 5.9–30.0, P = 0.003). Dose and number of insulin injections and mean blood glucose were all significantly lower in the liraglutide group. We observed no difference in the incidence of hypoglycaemia, nausea and vomiting, mortality or postoperative complications. Conclusions: Preoperative liraglutide, compared with placebo, reduces insulin requirements while improving perioperative glycaemic control during cardiac surgery