Germany's Stephen Lawrence

Campaigners in Germany, protesting at the suspicious death in custody of Oury Jalloh in 2005 and the subsequent cover-up by the criminal justice system, are looking to the Lawrence trial, the Macpherson Report and other British institutional responses to see how Germany could learn from the British experience

German policing at the intersection: race, gender, migrant status and mental health

Germany not only avoids using the term ‘race’, but its institutions, such as the police, refrain from collecting statistics according to race, gender, ethnicity and so on, which makes it hard to prove that police actions, and particularly violence, differentially affect non-white Germans. Examining a series of controversial cases in which non-white Germans have been killed in encounters with the police, the author argues for an understanding of how race and other identities intersect, and shows how the police mount a dubious ‘cultural defence’ – based on their perceived fears – to justify their disproportionate use of force. Deaths in custody provide a lens through which to view the need in Germany to identify and accept the presence of patterns of institutional racism

Required Rates of Return for Corporate Investment Appraisal in the Presence of Growth Opportunities

Traditional methods of estimating required rates of return overstate hurdle rates in the presence of growth opportunities. We attempt to quantify this effect by developing a simple model which: (i) identifies those companies that have valuable growth opportunities; (ii) splits the value of shares into 'assets-in-place' and 'growth opportunities'; and (iii) splits the equity β into β for 'assets-in-place' and 'growth opportunities'. We find growth opportunities for UK companies over the 1990–2004 period to average 33% of equity value. Incorporating the effect of growth opportunities, the average cost of capital for investment purposes falls by 1.1 percentage points

A body does not just combust: racism and the law in Germany

This is a short commentary article on the experience of being a trial observer in German court case. The piece examines some of the challenges in identifying and discussing racism in investigating deaths in police custody in the German context

Death zones, comfort zones: queering the refugee question

Sexuality-based refugee claims constitute an expanding area of legal practice and scholarship. This expansion in the field of refugee law mirrors international efforts to address homophobia in various sites around the globe, and in legal terms, this has predominantly taken the form of rights-based protections, such as decriminalising same-sex sexual acts as a matter of civil and political rights. The strategies of addressing sex-, gender- and sexuality-based oppression in the context of free movement on one hand and constitutional protections on the other share a common set of tensions and dilemmas, and both risk re-inscribing fundamental aspects of the very violence that they each seek to address. This article asks what it might mean to ‘queer’ refugee law, particularly in the context of its dynamic relationship with the discourse of decriminalisation. The article takes forward the centrality of sexual politics within the moral economy of migration regulation and attempts to approach it with the methodological impulse and transformative potential that ‘queer’ suggests

Clarifying concepts in cognitive dissonance theory

This commentary on Zentall’s target article focuses primarily on clarifying some postulates and variables in cognitive dissonance theory. I discuss the adaptive motivational functions of dissonance arousal and dissonance reduction, and attempt to clarify some past dissonance experiments and to tease apart a dissonance theory and contrast explanation of effort-justification-type effects. The evidence and arguments reviewed here support the explanatory power of cognitive dissonance theory in a wide variety of circumstances in human and nonhuman animals, but they depend on first defining concepts such as “cognitions” quite broadly, as Festinger did when he originally proposed the theory

Clarifying concepts in cognitive dissonance theory

This commentary on Zentall’s target article focuses primarily on clarifying some postulates and variables in cognitive dissonance theory. I discuss the adaptive motivational functions of dissonance arousal and dissonance reduction, and attempt to clarify some past dissonance experiments and to tease apart a dissonance theory and contrast explanation of effort-justification-type effects. The evidence and arguments reviewed here support the explanatory power of cognitive dissonance theory in a wide variety of circumstances in human and nonhuman animals, but they depend on first defining concepts such as “cognitions” quite broadly, as Festinger did when he originally proposed the theory

The United Kingdom on Race

The United Kingdom’s Commission on Ethnic and Racial Disparities, led by Tony Sewell, has recently published a report (“the Sewell Report”), which has been widely discredited since its launch by charities, education unions, academics and politicians. The report contends that institutional racism is an overused concept (p. 27), that slavery should be reimagined to have served the positive ends of berthing a culturally “remodelled African/Brit[ish]” subject (p. 8), that racialised minority groups should no longer assume that they may be disadvantaged owing to racism and should “help themselves” through empowerment in what it describes as an “era of participation” (p. 7). This is all premised on the idea that the UK is essentially a fair society in which opportunities are generally open to its citizens, with few exceptions. The report contends that the UK can serve as a beacon on racial equality for Europe and the rest of the world (p. 8)

An Analysis Of The Relationship Between Dropout Variables And The Race And Gender Of High School Students

The purpose of this study was to analyze the relationship between dropout variables and the race and gender of high school students in a mid-south suburban school district. Data was collected on 353 dropouts and 316 graduates that attended one of the district’s eight high schools between the years 2006 - 2011. Variables selected for study included ethnicity, gender, special education classification, socioeconomic status, retention occurrences, absentee rates, behavioral infractions, and grade point average. Descriptive statistics, Correlations, Tests for Differences, and Logistic regression analysis were run to determine both the predictability of these variables and their relationship among the two ethnic and gender groups. The analysis also provided the answers to thirteen research questions posed. Results from the various analyses revealed the variable grade point average was the best predictor for dropout occurrences. In each Hierarchical Logistic Regression model run, grade point average was highly significant. In the absence of grade point average, however, the other identified dropout variables became significant depending on which specific ethnic and/or gender group was being analyzed. Since the results of this quantitative research provide a method for predicting dropout occurrences, both school district administrators and legislators could use a similar data collection and regression testing to predict dropout rates across this nation. Having this accurate knowledge would prove beneficial in establishing intervention programs, allocating resources for prevention, and implementing appropriate graduation policies. Additionally, educators and other practitioners can better comprehend the impact that these variables have upon specific gender and ethnic groups. To this end, educators will be able to pinpoint the areas of need and develop effective intervention strategies that will aid in reducing the dropout rate

Burden sharing in refugee law

This chapter outlines out some of the ways in which the concept of ‘burden sharing’ has been considered within international refugee law. As it would be misleading to insist on too rigid a genealogy of the term ‘burden sharing’, given the far-reaching potential for application of such a concept within international refugee law theory and practice, the first section identifies the defining ways in which the concept is used. The second section critically interrogates the logics that underlie the commonplace notion of ‘the burden’ of burden sharing and postulates a different framework of understanding the concept. The chapter ultimately argues that, if the ‘burden’ represents a cost, then it is more aptly described as the cost of bordering logics, rather than the cost of accommodating refugee migration, and that the social, historical, political and moral dimensions of this cost should be urgently evaluated