You’re trouble you are, just like your mother! An intergenerational autobiographical narrative on activism in Higher Education

This paper draws on autobiographical interviews of a mother and daughter concerning their experiences of working in higher education to explore the changes in university teaching and research in the UK and also the possibilities of challenging prevalent normative assumptions about aims and purpose. It uses the qualitative methodology of narrative enquiry, particularly in its focus on temporality, sociality and place, to create a co-constructed account which is able to expose critical events, possibilities and limitations for higher education ‘activists’ in the recent past and present. It will be shown that the quality of the relationship between the two researcher-participants had a significant impact on the quality of the data generated, and that together the relationship and methodology promoted interpretation and analysis in ‘uncommonly accelerated ways’ (Carillo & Baguley, 2011). At the same time, it created moments of discomfort and misunderstandings about ideological perceptions. It was found that while there were some similarities at least initially between the experiences of the two interviewees in their capacities both to perform to work expectations and to take an activist position, substantial differences were identified due, in particular, to generational intellectual schisms as well as shifts in higher education from elitist institutions promoting public good to mass, neo-liberal institutions with performative and institutional goals and practices. The European dream of becoming ‘the most competitive and knowledge-based economy of the world’ (European Council, 2000) has marked the transformation and modernisation of social welfare and education systems…. When policies and institutional practices based on competence, efficiency and competition are stressed, ideals such as equity and social community tend to become secondary (Arnesan, 2011

Interactive cutting path analysis programs

The operation of numerically controlled machine tools is interactively simulated. Four programs were developed to graphically display the cutting paths for a Monarch lathe, Cintimatic mill, Strippit sheet metal punch, and the wiring path for a Standard wire wrap machine. These programs are run on a IMLAC PDS-ID graphic display system under the DOS-3 disk operating system. The cutting path analysis programs accept input via both paper tape and disk file

Goldstone Gauginos

Models of supersymmetry with Dirac gauginos provide an attractive scenario for physics beyond the standard model. The "supersoft" radiative corrections and suppressed SUSY production at colliders provide for more natural theories and an understanding of why no new states have been seen. Unfortunately, these models are handicapped by a tachyon which is naturally present in existing models of Dirac gauginos. We argue that this tachyon is absent, with the phenomenological successes of the model preserved, if the right handed gaugino is a (pseudo-)Goldstone field of a spontaneously broken anomalous flavor symmetry.Comment: 5 pages, 1 figure. v2: minor changes to text, references added and update

Models of Goldstone Gauginos

Models with Dirac gauginos provide appealing scenarios for physics beyond the standard model. They have smaller radiative corrections to the Higgs mass, a suppression of certain SUSY production processes, and ameliorated flavor constraints. Unfortunately, they also generally have tachyons, the solutions to which typically spoil these positive features. The recently proposed "Goldstone Gaugino" mechanism provides a simple solution that eliminates these tachyonic states. We provide details on this mechanism and explore models for its origin. In particular, we find SUSY QCD models that realize this idea simply, and discuss scenarios for unification.Comment: 33 pages, 4 figure

Naturalization and Naturalization Law: Some Empirical Observations

Ian F. Haney López, White by Law: The Legal Construction of Race. New York: New York University Press, 1996. Pp. xiv, 296. $24.95 (cloth),$17.95 (paper). Fourteen years ago, Robert Gordon noted that scholars associated with the Critical Legal Studies movement pay a lot of attention to history. In fact, wrote Gordon, Critical Legal Studies scholars have probably devoted more pages to historical description - particularly the intellectual history of legal doctrine - than to anything else. Much the same could be said today of the academic movement known as Critical Race Theory. Although Critical Race theorists are concerned above all with alleviating current racial injustice, they devote a good deal of their intellectual energy to examining the past. In the following Book Note, I consider one of the most recent and celebrated historical contributions to Critical Race Theory, Ian Haney López\u27s White by Law: The Legal Construction of Race. Unlike other evaluations of White by Law, this Book Note focuses not on Haney López\u27s theoretical objectives, but on one of his central empirical claims. In particular, it examines Haney López\u27s pathbreaking discussion of the role anthropological evidence played in determining the outcome of two Supreme Court decisions of the 1920s: Ozawa v. United States and United States v. Thind. Both decisions clarified the racial requirements for becoming a naturalized U.S. citizen under federal law. I have divided this Book Note into three brief sections. First, I describe the subject of White by Law and explain why Haney López\u27s analysis of Ozawa and Thind forms the foundation on which he constructs his more general historical and normative conclusions. Second, by considering the language of Ozawa and Thind and the jurisprudence of Justice George Sutherland, the author of both decisions, I suggest how that analysis is open to empirical critique. My remarks on Justice Sutherland focus on his consistent wariness toward the use of social science by the Supreme Court, as well as on his drive to consolidate federal authority over international affairs. Finally, I propose an alternative perspective on Ozawa and Thind that I hope might supplement Haney López\u27s trenchant interpretation

Prudent Politics: The International Criminal Court, International Relations, and Prosecutorial Independence

I contend that the political environment affects international prosecutors’ professional decisions. Admittedly, it is difficult for me to provide irrefutable proof of that claim—unless a former prosecutor of the ICTY, ICTR, ICC, or other internationalized criminal court improbably publishes a memoir in which he or she acknowledges that political considerations played an important role in the exercise of his or her prosecutorial functions. I will nevertheless seek to offer some examples of cases in which international criminal courts appeared to have acted, at least in part, on the basis of political considerations in carrying out their work. But beyond the claim that prosecutors do take politics into account, my stronger claim is that prosecutors should take politics into account. They should do so, though, in reflective, deliberative ways, not in the reactive and counterproductive ways we have at times witnessed in at least a few cases