How does linguistic indifference masquerade as linguistic resistance?

As we have argued throughout, language is always already political. Nevertheless, collegiate German studies curricula often seem largely indifferent to language politics, especially those that complicate or disrupt the notion of German as a singular language with an indexical relationship to the nation-states with which it is associated. However, discourses such as those described in the previous sections on linguistic indifference in cultural production and in language policy are relevant for learners of German since they reflect societal ideologies that they may encounter and that they themselves may endorse or reject. As Norman Fairclough writes, “If we are committed to education establishing resources for citizenship, critical awareness of the language practices of one’s speech community is an entitlement” (6). While citizenship in a German-speaking country may not be on the horizon for most US-based German learners, questions about who is granted positions of legitimacy within the disparate body of individuals that comprise “the German-speaking community” ought to be a central question in German studies education. This requires attention to the complexity of language and its use but also critical attention to the relationships between language and power. Complaining about bad subtitles can be a critical act of resistance against linguistic indifference. Students leaving our classrooms should be able to explain to their non- German-speaking friends what they missed in a subtitled film, but they should also be able to watch a subtitled film in a language they themselves do not understand with an awareness of how much more is involved than what they read and be able to leverage this understanding in pushing back against the popular discourse around subtitled films that enables linguistic indifference

A sovereign to overthrow: the development of theories on kingship, tyranny, and the king's two bodies in John of Salisbury's Policraticus

This thesis examines the theories of kingship and tyranny proposed by the twelfth-century English cleric John of Salisbury in his work of political thought Policraticus, which appeared fully for the first time in 1159 CE. The tumultuous nature of twelfth-century England influenced John of Salisbury as he took up work under the Archbishop of Canterbury after studying in France. Salisbury began to consider the role of the king and the power the sovereign held during a civil war in England and the later rise of King Henry II to the throne. The theories in Policraticus create the image of a king who is both a divine authority in the kingdom and a servant of the people. The work further argues against tyranny and offers tyrannicide as a final solution to the problem should a dominating tyrant exist. This thesis also examines the early development of the theory of the king’s two bodies, a medieval principle of kingship, as it relates to Salisbury’s theorizing in Policraticus

Dynamics of endosomal trafficking

Endosomes are dynamic vesicular structures which transport cargo molecules internalized into the cell via endocytosis. Endosomal trafficking of cargo involves a large number of individual endosomes that regularly interact with each other via fusion and fission and thus form a dynamic network wherein endocytosed cargo is sorted and transported to various other intracellular compartments. In this study we present a general theoretical framework that takes into account individual endosomes and several key microscopic interaction processes among them. By combining theory with quantitative experiments, we seek to address the fundamental question of how the behaviour of the endosomal network emerges from the interactions among many individual endosomes of different sizes and cargo contents. Our theory is based on distributions of endosomes of various sizes and cargo amount. We compare our theory to experimental time course distributions of LDL, a degradative cargo, in a population of early endosomes. Early endosomes display a broad distribution of cargo with a characteristic power law, which we show is a consequence of stochastic fusion events of cargo carrying early endosomes. A simple model can quantitatively describe time-dependent statistics of LDL distributions in individual early endosomes. From fits of the theory to experimental data we can determine key parameters of endosomal trafficking such as the endosome fusion rate and the fluxes of cargo into and out of the network. Our theory predicts several experimentally confirmed scaling behaviours, which arise as a result of endosome fusion. Our theory provides a link between the dynamics at individual endosome level and average properties of the endosomal network. We show from our theory that some features of the endosomal distributions, which arise from interactions among individual endosomes, are sensitive to alterations in chosen parameters. This provides a direct means to study perturbation experiments wherein the cargo distribution can vary in response to changes of the endocytic system. Our analysis provides a powerful tool for the study of genetic and chemical perturbations that may alter specific systems properties and for extracting various kinetic rates involved in endosomal trafficking from only still images at different points

Qualified Immunity for Officers’ Reasonable Reliance on Lawyers’ Advice

An officer is entitled to qualified immunity when a reasonable officer would not have known that her conduct violated clearly established law. Courts disagree over whether and how an officer’s receipt of legal advice before acting supports the qualified immunity defense by showing that, based on the advice, a reasonable officer would have thought that her conduct would not violate clearly established law. This Article argues that legal advice should support the qualified immunity defense. It argues that when an officer asserts reliance on legal advice as supporting qualified immunity, a court should consider whether in the circumstances the officer was reasonable to rely on that legal advice, rather than analyzing the issue under a narrow “extraordinary circumstances” exception. It further proposes a detailed framework for assessing reasonableness, based on a synthesis of various circuits’ divergent approaches to this specific question, the Supreme Court’s evolving approach to qualified immunity, and the policies that drive the qualified immunity doctrine. This detailed framework for a searching reasonableness analysis is the best way to balance the imposition of liability for officers who violate clear law against the recognition that often the best course for a reasonable officer will be to seek and rely on a legal opinion about a difficult legal question