text: The Cambridge Union Society 2016-05-31T18:27:35-04:00 The Cambridge Union Society http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/author/index.php?author=the-cambridge-union-society Copyright 2008, HuffingtonPost.com, Inc. HuffingtonPost Blogger Feed for The Cambridge Union Society Good old fashioned elbow grease. This House Regrets Organised Religion tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2015:/theblog//3.7265694 2015-05-12T10:37:49-04:00 2016-05-12T05:59:01-04:00 The Cambridge Union Society http://www.huffingtonpost.com/the-cambridge-union-society/ Proposition Leyla Gumusdis The twitter handle @TheTweetOfGod has nearly two million followers. Worldwide, more than eight out of ten people identify with a religious group (or at least, this is what the Pew Research Group found in 2010). This is over five and a half billion people. The remainder are religiously unaffiliated, an identification that by no means excludes them from holding religious or spiritual beliefs. Organised religion is huge. There is no denying this fact. It has adherents worldwide and over history has given us moral standards and education. It has helped create communities and spread learning - in Europe literacy was advanced by Protestants who believed men should be able to read the bible and by Catholic orders who established schools. Organised religion has the resources, influence and reach to do good. Yet tonight this House urges you to reconsider this judgment. This House regrets organised religion. This House believes its benefits are far outweighed by the damage it has done to this world. Yes, it sets moral standards. But it makes it extremely easy to cower behind these and refuse change - it makes it acceptable to deny marriage to those who do not conform to societal expectations, to force women to have children they feel they cannot raise. Yes, it has furthered education. But at times it held back learning for centuries - the Catholic Church tried Galileo for heresy and placed him under house arrest because championed heliocentrism. Yes, the Muslim world preserved classical learning and advanced it at the time when Europe had rejected it, but the fundamental fact remains that Europe rejected it in no small part because of organised religion. Yes, it creates communities. But too often it has created them in opposition to others, too often it has spurred mankind to war, too often it has turned us against each other. Organised religion is a danger. In the form most of us know it, it is beholden to ancient customs and teachings. In order for society to advance, we must do away with traditionalism and superstition (as the Enlightenment tried to). We cannot justify decisions based on: my people have always done this, a religion created over a thousand years ago proclaims this, I have a community who will back me up on this. We regret organised religion - we regret it deeply - because it has held us back. Does it encourage any to do good, to be charitable, to think of others? Yes. Is it used to encourage us to create territorial communities, to foster hostility, to retard the forward march of society? Also yes. Herein lies the fundamental problem: by itself, organised religion is no evil. If anything, it is a force for good. But it has been corrupted over the centuries and is too easily manipulated. Many of the worst atrocities have been committed in the name of a religion, and we forget this at our peril. And so we implore you, for the sake of civilisation, to follow God and skip church. Opposition Naile Shamgunova Disclaimer: I am religious, but I passionately believe in secularism and separation between organised religion and state. However, that does not mean that organised religion in itself is a bad thing. The common arguments against it tend to rest on the amount of influence a religious organisation be it the Catholic Church with its Inquisition or countries ruled by Sharia Law. There is a principal difference between these two examples: one represents a powerful independent organisation which can influence a government and another - a direct rule by a religious organisation. Any arguments against the latter, good as they might be (a secular state is better because it is, at least in theory, based on rational principles rather than beliefs of a particular group of people etc), cannot be equated to arguments against organised religion per se. The secular and democratic state which secularism strives to create is, by definition, respectful to people of any gender, sexuality, political or religious affiliations. Prohibiting organised religion would be going against the very principles which secularism is supposed to be upholding. The right of a religious organisation as a private association of like-minded people to exist is more difficult to argue against than the right of a religious organisation to be directly involved in governmental structures. However, independent religious organisations are also a form of organised religion. By the virtue of being private associations, they have a right to exist. If individual members of a religious organisation commit certain crimes, for example, hate speech or harassment, it is their individual responsibility rather than the result of the principle of freedom of organisation. In other words, just because members of a pro-life church harassed women outside of an abortion clinic, despicable as it might be, does not mean that hundreds of other peaceful people should not be allowed to come together to worship as a community if they wish so. All this means is that religious organisation should be allowed, it does not really mean that their existence is not regrettable, some would argue. Look at all the influence some 'independent' organisations, such as the Catholic Church, have. Look at the amount of power they can have in covering up various abuses and crimes. The obvious answer to that would be, again, that the existence of those individual organisations is regrettable, but not the entire principle. The same principle can be applied to secular organisations. Just because, say, BP has a huge amount of power and can evade justice in environmental cases does not mean that a hard-working Uncle Jo should not be allowed to be industrious and open a small petrol station. The abuses are the problem in both cases, and they must be tackled, but that does not mean that the whole framework is inherently flawed. A similar argument can be used for the issue of 'regretting' what religious organisations have done in the past. Again, an analogy can be made between the 'Church N burned that many people' argument and any other type of organisation. For example, just because the British state persecuted LGBT+ people in the 20th century does not mean that the existence of the British state or even the concept of a state in general is regrettable, it just means that a particular historical example is. I could talk about spiritual solace people can get from representatives of an organised religion or the positive effect certain religious organisations can have on communities by organising various activities and bringing people together, but that is essentially anecdotal evidence. What is more important is the right of people to have access, even theoretically, to that solace or community experiences if that is what they want. Denying people the right of association based on an ideological factor, among other things, sets a dangerous precedent. To conclude, I do regret various factors connected with organised religion, but that does not mean that the very principle of it is regrettable. Follow the debate... https://www.facebook.com/events/837092042993449/]]> This House Wouldn't Vote Because They're All Tossers Anyway tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2015:/theblog//3.7220206 2015-05-06T05:18:16-04:00 2016-05-06T05:59:01-04:00 The Cambridge Union Society http://www.huffingtonpost.com/the-cambridge-union-society/ Proposition Leyla Gumusdis The Oxford English Dictionary has four definitions for the term "Tosser": I. One who or that which tosses II. A term of contempt or abuse for a person III. A cooking-vessel, a tossing-pan IV. A penny, a coin of small value As far as this House is concerned politicians (the "all" referred to in the motion) conform to all four of these definitions. Definitions one and three are fulfilled jointly: as part of the campaigning for this general election (recently declared to be the most important general election since the last one) we have been treated to a number of interviews with politicians taking place in their kitchens -- ideal response from point of view of spin doctors: look! He's just like us! He has a kitchen! (except for Miliband who is a tosser [def. 2] because he has two) -- and I would be astounded if these did not include some sort of omelet tossing. Definition four is fulfilled in the sense that politicians, like small change, are shiny, without real value and keep turning up in the most unexpected places. However, for the purposes of this debate, it is the second definition which is most applicable. Politicians have racked up a lot of abuse over the course of this election cycle. Nigel Farage was challenged to a duel in Hyde Park by a Polish aristocrat (which led to an amusing press release from UKIP conceding that "Nigel doesn't have a sword"). Ed Miliband had his romantic past dredged up (hard to believe he has one, but still) and was further ridiculed for falling off a stage. David Cameron was humiliated when the Conservative Party's attempt to set up a twitter hashtag to rival #milifandom (oddly popular among preteen girls - am I the only one not seeing the appeal?), the #cameronettes, failed utterly. The Prime Minister was further damaged by admitting that he is indeed related to the Kardashians. Nick Clegg after visiting a hedgehog sanctuary (see what I mean about unexpected places?) and taking a picture with Humpty, a hedgehog with a head injury which means he walks around in circles (you really couldn't make this up), was greeted by a Times headline reading: "A very prickly endangered species... and a hedgehog". Meanwhile a participant in one of Lord Ashcroft's focus groups honed in on Nicola Sturgeon's biggest problem: "I wouldn't trust that Nicola Sturgeon, she's got very thin lips". Finally Natalie Bennet, leader of the Greens, lost her voice after "too many conversations with voters" and The Economist suggested that "some in her party might be grateful for her silence". Do the politicians deserve this abuse? Absolutely. After all, they're politicians! One of the main conditions for being able to pursue the career they've chosen is to be a tosser. In the opinion of this House, there is only one contest that merits voting in: the constituents of Hampstead and Kilburn will have a choice between Ronnie Carroll, who appeared in the Eurovision Song Contest and is now deceased but will still appear on the ballot, and Maajid Nawaaz, a former Islamist who has been threatened by Islamic State after videos surfaced of him enjoying a lap-dance. Now there are some tossers worth voting for! Opposition Sarah Sheard Earlier this week Russell Brand pulled off the latest bizarrity in a surreal election run-up (8 and a half foot monolith, anyone?) by renouncing his previous promotion of no-voting and instead urging his followers to vote Labour. "I know I've been Mr Don't Vote," he admitted, "but what I mean is politics isn't something we can just be involved in once every five years, not just elections. Democracy is something you should be constantly involved in." I'll admit when I heard the news, I may have muttered something somewhat cynical about his followers' inevitable time-machine jolly back to the voter registration deadline in April. But let's be optimistic here; if I can show you a staunch no-voter who has U-turned, particularly one as irritatingly stubborn as Russell Brand, then I may as well end this op-ed piece here. When Russell Brand visited the Union in Michaelmas 2013, he spouted endlessly idealistic soundbites about the coming 'revolution'; for someone so set on meaningless rhetoric to sell books and tour tickets to explicitly say that voting is the only realistic way to get the Tories out surely says something about the power of voting. I wouldn't dispute that the majority of politicians are out-of-touch and abhorrent to the majority of people. But the fact of the matter is that, at the moment, until Russell Brand sounds his celestial conch shell to galvanise the youth into implementing the revolution and establishing the benevolent autocracy of a one-time comedian, parliament makes the decisions. Those politicians make the decisions. And I'd hope anyone with half a brain would realise that, although there's probably less wiggle-room between a Tory and a Labourite today than some people might like, there are still fundamental differences between the parties; the possibility of an EU referendum and UKIP's weird obsession with phrasing any potential question as 'do you wish to be a free, independent sovereign democracy?' is the most obvious example of that. At the last count, about 8.6 million, or 15.7% of eligible voters, were not registered to vote. In the 2010 election, the turnout of 18-24 year olds was just 22%. Whilst some will look at those statistics and claim it wouldn't have mattered even if they had voted - in some seats, I would agree. As a Homertonian I technically live in South Cambridgeshire, rather than Cambridge, and am thus condemned to voting in a seat which has been safely Tory since 1997. Damn you, Andrew Lansley. But to look just beyond Hills Road and see Cambridge, one of the true battleground seats of this election, is a reminder that in some places, every vote counts. In 2010, 10 seats were won or lost by a margin of just 194 votes, with the closest battle for Hampstead and Kilburn being decided by just 42 votes. Yes, this is probably only the case in a few constituencies, and perhaps it's the fact that I will continue to live on under a Tory MP into the considerable future that is motivating this slightly tearful opinion piece. I would challenge any no-voter, however, not to spout a single opinion on a politician, issue or electoral speculation for the next five years; put literally, if you don't vote, then you do not get a say in parliament, and I, in my MP-esque regality, will not have the patience to listen to you complain about an issue you abstained from making any decisions on. At least until Russell Brand finally rallies his Youtube minions to spill MPs' blood in the glorious revolution, this is what we're stuck with; we may as well make the most of it. Follow the debate... https://www.facebook.com/events/900130613381731/]]> The House Believes in the Unconditional Right to Offend tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2015:/theblog//3.7163764 2015-04-28T14:36:46-04:00 2015-06-28T05:59:02-04:00 The Cambridge Union Society http://www.huffingtonpost.com/the-cambridge-union-society/ Proposition Sam Deans Let's be clear on what this motion means outside the Cambridge Bubble. It indicates consent for a government to a) define offence and b) legislate against it. Here's why that's an awful idea. When we consider principles like freedom of speech, we have to ask why it is that we hold them. For me, the best arguments for most moral standards are consequential. Take freedom of speech, for example. First, it leads to what is often described as a "free market" of ideas - we will be exposed to better ideas, and the best ones will come to prominence at the detriment of poorer ones. Also, the right to freedom of speech is good for individuals - when people can express their feelings about the world, they have a means to complain about unfair treatment. To support conditions on the right for those ideas to be offensive is to allow the government to curb thisexchange of ideas. There are two major reasons why we should be worried about this. The first reason is the suppression of minority morality. Although not every instance of offence is a useful contribution to a debate (cf Hopkins on more or less anything - I'm reserving my right to offend Sun readers here), there are moral decisions which need to be made where the outcome will offend some people. An example is the debate over women's access to abortions. For many people, the answer to this debate is clear-cut, and anyone arguing to the contrary is advocating the abhorrent violation of basic human rights. Unfortunately, that is also how the other side feels. Whichever happens to be more popular in a given country at a given time should not prevent those who disagree from even discussing the issue. The risk is, that in trying to come up with definitions of offence to stop people calling migrants "cockroaches", legitimate dissent on a range of issues will be prevented too, on the grounds that it is morally offensive to the majority. This is a clear mechanism where change in views will be stifled by measures designed to curb offence. The second mechanism for this stems not from clumsy bureaucracy but from how individuals will respond to an anti-offence policy. There is a great feeling in the UK that 'political correctness' defines restrictive boundaries to discourse, and resentment of this means that people become entrenched in their views. This is clear in the debate about immigration in the UK, and the common orthodoxy that the Left sees talking about immigration as racism. This, ironically, stops people from taking any criticism when what they say is genuinely offensive. An official prohibition on offence would not eradicate 'offensive' views, but preserve them. In truth, student debates about No Platform policies, angry tweets written to smug New Statesman journalists, or even Brendan O'Neil's most recent rant on Spiked are insignificant in the extreme to the wider importance of free speech. Free speech is, at its core, a protection for dissenting voices from the views of the current regime or the wider social mores. Without an unalienable right to say what we think, we lose the exchange of ideas which makes freedom of speech so valuable. Opposition James Riseley Debating Officer Last year, Australia's Attorney General George Brandis announced his intentions to cut out part of Australia's Racial Discrimination Act. He wanted to remove section 18C, that section which made it illegal to "offend, insult, humiliate or intimidate" someone on the basis of their "race, colour or national or ethnic origin". It would still be illegal to directly incite others to hatred. But whether a comment was offensive would no longer be relevant when determining whether it was legal. How he justified the changes (which luckily were later dropped) has become infamous: "People have the right to be bigots you know," he said, "in this country people have the right to say things that other people find offensive or bigoted". His comments would not look out of place in a speech at the Cambridge Union, or a Guardian op-ed defending our unconditional right to offend others. Unfortunately, comments like his point to the broken nature of those debates. How we talk about free speech is misguided. We frame the free speech debate almost exclusively in terms of the issue of 'offense' - what is offensive, who gets to decide, whether offensive speech be permitted, and so on. That is an important issue, but it is by no means the only issue. And there are reasons other than 'offense' - in many cases more powerful ones - why we ought to curtail some kinds of speech. We need to cast the debate in a different, more nuanced light. We need to unpack what we mean when we call something offensive, because the term itself is unhelpfully broad. A homophobe may be 'offended' when they see two men holding hands in the street; a survivor of sexual assault may be 'offended' upon hearing someone trivialize rape. What those two people are feeling is not the same thing, and anyone who suggests as much is foolish. In light of that, I want to argue (1) that offense is sometimes a good reason to curtail speech, but that (2) we ignore other reasons why we should curtail speech by fetishizing the word 'offense'. As a society we place an enormous value on freedom, especially free speech. But as a society we also value things other than freedom. Even the most die-hard defender of free speech presumably supports laws against libel and direct incitement to hatred/violence. Those laws are an affront to free speech, but we think that the speech they are banning isn't worth the harm it causes to others. So the free speech debate is really a balancing act. We need to consider our different values as they come into conflict, and then make a decision about which ones we think we should privilege. It many cases freedom will trump. In others, it should not. Everyone is well aware that Katie Hopkins recently compared asylum seekers to "cockroaches". She has been lambasted for those comments, and police are investigating whether they constitute incitement to hatred. Regardless, if she had written her article in Australia, she may well have been in trouble for breaking section 18C of the RDA. And quite rightly so. You say: offense should not be a test for whether a speech-act is legal. I say: stop saying the word 'offense' and look at the speech-act itself. When swastikas are painted on the walls of synagogues in France, when members of the Westboro Baptist Church picket the funerals of dead soldiers, shouting "God hates fags," and "God hates America," and when Katie Hopkins vilifies asylum seekers, more is happening than the utterance of sounds. Using mere words, we can cause people profound grief - we can bully them, we can humiliate them, we can make them feel uncomfortable going outside and with themselves. So you can call Katie Hopkins' article offensive. You would be right. I would say it is offensive, but it is also so much more than that. Instead of using hollow labels, we should look at how an asylum seeker would feel when they read it - the kind of shame it would engender, the impact it would have on their ability to live life as they want to. If we did that, I suspect more people would be willing to abandon their free speech fundamentalism, and support measures like 18C. Follow the debate... https://www.facebook.com/events/440811362753190/]]> This House Blames the West for Islamic Extremism tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2015:/theblog//3.7120258 2015-04-22T15:34:26-04:00 2015-06-22T05:59:01-04:00 The Cambridge Union Society http://www.huffingtonpost.com/the-cambridge-union-society/ Proposition Sam Deans Of course, within any large enough faith or political movement, there will always be those who are prepared to use violence to advance their cause - the Animal Liberation Front springs to the mind of a biologist. But when we see terrible acts of violence on the news attached to 'Islamist' groups, we have to consider how it is that normal people can get sucked into groups whose raison d'être is violence. Therefore it is relevant to look at the growth of Islamic extremist groups when we talk about Islamic extremism, rather than looking at the origins of particular ideologies. The answers, as I see it, rely on West's interactions with the Middle East and with Muslims at least since the 1980s, if not much longer ago. The funding of the Afghan Mujahideen is a case in point. In order to fight a proxy war against the Soviet Union, the USA poured money into diverse Islamist groups in Afghanistan, which were able to organise as coordinated networks. This is where al-Qaeda comes in; its formation in 1988 was catalysed by the aid given to guerrilla groups by the USA. Many large Islamic extremist groups have splintered directly from al-Qaeda (such as ISIS) or received funding from them (such as Boko Haram). From this, we see that the West's dedication to proxy wars have enabled the growth of these groups and their ideology. The other element to the success of extremist Islamic groups is their recruitment. Locally, recruitment to extremist groups can happen by a number of mechanisms: coercion, which bolsters numbers but not ideology, recruitment along religious lines and recruitment through a common anti-western narrative. The last two are often mixed, but it would seem reasonable to assume that the correlation between the expansion of these groups is mainly due to anti-western sentiment for two reasons. The first reason is that the impetus for the growth of Islamist groups in the Middle East has been Western military interventions in the region, most notably the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Although power vacuums caused by conflict allow groups like ISIS to expand, dropping cluster bombs on people doesn't normally improve their opinion of you. The second reason comes from looking at recruitment from abroad. Two men arrested in the UK last year going to fight in Syria had ordered "Islam for Dummies" from Amazon beforehand - a striking example of the way that religious ideology isn't the determining factor in Isis recruitment abroad. Rather, the religious ideology provides justification for turning anger at the West's conduct in the recent wars and, indeed, at widely-held prejudices at home, into violence. So here we see that the West's military interventions are more important in recruitment to extremist groups than preconceived religious notions. The blame for the West, therefore, is twofold; in creating the jihadist groups which exist today, and in appalling behaviour in the Middle East which is used as a rallying cry. The growth in the ideology is a byproduct of the growth of militant organisations, and the blame for this can be set squarely at our own door. Opposition Naomi Magnus Much of the post-9/11 discourse and many of the events undertaken by the West as part of the 'war on terror' may have further contributed to Islamic Extremism, rather than alleviated it, through radicalising those who would not have previously been labelled as 'extremists', the root causes of Islamic Extremism long precede these events. Neither do the roots come from other events prior to the 'war on terror', which the proposition may refer to in order to lay the blame for Islamic Extremism on the West; for example the 1953 Iranian coup d'état, which disposed the previous leader and replaced him with the Anglo-American backed Shah Pahlavi, or the support given by some Western governments to anti-Soviet fighters - who would later form the Taliban Government -during the Soviet-Afghan War. These events may have (inadvertently) contributed to the spread of Islamic Extremism, but its roots were already there, and were not created or influenced by the West. The modern Islamic fundamentalist movements have their origins in the late 19th century. The Wahhabi movement, the form of state-sponsored Islamic fundamentalism within Saudi Arabia, began in the 18th century, but gained traction and spread during the 19th and 20th centuries. Reviewing the history of Islamic extremism, in both Shiite and Sunni Islam, reveals their joint origin. Wahhabis, in the Arabian Peninsula, demanded a return to the Salaf (the early period of Islam) and found their desired government after a coalition with the Saud family. Abul Ala Maududi proposed the idea of reviving the caliphate and creating a unified government for all the Muslim lands during the Indian independence movement. He also wrote and published the first draft of a constitution for this government. His thought has been welcomed by Saudi Arabia. The ideas of Maududi also greatly influenced Sayyid Qutb, the main ideologist of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, and he continued to spread the ideology of Maududi in reviving the Islamic government and opposing the West. In the Shiite world, Mohammad Baqir al-Sadr, inspired by the ideology of Maududi, presented and published a new version of the constitution of the Islamic government. When the Iranian constitution was being codified, he presented the religious elders of Iran with a template containing the general structure of the Islamic state. This template was given to the religious elders just as the interim government of Iran had presented to the Constitutional Assembly of the Experts a secular draft of the constitution. As a result, Mohammad Beheshti, the vice president of the assembly, immediately prepared a new draft based on the writings of Sadr and eventually, after small modifications, that same draft was confirmed by the assembly. Even in its current form as a social movement and apart from its historical religious background, this movement was a reaction to the frailty and weakness of Islamic countries compared with their glorious pasts. Though the proposition may argue as such, the decline of many Islamic countries or empires cannot be uniformly pinned on Western colonialism. For example, the decline of the Ottoman Empire is related to a multitude of factors for which the West cannot be blamed; namely its role as one of the Central Powers, in alliance with Austro-Hungary and Germany, during WWI - particularly with regards to The Arab Revolt, which turned the tide against the Ottomans at the Middle Eastern front. The Revolt aimed to secure independence from the ruling Ottoman Turks and create a single unified Arab state spanning from Aleppo in Syria to Aden in Yemen. Hence, though the West may well have contributed to Islamic Extremism (often when it is trying to do exactly the opposite) as a result of its direct or indirect actions, it cannot be 'blamed' for it. Ultimately, the roots of Islamic Extremism fall in the Islamic world - not the Western one. Follow the debate... https://www.facebook.com/events/1028766920486588/]]> This Future Astronaut Believes Space Exploration is Worth the Cost tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2015:/theblog//3.6721004 2015-02-20T10:28:50-05:00 2015-04-22T05:59:01-04:00 The Cambridge Union Society http://www.huffingtonpost.com/the-cambridge-union-society/ On 5th February 2015, the Cambridge Union hosted a debate, sponsored by Mendeley, on the motion 'This House Believes Space Exploration is Worth the Cost'. Dr Christine Corbett Moran, a computational astrophysicist, debated in proposition of the motion, here outlines her stance on the debate. It was an honour to recently debate with Professor Gerry Gilmore and Professor Alistair Reynolds on the side of space exploration being worth the cost. We discussed this issue constructively with Dr. Bapuji Roa Velagapudi, Myrto Vlazaki, and Cammy Mitchell (all involved in medical careers) in the Cambridge Union Society, the oldest debating society in the world. More than 80% of the attendees of the debate agreed with Professors Gilmore, Reynolds and myself that indeed it space exploration has been, is and will continue to be worth the cost. I won't go into the opposition's points in detail, as we were on the same page on so many of them: there are vast and terrible problems to be solved on earth and we need to commandeer more resources to solve them. Where we diverged in opinion with the opposition was both on calculating the cost of space exploration and on calculating the true cost that neglecting to progress into the cosmos would bring to humanity. A typical argument against funding space exploration goes that money devoted to space exploration is diverted from charity and human developing programs, the particularly aggressive objectors citing endemic problems of the developing world. And yet the developing world itself sees vast value in space: Nigeria launched its first satellite in 2003, and China, India and others strive to replicate and expand achievements in technology and science to drive space exploration forward. India's space program and satellite constellations allow it to survey natural resources, enable communications, have disaster management support perform meteorology, and do pilot programs in tele-education and tele-medicine for an underserved population. Dr. A.P.J. Abdul Kalem, former president of India said: "As a scientist who has been part of the growth process of the space sector in India, I find this field of human endeavor has, in the last 50 years, made an unprecedented impact on the life of the human race." Humanity as a whole-the developing and the developed world with their respective problems-broadly sees space exploration as an expression of being human and a vote for technological progress as a potential if unpredictable solution to many problems homegrown and abroad. No more than we demand a civilization put all art, music, and pleasure on hold until all of its human rights issues are solved can we demand that space exploration be relegated to that hypothetical place and time of a post-scarcity of problems. This is precisely because cultural development is a human right itself, and exploration of the cosmos is a prime form of that. As physicist Robert Wilson put it "this new knowledge has all to do with honor and country, but has nothing to do directly with defending our country except to help make it worth defending". In the early stages of space exploration, the bulk of the funding came from governments who helped inject research and experimental funds to push our capabilities further, faster. Though the future of space exploration was enabled by this early governmental research it now lies in the private industry which hopes to make billions and even trillions from the great unknown, creating jobs, opportunities, and perhaps even civilizations. It is the private corporation SpaceX, not the U.S. or international governments, that leads the way in developing technology and cultural will to visit and colonize Mars. Governmental funding of space exploration has in the past provided that catalyst to what industry will take to the next level. It will continue to do so at a lesser and sustainable scale with examples such as NASA's selection of SpaceX as part of America's human spaceflight program evincing the burgeoning governmental and industrial partnerships in this field. It has been just over 200 years since the rocket equation based on Newton's third law was introduced. Shortly thereafter science fiction writers such as Jules Verne and Orson Welles expanded our imaginations from The Earth to the Moon to Mars with The War of the Worlds. In between, 1929 saw the first liquid fuel rocket. This technology decades later culminated in the Apollo program and expanded humanity's reach-via robotic probes-into the solar system in the subsequent decades. Technology transfers from the space to the consumer sector abounded along the way but as Richard Dawkins succinctly said "justifying space exploration because we get non-stick frying pans [Teflon was a product of the space research] is like justifying music because it is good exercise for the violinist's right arm". An EU report in 2000 concluded that abstaining from space investment at the EU level would result in a loss of leadership, competitiveness, a weak role in international space policy, difficulties in keeping scientists in the EU, a loss of past efforts, and introduce critical and perhaps even fatal delays at response when new opportunities or pressures inevitably present themselves all at a savings of roughly 0.7% of the EU's budget. Willingly entering a Middle Ages of space exploration is simply not worth the cost. Opponents to space exploration advocate that "Mars is not going anywhere" but without going to Mars and beyond, neither is all of humanity. We cannot wait until the time we must go to Mars and beyond to attempt to do so, by then it is already too late; rather, we must develop space exploration capabilities to help guide humanity to a Universe of wonder.]]> This House Supports the Right to Be Forgotten tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2014:/theblog//3.6131192 2014-11-10T04:14:41-05:00 2015-01-09T05:59:02-05:00 The Cambridge Union Society http://www.huffingtonpost.com/the-cambridge-union-society/ On Thursday October 23rd the Cambridge Union Society hosted a debate sponsored by Mendeley about the right to be forgotten online, and voted to oppose the motion. Gabriel Hughes, VP of Analytics at Elsevier and a former executive at Google, outlines his own stance in opposition and reflects on the overall debate. Should we have the right to force search engines to remove links to information which we don't want other people to see? A May 2014 ruling in a case brought against Google gave European citizens this power and sparked a heated worldwide debate. Althought the 'right to be forgotten' had been first outlined in the EU's 1995 Data Protection Directive, these recent developments showed us what it could mean in practice, and this is what I find myself passionately opposed to. It is clear that an absolute right to be forgotten, allowing everyone complete control over what information about them should be published online, makes no sense. We need to know about politicians who have fiddled expenses, doctors who have been sued for malpractice, and bankers convicted of fraud. If there is to be a right to be forgotten, then everyone accepts there has to be a balance between the rights of individuals, freedom of speech and the public interest. What then of the specific 'right to be forgotten' now granted in European law? The ruling which has led to this arose from the case a Spanish businessman, Mario Costeja González, brought against Google. Mr González Googled himself in 2009 and found a link to a public notice about the forced sale of his house 9 years before. Understandably he would prefer to appear to be financially reliable, so he contacted the publisher, a newspaper called La Vanguardia, and asked them to remove the notice. They said they could not, as the notice was made by order of a Spanish court. Here we get to the heart of the matter. The underlying problem that Mr González had was nothing to do with search engines, and yet it is Google who has been pursued and ruled against in this case. What is particularly perverse is that while the search engine is obliged to remove links to information, the publisher has no obligation to remove the information itself. Given the way the Internet works, an approach like this is bound to fail, as it will simply encourage new routes of navigation to publicly available information, bypassing search engines and serving only to undermine the neutrality and integrity that people expect from search. This is already happening. The Daily Telegraph is now publishing a complete list of all their articles that have been unlinked in search engines. David Jordan, the Director of Editorial Policy at the BBC, declared just last week that the BBC would like to do the same. The Guardian has been considering reposting unlinked stories in a Twitter feed. (By the way, just in case you find it difficult to trawl through these various repostings you can find all of them helpfully organised for you at hiddenfromgoogle.com - a site which appeared within weeks of the Court's decision...) Thus the new ruling not only fails to provide the intended protection, but can also give people an entirely false sense of security. Nobody seems to think it is a good idea to force Google into this new Big Brother role where it has to arbitrate what websites can share online. The search engine is getting thousands of requests, which it then individually evaluates, to try and determine if and how to censor its own search index. In other words, this right is turning the neutral and automated role of a search engine on its head. Furthermore, this ruling affects all search engines, and not all search engines have the resources that Google has at its disposal. No doubt Bing and maybe even Yahoo might be able to match their efforts, but what about Ask.com, or Blekko, or WolframAlpha, or DuckDuckGo, or AOL, or all the sector specific search engines like Monster.com, or Business.com, or Mocavo.com? People who want to be forgotten have A LOT of search engines to go after. Meanwhile, publishers like the BBC and The Guardian have said they would actually prefer to directly handle requests for changes to public information, as only they know the full story behind each story. Unfortunately, data protection regulations prevent search engines from sharing the details of those requests with the publishers. The central error I believe the court made was to find that search engines are data controllers of personal data posted on other websites. Indeed the EU's own Advocate General, Niilo Jääskinen advised last year that search engine providers should not be classed as such. Search engines may be devised by people, but the search results themselves are not, they are discovered and organised by computer algorithms, providing a data processing service for publishers and users. What this ruling is effectively saying is that machines should be in charge of controlling the validity and relevance of information. The very fact that Eric Schmidt has said very clearly that every request for removal that Google receives has to be evaluated individually by a person, and that they don't see this process being automated, speaks volumes against this idea. If Google, of all companies, does not think that something can be automated, others should probably take heed. So went my argument against the 'right to be forgotten' ruling. My team in opposition was led by the MP for Cambridge Julian Huppert, Mariam Cook, CEO of Position Dial, and Alistair McCapra, CEO of the Chartered Institute of Public Relations. The proposition side supporting the right to be forgotten was led by David Smith, Deputy Commissioner at the Information Commissioner's Office, and also included Jon Crowcroft, Professor of Communications Systems at Cambridge, Gavin Phillipson, Chair of Law at Durham University and also Emma Carr, Director of Big Brother Watch. Our opposing team won the debate by 35 per cent 'nays' to 30 per cent 'ayes'. Yet the debate highlighted the complexity of the issue, which was also reflected in the high level of abstentions. Indeed one audience member spoke up in abstention to ask whether the debate was about the principle of the Right To Be Forgotten, or the actual right in law now defined by the Court of Justice of the European Union. This is an important consideration, as the principle may have some virtue even if the current law is unworkable. In my view, what is now needed is a renegotiated consensus between the major technology companies, publishers and lawmakers, designed to address personal data protection and privacy long into the future. Ordinary users need greater negotiating power online and stronger prohibitions against misuse of their private data. The public and publishers need protections against unprincipled requests that would purge important information about persons and past events from the public domain. Together we should work towards building a strong foundation of trust and integrity between the public, technology providers and online publishers on whom we all now rely. If we can achieve this, then web technology can become part of the solution instead of being perceived as the source of the problem. Interested in contributing to the #RTBF debate? Tweet me at @gabehughes @CambridgeUnion or @Mendeley_com]]> Should We Boycott the Sochi Winter Olympics? tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2014:/theblog//3.4731186 2014-02-05T11:24:02-05:00 2014-04-07T05:59:01-04:00 The Cambridge Union Society http://www.huffingtonpost.com/the-cambridge-union-society/ The Cambridge Union Society's Press Officer, Oliver Jackson, argues why the UK and all other 87 nations currently participating should boycott the Sochi Winter Olympics. On Friday 7 February the 22nd Winter Olympics will kick off in Sochi, Russia. Our TV screens and Facebook feeds will be covered in updates and news from a sporting event hundreds of miles away that, directly, doesn't actually impact us at all. Yes, should the UK win a few medals then we will no doubt experience no small amount of national pride and prestige (see Amy Williams' extraordinary success in skeleton racing at the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics) but this will, in a short amount of time, all die down into background noise, as indeed it does every time. The athletes taking part and the die-hard fans who travel to Sochi to see their favourite sportsperson compete will have had an extraordinary, possibly even life-changing experience, but for the overwhelming majority it will be just another sporting event with very little special meaning or significance. So far so good. In this respect Sochi is no different to any other global sporting event, and of course this is absolutely not a reason to boycott. However, there are groups of people for whom the Sochi Olympics are impacting their lives directly and malevolently. I speak of Russia's LGBT+ community, a community that has been living under no small amount of oppression since the enaction of Putin's "antigay" law late last June banning the promotion of information about "non-traditional" sexuality. Ironically, this law violates the Olympic Charter, which states that "any form of discrimination... on grounds of race, religion, politics, gender or otherwise is incompatible with belonging to the Olympic Movement" (6th Fundamental Pinciple of Olympism) and that the International Olympic Committee's role is, among other duties, "to act against any form of discrimination affecting the Olympic Movement" (article 2-6). This homophobic law effectively makes it illegal to talk to anyone under the age of 18 about homosexuality. It also makes it illegal to suggest that gay relationships are equal to heterosexual relationships. Universally condemned, in the months since its enaction it has seen multiple arrests of gay rights activists, a huge surge in hate crimes against homosexuals, and follow-up legislation banning gay pride marches (in Moscow, such parades have been banned for 100 years). It is the state effectively sanctioning homophobia, and has been described as encouraging the worst human rights climate in Russia since the end of the Soviet era. The Mayor of Sochi has declared that "there are no homosexuals in my town" and in July 2013 the head of the Russian Orthodox Church (of which 80% of Russians are members) Patriarch Kirill declared that same-sex marriage was "a very dangerous sign of the Apocalypse", a claim that chimes with a recent UKIP counsellor's claim that same-sex marriage is to blame for all the recent flooding in the UK. Russia is the country that, on Friday, will be hosting an international sporting event. A country that refuses to acknowledge the basic freedoms of roughly 10% of its citizens will be at the centre of the world's attention. For the next five weeks, until the end of the Winter Paralympics, we will be seeing news from Russia every single day. And it won't be open and transparent news either - foreign journalists are banned form reporting on anything other than approved Olympic events. Any journalist reporting on the 2,000 locals forced from their homes to make room for the Olympic park, or the thousands-strong army presence there to maintain control, or the horrifically poor state of the park itself (there is currently no running water in many of the buildings put up for foreign tourists), or the fact that many Russians are banned from entering the "controlled" and "forbidden" zones in case they disturb the tourists, will have their visa revoked and be put straight on a plane back home. Western governments have condemned Russia for the last seven months, drawing attention to her horrific human rights record and homophobic actions. However, there is nothing to make Russia pay any attention to these objections - why should she? Putin knows that there is nothing that the West can really do to put pressure on him, and any sanctions or trade limitations or suchlike that the West could use to draw attention to Russian actions would only economically disadvantage the poorest in Russian society. The people at the top, the ones in control, would be unaffected. The Sochi Winter Olympics are a unique opportunity to change this. For the first time in a generation comes an event that Russia has staked a lot on and really cares about. For it to run smoothly, for the mountain of dirt to be swiftly brushed under the carpet, Russia needs international cooperation. Currently, despite their empty noises about condemning Russian actions, everybody is planning to attend. Well, Barack Obama, Hilary Clinton and David Cameron aren't going to go, but then they're not really necessary for the event to go ahead. Boycotting Sochi would send out an incredibly strong signal to the world that we will not tolerate this sort of behaviour to our fellow human beings. It would be a media catastrophe for Russia, both within its borders and internationally, and would demonstrate how strongly the international movement feels about LGBT+ issues. An end to the boycott could occur once Putin has repealed his homophobic legislation, resulting in a positive outcome that would benefit millions of people across Russia. Boycott Sochi and show Russia that we will not stand for her repressive actions.]]> Would You Send Your Kids to Private School? tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2014:/theblog//3.4661406 2014-01-26T19:00:00-05:00 2014-03-28T05:59:02-04:00 The Cambridge Union Society http://www.huffingtonpost.com/the-cambridge-union-society/ The Cambridge Union Society's Press Officer, Oliver Jackson, as the product of a succession of British private schools, discourses on the arguments around the system that educated him. The Cambridge Union Society, as is its wont, held a debate last Thursday. The motion under discussion was "This House would send its children to private school" and it was roundly defeated, with 320 Nays to 246 Ayes and 143 Abstentions. One thing particularly stands out with those results; totalled up they come to 709 votes. The Union's full capacity is 800 people and it seems likely, given the number of people who attend but typically don't vote at these debates, that there were nigh on 800 people in the building last night (I would declare it over 800 people but seeing as that is the legal limit set on the number of people allowed in the building such a statement could get me into a bit of trouble with the authorities!). Regardless, this utterly extraordinary turnout is in contrast to many previous debates (where turnout has been as low as 100) and some other events where we've been lucky to have 30 people in the room, such as the time that the Slovakian prime minister flew over to speak. What is therefore clear is that the subject of private vs. state education is one that a lot of people, especially students, care enough about to give up a Thursday evening in order to listen to of a load of people that they have never heard of or met before argue about it. The Union has held a debate on the subject every other year for practically the last decade (at least) and yet the topic never seems to get old. However, last Thursday's debate differed markedly from the usual argy-bargy Conservative toff versus Socialist Worker discussion in that it wasn't discussing banning or abolishing private schools but whether, on a personal level, the speakers and the audience present would send their own children to private school. So why do people care about this so much? Why are there not more feelings of apathy and disillusion like there are for so may other topics worthy of debate? Firstly, this motion tugs at the heartstrings - these are your (mostly hypothetical, for a student audience at least) children. The decisions that you make for them will change their lives. Secondly, it addresses an issue that everybody in the audience was familiar with. Everybody in this country is legally obliged to stay in full-time education until the age of 16, and there are noises to increase that limit to 18. Of course, the audience last Thursday were nearly all Cambridge students - the overwhelming majority, if not everybody, would have been in full-time education until the age of 18. Thus the debaters of this motion could count on an informed and knowledgeable audience, a luxury that is definitely not the case when discussing a more esoteric motion such as Euthanasia, or the Israel-Palestine problem. Thirdly, it gives people a chance to challenge or conform to a stereotype. And everybody loves a good stereotype. So what is the stereotype? Well, at this point I could get a bit more personal. I could explain my own circumstances and why it is that I spent nine years of my life in private schools. I could even hazard a guess as to why my parents chose that life for me. I'm also aware that, through my (thoroughly enjoyable, I feel bound to point out) experiences in these private schools, I am an object of derision, scorn and occasionally even hate for a proportion of the population of this country (thankfully a minority, but a decent proportion nonetheless). But I would rather stay away from all that. It doesn't lead to a good discussion and just ends up with lots of people extrapolating from their own personal experience to the whole of the UK's population, an inductive effort that goes just a bit too far. The salient point here that I am trying to make is that it doesn't matter who is making an argument if that argument stands up to scrutiny or, to put it another way, 'it doesn't matter who says it if it's good'. This is true whether the argument is over private schools, economics, foreign policy, or who's going to win the Olympic gold in the Modern Pentathlon. All too often a public figure (let's say, Nick Clegg, for example) sticks their head up above the parapet to tentatively voice an opinion only to be shot down again, not because what they said didn't stand up to scrutiny, but because they had the temerity to put forward an informed statement or opinion on something that, for whatever reason, they hadn't had any direct experience of. This is patently ridiculous. While I accept that if commenting on a private school education it helps to have an experience of that schooling (likewise for a state school, or in fact any other topic under the sun) it is physically not possible for a single human being to have experienced everything there is in this world. I do not hold back from conversing on Manchester United's chances of winning the Premier League this year depite never having seen them play, let alone played for them (one day dreams will come true...), and yet I will freely admit that I do my best to avoid conversation about the state of the UK's education system not because my view isn't informed or valid (but I suppose that's fairly subjective anyway) but because I am aware that people will judge what I say based on what they know of my background and not on the content of my words. Reading that last bit back it seems that this did suddenly get a little bit personal. For that I can only apologise. However, if there is one thing that you take away from reading this article please let it be this, namely that in future discussions you judge a point on its own merits and not on the situation of the person making it. Of course you have to consider motivations, incentives and the like when taking part in a debate but please, in the interest of free and frank discussion about absolutely anything and everything that anyone could care to name (private schools and state schools as well as absolutely every single other topic under the sun), don't let it get personal.]]> Does Business Hijack International Development? tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2014:/theblog//3.4601558 2014-01-15T08:13:29-05:00 2014-03-17T05:59:02-04:00 The Cambridge Union Society http://www.huffingtonpost.com/the-cambridge-union-society/ Rose Beale, Events Officer of Cambridge Development Initiative, explores the issue ahead of Friday's Forum. There are a new cast of heroes and villains on the international development scene. They are not governments, charities, NGOs, but businesses. Firstly, two caricatures - the big, evil business vs. the small, ethical enterprises. On the one hand, the Nestlés pushing breastmilk substitutes, the BPs oozing oil. On the other hand the newly applauded, smaller heroes: enterprises introducing solar power to rural communities; sellers of mobile apps giving access to market and health information. But the picture is increasingly complex. Multinationals are emphasizing their commitment to positive change. A quick glance at BP's website informs us that they are 'Committed to the Gulf' and 'Restoring the Environment'. This is a PR stunt, but they have also put their money where the mouths is - creating a $20-billion trust to pay claims, settlements, natural resource damages. Companies without such PR disasters are also involved in development, sometimes through their core activity, but also through foundations, charities and smaller businesses funded by the organisation. Are these motivated by genuine concern, or only the white side of darker business practices? Is the charitable wing of Google, 'Google giving', mainly an antidote to tax dodges; the Shell Foundation's for global development and environmental challenges, a counterbalance to Shell's environmental damage? Perhaps the most fascinating trend is the focus on the so-called 'bottom of the pyramid' - those living in poverty- as the new consumers. The idea is that lifting these out of poverty is a huge opportunity, that development and the pursuit of profit go hand-in-hand. Who are the heroes and villains in the new story, the blockbuster painted by one business guru as the 'Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid: Eradicating Poverty Through Profits'? (C.K. Prahalad, 2006) Or is this more ambiguous? Take the brewing giant SABMiller (global brands include Miller and Peroni) who recently begun to sell Impala, a beer made from cassava in Mozambique. Their head of global head of sustainability, Andy Wales, paints a roseate picture: "By using locally sourced raw materials, we can make high-quality, but affordable products for consumers who would otherwise be drinking informal or illicit alcohol. So the long-term commercial opportunities are significant." Is this ethical or exploitative, practical or paternalistic? Either way the idea of the 'Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid' is gaining ground as multinationals move into this space directly, or fund charities and independent organisations. Even if we are uncomfortable with big business' take on this 'Fortune', isn't this the same concept that drives 'heroic', smaller enterprises, which rely on the limited income of their customers for growth? The crux of the New Development Blockbuster is essentially this - are the goals of profit and development compatible, identical or antithetical? Does Business itself 'hijack' development? Front row-viewing takes place at the Union this Friday at 5pm, with the Forum 'Does Business Hijack International Development', co-hosted by Cambridge Development Initiative. For more on Cambridge Development Initiative and our speakers - with expertise ranging from the European Commission and Swedish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, to the Cass Business School and the Boston Consulting Group - see our facebook page and our listing in Prospect Magazine. https://www.facebook.com/events/1374225852838434/ http://www.listings.prospectmagazine.co.uk/eventcategory/debates/?etype=upcoming&sortby=address_low_high]]> Why We Still Need Feminism tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.2858567 2013-03-12T06:18:04-04:00 2013-05-12T05:12:01-04:00 The Cambridge Union Society http://www.huffingtonpost.com/the-cambridge-union-society/ Rebecca Meredith, one of the two debaters who faced sexist heckling at the Glasgow University Union, makes the case for feminism following her experience in dealing with the media and the online abuse she has received since her story came to light. Last Friday marked International Women's Day. In our student bar in Cambridge, one of my male friends declared: "I understand why it would be needed for women in India or Iran, but why would it be relevant in Britain. You are doing just fine here." The perception that sexism has been solved - that modern Britain banished the historical evil of misogyny through equality legislation and the removal of formal barriers to employment - is pervasive. The rationale is: 'if I don't see it, it can't be that bad.' If only that were true. The claim that western women don't need International Women's Day infuriated me. I had spent the day frantically calling lawyers and friends after being informed by male friends and complete strangers that 'Lad' websites and male chat forums had posted pictures of me from news sites and discussed how best to violently rape or sexually assault me. I scrolled through comment after comment discussing whether it would be preferable to rape me using a knife, or to keep me as a sex slave. According to Rape Crisis, one in five women in the UK will experience sexual assault in their lifetimes in the UK. Now more than ever, feminism can't be allowed to peter out among claims that formal legislation equates to eradication of the problem. My friend Marlena and I had been in the media because we had been booed during the final of a debating competition by a small number of male Glasgow University Union members. The men analysed our sexual attractiveness throughout the debate, told female audience members they were 'frigid b****' when they were confronted and shouted 'get that woman out of my union' when my partner Marlena approached them after the debate. In the past week, female students from Glasgow reported that some male GUU members in the past have allegedly played a game where they grab a female student, tell her they were going to rape her, and then time themselves to see how long they could hold on as the woman struggled. This game was played on campus, by university members, and always against women. The response to women who speak out about sexism from the media is an interesting one. Women who publically protest against sexism are often met with the response that they are whiners: unable to cope in a tough world. Alternatively, they are dismissed as radical feminists with an agenda, or are personally attacked based on their attractiveness. The MP Clare Short, when protesting against Page Three in 2004, was dismissed by The Sun as only campaigning against topless modelling because she was 'fat and jealous'. The national media in many ways has perpetuated tired sexist stereotypes. When reporting on the GUU incident, some newspapers falsely claimed that we had been reduced to tears in the debate because the boys called us ugly - playing in to narratives that we were female wallflowers that should be pitied and petted because some men had been mean. We hadn't cried; in fact we'd confronted the men involved and the organisers only to be told that 'it was to be expected' and 'par for the course' that women would be booed in the union for their gender. Others emphasised that I studied at Cambridge, with several commentators from the public noting that this probably meant I was sheltered and couldn't deal with heckles. I attend Cambridge on a bursary and I grew up in the West of Scotland, 30 minutes from Glasgow. The idea that I was an English rose wrapped in cotton wool, who just couldn't handle the big bad world, encouraged blatant apologism for the sexism I had encountered. The idea that a woman should accept being sexualised and abused for her gender is inexcusable, regardless of her background. But more importantly, it attempts to victim-blame; to paint the picture that women who speak up against sexism do so because they aren't able to handle the heat, rather than because they have genuine grievances. Gerald Warner, a GUU old-boy writing in the Spectator, went as far as to say that women just aren't suited to the 'rough and tumble of a dialectic free-for-all.' I was the 3rd top speaker in Europe at the European University Debating Championships; one of the female debaters abused by the men in the audience was the top speaker at the World Championships. We can deal with heckles and we have beaten men in debates hundreds of times. What I'm trying to work out is why the onus is on us to interrupt our speeches and explain to men why saying 'what does a woman know anyway' is unacceptable when the same men are free from any such interruptions when they choose to speak. Women are as good at debating as men; but Warner should remember that a 'free for all' doesn't usually include one speaker being harassed because of their gender or race. That seems to miss most of the criteria of a free discussion under any definition I can think of. Warner claimed that we were heckled because we introduced 'feminist clichés' into a debate about religion. The desire to portray women who speak out as extremist radical feminists who are to be ignored because they just like complaining is not one we just find among young men or 'Lad' sites - it is pervasive within mainstream culture. Warner again got his facts wrong. I was booed before I even started speaking. The six men in the debate with us spoke about female priests and female equality, and yet weren't booed. Warner even claimed that if the men hadn't disparaged our appearance, women in the audience would have. Rampant apologism for young men, excuses for sexist behaviour, and the attempt to denigrate women as hysterical radicals who have a pathological hatred towards men - or each other - allows exposure of sexism to be lost among gendered narratives and excuses. The problem with societal discussions about sexism is that they are presented as black and white issues. Women are juxtaposed against men. When I spoke to journalists, I continually tried to emphasise that men in debating had been hugely supportive, and that senior debaters at the GUU (many of them men) had written a public note condemning the male students involved in the heckling. Sadly, that never seemed to get mentioned in print. The story that some men are also feminists, not just creepy internet users who threaten young women, didn't seem to be a relevant one. And that is why western society still needs feminism. Because while it seems like formal barriers have gone a long way to increase equality, sexism hasn't gone away - it has just morphed into a subtler and more insidious form. We are a society that is too often silent on sexism. When women speak out they are often treated either as oversensitive wallflowers, or as militant feminists with an agenda. When women are reported upon in daily newspapers or enter student unions, they are fair game for men to sexualise and attack with threats of sexual violence. And media outlets defend or propagate these men's right to 'free speech' or use gendered language to colour the portrayal of the victim. While we should continue to fight against sexism worldwide, the 'grading' of sexism based on different levels of harm is a temptation which should be resisted. Deciding that the legal treatment of women in other countries is worse than in the West does not mean we have reached some kind of an objective 'end point' - a satisfactory place in which we can assume equality exists. Women may be perceived to have equal opportunity to men, but they are still more likely to paid less than their male counterparts for the same job (according to research by the Higher Education Careers Services Unit) and remain under-represented in high-powered career fields. According to Women's Aid, 11,310 women will have used domestic violence help services on International Women's Day. On International Women's Day an estimated 10,000 women will have been working as sex workers in the UK after being forcibly sex trafficked. On International Women's Day I was offered huge sums of money to pose in my underwear for a British media outlet that didn't want to write a story on sexism or misogyny - it just wanted its readers to see the latest nameless woman it had provided for them. This is why feminism is as relevant as it has ever been.]]> The Sexism I Faced at the Glasgow University Union tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.2816940 2013-03-06T19:00:00-05:00 2013-03-06T16:59:02-05:00 The Cambridge Union Society http://www.huffingtonpost.com/the-cambridge-union-society/ At a debating competition at the Glasgow University Union last weekend, Cambridge debater Rebecca Meredith and her debating partner from Edinburgh University Marlena Valles were subjected to sexist comments and heckling as they were competing in the final. In this piece, Rebecca tells her story: In the past three days I have received hundreds of emails from women all over the world. Women from the Philippines, from South Africa, from America and the UK have emailed me to say: "I am a young, intelligent woman who debates, and I have been a victim of misogyny." I have been debating since I was 14 years old. At school it was a hobby, a way to get CV points; at university it allowed me to go all over the world and speak; and on Saturday it thrust me into one of the most unpleasant incidents of my life. It began as soon as a female friend and I opened the final of the Glasgow University Union Ancients debating competition. Like the other six individuals speaking in that final, we had gone through five rounds of debating and won enough debates to reach the final, held in the GUU debating chamber. Unlike the other six individuals in that final, we were booed, heckled with "shame woman" and exposed to sexual comments and queries of "what qualifications does a woman possibly have to be here". The difference between us? We were female. During the debate, a select number of male students, including former committee members and even an ex-president, made sexual comments about our appearance, shouted "shame woman", booed loudly and questioned "what does a woman know anyway?". This was not mere heckling, and not related to the content of our speeches. None of the male speakers faced the same treatment. After the debate, a member of this group shouted "get that woman out of my chamber" as my partner Marlena passed. When female students heard these comments, one confronted the male members and was told to stop being a "frigid bitch". After the debate, a female Cambridge student rose to confront the perpetrators. The organisers of the tournament, and GUU committee members, begged her to sit down and not "cause trouble". I myself confronted one of the male members concerned, and the GUU committee, only to be told that it was "to be expected" and "par for the course" that women would be booed in the GUU chamber. When I asked whether they would accept the treatment of racial minority speakers in the same way, I was told "they would be booed too, but we don't have them here." The committee accepted we were booed because we were women, not for any other reason, but refused to take action against their members. This is not the first time the GUU has been accused of misogyny. Every year a number of members choose to celebrate the men who voted against admitting women to the union in the 1980s with a celebratory dinner in their honour. As an outsider, I was shocked to hear a Union pub quiz in which the question, "how many men voted against letting women into the GUU" was met with a torrent of applause from male students. Students from Glasgow told us that the male members concerned often shouted "whore" and "slut" at female students; while a former female committee member stated that she had adopted "battered wife syndrome" and had risen to the top of the GUU by accepting and ignoring misogyny. One said "things will never change here, they are too powerful ". I can tolerate heckling, and I don't mind if the crowd wishes to express its approval or disproval on my arguments. I have argued with enough male professors at my university to know when to stand up for myself. What I refuse to accept is that being by virtue of being a woman, I should be abused and targeted in a way men are not. I refuse to believe that women should accept being overtly sexualised or targeted as "par for the course" in a university which is supposed to represent learning and equality. In the wake of the incident, I have been contacted by hundreds of women and men. Many of those were from Glasgow University, and reported having abandoned debating as a fresher because they were subject to misogyny. Another Glasgow University student reported hearing committee members singing songs about rape. Others were debaters from all over the world. One student told me she'd been told to wear a shorter skirt in order to win debates, others explained that they had been told that when male speakers debate, they sound "persuasive", but the tone of a woman's voice makes her sound hysterical. I myself have been told to defer to my male partner since "men are more convincing". There are many lovely people at the GUU, and several of individuals apologised to me in a personal capacity. But this incident is not an isolated one; and we aren't two women who just want to complain for the fun of it. It represents dozens of women at Glasgow who have felt personally violated by virtue of their gender, who have abandoned competitive debating because of discrimination, and women all over the world who take part in competitive debating and feel they are not considered equal to men in the world of rhetoric and academia. My friend and I decided that we would not let this happen to us and say nothing. I created an online survey with the help of my boyfriend, in which debaters could anonymously report on misogyny within debating. Within six hours, we had over 150 responses. Reports came from all over the world that women had faced sexual harassment, derogatory comments and abuse, but had remained silent. We intend to use that survey to compile a report with ideas for practical change within debating to combat misogyny. To be clear, debating is a friendly and usually inclusive environment; there are many world-class university speakers who are women. But the events at GUU tell us that some unions still face institutional sexism, where women have to accept sexism to stay involved or to debate, and where abuse on the basis of gender is normalised. It tells us that though debating is a wonderful activity, it suffers from a lingering misogyny which needs to be solved. In the national media, details of the incident had been invented without ever speaking to us. One daily tabloid claimed we were reduced to tears in the chamber. Another claimed that we were upset because the boys called us ugly. None of this is accurate. What began as our attempt to create change had morphed into a stereotype story about two weak women who cried when boys were mean to them. Commentators from the public attacked us for being "wrapped in cotton wool" and "clearly not good enough debaters to deal with it". Debating shouldn't be about shouting over men who believe your gender makes you inherently inferior as a speaker. The equal art of debate is not for men to have a free platform to speak while women are sexualised and abused. To debate is to be judged on argument, to be listened to on an equal platform as your competitor. We were judged on our gender, we were deemed unequal because we were women who had chosen to speak in the Glasgow Union. We did not run away crying. We confronted the committee at GUU, and an individual involved, and what shocked us the most was that we were met with a brick wall of silence. The world of the 21st Century should not be a world in which women are to accept that they should shout over sexist abuse, not because their arguments are being challenged, but because they are female. Social media also shocked me: my Facebook profile was shared by male GUU members around the internet, while university websites placed pictures of me, taken from the internet in their "hotties" section. In the wake of the event, several student societies at Glasgow University disaffiliated from the GUU, while the Cambridge Union promised not to send any of its debaters to the union until sexism has been dealt with. A petition to hold the members to account was set up by a student at Glasgow University, which has received over three thousand signatures. In response, the GUU has promised to look into the incident and work on the pervasive culture of misogyny it suffers from. I sincerely hope that they follow this through. They owe it to the many bright young women who have personally contacted me in the past few days to say that they left debating because of the treatment they faced at the GUU. Those same women have created a Facebook page for sharing experiences about misogyny at the GUU. Above all, I hope that the hobby I enjoy learns that GUU is not an isolated case, but that latent misogyny which tells young men that the male rhetorician is inherently more persuasive, or that girls must only win debates because of who they have sex with, has to be tackled. Women can debate just as well as men, and we can deal with hecklers just as well as men. What we shouldn't have to deal with is a world in which to get ahead we have to ignore sexism when we see it, that we have to accept being booed for our gender when men are not, and that we have to see ourselves be turned into crying damsels when we speak out. Please argue with me, please leave comments challenging me, but please, please, do not refuse to listen to me simply because I am a woman.]]> This House Regrets the Consequences of US Dominance tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.2795870 2013-03-03T19:00:00-05:00 2013-05-03T05:12:01-04:00 The Cambridge Union Society http://www.huffingtonpost.com/the-cambridge-union-society/ Henry Lawton is a candidate for the M.Phil in International Relations at Jesus College. He has published a number of journal articles on different elements of contemporary U.S. foreign policy; including special operations raids in Afghanistan and Pakistan, tensions with Iran and the use of social media to monitor Human Rights. He has interned at a number of foreign policy think tanks and was employed as a policy advisor to a Federal parliamentarian in Australia before coming to Cambridge. "Can I be honest with you? I am bad news. I'm not your friend. I'm not going to help you. I'm going to break you. Any questions?" So goes the memorable line from the American interrogator in Zero Dark Thirty - the film that, along with The Hurt Locker, comes closest in the popular consciousness of the Anglosphere to an uncomfortable zeitgeist of the post-9/11 era. When this controversial film was largely snubbed at the Oscars earlier this week, many breathed a sigh of relief - better to forget All That. To this Australian, whose armed forces have been heavily involved in so many American military misadventures, there is a profound and shameful disconnection between me - as a civilian in whose name the wars of the past decade have been fought - and the costs and consequences of U.S.-led military dominance. Where is our regret? Our introspection? Restraint is a scarce virtue for the elites who largely craft our foreign policy; 'The Best and the Brightest' as bitterly but not inaccurately labelled by the late David Halberstam as the war in Vietnam was winding down. On February 25th 2011, then-U.S. Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates, voiced this frustration when he told an assembly of Army cadets: "In my opinion, any future defense secretary who advises the president to again send a big American land army into Asia or into the Middle East or Africa should 'have his head examined.' " Ok, let's examine. The post-9/11 intoxication of wealth, power, fear and the ease with which they can be used and abused has seen the constant and incredibly costly search for easy answers to contradictory, contingent, and complex international problems. Here are just two consequences of American-led actions in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, drawn from the authoritative Costs of War project complied 31 October 2012: • Putting together all of the wars' dead, their moderate estimate is that 313,890 have died. This total includes US and allied uniformed troops, US contractors, national military and police in the war zones, civilians, opposition forces, journalists, and humanitarian and NGO workers. Of course, this doesn't include the millions of people have been displaced indefinitely. Yes, that many. • While most people think the Pentagon war appropriations are equivalent to the wars' budgetary costs, the true numbers are twice that, and the full economic cost of the wars much larger yet. Conservatively estimated, the war bills already paid and obligated to be paid as of June 2011 are $3.2 trillion in constant dollars. Yes, that much. Was it worth it? How many schools, hospitals and crucial pieces of infrastructure could have that built? As President Eisenhower once cautioned: "..each proposal must be weighed in the light of a broader consideration: the need to maintain balance in and among national programs.." Pity nobody listened. So yes, the overwhelming American dominance that allowed our Coalition the reckless luxury of searching for those 'monsters to destroy' this past decade is something we should regret - at home and abroad.]]> This House Would Invite Marine Le Pen tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.2741664 2013-02-24T19:00:00-05:00 2013-04-26T05:12:01-04:00 The Cambridge Union Society http://www.huffingtonpost.com/the-cambridge-union-society/ Ben Kentish, President of the Cambridge Union Society, explains why Marine Le Pen was invited to talk on Tuesday 19 February Marine Le Pen's talk at the Cambridge Union last week unsurprisingly divided opinion. There was a protest by Unite Against Fascism and one of the NUS campaign groups, and criticism from several other groups. However, 'courting controversy' is far from the reason for the union inviting such speakers, and I am convinced that the decision to host Mme. Le Pen this week was the right one. In a Comment is Free piece last week, fellow Cambridge student Conrad Landin's asked why Le Pen was invited. I am happy to explain why. For nearly 200 years the Cambridge Union has existed to promote free speech. At times this inevitably leads to controversy. In the 1960s, it stemmed from the Union's invitation to Enoch Powell and Oswald Mosley. Last term it was Julian Assange, and before that Dominique Strauss-Kahn. This time it was Mme. Le Pen. The fundamental reason behind all of those invitations is a belief that freedom of speech is universal, and cannot simply be withdrawn from those whose views we may not like. The free exchange of views and ideas is the bedrock of our society, and that is threatened when it is restricted. Some in recent days have argued that it is also threatened by 'fascism'. This may be true, but the answer is surely not to fight 'fascism' with its own prescriptions. Instead, the response to disagreement in any modern society must be open debate. To attempt to silence one's opponents and pretend their views will simply go away makes no sense. That applies all the more if you believe those opponents are against the concept of free speech. The only adequate response to that is to promote free speech even further, and defend it even more strongly. The free speech argument, however, is only part of the story. The union also exists to promote the open and frank exchange of ideas. That ideal is the fundamental basis of democracy, but becomes entirely redundant if the only ideas exchanged are those that the majority already agree with. Soon after the announcement of Mme. Le Pen's visit, someone emailed me a quote about free speech needing to protect unpopular speech, as popular speech by definition needs no protection. I could not have put it better myself. In a society where debate too often becomes a competition of who can shout the loudest, and political debate is condensed into soundbites, the genuine discussion of ideas - all ideas - is something valuable that needs protecting. In fact, in this regard the term 'no platform' is unhelpful. It suggests a stage on which the speaker is free to spout their views without challenge. This could not be further from what the Cambridge Union is about. Free speech at the union works both ways; the speaker is free to express their views, but members are equally free to challenge them on what they say - and challenge they certainly did. Mme. Le Pen was asked numerous questions, criticised by audience members for her views on issues such as immigration and radical Islam, and asked to explain comments attributed to her father. In fact, given Mme. Le Pen's appearance on BBC's Newsnight earlier this month, it seems surprising that yesterday's event caused such a stir. That interview provided her with a 'platform' to hundreds of thousands of British households, with viewers offered no opportunity to engage with or challenge her views. This caused little reaction and seems significantly less controversial than her visit to the union, during which the audience were free - and did - directly criticise and question her beliefs. Seemingly people realise that an appearance on Newsnight is not an endorsement from the BBC. In the same vein, nor is an invitation from the Cambridge Union, which doesn't make value judgements about the speakers it invites. It is easy to portray the idea of 'No Platform', as Mr Landin did, as something reserved only for the most extreme of speakers. This does not prove true when the facts are considered. Last year a group of Cambridge students successfully prevented David Willetts from delivering a lecture. They took away his right to speak, and the right of students here to challenge him. Why? Because they didn't like what he had to say. While that event was met with widespread condemnation from fellow students, it was not a one-off. In the last two years protestors have also attempted to silence Eric Pickles and Jeremy Hunt during their speeches at the Union, for the sole reason that they didn't agree with them. The NUS also has a 'No Platform' policy against George Galloway and Tony Benn. 'No Platform' has become a tactic to silence those that some groups disagree with. Indeed, the sad irony was not lost on many that it while union members directly criticised and challenged Le Pen on her views, the 'anti-fascist' protestors outside were the ones physically attacking someone because of her beliefs (a mob tried, unsuccessfully to assault Le Pen on her entry to the building), repeatedly trying to force entry to a building, and making death threats to students and security staff. Last year around 75% of Cambridge freshers made the decision to join the union. They did so to hear interesting and influential speakers, and to have the opportunity to challenge those speakers on what they say. When the current union building was opened in 1866, Lord Houghton stated his desire that the society would, in the coming years, continue to "tolerate even the intolerable". In defence of universal free speech and the open debate of ideas, that is what it continues to do today.]]> This House Would Fight for Queen And Country tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.2660579 2013-02-11T19:00:00-05:00 2013-04-13T05:12:01-04:00 The Cambridge Union Society http://www.huffingtonpost.com/the-cambridge-union-society/ Last week, members of the Cambridge Union voted to reject the motion that "This House Would Fight For Queen And Country" after speeches from Dan Jarvis MP, Kevan Jones MP, Michael Codnor of RUSI among others. In arguing that this house would not fight for Queen and Country, Ben Jones calls for self-reflection rather than unquestioning patriotism for those who might support such a notion. Ben Jones is a second-year Politics and International Relations student at Homerton College, Cambridge. He spent time in Benghazi during the Libyan uprising and has experience of post-conflict environments in Iraq and Lebanon. This house would not fight for Queen and country, just as this house would not fight for the Supreme Leader, the Fuhrer, the Great Overlord, the Heavenly King nor anyone else who claims the right to potentially dispense with my life without sufficient justification. It is not sufficient to say 'I would die for a country', for it is never a country that sends people into battle. It is politicians - people - who are often immoral and frequently incorrect. Practically, to say that I would fight for my country is to say 'I give my morality to whoever happens to be in charge, and I am prepared to kill - and be killed - depending on their decisions.' It is to mask a political act with a patriotic veneer. Political acts are often subject to moral scrutiny. The unreflective patriot, however, never subjects love of country to moral scrutiny. How many tragedies could have been prevented if no one was unthinkingly loyal? If people had said not 'Heil Hitler', but 'So then Adolf, why exactly is it that I should follow your orders?' Unreflective patriotism entails a willingness to unthinkingly obey the representative of your country. The unreflective patriot does not ask 'why', but 'how'. If soldiers never question 'why' then the most immoral and irrational leaders find their orders obeyed unflinchingly. How many people have died because no one ever asked 'why'? If we say that we will fight for Queen and country, we imply that it is good enough, when the battle is over or the genocide complete, to declare 'I was just following orders'. Sometimes, it is right to disobey orders. Now, there are cases when soldiers are sent into combat for causes which are worth fighting for. The soldier, however, does not choose the terms of his or her deployment. It is not the soldier who decides whether the deployment is to Berlin or Baghdad. Soldiers do not choose their leaders. Nor do they choose their orders. Furthermore, only a tiny number of internationally mobile people have the opportunity to choose their country of allegiance. For the vast majority of people, to affirm one's country is to affirm any other characteristic which you have no control over. It is no more logical to say 'I am proud to be American' than it is to say 'I am proud to have blue eyes' or 'I am proud to be of the Nuer tribe' or 'I am proud to be white' or 'I will be proud to fight for whatever politician, ostensibly representing my Queen and country, may send me into battle in 10 years time'. It is irrational to unconditionally declare allegiance to any of these things, as none of them are chosen. If it is not morally right to fight for someone you have no control over and to obey orders unflinchingly, then when is it right to fight? There are of course times when it is absolutely necessary to fight. I would fight for liberty, for example. I would fight for education. I would fight for the rights of the persecuted. The exact values for which people will fight for will differ. I may fight for freedom whilst you are more inclined to fight for equality. However, if we all made a commitment to fight not for Queen, nor country, nor tribe, nor Fuhrer, but for chosen values - then how many more wars could have been prevented? For when people are willing to choose what they will fight for, and think critically of what they value, then people are willing to debate and engage one another. I want a future of fighters. But if we choose what we fight for, then it is far more likely that that fighting can be kept within the domain of the negotiation table, the press, and civil society - and not on the zero-sum arena of the battlefield. We will be able to understand the concerns of others, rather than fighting simply because your perceived national interest does not align with mine. Unconditional patriotism opposes my national interest with your national interest. Our human interest dictates that we should seek resolution through dialogue, not conflict. The conscientious objectors of World War One were largely condemned. Some were even executed for choosing to not fight for what they did not believe in. Nowadays, many applaud their courage. Fighting for Queen and country may well coincide with fighting for fine values critically reflected on for causes which are as virtuous as they are considered. Remember the millions of brave men and women who gave their lives to fight the evils of totalitarianism in World War Two. Regardless of their individual reasons for fighting, they nonetheless fought for freedom from tyranny. They would not have had to give their lives, however, if the adherents of those regimes they fought against had valued only sentiments critically and rationally reflected upon, and not instead followed a national ideology with some degree of unconditional patriotism. If, therefore, you are willing to answer yes to the question 'would you fight for queen and country', then at least make sure that you can answer 'why'. By all means be a patriot if you wish. But please, don't be unreflective.]]> This House Believes Religion Has No Place in the 21st Century tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.2613798 2013-02-04T19:00:00-05:00 2013-04-06T05:12:01-04:00 The Cambridge Union Society http://www.huffingtonpost.com/the-cambridge-union-society/ Last week the Cambridge Union welcomed Professor Richard Dawkins and the former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams among others to debate the role of religion in the 21st Century. Tim Squirrell, a second year natural sciences student at Churchill argues that we would be better off without religion. Let's be clear on two things from the beginning: first, 500 words isn't enough to begin to cover such an incredibly broad and important issue. Second, I have no qualms with private spirituality or faith. Whilst I don't subscribe to any kind of spirituality myself, I believe it's every human being's fundamental right to attempt to find some modicum of happiness in an intrinsically meaningless world. To go around telling people that they have no right to their own beliefs is absurd, and is just as bad as attempts by religious organisations to push their beliefs into legislation. I don't think that all religions are all bad all of the time. I think that they have provided a sense of community and hope for a large number of people over the ages, and I believe that a lot of the work that they do for underprivileged people is fundamentally good. However, I don't think that any of the good things which religions do are unique, and nor are they able to counterbalance all of the terrible things which they have done, which they continue to do, and which have been done in their name. In addition to this, I have major issues with the way in which religious texts and organisations can so easily be hijacked and used to justify extremism, hatred and violence. The latter is what separates religion from any other form of tribalism or group identity: the fact that it provides its members with the ultimate get-out clause for their actions - God willed it to be so. When an institution builds its authority upon claims of divine revelation and thereafter either endorses or fails to publicly condemn morally reprehensible acts, that is when we have a huge problem. The people who commit these acts - whether they be the molestation of children, the incitement or instigation of violence, or attempts to legislate beliefs that are at best ethically tenuous - feel that they have the backing of their church, and that they are justified in their actions because they have the tacit backing of up to a billion people. An institution simply does not exist without its members, and as inconvenient and uncomfortable as it may be, those members are therefore indirectly and collectively responsible for the actions of those who receive their backing from that institution. This means that any person who claims to be a Catholic, who goes to mass on Sundays or who buys a Catholic Bible gives their tacit endorsement and approval of the actions of the institution of the Catholic church by being a part of that religion. I am not saying that every Catholic supports the molestation of children: that would be a horrible and offensive simplification of an incredibly complex problem. However, what I am saying is that without organised religion and the institutions it entails, people who do horrible things in the name of religion would no longer be able to claim the justification that they currently do. All of the good things which we find in religion - charity, hope, support - can be, and are, found elsewhere. The only thing that religion really provides that is utterly unique is the ability to absolved of any responsibility for one's actions. For this reason, we would be better off without it.]]>