Council's Efforts Research Articles

THE IMPACT OF THE TRANSFER, APPOINTMENT, AND DISMISSAL OF JUDGES ON JUDICIAL INDEPENDENCE IN LIGHT OF THE 2020 CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT

Objective: The aim is to highlight the important role of the Supreme Judicial Council in the transfer, appointment, and dismissal of judges, particularly after the adoption of the justice sector modernization plan in Algeria. Additionally, it seeks to contribute to the strengthening of the Supreme Judicial Council through the 2020 constitutional amendment and its effectiveness. Theoretical Framework: The study is based on the field of appointing, transferring, promoting, and dismissing judges, which falls under the jurisdiction of the Supreme Judicial Council according to the 2020 constitutional amendment. It also examines the council's authority in supervising judicial discipline, which entails criminal, civil, and disciplinary responsibility as stipulated in the organic law and the 2020 Constitution. Method: The objective analytical method was used, as the subject of this study is derived from legal texts and their analysis. Results and Discussion: The Supreme Judicial Council in Algeria continuously reviews its composition and institutions to adapt to the requirements of the constitution and the law. Its independence limits interference from any authority, including the legislative or executive branches, in the judiciary's professional path. This applies to the appointment, transfer, promotion, and dismissal of judges, and also encompasses all matters related to judges. Research Implications: The results indicate that the 2020 Constitution has made the Supreme Judicial Council more adaptable to current developments and strengthened its independence, particularly in relation to the appointment, transfer, promotion, and dismissal of judges. However, it is necessary to ensure that the composition of the Supreme Judicial Council is exclusively comprised of members of the judiciary, and that the position of President of the Supreme Judicial Council is assigned to the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court to support guarantees. Originality/Value: This study serves as a contribution to the field of judicial independence through the appointment, transfer, promotion, and dismissal of judges. It enhances this specialization and supports independence by referring to the 2020 constitutional amendment. The study is limited and has not been deeply explored before, providing valuable insights into the Supreme Judicial Council's efforts to strengthen judicial independence in light of the 2020 Constitution.

THE REALITY OF PARALLEL TRADE IN CRIMINAL LEGAL TEXTS

Objective: The aim is to highlight the important role of the Supreme Judicial Council in the transfer, appointment, and dismissal of judges, particularly after the adoption of the justice sector modernization plan in Algeria. Additionally, it seeks to contribute to the strengthening of the Supreme Judicial Council through the 2020 constitutional amendment and its effectiveness. Theoretical Framework: The study is based on the field of appointing, transferring, promoting, and dismissing judges, which falls under the jurisdiction of the Supreme Judicial Council according to the 2020 constitutional amendment. It also examines the council's authority in supervising judicial discipline, which entails criminal, civil, and disciplinary responsibility as stipulated in the organic law and the 2020 Constitution. Method: The objective analytical method was used, as the subject of this study is derived from legal texts and their analysis. Results and Discussion: The Supreme Judicial Council in Algeria continuously reviews its composition and institutions to adapt to the requirements of the constitution and the law. Its independence limits interference from any authority, including the legislative or executive branches, in the judiciary's professional path. This applies to the appointment, transfer, promotion, and dismissal of judges, and also encompasses all matters related to judges. Research Implications: The results indicate that the 2020 Constitution has made the Supreme Judicial Council more adaptable to current developments and strengthened its independence, particularly in relation to the appointment, transfer, promotion, and dismissal of judges. However, it is necessary to ensure that the composition of the Supreme Judicial Council is exclusively comprised of members of the judiciary, and that the position of President of the Supreme Judicial Council is assigned to the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court to support guarantees. Originality/Value: This study serves as a contribution to the field of judicial independence through the appointment, transfer, promotion, and dismissal of judges. It enhances this specialization and supports independence by referring to the 2020 constitutional amendment. The study is limited and has not been deeply explored before, providing valuable insights into the Supreme Judicial Council's efforts to strengthen judicial independence in light of the 2020 Constitution.

Why Rules Matter: Shaping Security Council Sanctions Policy in Counterterrorism and Beyond

AbstractSanctions are critical to the Security Council's efforts to fight terrorism. What is striking is that the Council's sanctions regimes are subject to detailed sets of rules and decision criteria. The scholarship on human rights in counterterrorism assumes that rights advocacy and court litigation have prompted this development. The article complements this literature by highlighting an unexplored internal driver of legal-regulatory decision-making and explores how mixed-motive interest constellations among Security Council members have affected the extent of committee regulations and the content of decisions taken by sanctions committees. Based on internal documents and diplomatic cables, a comparative analysis of the Iraq sanctions regime and the counterterrorism sanctions regime demonstrates that mixed-motive interest constellations among Security Council members provide incentives to elaborate rules to guide decision-making resulting in legal-regulatory sanctions governance, even if the human rights of targeted individuals are not at stake. For comparative leverage and to assess the limits of the proposed mechanism, the analysis is briefly extended to other sanctions regimes targeting individuals (Democratic Republic of the Congo and Sudan). The findings have implications for this essential tool of the Security Council to react to threats to peace as diverse as counterterrorism, nonproliferation, and internal armed conflict.

A CRITIQUE OF THE UNITED NATIONS SECURITY COUNCIL (1945-2020)

The United Nations was established after the Second World War in 1945 to maintain peace and security because of the threats posed by global poverty, disease, and the breakdown of the environment. To help actualize these objectives, the United Nations Security Council was an absolute necessity in order to make world peace a priority for all nations. However, studies show that a number of institutional issues visible in the UN system have hampered the mandate of the Security Council towards achieving world peace. This study, therefore, intends to critique the United Nations Security Council's efforts to promote international law-based global peace on this basis. The study employed the use of the in-depth interview to elicit data from respondents while content analysis was used to identify data gotten from the field. Findings from the study revealed that the United Nations Security Council has succeeded in the maintenance of global peace and security. This study concluded that the United Nations Security Council’s roles are to prevent nuclear proliferation, clear landmines, and promote disarmament. The study also reveals that the body is able to ensure security by constituting peacekeeping and special political missions.

National Council grants support Mental Health First Aid research

The National Council for Mental Wellbeing is accepting applications through May 27 for the 2022 Mental Health First Aid USA Doctoral Student Grants. The program reflects the National Council's effort to grow the research and evaluation base around Mental Health First Aid, the curriculum that instructs individuals from all walks of life in recognizing and responding to behavioral health crises. Eligible for the grants are full‐time doctoral students in psychology, public health or a related field, with previous evaluation experience and either a strong interest in or direct experience with Mental Health First Aid. A panel will interview finalists for the grants, and the top four candidates will receive an award of $5,000 each. Funded recipients will submit regular research updates and complete a final report of research findings within two years of receiving the grant. More information about the grant program can be found at https://www.MentalHealthFirstAid.org/DoctoralGrants.

A Rebuttal to Heresy: Analyzing the Efficacy of Constantine and the Council of Nicaea's Response to Arianism

In May 325 AD, Roman Emperor Constantine assembled the First Council of Nicaea to address a rising heresy called Arianism. The council blazed a new trail in that it was the first council convened with the intention of representing all churches in the Roman empire. This article analyzes the impact that the Council of Nicaea had on the Christian Church, specifically regarding the doctrine of Arianism. Ultimately, this article concludes that the council's effort in extinguishing Arianism produced a negligible result.

‘Spreading the word’ in the Polish People's Republic: the British Council and the English Reading Room at the Jagiellonian Library in Kraków, 1946–1989

The British Council's library work in Communist Poland remains relatively unknown. This paper contributes to a better understanding of British cultural influence in that part of Europe by examining the British Council's efforts in sharing the works of British culture, literature, and science with Polish society in the context of sometimes turbulent Cold War cultural relations between Poland and Britain. Particular attention is given to the Jagiellonian Library English Reading Room, which for decades remained the only British Council-sponsored regional reading centre outside Warsaw. It offers insight into the Council's library work in the university setting, reassuring, if only indirectly, the principles of academic and intellectual freedom.

Hazel Brannon Smith: The Female Crusading Scalawag by Jeffery B. Howell

Reviewed by: Hazel Brannon Smith: The Female Crusading Scalawag by Jeffery B. Howell Erin K. Devlin Hazel Brannon Smith: The Female Crusading Scalawag. By Jeffery B. Howell. ( Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2017. Pp. viii, 245. $35.00, ISBN 978-1-4968-1079-3.) Hazel Brannon Smith: The Female Crusading Scalawag is a biography of Hazel Brannon Smith, a white newspaper editor in Holmes County, Mississippi, who earned national acclaim as one of the first women to win a Pulitzer Prize as a result of her editorial positions during the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s. Jeffery B. Howell chronicles the entirety of Smith's career, tracing the evolution of her views on southern race relations and her consistent commitment to freedom of speech and law and order. Howell contends that Smith's early career laid the groundwork for her fight against the White Citizens' Council in the wake of Brown v. Board of Education (1954). In the 1940s Smith consistently denounced lawlessness in her campaign against bootleg liquor. She viewed the actions of the Citizens' Council to maintain segregation through intimidation, violence, and economic retaliation as another expression of reckless disregard for the rule of law that threatened not only the civil rights of African Americans but also the civil liberties of white southern moderates like herself. Howell suggests that these concerns, rather than a liberal critique of Jim Crow, drove Smith to speak out against the Citizens' Council. During the first two decades of her career, "she ardently supported segregation" (p. 4). Although she decried overt violence and called for the equalization of public services, Smith believed that white and black southerners alike preferred racial separation. In her editorials in the late 1950s, Smith supported the state's legislative efforts to circumvent the implementation of the Brown decision and even applauded the establishment of the Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission. [End Page 216] However, Smith alienated the white establishment when she spoke out against the Citizens' Council's tactics. The Citizens' Council sought to put Smith out of business by calling on advertisers to boycott her papers and by establishing a rival publication. The once popular editor became a social pariah, and she bridled at the Citizens' Council's efforts to quash her editorial voice. Rather than being intimidated, Smith took a more progressive stand in the early 1960s by calling for the repeal of Jim Crow segregation statutes and printing copies of NAACP publications like the Mississippi Free Press. Howell demonstrates how out of step Smith was with white public opinion by comparing her editorials and columns with those run by her competitors at the Lexington (Mississippi) Holmes County Herald, the Jackson Daily News, and the Jackson Clarion-Ledger. However, it would have been useful to analyze Smith's writing alongside the perspectives promoted by the black press. Smith maintained that abolishing formal segregation statutes would not overthrow "local customs and traditions" and opined that de facto segregation would continue to preserve most facets of the so-called southern way of life (p. 135). Howell describes Smith as an ally of the civil rights movement who helped facilitate racial change in Mississippi and was called an integrationist, yet he notes that Smith never described herself as such. Howell maintains that the label was less important than Smith's calls for "equal justice, fair treatment, freedom of expression and association, and racial harmony," and he suggests that she must have understood that "freedoms" could not exist "without some measure of societal integration," despite her own statements to the contrary (pp. 136, 160). Ultimately, Howell's portrait of Hazel Brannon Smith reveals both the editor's important contributions and the limitations of white southern moderation in the twentieth century. Erin K. Devlin University of Mary Washington Copyright © 2018 The Southern Historical Association

Desenclavar as ciências sociais na África lusófona: a Iniciativa Especial do CODESRIA

Este artigo analisa a Iniciativa Especial para a África Lusófona do Conselho para o Desenvolvimento da Pesquisa em Ciências Sociais em África (CODESRIA), inserindo-a no âmbito dos esforços que o Conselho tem feito para lutar contra a fragmentação da produção científica no continente e o perigo do isolamento de certas comunidades científicas. Adotando uma perspetiva histórica, começa por abordar a trajetória das ciências sociais nesses países, mas também discorre sobre o contexto epistêmico em que elas se desenvolvem, nomeadamente, a crise em que as escassas instituições de pesquisa foram mergulhando nas últimas décadas, a insipiência do sistema de Ensino Superior e a fraca participação do Estado no financiamento dessas instituições. Com este pano de fundo, são analisados os desafios que se colocam às ciências sociais em países africanos, bem como algumas iniciativas que têm surgido no domínio de estudos sociais. Por fim, são analisados os elos de ligação existentes entre as atividades do CODESRIA, a Iniciativa Lusófona e a integração dos cientistas sociais africanos lusófonos nos programas deste Conselho.

The Security Council's 1267/1989 Targeted Sanctions Regime and the Use of Confidential Information: A Proposal for Decentralization of Review

AbstractFrom a due process perspective, the essential problem with the UN Security Council's targeted sanctions regime is the persistent lack of sufficient access to confidential material relied upon for the designation of targeted individuals. Despite the Security Council's efforts to amend the procedures of the sanctions regime, it is highly unlikely that this deficiency can ever be remedied within its present top-down structure. Therefore, this article proposes to decentralize the regime's designation procedure, to mitigate the problem of being unable to challenge or review confidential information and evidence, which underlies an individual's designation. Such an amendment would entail that the designation of a particular individual and the possible subsequent judicial review procedure would take place domestically, prior to a universal blacklisting by the UN Sanctions Committee. As a consequence, any confidential material relied upon could stay within the designating state, and would be shared only with courts and possibly special security-cleared advocates, within that domestic legal order. This would make it more acceptable for the relevant authorities to make such information available.

The Death of the Graduate Student (and the Birth of the HQP )

The Death of the Graduate Student (and the Birth of the HQP) Robert Zacharias (bio) In the middle of a sleek little brochure entitled Framing Our Direction 2010-12 (2010), the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) announced its plans to gather together its graduate student and postdoctoral funding programs under a new umbrella program called "Talent." According to the SSHRC website, the primary context for the establishment of the Talent program is the granting council's efforts at "promot[ing] the acquisition of research skills, and assist[ing] in the training of highly qualified personnel in the social sciences and humanities" ("Talent Program"). The Talent program is not the first time that SSHRC has adopted the term "Highly Qualified Personnel" (HQP) as a euphemism for "graduate students," and SSHRC is far from the only granting council in Canada deploying this rhetoric. But for a recent PhD graduate and current postdoctoral scholar such as myself, SSHRC's decision to link the major granting programs for all graduate students and postdoctoral scholars and collectively frame them as a training program for highly qualified personnel offers an occasion to pause and consider what is beginning to look like the death of the graduate student in Canada's increasingly corporatized postsecondary institutions. The time has come [End Page 4] for an impassioned defence of graduate education as education, a process that could begin with a pedagogy of critical professionalization. In Lowering Higher Education: The Rise of Corporate Universities and the Fall of Liberal Education (2011), James E. Côté and Anton L. Allahar lament what they call the "drift towards vocationalism" (14) currently underway in Canadian universities. Although Côté and Allahar focus on undergraduate education, the distinction they draw between the training that characterizes preparation for postuniversity vocations and the education that fosters critical thought is useful for understanding the process underway at the graduate level as well. While "training is more given to specialization and the acquisition of a narrow range of skills and information associated with a discrete or specific task," they suggest, the concept of "education is more general and envisages as an end product a more cultured, open-mined, and civic-minded citizenry" (14). SSHRC's newly minted Talent program is only one example, of course, but its stated aims of "promot[ing] the acquisition of research skills, and assist[ing] in the training of highly qualified personnel" (emphasis added) is indicative of a larger shift in the humanities away from graduate student education and toward graduate student training.1 My own introduction to the changing climate of the humanities came as a result of my fortuitous involvement with Daniel Coleman and Smaro Kamboureli's "Culture of Research" colloquium, which I attended in the first semester of my PhD in 2006. Let me confess here that I was utterly and unredeemably lost throughout the weekend, although I'm sure this was abundantly clear to all who were around that table. My sense is that the vast majority of those currently entering graduate studies in Canada would be as bewildered as I was at such an event and, as such, are woefully unprepared to respond to the various ways in which their position in the university is shifting. As Jessica Schagerl points out, for students lacking a systematic introduction to the relevant networks of organizations and contexts of humanities scholarship in Canada, any debate surrounding their form or function quickly dissolves into "the equivalent of 'blah blah blah blah, funding, blah blah blah blah, research' " (98). Schagerl turns to a re-investment in mentorship as a means to offer graduate students such [End Page 5] an introduction, and, as someone who was extremely fortunate to have strong mentors throughout my graduate studies, I can certainly attest to the value—both intellectual and economic—of strong and invested mentorship. As a recent member of the wider graduate student community, however, I can also attest to the vast inconsistencies and inequalities that show mentorship to be a fatally ad hoc pedagogical model. A more systematic introduction to the shifting contexts of the humanities in Canada is necessary not simply for the precious few students who will ultimately join...

Evaluating UN Sanctions

Nothing provokes a debate like UN sanctions; there seems to be an instant polarizing quality to the topic. In the post-Cold War era, have become a key security council tool in responding to international peace and security situations. Sanctions are applied not just to stop hostilities, but to improve governance, protect natural resources, promote democracy, and decry abhorrent practices such as the use of child soldiers or the incitement to violence and hatred. The sanctions decade of the 1990s witnessed an 86-fold increase in the number of UN regimes employed, making the security council's most important and most used coercive tool.1 Twenty-three mandatory regimes have been created since 1990; 12 are currently active. The council is very likely, indeed encouraged, to reach for as an alternate to force in dealing with an international crises.Increased use, however, does not necessarily translate into increased success or effectiveness. For many analysts, UN are ineffective and generate too many complications and unintended consequences. The sheer number and long duration of regimes threaten to overwhelm the UN system's ability to monitor or manage them. With the advent of targeted sanctions, the full weight of the council, once reserved for states, is now aimed at individuals who do not necessarily have recourse to judicial remedy. And the jury is out on the degree to which any of these regimes are ultimately able to achieve their goals. These factors are all cited as evidence by those who argue that the heyday of is over, or that it should be.The vastly expanded UN experience in using as an international peace and security tool, and the resulting divergence of opinions on their utility, prompted the director of the Centre for International Relations at Queen's University, Charles Pentland, and the Canada Research Chair in international relations and security studies at the Royal Military College of Canada, Jane Boulden, to host two international workshops on the subject of UN sanctions. The first workshop, held in 2007, focused on the humanitarian impacts of sanctions. The second workshop, held in 2008, took a step back from the literature to explore what was new about UN and what could be learned from the considerable experience now under the UN's belt.The overall goal was twofold: first, to establish the current state of play in UN in the wake of the council's consistent, frequent, and increasingly innovative use of sanctions; and second, to consider how to evaluate that experience as we look ahead to future UN security council action. This issue of International Journal, dedicated to UN sanctions, tackles these two broad areas in a series of articles penned by international experts who participated in the workshops.In many ways the council's apparent wholesale embrace of as a tool mirrors its experience with peace operations. As with peace operations, the council's post-Cold War willingness, even desire, to address a wide range of international peace and security issues resulted in a wealth of new experiences and a concomitant, if often inadvertent, innovative bent. And as with peace operations, the council's efforts generated a whole host of unanticipated outcomes and unintended consequences, prompting new rounds of adjustment and retrenchment, lessons learned and applied.The result is a complex picture in which the council has developed a range of tools to address a spectrum of international peace and security issues. Indeed, rather than a single tool, can now more properly be seen as a whole drawer in the security council toolbox, in which a wide range of tools are available for use in a variety of situations against a variety of targets, including nonstate actors as well as states. This is in sharp contrast to the Cold War and the early post-Cold War period when the council mainly used as a blunt-force mechanism against a state as a whole. …

The Evolution of Security Council Innovations in Sanctions

The attitude of security council members toward sanctions has been fraught with contradictions mixed, at times, with a strong dose of reluctance. Looking at the employment of UN sanctions over the years and across cases, however, one is struck by how much has been achieved, both in terms of their impact and in terms ofthe development of council working methods despite the undercurrent of political uneasiness and discord that has almost always accompanied this issue within the council. This article outlines the significant changes made to the design of sanctions regimes by the council over the years and the processes and methods associated with the regimes in order to present a clearer and more accurate assessment ofthe council's efforts to improve its working methods and procedures vis-a-vis sanctions.EVOLUTION IN SANCTIONS REGIMES DESIGNThe security council has changed, fundamentally, its construction of sanctions regimes since the early 1990s. After years of Cold War paralysis the council became much more interventionist, resorting to chapter VII tools more often. Sanctions were the council's tool of choice to address threats to and breaches of international peace and security. The council applied sanctions to address a varied list of crises and conflicts, especially intrastate conflicts and, most recently, to target nonstate actors who support international terrorism. In addition, the objectives towards which the security council applies sanctions have expanded from, in most cases, stopping or slowing hostilities to include a variety of goals, such as improving state governance; restoring democratically elected governments; and addressing a range of global security issues from nuclear proliferation and terrorism to the use of child soldiers, and most recently, sexual violence in conflict situations. Finally, the security council has become more selective about the types of targets chosen and the types of measures applied.In the early 1990s, the council was less inventive in the types of sanctions it applied. Sanctions applied in some cases were comprehensive (e.g., in the case of Iraq, Haiti, and the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia) while in other cases, only an arms embargo was applied (e.g., in the case of the former Yugoslavia, Ethiopia/ Eritrea, Liberia I, Rwanda, and Kosovo). In this period, sanctions were applied against the states in question rather than particular actors. However, the council began to differentiate between the measures and the particular actors ofthe conflicts. In the case of Angola, for example, in 1993, the council chose to apply sanctions against only a nonstate actor - the rebel group Uniao Nacional para a Independencia Total de Angola (UNITA) - rather than the state. Determining that as a result of UNITA's military actions, the situation in Angola constituted a threat to international peace and security, the council invoked chapter VII.1 The security council imposed a mandatory arms embargo (including related materiel) and a ban on petroleum and petroleum products to Angola in September 1993,2 with the objective of inducing UNITA to accept the terms ofthe peace accord signed in 19 9 1.3 When UNITA and its leader, Jonas Savimbi, refused to comply with the council's demands, the council choose to target UNITAs main source of funding - diamonds. Diamonds, however, were also an important legitimate source of funds for the Angolan government. Therefore, the council made the decision to target only diamonds not certified by the Angola government, further differentiating the target UNITA and the particular commodity of concern - the conflict diamonds sold by UNITA.Following the UNITA example, the council continued to focus on commodities as a way of pressuring conflict groups by tailoring the types of commodities sanctioned to the state in conflict. Timber sanctions, for example, were applied against Liberia, as timber represented a major source of the country's wealth, whereas in Cote d'Ivoire, the security council considered the possibility of targeting cocoa and cotton in addition to diamonds in order to maximize the impact of the sanctions on those responsible for the continuation of the conflict, while limiting the consequences to the general population. …

And She's Not Only Merely Dead, She's Really Most Sincerely Dead.

And She's Not Only Merely Dead, She's Really Most Sincerely Dead. Alan Rubenstein, John P. Lizza, and Paul T. Menzel To the Editor: D. Alan Shewmon's work over the last decade has clearly awakened the bioethics community from its dogmatic slumbers. Easy acceptance of the "somatic integration" rationale for equating the condition known as total brain failure with death of the human being is, after Shewmon, a thing of the past. In "Brain Death: Can It Be Resuscitated?" (Mar-Apr 2009), he has made yet another valuable contribution to the debate, providing a close and critical reading of the President's Council's white paper, "Controversies in the Determination of Death." Shewmon asserts that the council's effort is "brave but flawed." Having been involved in the production of the white paper as lead staff researcher and writer, I believe that he is mistaken on a number of points. (All opinions expressed here are mine alone.) Shewmon's account of the historical foundations of this controversy is far too one-sided. He rightly points out that the initial equation of "irreversible coma" with human death was made without a developed philosophical defense and with an eye to practical consequences that would follow from a new standard. But a more balanced historical account would also note that the condition in question—also revealingly called "coma dépassé," or "beyond coma"—was recognized by neurologists and others as a case apart from all other brain injuries discovered in ventilator-dependent patients. Eelco Wijdick's 2003 historical study of the Harvard Committee's work gives a more nuanced picture, pointing out that "neurologists in the committee knew too well that brain death represented a unique comatose state that could be clearly delineated from other neurologic states." Regardless of the practical context, the task of interpreting this unique state in a way that does justice to the permanent and profound degree of its sufferers' incapacitation had to be taken up. The "position two" argument in the white paper can be understood as an attempt to provide such an interpretation. It should be noted that this is a more modest way of reflecting on this issue than the "definition-criteria-test" approach that other commentators have followed. The council did not propose a "definition" of death from which a criterion for judging whether someone has died should follow as a logical consequence. Rather, the council keeps its efforts closer to the ground—closer to the reality of the patient and the experience of those who confront the puzzling state of "brain death" in someone they love. Paying close attention to the phenomenon itself—and not to various philosophical devices that have piled up over the years—the white paper encourages us to ask: "What is so unique about this state?" and "Do the phenomena that differentiate this condition have any resonance with the way of being that distinguishes the living from the dead?" The patient who has suffered total brain failure is closed off from the world, and this closure will never be overcome; not even the very limited recovery that a patient in a persistent vegetative state achieves can be hoped for. The marks of this closure are complete coma—unresponsiveness to pain, to light, and so on—and complete termination of the drive to breathe. Does closure of this sort have any significance to an organism? Here is where the council's discussion of an organism's fundamental, defining work is useful. Openness to the world and the power and drive to interact at the whole organism level is what makes a living thing what it is. "Integration" was certainly never the point. After all, a complex machine is integrated: when assembled and functional, it is more than the sum of its parts. But it is not alive. Shewmon reasonably asks why breathing and minimal awareness should be singled out as signs of an organism's life and interaction with its environment. He suggests that the council's argument would have difficulty accounting for the embryo, which is alive but does not breathe. According to the council's argument, however, it is not breathing as such that is the fundamental...

The Problem of Housing Affordability, and its Economic and Social Effect on the City of Gweru, Zimbabwe

The paper examines Gweru City Council's efforts to provide housing, and analyses the housing affordability problem along with its economic and social impact on Gweru in Zimbabwe. It investigates how far lodgers have enabled both the landlord and the lodger to access shelter in Gweru, and observes overcrowding and the factors constraining progress in the provision of housing in Gweru. The study reviews responses to the affordability crisis by Gweru City Council, and adaptation mechanisms by the low-and middle-income home seekers. It summarises by suggesting solutions to the housing affordability problem.

Culture and the Thomist Tradition: After Vatican II by Tracey Rowland

BOOK REVIEWS Culture and the Thomist Tradition: After Vatican II. By TRACEY ROWLAND. Radical Orthodoxy Series. London: Routledge, 2003. Pp. 226. $95.00 (cloth), $28.95 (paper). ISBN 0-415-30526-8 (cloth), 0-415-30527-6 (paper). It is not surprising that Thomas Aquinas did not worry about the role of culture in moral formation since he lived in a thoroughly Catholic milieu. Contemporary Thomists, however, have no such excuse. According to Rowland, the culture of modernity-with its mix of theistic, quasi-theistic, and atheistic elements-is deeply inimical to the gospel in ways that have not been generally appreciated in the Church in general and among Thomists in particular. A notable exception to this is Alasdair Macintyre, the Thomist hero of this book, whose writings articulate what Rowland classifies in her "Introduction" as "Postmodern Augustinian Thomism" (5). While on first glance it appears that these three terms do not belong together, Rowland argues that they can be synthetically reconciled in a kind of concordantia discordantium if defined in a certain way. She asserts that "post-modern" implies the following notes: a recognition that the primary intellectual problem is the need to transcend the culture of modernity, a nonmetaphysical starting point ofthe soul caught in the contradictory culture of modernity, and a critique of the Liberal tradition that incorporates elements from the Marxist and Genealogical traditions within a perspective that highlights the role ofnarrative and tradition in moral formation. The term "Augustinian" supplements "post-modern" with a theory of grace along the lines ofLa nouvelle theologie, a sense ofthe dialectical tension between the secular and sacral orders, and an appreciation of the role of memory in the formation of the soul. Strangely and tellingly, however, Rowland never defines what she means by the third term: "Thomism." Perhaps she thinks it is per se nota. Yet it is not at all clear how one could reconcile a basic adherence to the thought of Thomas Aquinas with a simultaneous adherence to what is required by Rowland's definitions of "post-modern" and "Augustinian." The worries mount as the text unfolds. "Culture as a Theological Problem" is the topic of the first part. Chapter 1 argues that the Second Vatican Council in Gaudium et spes was too optimistic and naive about the degree to which modernity, understood as a specific cultural formation whose beliefs are embodied in social practices, is compatible with the 143 144 BOOK REVIEWS gospel. According to Rowland, the council's efforts at aggiornamento have too often led to dangerous accommodations to modernity. For example, Whig Thomists (a term of art comprising such diverse figures as Jacques Maritain, George Weigel,John Finnis, and Germain Grisez) have uncritically assumed that the natural-law teaching ofThomas Aquinas can be reconciled with liberalism in such a way as to allow the Church's teaching on morality to enter into the political dialogue of the naked public square. Motivated perhaps by a desire to distance itself from integralism-the view that it is possible for the Church to provide answers to secular questions directly from faith-the council unwittingly recognized the autonomy of secular modern culture in such a way as to encourage an extrinsicism of nature and grace that is reflected in most Thomists (even Karl Rahner!). After criticizing the authors of Gaudium et spes for failing to provide a good definition and analysis of culture, Rowland proceeds to endorse the German Kulturgeschichte understanding of culture as comprising Geist, Bi/dung, and Kultur; the first term refers to the dominant moral values of a culture or civilization, the second to the laws guiding self-formation, and the third to the guiding principles that give a culture its specific form. According to Rowland, these three concepts are somehow related to the Greek terms ethos, nomos, and logos. She never explains how these modern (and therefore presumably tainted) Germanic notions cohere with the premodern Greek concepts in a coherent concept of culture that is presumably centered on the Trinity. It is a central weakness of this book that it never explains the meaning of the first word of its title. Chapter 2 explores the theme of culture in postconciliar magisterial thought. If the...

The University Library's Role in Planning a Successful Distance Learning Program

Summary This article examines the role a university library plays in planning the student support services that are so crucial to a successful distance learning program. The content of the paper is based on the experience the author acquired as a member of Texas Tech University's Distance Learning Council. The Council's efforts to plan, prioritize, and develop a distance learning program that will include strong support from the Library are emphasized. The work of the Distance Learning Council and its committees is discussed when it relates to the TTU Library's contribution to the program.

Planning for Distance Learning

The article examines the role that student support services plays in planning a distance learning program, especially the services offered by a university library. The content of the paper is based on the experience the author acquired as a member of Texas Tech University's Distance Learning Council. The Council's efforts to plan a program that will include strong support from the Library are discussed.

The Lincoln Stonebow and the Flattery of Princes

This paper takes as its starting point the relatively unusual form taken by Lincoln's gatehouse-cum-guildhall, which was rebuilt in 1520. It is argued that the Stonebow's elevation bears a superficial similarity to the contemporary royal palace at the Field of the Cloth of Gold. The local political background may suggest that the two buildings are, indeed, connected — through the city council's efforts to renegotiate the terms of their fee-farm with their feudal lords. The new building, and its simple Annunciation iconography, were intended to be understood at several levels of symbolic meaning, all of which referred to the city's relationship with its various lords. Consequently, the Stonebow's simplicity is deceptive; it is, in fact, a multi-faceted political statement, summing up the city's own view of its place in contemporary politics and, as such, it is a good example of the complexity sometimes achieved in early Renaissance architectural iconography.

The Lincoln Stonebow and the Flattery of Princes

This paper takes as its starting point the relatively unusual form taken by Lincoln's gatehouse-cum-guildhall, which was rebuilt in 1520. It is argued that the Stonebow's elevation bears a superficial similarity to the contemporary royal palace at the Field of the Cloth of Gold. The local political background may suggest that the two buildings are, indeed, connected — through the city council's efforts to renegotiate the terms of their fee-farm with their feudal lords. The new building, and its simple Annunciation iconography, were intended to be understood at several levels of symbolic meaning, all of which referred to the city's relationship with its various lords. Consequently, the Stonebow's simplicity is deceptive; it is, in fact, a multi-faceted political statement, summing up the city's own view of its place in contemporary politics and, as such, it is a good example of the complexity sometimes achieved in early Renaissance architectural iconography.