Humanitarian Tradition Research Articles

The Problems of University Education in Russia

In this article we are studying the problems of university education in modern Russia. The authors of the article are investigating which measures need to be taken in order for universities to develop successfully, how it is possible to preserve social and cultural matrix, basic, fundamental humanitarian traditions, experience and values under the condi-tions of governmentalization, modernization (mostly, technological modernization) and endeavor to make the university a market needs service “workshop”.

School of Spanish

Spanish language was among foreign languages, studied at MGIMO from its inception. Maria Luisa Gonzalez Vincens was at the origin of the establishment of the School of Spanish language at MGIMO. She as a philologist, belonging to humanitarian tradition. She studied at the University of Madrid with Luis Bunuel, Federico Garcia Lorca and Salvador Dali, and communicated with people who later became the glory and pride of the world culture. The increased role of the Spanish language in international contacts required the creation of the separate Department of Spanish Language at MGIMO. Since 2002, the Department of Spanish Language separated from the Department of Roman Languages and is teaching students of all Departments and at all stages of educating at MGIMO, including almost all masters programs. It is hard to imagine successful language learning without the understanding of a broad cultural context. This is why the Department supports the Spanish theater for more than 20 years. Currently, the Department is headed by of professor, Doctor of Philology Valery Iovenko. The Department staff includes more than 45 teachers who successfully address new educational and scientific objectives, creating teaching materials, fully adapted to the new educational standards.

“Characteristically Generous”? Australian Responses to Refugees Prior to 1951

When Australia pledged to accept 15,000 Jewish refugees from Europe in 1938, it was applauded by the London Times as “a characteristically generous contribution” and an example for others. Australia's reputation for generous humanitarianism was solidified after the war when it absorbed more than 180,000 of Europe's Displaced Persons and committed to international human rights instruments designed to protect refugees and asylum seekers. This reputation has been used to both defend and critique the nation's contemporary responses to asylum seekers. Recent Australian Prime Ministers have invoked Australia's proud record of refugee resettlement to deflect criticism of their tough border control policies, policies which critics charge repudiate the nation's humanitarian traditions. This article critically reviews the history of Australia's responses to refugees and asylum seekers prior to 1951 and demonstrates that contemporary border control policies are neither a deviation from, nor defence of, a proud humanitarian record. Rather, they embody the migration management approach to refugees that provided impetus for Federation in 1901, governed Australia's response to the Jewish refugee crisis in the 1930s, and shaped its conditional acceptance of the Displaced Persons and the position it adopted in the drafting of the United Nations Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees in 1951.

Les intellectuels chrétiens et le dialogue judéo-chrétien au Colloque des intellectuels juifs de langue française (1957-2000)

After the attempt to exterminate Judaism during World War II, many Jewish thinkers developed in France an unprecedented intellectual experience, known as the School of Jewish Thought of Paris. With the School of Orsay, the Colloque des intellectuels juifs de langue francaise captured this defining experience of Jewish cultural life in France after the Holocaust. These high-level intellectual meetings were put forth by Jewish thinkers to address issues most often linked to the events of the day and to approach them through the lens of traditional Jewish texts and their questions. The relations between Jewish intellectuals and intellectuals from the Christian world were numerous, as per the intent of the preparatory Committee which organized these meetings. Amongst those intellectuals who participated in these meetings, many were focused on furthering the Judeo-Christian dialogue. The Colloque des intellectuels juifs de langue francaise initiated a movement of reconciliation between the two groups as the Christian world ended up testifying to this evolution by growing closer to the religious, moral, cultural and political values of Judaism. In this current of Judeo-Christian civilization, the presence of Christian thinkers at these colloquia allowed the hitherto marginalized Jewish faith to integrate itself into the Western humanitarian tradition. The aliya of the Jewish thinkers chairing the preparatory Committee after the Six Days’ War, as well as the intellectual crisis which followed World War II, marked the beginning of the decline of the Colloque des intellectuels juifs de langue francaise in the late seventies. The colloquium had nonetheless given rise to a new type of intellectual : the religious thinker, whether Jewish or Christian.

Barmhärtiga svenskar och tacksamma flyktingar: Ett beredskapssjukhus sommaren 1945 i svensk press

In June of 1945 Sweden agreed to receive 10 000 former prisoners of German concentration camps for medical care. Approximately 1 200 of these were to be assigned to a temporary hospital in the small Swedish town of Sigtuna. A study of how a selection of Swedish daily papers describe this event shows that the reporters tend to focus more on the Swedish hospital staff than on the refugees. The refugees are merely portrayed as the recipients of Sweden’s humanitarian assistance. In these articles, the refugees have no past and no future. Their role is merely to express their gratitude and to recover, thereby testifying to the efficacy of the Swedish hospital. Life in the hospital in Sigtuna is described as close to paradise. That many of the patients were in such poor condition so that they died shortly after their arrival in Sigtuna is rarely mentioned. These tendencies in the articles about the Sigtuna hospital can be connected to Sweden’s postwar need to redeem its tarnished reputation as a neutral country by portraying itself in public debate as the champion of a humanitarian tradition. It can also be analysed on the basis of what other studies have shown of how Swedish reporters of the 1980s and 1990s constructed an idealistic picture of Sweden and the Swedes by describing immigrants and refugees as the essential Other.

Guest Editorial: Special Issue on EC-TEL 2007

THE theme of the Second European Conference on Technology Enhanced Learning was “Creating new learning experiences on a global scale.” As David Bloom from Harvard University put it, the average number of years spent in school in developing countries has more than doubled between 1965 and 1990, from 2.1 to 4.4, among those age 25 and over. Despite this impressive improvement, there are still millions of children with no access to primary or secondary education. Even in the more “developed” world, students often experience schools and universities as disconnected from “real life” and thus lose interest, do not achieve deep learning, and drop out. And the vision of “life-long learning,” within and outside corporations, remains largely unfulfilled. This is all the more worrying as learning can be considered a “root solution” to many of the more pressing problems of our times: Getting better at learning is—in Engelbart terminology—truly “getting better at getting better...” Moreover, we should not forget the planetary dimension of the problem. Rooted in a deep humanitarian tradition, learning technologies should respect different cultures, different viewpoints, and different approaches to learning, as illustrated by the installation “El crocodile de Humboldt no es el crocodile de Hegel” by the Columbian artist Jose Alejandro Restrepo. It is in the context of these urgent problems that we positioned the discussions about technology enhanced learning at the Second European Conference on Technology Enhanced Learning. Indeed, with the advance of metadata standards, learning objects, Web 2.0 approaches to rip, mix, and burn learning, wikis, blogs, syndication, user-generated content, interactive TV, games, and the ubiquitous availability of computing devices, we now can and have to offer more flexible learning services. We invited extended versions of the 14 best papers of the conference for a second, even more rigorous reviewing process. In this special issue, we have selected seven papers out of these 14. We are proud that this first issue of the new IEEE Transactions on Learning Technologies supports the vision of the EC-TEL conference as a forum for the best research on technology enhanced learning. “Detecting Self-Regulated Learning in Online Communities by Means of Interaction Analysis” by Giuliana Dettori and Donatella Persico uses interaction analysis to help understand the practice and development of self-regulated learning, which is becoming more important as open educational resources become more available world-wide. “What Do You Prefer? Using Preferences to Enhance Learning Technology” by Philipp Karger, Daniel Olmedilla, Fabian Abel, Eelco Herder, and Wolf Siberski underpins the first paper with decision support for learners. By taking the learner preferences into account, the search of learning objects can be enhanced significantly. “Relevance Ranking Metrics for Learning Objects” by Xavier Ochoa and Erik Duval introduces new concepts for uniting human relevance with computed relevance factors in assessing learning objects. “Building Domain Ontologies from Text for Educational Purposes” by Amal Zouaq and Roger Nkambou focuses on the creation of concept maps and the following ontologies from textual descriptions. It combines computational linguistics with Semantic Web technologies to support learning environments. “Evaluating Spatial Representations and Skills in a Simulator-Based Tutoring System” by Philippe FournierViger, Roger Nkambou, and Andre Mayers covers the cognitive processes of learners. It provides modeling and evaluation support for spatial representations of knowledge in the human mind. “Capture, Management, and Utilization of Lifecycle Information for Learning Resources” by Lasse Lehmann, Tomas Hildebrandt, Christoph Rensing, and Ralf Steinmetz explores the necessary change processes learning objects are subject to. “Control Your eLearning Environment: Exploiting Policies in an Open Infrastructure for Lifelong Learning” by Juri Luca De Coi, Philipp Karger, Arne Wolf Koesling, and Daniel Olmedilla is a comprehensive study about policies and reasoning about them in learning environments. Significantly, all of the papers include evaluations of implementations in real life experiments. Our thanks go to all of the authors of EC-TEL 2007, the invited authors for this special issue, and the reviewers who did a fantastic job of providing constructive feedback to the IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON LEARNING TECHNOLOGIES, VOL. 1, NO. 1, JANUARY-MARCH 2008 9

Сознание как проблема психологии: отечественные и зарубежные подходы

В последние десятилетия единым основанием развития отечественной и зарубежной научной психологической мысли можно считать явления сознания, обсуждение которых дает возможность вывить в широкой системе психологических знаний новые значения и смыслы. В связи с этим в статье анализируются различные подходы к определению и структурации сознания, отмечается при этом, что существующие в российской психологии научные подходы к решению проблемы сознания группируются в направлениях естественнонаучной и гуманитарной традиции, отмечается пересмотр критериев научности в последнее время. Большое внимание уделяется и зарубежным подходам, отличающимся от российских, преобладанием анализа причин появления сознания и его связи с физическим миром, что достаточно изучено в отечественной психологии с позиций диалектического и исторического материализма.

Enlightened Self-Interest and the Control of Tuberculosis

Given the great humanitarian tradition of the United States, it is curious that no category of government spending ranks below foreign aid in polls of the American public.1 Americans are poorly inf...

The Rhetoric Of Sympathy In Smith And Wordsworth

would seem to have little in common. The sonnet—though not limited to any one subject matter—was so thoroughly associated with the poet’s own self and feelings that Coleridge wrote in the preface to his Poems of 1797, ‘‘To censure [Egotism] in a Monody or Sonnet is almost as absurd as to dislike a circle for being round’’ (xiii). By contrast, the humanitarian poem necessarily looked outward, focusing on figures typically far different from the poet himself or herself. In practice, however, the opposition was rarely this simple, and there were far more connections between the two genres than one might initially expect. Even when they focused on the poet’s own self, many late eighteenth-century sonnets were either devoted to humanitarian themes or drew upon stock figures from the humanitarian tradition such as peasants, slaves, or forsaken women. And, despite their seemingly altruistic nature, humanitarian poems were often nearly as self-oriented as the sonnets of the time since, in the course of describing their unfortunate subjects, poets frequently called attention to themselves and their own benevolence. In the essay that follows, I shall examine the intersections between the sonnet and the humanitarian poem, analyzing how Charlotte Smith and William Wordsworth—two of the most creative and self-aware poets of the late eighteenth century—negotiated the different demands of these two seemingly opposed genres. 2 To understand why it is that these two types of poetry would have gained such prominence at this time, we need only to turn to the prevailing moral philosophy—the ‘‘sentimental’’ school of ethics that culminates with Adam Smith’s 1759 The Theory of Moral Sentiments. Like Shaftesbury and other members of this school, Smith believes that morality results from an emotional response rather than any rational decision; however, what makes him particularly relevant to our purposes here is his emphasis on ‘‘sympathy,’’ what he describes as a ‘‘fellow feeling with any passion whatever’’ (1: 5) that can be so complete that ‘‘we become in some measure the same person’’ (1: 2) with the object of our sympathy. Largely beyond our conscious control, sympathetic responses come upon us suddenly and powerfully; we simply observe a particular situation and react: ‘‘When we see a stroke aimed and just ready to fall upon the leg or arm of

Organophosphorus intoxication.

In every period of history, military leaders have wrestled between a desire to gain victory by using every possible means and a revulsion from resorting to poison. During the First World War, a European country cast aside the humanitarian tradition of its poets and philosophers and attacked its enemies with a wave of chlorine gas; the same nation, 30 years later, put to death 6 million human beings in gas chambers. But out of the industry of war gases, a few organophosphorus compounds, notably tabun and sarin, later underwent large-scale development. These compounds are nowadays used primarily as insecticides. Several early citations on organophosphate compounds place this chemical class in neurological context. However, as evidenced by events during the Gulf War of 1991 and the United Nations' arsenal inspections during that war, military interests in organophosphates are medically very pertinent today, beyond just historical allusions.

Secular human rights: Challenge and opportunity to Christians and Muslims

Abstract The principle that all human beings should enjoy equal rights of freedom and participation is a specifically modem idea which initially met with resistance from both Christians and Muslims. Even today Christians and Muslims often have difficulties with recognizing the secularistic features of human rights. The profession of the inalienable dignity of every human person, however, can facilitate a critical reconciliation between the emancipatory ethics of human rights on the one hand and the humanitarian traditions of Christianity and Islam on the other.

The Social Ideas of American Physicians (1776–1976): Studies in the Humanitarian Tradition in Medicine

The Social Ideas of American Physicians (1776–1976): Studies in the Humanitarian Tradition in Medicine

Eugene Perry Link. The social ideas of American physicians (1776–1976). Studies of the humanitarian tradition in medicine. Cranbury, NJ: Susquehanna University Press, 1992. 317 pp. $46.50 (cloth) (Reviewed by Robert E. Johnson)

Journal of the History of the Behavioral SciencesVolume 31, Issue 4 p. 431-432 Book Review Eugene Perry Link. The social ideas of American physicians (1776–1976). Studies of the humanitarian tradition in medicine. Cranbury, NJ: Susquehanna University Press, 1992. 317 pp. $46.50 (cloth) (Reviewed by Robert E. Johnson) First published: October 1995 https://doi.org/10.1002/1520-6696(199510)31:4<431::AID-JHBS2300310423>3.0.CO;2-5AboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditWechat No abstract is available for this article. Volume31, Issue4October 1995Pages 431-432 RelatedInformation

Eugene Perry Link, The social ideas of American physicians (1776–1976): studies of the humanitarian tradition in medicine, Selinsgrove, Susquehanna University Press, and London and Toronto, Associated University Presses, 1993, pp. 317, illus., £40.00 (0-945636-34-2).

Eugene Perry Link, The social ideas of American physicians (1776–1976): studies of the humanitarian tradition in medicine, Selinsgrove, Susquehanna University Press, and London and Toronto, Associated University Presses, 1993, pp. 317, illus., £40.00 (0-945636-34-2). - Volume 38 Issue 3

The social ideas of American physicians (1776-1976): studies of the humanitarian tradition in medicine

The Hippocratic Oath is viewed as a paradigmatic summary of the physician's role. This book details the Declaration of Geneva as the revised version of the Oath. Illustrated.

The Social Ideas of American Physicians (1776-1976): Studies of the Humanitarian Tradition in Medicine

The Social Ideas of American Physicians (1776-1976): Studies of the Humanitarian Tradition in Medicine

Book Review

AbstractThe aim of the book is to "capture the movement's moral vision and sense of mission, with sensitivity to its concerns but also an awareness of some of its excesses" (book jacket). It is a brave book in its attempt to provide a dispassionate account of what has become (along with abortion) one of the most passionate controversies of our era. The authors are two sociologists currently at New York University, with long and prolific careers writing about the interface of science and social values. Jasper has written widely on nuclearism, technology, and social change, and Nelkin on genetic engineering, biotechnology, AIDS, nuclearism, ecology, and job safety. Regarding animals, apparently their only two prior studies were co-authored presentations at recent sociology meetings (Jasper &amp; Poulsen, 1989; Jasper, Nelkin, &amp; Poulsen, 1990). Seven of the 12 chapters analyze the nature of the movement. Over the centuries, several social forces (urbanization, industrialization, democratization) have caused a shift in humans' view of animals, from instruments to be used for food, clothing, and farm work to companions to be cherished - pets given a name and family status. It has led to what the authors term "sentimental anthropomorphism," people's attribution to animals of human sentiments such as the abilities to feel emotions and communicate, and to form social relationships. Borrowing tactics from other reformist movements, animal advocates have become more effective in several ways - protests, litigation, boycotts, lobbying, and public relations. Since the 1970s, philosophers like Peter Singer and Tom Regan have honed a notion of "animal rights," providing an important ideological base that has further accelerated the movement. The remaining five chapters focus on five specific themes of the crusade: Regarding "animals in the wild," strong protests have been mounted against large-scale seal hunts, dolphin-safe tuna, trapping, and hunting. "From rabbits to petri dishes" describes the dramatic drop in industrial testing of cosmetics, drugs and toiletries since 1980, to the point where the once-routine Draize and LD-50 tests are now viewed by many as obsolete. "Test tubes with legs" documents the dramatic rise in biomedical research after World War II, and the effectiveness of protests challenging this- reportedly more easily at some labs (Cornell, Berkeley, Museum of Natural History) than at others (New York University, Stanford). "Animals as commodities" concludes that the crusade has persuasively made moral issues of factory farming, humane slaughter, and fur production (both wild and ranch). Finally, in "Animals on display," earlier protests against pit bull and cock fighting have now expanded to rodeos, circuses, Hollywood films, zoos, and animal shows, with only partial impact. Jasper and Nelkin present an overview of the evolution of the animal rights movement by dividing the movement into three parts: (1) Since the 1860s, the original SPCA "welfarists" were part of a larger humanitarian tradition of helping others; (2) Since the 1970s, more assertive "pragmatists" like Henry Spira have demanded "animal rights," using stronger methods in order to force negotiation with those who violate these rights; (3) Since the 1980s, "fundamentalists" like People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) have sought to protect animal rights without "hobnobbing in the halls with our enemy" (p. 154) or compromising. Even in the 1990s, welfarist groups like the HSUS and SPCA remain the largest in both membership and funding. Yet there has been a meteoric rise of the crusader factions, eclipsing the welfarists - pragmatists like Spira's Animal Rights International, Joyce Tischler's Animal Legal Defense Fund, Cleveland Amory's Fund for Animals, as well as fundamentalists like PETA, Trans-Species Unlimited, and the Animal Liberation Front. Moreover, the achievements of the crusader groups are telling. For instance PETA grew from its two founders in 1980 to 300,000 in 1990 (p. 31), and between 1980-87 much of the cosmetics industry had come to pledge an end to all animal testing and allocated $5,000,000 for research on alternatives (p. 2). Some of this strength comes from alliance with parallel movements against pollution, racism, sexism, nuclearism, agribusiness, even cholesterol.

Private Sponsorship of Indochinese

T he Canadian Immigration Act states that one of its objectives is to fulfill Canada's international legal obligations to refugees and to uphold its humanitarian tradition with respect to the displaced and the persecuted. Canada's tradition here has not been solely humanitarian. At times it has been downright inhumane. The Act deliberately does not ask immigration policy makers to uphold the whole of Canadian tradition regardingthe displaced and persecuted, but only the humanitarian component of that tradition. Thisobjectiveisnoteworthynotonly because it singles out the humanitarian componentof the Canadian tradition, but also because it distinguishes between Canada's intemationallegal obligation to refugees and that humanitarian tradition. Fulfilling refugee obligations and upholding the humanitarian tradition are not one and the same objective. The very mention ofboth is an indication that Parliament believed what is aIl too obvious, that the refugee definitiondoesnotcoyerevery displaced and persecuted person who, for humanitarian reasons, needs protection. The Immigration Act, at least in its objectives, is generous, stretching Canadian hands out beyond Convention refugees to the displaced and persecuted who may not fall within the refugee definition, but who still justify humanitarian concerne Mechanically, the Immigration Act provides for the realization of this objective by stating any Convention refugee and any person who is a member of a designated class may be granted admission ta Canada as permanent residents. There have been four designated classes: the Latin American Designated Class, later

Competition and technology's consort

0 ver the years, the medical profession has enjoyed a considerable amount of trust from the public. This trust is in part a result of the humanitarian tradition embodied in the practice of medicine, and in part due to medicine’s status as a true profession. As professionals, we physicians are entrusted to act in the patient’s best interest, and, as a profession, we are expected to educate and monitor ourselves to assure that we behave according to generally accepted standards, Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis has noted that true professionals possess four distinguishing characteristics, First, they are the keepers, transmitters, and advancers of knowledge gained at least in part through experience. They are governed by a guiding code of ethics that includes service to others. They set and enforce their own standards. Finally, performance is valued above reward [2]. Medicine is arguably the profession that enjoys the most respect and is most expected to behave this way. The humanitarian tradition was especially critical to the doctor’s role when the doctor had little of therapeutic value to offer the patient with serious disease. During the 20th century, medicine changed from simply a caring activity to a curing activity blessed with remarkable therapies and technologies. As technology achieved ascendency, there was considerable concern, especially among academicians, that technology could overwhelm humanitarianism and other features of medical professionalism. The late Walsh McDermott, with David Rogers, made an eloquent appeal [3] in support of the humanitarian aspects of the medical profession in an essay developed around the theme of “samaritanism.” According to McDermott samaritanism, the human support function, was in danger of being overwhelmed by technology. Technology and, in particular, over-reliance on technology, can interfere with the very human bonds between doctor and patient that are so critical to caring for patients. He and others expressed concern that in a world of increasing reliance on medical technology, “There is grave danger that medicine will continue to lose ground as an important healing social force extending well beyond simply its technology” [3]. One solution was to promote one of medicine’s most desirable traits, samaritanism. After all, samaritanism and medical science share the same goal-tempering the harshness of illness and disease. Furthermore, McDermott, a self-proclaimed Tolstoian, agreed with Tolstoy that “the germ of every human quality exists in us” [3] even though we might not consistently be imbued with love of our fellow man or a deep desire to help our fellow man. Samaritanism could be technology’s consort-the humanitarian force to accompany medical technology. Samaritanism could lessen the distance that technology can create between doctors and patients [4]. It can counteract the mechanization of medical care. Perhaps most importantly, samaritanism, as the human support function, has healing and consoling effects of its own-effects that the medical profession can ill afford to lose. I believe that most physicians share the ideals expressed by McDermott. The desire to promote samaritanism and other humanitarian values was a force that motivated many to choose medical careers. In addition, the goals of progressive medical education are to harness technology as effectively as possible through research and teaching and to promote samaritanism among trainees and practitioners. Although advancing technology clearly can and has caused problems for the profession, both the profession and the public are attempting to address the problem. In retrospect, advancing technology has not overwhelmed the healing, human support f0rGS.S of medicine (samaritanism). Perhaps we have followed

NUTRITION RESEARCH--THE ROLE OF THE AGENCY FOR INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT.

THE nutrition research program of the Agency for International Development must be viewed against over-all objectives of the AID program, developments in our knowledge about nutrition during recent years and world-wide trends in terms of population growth and availability of food, on a per capita basis, in the developing countries of Latin America, Africa, and Asia. The objectives of AID, or its predecessor agencies, have been described and defined in many ways. The basic objective has been stated as follows: To assist other countries that seek to maintain their independence and to develop into self-supporting nations. Although an overriding emphasis remains on mutual security, in the last few years greater emphasis has been given to economic development in the less developed countries. There can be no doubt that the humanitarian tradition of the United States has played and continues to play a role in this program.