The Virtual Stoa

I wouldn’t mind that the AUT was generally crap at politics, or that there hadn’t been much internal union deliberation if the policy adopted by Council clearly reflected the will of the majority of AUT members. But there’s no reason to think that it does. I don’t think the boycott motions would survive the test of campus ballots, for example. Nor is this just a matter of members versus their representatives in Council: there are divisions among the activists themselves, for the boycott motions seem to have been passed by Council fairly narrowly.

To conclude this bit of the discussion: unions that are crap at politics, and without an especially good record of widespread internal deliberation among grassroots members, should, on the whole, refrain from adopting obviously divisive political motions.

I’d have more respect for the boycott motions if they were the product of extensive deliberation inside the union in well-attended branch meetings, etc. I haven’t heard reports of widespread member participation on this issue. (Then again, I haven’t been keeping a look-out.) Reports of today’s Council debate suggest that discussion was brief and curtailed, and that only the executive got to oppose the proposed motions.

My union, the AUT, isn’t very good at politics. (It’s widely believed that the union once rejected a long-term deal from government to link academic salaries to civil service salaries, on the grounds that it could do better with annual collective bargaining.) Members don’t look to the union for guidance on national or world politics. It hasn’t acquired the kind of moral authority, forged in effective struggles over the years, that leads its members to respect the positions it takes because they are the positions it takes.

Boycotts can be morally impressive when either there are significant costs for the bulk of those who sustain the boycott (e.g., Civil Rights-era bus boycotts) or when those who suffer from the effects of the boycott by and large approve of its imposition (e.g., anti-apartheid boycotts).

The AUT boycott of Haifa and Bar-Ilan Universities falls into neither category. It only affects the very small proportion of AUT members with academic ties to one of these two campuses, and it’s pretty clear that the boycott is widely - though not universally - rejected within Israeli academia, even within liberal Israeli academia.

Here’s a fine picture of your Labour candidate in Oxford West and Abingdon, Antonia Bance, swiped from her blog.

As a friend said when I told him who the local party was running in the constituency, “They let Antonia onto the Approved Candidates’ List!” Well, maybe they did, maybe they didn’t. I’m not too clear on what the rules are down at Labour Party HQ about this kind of thing. But she’s an excellent candidate, and she’ll be a very good MP.

Richard Stafford Cripps, born 24 April 1889, died 21 April 1952.

I’m delighted to report that a copy of Aidan Nichols The Theology of Joseph Ratzinger: an Introductory Study is on its way to me: I’ve managed to snaffle the last copy on sale through abebooks.com, which - happily - was sitting in a shop in Hay-on-Wye. Now I’ll just have to hope his theology hasn’t changed too much in the 17 years since the book was written…

I’d never heard of this book until a few hours ago, when I read this 1988 piece [pdf] of Andrew Sullivan’s from The New Republic, which he’s just posted at his blog. As I remarked over at B&T, it’s a reminder of how much better a writer the pre-blog Sullivan was, once upon a time, and what he says about Nichols’ book makes me want to read it:

The great merit of Aidan Nichols’s dense, scholarly study of Ratzinger’s theology is that it places Ratzinger in the context and language of this abiding, Germanic Augustinianism. It is an emphasis that manages to cut through the usual, unhelpful categories of left and right, progressive and reactionary, to focus on the arguments of the Church rather than the preoccupations fo the world.

Well, I’m always a sucker for a bit of hardcore Augustinianism.(And if anyone else has got some good Ratzinger bibliography, do please pass it along. This is going to be interesting.)

From JW, via DE.

By Tom Fourwinds, via Jim Bliss.

I’ve been making a mistake: it’s not Benedict XVI at all. It’s Giblets!

(See here for his shrewd assessment of the competition.)

Free encyclopaedia Wikipedia had recorded Andrea Dworkin’s death around 36 hours before the press in this country [see here]; now it’s already got a page up for Pope Benedict XVI. Not bad at all.

Hmm. I can’t get the Cardinal Ratzinger Fan Club page to open right now. Is the server overloaded, or have they taken it down immediately for an update? Or perhaps its now moved to www.benedictxvifanclub.com already?

It’s Ratzinger!!

Or Pope Benedict XVI, as we must now call him.

The flow of Pope posts will dry up before too long, but here’s a good one: Pope on a Rope Soap [via].

And, while I’m on the subject, there’s Papal blogging from the conclave (well, from outside the conclave. Well actually I’m not sure where the author is) over here.

This exceptionally distinguished historian of philosophy died the other day at 81, and the NYT has got around to publishing an obituary here [via].

His classic work went through three versions — A History of Skepticism from Erasmus to Descartes (1960), … from Erasmus to Spinoza (1979), and … from Savonarola to Bayle (2003) — all of which were masterpieces, and his many other works (hmm, let’s see whether this link works) virtually all have something delightful and/or useful in them.

He’s also one of the very few late moderns to have read every word of Bayle’s Dictionary — all seven million of them — when he was preparing his very handy volume of selections. That’s quite an impressive achievement on its own.

Here’s the Guardian’s latest comment on the Papal election:

After breaking for lunch, the cardinals will reconvene at 4pm (1500 BST) for two afternoon rounds of voting, with a new plume of smoke expected by 7pm.

Three ballots down, no Pope yet.

I’m sure you’ve all studied it carefully by now, but, just in case you haven’t, the Cardinal Ratzinger Fan Club Page is quite a useful resource.

José Carlos Mariátegui, Peruvian socialist; born 1894, died 16 April 1930.

If you’re bored of manipulating British democracy through postal voting scams, you might want to try to rig the Papal vote next week. In which case, read this first. [via Nick]

Jean-Paul Sartre, existentialist philosopher, born 21 June 1905, died 15 April 1980.

“An anti-Communist is a dog, I don’t change my views on this, I never shall.”

Ernest Bevin, trade unionist and Foreign Secretary; born 9 March 1881, died 14 April 1951.

Vladimir Mayakovsky, futurist poet, born 19 July 1893, died 14 April 1930.

I want the pen to be on a par
with the bayonet; And Stalin
to deliver his Politburo
reports
about verse in the making
as he would about pig iron and the smelting of steel.

Simone de Beauvoir, born 9 January 1908, died 14 April 1986. Socialist, feminist and existentialist philosopher.

Only seven out of ten in the BBC’s politicians and pop music quiz, I’m afraid.