Category: issues

“Examining the trajectories of empires — their creations, conflicts, rivalries, successes and failures — reminds us of something we have forgotten: that sovereignty in the past, and in many areas today, is complex, divided, layered and configured on a variety of founding principles and practices.”

“This is disaster. It will lead to very slow growth for a long time. Instead, they must use temporary deficits to restart growth. Rarely has policymaking been this poor. Sooner than later, the citizens of these nations will say, No more!, and political instability will result.”

“Instead of making things, inventing them, or pursuing other kinds of enterprise, commercial, intellectual or educational, our national effort has become focussed on money.”

“Although middle age may seem like a universal truth, it is actually as much of a manufactured creation as polyester or the rules of chess. And like all the other so-called stages into which we have divvied up the uninterrupted flow of life, middle age, too, is a cultural fiction, a story we tell about ourselves.”

This week, the Historical Museum closed and the National Gallery shut its doors early in the autumn.

“Please God, no. Over 60 years after the foundation of the Arts Council, 50 years after the creation of the RSC, with publicly funded British plays the toast of Broadway, visits to newly free museums doubling in a decade and British concert life the envy of the world, surely we don’t have to justify giving public money to the arts? Again? Well, yes, we do.”

“Among recent college graduates, those with the highest rates of unemployment had undergraduate degrees in architecture (13.9 percent), the arts (11.1 percent) and the humanities (9.4 percent), according to the study.”

“The Koran may be interpreted but from a believer’s viewpoint, nothing in it can be set aside. Yet, at least in the calm, superficially courteous world of Western academia, debating the precise text of the Koran” – and, more crucially, how that text varied in its early versions – “is increasingly common.”

“Pupils are being denied careers advice at a time of record youth unemployment, schools are scrapping projects to help the neediest children catch up on their reading, and teachers of music, art and sport are losing their jobs, a Guardian investigation into the impact of cuts on education reveals.”

“President Hu Jintao has said China must strengthen its cultural production to defend against the West’s assault on the country’s culture and ideology.” His essay, published this week, “drew a sharp line between the cultures of the West and China and effectively said the two sides were engaged in an escalating war.”