Ingrid

7854 posts in CT’s history, and “virtually none”:https://crookedtimber.org/?s=autism written on autism. I think we are missing an opportunity here, to talk about something most people have no clue about, while chances are real that they have non-diagnosed people with autism in their families, neighbourhoods or professional circles. April 2nd was International Autism Awareness day, but since I was leaving that day for a family holiday, the post that I wanted to write arrives only now.
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So now we know “why Srebrenica fell”:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=onySJCkRH6g&feature=player_embedded. It was party due to the fact that gays could be openly gays, which internally weakened the Dutch Army, which as a consequence was no longer able to protect the local population.

I’m not going to write a real post about this. Erik Voeten at “The Monkey Cage”:http://www.themonkeycage.org has basically said all there is to say. “Go read and comment there”:http://www.themonkeycage.org/2010/03/did_gays_in_the_dutch_military.html.

I’ve put together a symposium on the philosophy of Amartya Sen, in which Sen himself will take part. The symposium will be held in Rotterdam on July 1st, and will be preceded by a public lecture on global justice. Details below the fold.
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Dutch politics was shaken up today, when “Wouter Bos”:http://www.pvda.nl/politici/politici/wouterbos, the political leader of the social-democrats, “PVDA”:http://nu.pvda.nl/, announced that he will leave politics in order to be able to spend more time on another major responsibility he has in life – his three children and his wife. His children are almost one, four, and six, and his decision to want to spend more time with them was the only reason he gave in his unexpected “farewell speech”:http://nu.pvda.nl/berichten/2010/03/Verklaring+Wouter+Bos.html. The Dutch cabinet was dissolved recently over a dispute between the Christian Democratic Party (“CDA”:http://www.cda.nl/) and the PVDA on whether or not to continue sending troops to Afghanistan, and elections are scheduled for early June.

I think this is a great loss for the social-democratic party, a great loss for Dutch politics and public life, but an amazing supporting signal for the kind of feminist movement which I endorse. A top male politicians says: “Enough. I don’t want to have children and a wife whom I never see.” And he uses the right word: “major responsibility”, not just something he fancies doing. His decision will serve to an increasing acceptance that both men and women are entitled to combine having a family with doing paid work – even if this implies that they need to quit a top position.

I’ve seen many short interviews today with other Dutch politicians and other public figures. And it’s interesting that most of them said they “understood” his decision, adding that he made enormous sacrifices to his family life in the last years. Of course, it is likely that other motives played a role too – but I don’t see any serious grounds for doubting his official reason as being the main reason for his decision. When about six years ago, he was ‘merely’ an MP (and not yet a Minister of Finance), he choose to use his legal right to parental leave and thus was home with his baby one day a week. I therefore think that the few public figures who have today said that his was just ‘an excuse’ and that he should give his ‘real reasons’ for quiting politics are wrong and should be deeply ashamed of themselves. If a woman were to give ‘time for family’ as the reason we would believe her; if a man, who earlier on in his political life took parental leave, gives the same reason, we should similarly believe him. Anything else would be wrong and sexist. I hope he and his kids will enjoy the time together.

I wrote “a year ago”:https://crookedtimber.org/2009/03/09/belated-happy-birthday-international-womens-day/ that it was the 100th International Women’s day, but looking at the status updates of my Facebook Friends that special birthday seems to be today. Never mind! The “BBC”:http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8555459.stm has a short documentary reporting on a UN conference reviewing what has been accomplished since the 1995 Beijing conference. The UN reports on all the progress that has been made; the activists rather note all that hasn’t been achieved yet.
Interestingly enough, that is precisely the pattern we see in debates in rich countries too: yes, there has been progress, but no, we haven’t reached a gender just world yet. In “a debate”:http://www.womeninc.nl/page/17963/nl on recent Dutch policy initiatives to facilitate employment for parents (an issue many more women than men struggle with), which I attended in Amsterdam on Saturday, Mariette Hamer, a leading labour party politician said the same: feminists should count their blessings, and not just focus on what hasn’t been achieved, but also note all the positive changes.
I guess it’s good to focus on change and keep a positive attitude, but in some areas of feminist concern, the change has been painstakingly slow. I’m not going to elaborate on examples here, but rather invite you to ponder on what you think has been an area in which progress has been too slow, or perhaps even negative. In any case, I don’t think there is any reason yet to stop ‘celebrating’ International Women’s Day. There is still way to go.

This picture is taken in the suburbs of Utrecht, which is one of the four ‘big’ Dutch cities (big by Dutch standards, of course). I’m not going to translate this – that would spoil the fun of guessing!

I was at the University of Wisconsin at Madison this week, and was very lucky that Jane Waldfogel was giving “the A. Kahn Memorial lecture”:http://www.irp.wisc.edu/newsevents/seminars/series/2009/KahnLect2009.htm on Thursday. She gave a fascinating talk on developments in comparative social policy studies, and also discussed her forthcoming book on Britain’s war on child poverty. I’m sure that when that book is out, somewhere in April 2010, someone more knowledgeable on the UK and the lessons that can be drawn for the US will post a piece here.

I don’t think we’ve discussed her work here on CT before, which is a shame, really, since her book What Children Need is an excellent book on the topic of its title. The book focuses especially on the question what children from working parents need. How can we make sure that the care that children get when their parents have to work is good enough?
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So the news is spreading that the Belgian PM, Herman Van Rompuy, would be the first president of the EU. I am not going to comment on what that means for the EU now. It’s after nine in the evening here, and I’m preparing my teaching for tomorrow morning (and for reasons I need not disclose in this post, I need my time to prepare).

But despite time shortage, one thing I am happy to throw in cyberspace is a prediction that this will not be good for Belgium. Not a very hard-to-make prediction indeed. In the last years I’ve blogged here, once in a while, on the political instability of Belgian politics, indeed perhaps even the instability of the very future of Belgium; and Van Rompuy seemed to have been the only one able to bring calm back, and at least lead a more-or-less functioning government. His professional skills and talents in making compromises in extremely difficult situations will certainly be very useful in Babylonian Europe; but who will rescue Belgium? How long will it take for the Belgian government to have a new PM, and is there anyone to be found with the same authority that Van Rompuy has been able to command? Tonight Belgium will celebrate that this little country has been able to achieve something powerful, but tomorrow it will wake up with headackes…

Mercedes Sosa “died today at age 74”:http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2009/10/04/arts/AP-LT-Argentina-Obit-Mercedes-Sosa.html?_r=2&hp. An amazing voice, wonderful songs, and an important symbol of resistance against the Argentinean dictatorship. She will be missed, not just by Latin-Americans.

In August, the Erasmus University Rotterdam fired Professor Tariq Ramadan. Well, strictly speaking, they didn’t fire him, but rater withdrew the invitation to be a guest professor. Since December 2006 Ramadan had a contract with the City Council of Rotterdam to advise the City Council on civic integration & multicultural policies (about half of the population in Rotterdam is not from Dutch origin and the city has enormous socio-economic-cultural problems). At the same time he was invited as a guestprofessor at the Erasmus University for the same period (allegedly he had asked for this affiliation himself when he was asked to work for the City Council). So legally speaking in August the City Council fired him, and at the very same moment the University withdrew its invitation to be affiliated as a guest professor. Yet for what follows, I don’t think this legal quibble is very relevant. From an ethical-political point of view it remains a dismissal. The question is: was this dismissal justified?
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Sometimes you make a picture that you feel like sharing. Quiet Sundays are a good time to do so. Here’s one. It’s a wall painting, taken in a small street in Utrecht, with a row of bicycles in front of the wall painting. I love wall paintings – I prefer poetry on walls and windows rather than in libraries, and art outside in public spaces rather than in musea (the metal flowers carved in the pavement around St. John’s College in Cambridge are another example that makes me happy). Enjoy.

Belgium has one of the highest per capita public debts in the EU, and a pension system whereby the workers pay for the pensions. So there is a serious challenge of keeping the public pension system viable and sustainable in the near future when the population will be aging.

According to the Dutch-language Belgian newspaper “De Standaard”:http://www.standaard.be/Artikel/Detail.aspx?artikelId=BE2D2NEF, Belgian politicians have decided that the best qualified candidate for the position to lead the Belgian National Office for Pensions will not be appointed. The reason? He is Dutch-speaking, and it was decided that appointing him would bring the balance of francophone versus Dutch speaking high office public servants in danger. [click to continue…]

Rather than being about dead ideas in economics, this post is about the future of economics: its relation to ethics. More specifically, about teaching ethics and economics.
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I haven’t blogged much in the last months — I had too much on my plate and blogging is an easy thing to drop if there’s much more work than can be squeezed into 24 hours a day. A few times something came on my path that I felt I had to blog about, and now, in this academic-off-season with more time (or rather: fewer urgent deadlines) the challenge will be to remember all those things that I felt were worthwhile throwing into the Blogosphere.

Here’s one. A few weeks back I joined “the Friends of the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy”:https://leibniz.stanford.edu/friends/ (SEP). For philosophers, but also for other academics or thinkers/writers/readers who sometimes want to check out a philosophical theory, term, subfield or canonical thinker, this is a true gift. I use it in my teaching and have so far only had positive remarks from students. The SEP contains high quality refereed entries, generally well-written and enlightening, and always freely available to anybody on Earth with access to the internet. Anybody supporting the Open Access movement, or anybody seriously concerned about educational equality of opportunity on a global level, should therefore support the SEP if they can (the membership fees are $5 for students and $10 or 25 for professionals – much less than the fees of most academic associations). So now there is an easy way to support the SEP, and you’ll get something in return for your membership – nicely formatted PDFs of the entries. I hope many thousands worldwide will join, and that the people working hard at creating and maintaining the SEP will take it as a big ‘thank you’ for their work.