七転び八起き

First of all, I would like to express my sympathy with the victims of the disaster in Japan and all of those involved. To remain strong in such a horrendous situation deserves nothing but respect and high esteem. Furthermore, many thanks to the organisers of Friday’s information evening. Besides answering many of the visitors’ questions, the evening also symbolised an inspiring feeling of commiseration for those in peril. The widespread and palpable feeling of solidarity last Friday gave me an insight in the potential of LUC the Hague. Besides functioning as a regular university college, LUC could become a platform for information on contemporary affairs and situations in the world. As students and staff of the very first year of LUC, it is our responsibility to live up to the mission statement “building knowledge for a better world”. Important events such as the information evening about Japan are the true foundation of the process of building for a better world. By listening to, observing and interacting with leading experts in the fields of different global challenges, students can create the necessary awareness for a necessary better world. On a planet where nature is not always on our side and vice versa, future scholars or policy makers should be aware of the risks and dangers of life on earth. LUC can serve as a distributor of knowledge that could enable us to live on earth our earth sustainably, safely and peacefully. As scholars and students, we have the duty to learn from disasters and horrors in order to learn to deal with them in the future . I would like to end this short blog entry with a Japanese saying that a friend of mine once told me: 七転び八起き(nana korobi - ya oki), Fall seven times – get up eight.

Jules Marc van der Sneppen (1st year student, LUC)

Where it all began?

Thomas More - Utopia

The first book read for the Dean’s class is Thomas More’s Utopia, which could be seen as the start of the whole genre of Utopia’s. Written in the sixteenth century it clearly shows the clash between the ending feudal system and the starting modern age (with the building of the nation-state).
For me the most interesting part of Utopia was the way More tried to mix a strong normative view on religion with a humanist view on almost all other matters concerning society. As More himself was a devoted Catholic and eventually even died for his believe; in Utopia this is shown through his strong statements against; who he claims are not even human! So the person in question should be forbidden to speak in public and hold any public offices as well.

However on the other side we see More as a humanist and socialist, for he does not believe in social classes, which leads him to make all people shift jobs every 5 years or so with one another, thinks money irrelevant and believes that all people should be educated properly; from which also follows according to More that all people will be reasonable once they have received such an education.

In the end however, although More makes many reasonable points which are especially great when we realize the time in which he wrote them down (1516), I believe More was still too normative in his religious believes to come to a truly great society in his Utopia; for above all the humanistic and socialistic standpoints he put a religious domination (through morals that he believes all people should and would have in this society of Utopia, and the control over society and those morals he gives to the priests!) that limits basically all freedom and equality he gave to the people of Utopia in the other parts of his book.

Laura Pierik, 1st year student, LUC

The LUC Dean's Masterclass is run each semester for the students who made the honour roll in the previous semester.

Japan panel follow up

Many people expressed the desire to help on Friday, and we hope that such people can use this site as a way of communicating with each other and hence as a way to facilitate follow-up meetings and events. Feel free to post comments to that end; we can use this thread to find each other again.

Japan awareness panel

On Friday 1 April, the LUC Research Centre and the Modern East Asia Research Centre co-hosted a panel of experts to discuss recent events in Japan, with the intention of disseminating accurate, reliable information, and also to provide opportunity for coordination of some fund-raising activities.

The hosts were delighted that so many people attended the event, and also that Prof.dr. Laurens Jan Brinkhorst, a long-time patron of MEARC and the former EU Ambassador to Japan, took the time to chair the event for us.

In addition to the panelists and audience, the event attracted attention from representatives of the Dutch government, media and business. Minister Ishii of the Japanese Embassy was also in attendance, and he spoke of the traditional importance of water in Japanese history and culture, noting its extreme nature in that part of the world.

The panel (left to right) included Prof Chris Goto-Jones, dean of LUC, director of MEARC and professor of comparative philosophy at Leiden, who spoke about the place of natural disasters and nuclear crisis in the literary culture of modern Japan; Dr Rogier Busser, assistant professor of Japanese Political Economy at Leiden, who spoke about the likely impact of the disastrous events of March on the Japanese and world economy; Dr Ethan Mark, assistant professor of Modern Japanese History at Leiden, who spoke about popular and grass-roots reactions to the crises in Japan; Dr Jan Leen Kloosterman, associate professor of Nuclear Reactor Physics, Delft University, who explained the crisis in the Fukushima reactors; and Prof Jean Savelhout, professor of Radiation Safety & Health, Leiden University and VU Amsterdam, who explained the possible effects of radiation on the health and environment of Japan and elsewhere.

Every seat was taken in the lecture hall, as a diverse audience of students, academics, government representatives, journalists, business people and a wide general audience sought more information about events in Japan. In the end, it was decided to continue the discussion about how help could and should be provided to the people most impacted by these events. A collection was made for the Japanese Red Cross -- the panelists all waived their honoraria so that the money could be donated to the Red Cross -- more events will be planned in a considered way over the next period.

The hosts would like to thank all of those involved in Friday's event. We express our ongoing sympathies to the people of Japan, and our determination to find new and appropriate ways to help them.

Courageous men and women

'Courageous men and women had for many decades defied state terror... Today they are joined by the masses'


Listen to Dr Elizabeth Kassab

http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/news/2011/02/110228_kassab.shtml

Dr Kassab is the author of Contemporary Arab Thought: Cultural Critique in Comparative Perspective published by Columbia University Press.

http://cup.columbia.edu/book/978-0-231-14488-9/contemporary-arab-thought

For a review of Dr Kassab's book, see

http://h-net.msu.edu/cgi-bin/logbrowse.pl?trx=vx&list=h-levant&month=1009&week=e&msg=opEoQuUesNZ2g9dx4PWyCw&user=&pw=

Thomas Bundschuh