Books and glasses

Best of the week - 12 June 2020

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Each week BISA Director, Juliet Dryden, scours the internet for COVID-19 content that might interest you. Here she brings you this week's best readings and podcasts. She also gives you 'The best of the rest' - readings and podcasts to keep you up to date with what's happening around the world. This week she finishes with a weird and wonderful article on the origins of eels.

COVID-related news

The best of the rest

Global Order

Black Lives Matter protests

  • George Floyd protests show how the US has retreated from its position as a world leader
  • What black America means to Europe. Gary Younge in the New York Review of Books
  • Rhodes must fall. Amia Srinivasam on the campaigns in Oxford and Cape Town in the London Review of Books
  • America Explodes: Adam Shatz on Trump’s domestic war in the London Review of Books
  • Podcast: Black Lives Matter from the Reasons to be Cheerful podcast series. After George Floyd's murder, Black Lives Matter protests are again taking place around the world against police violence and systemic racism. What can we do to make this a moment of real change?
  • Podcast: Police State USA from Talking Politics. Listen to Adom Getachew, Jasson Perez and Gary Gerstle about the politics of protest and the politics of policing in America. What does 'Defund the Police' mean in practice? Is the current crisis likely to empower or curtail the surveillance state? How are the current protests different from ones we've seen in the past? And where Minneapolis leads, will the world follow?
  • Podcast: Empire state of mind from the Reasons to be Cheerful archive podcast series. Has our failure to understand Britain’s history played a role in recent political events? Listen to Professor Gurminder Bhambra, expert in postcolonial studies, and Jason Todd, former history teacher and now lecturer in history education, discuss the teaching of the British Empire in schools. 

Middle East

Liberalism in a radical age

And for something completely different...

Photo by Sincerely Media on Unsplash