A rethinking of homogeneity as the baseline used to study diversity

2014/06/09 Leave a comment

Interesting take on diversity vs homogeneity, and the tendency to take homogeneity as the default, from a study by the MIT Sloan School of Management:

In the paper, Apfelbaum, Phillips, and Richeson survey past literature and raise the possibility that homogeneity may be one underlying cause of “groupthink,” in which people fall into an unwarranted consensus.

“It may be that part of what is driving these classic cases of groupthink is having people who are similar to one another,” Apfelbaum says.

Other scholars who have read the paper say it presents a useful reframing of diversity discussions. Samuel Sommers, an associate professor of psychology at Tufts University, calls the paper “very interesting work” that “makes the convincing argument that homogeneity has effects, too, and we should be studying and debating those as well.”

Apfelbaum is working on further experiments aimed at isolating the effects of both homogeneity and diversity. One study looks at peoples activities in financial markets, examining how accurately people price assets in markets that are ethnically diverse or homogenous.

“Being with similar people serves a very basic psychological need to belong and feel comfortable,” Apfelbaum observes. “Were not arguing theres no value in that. Were arguing there is a trade-off with that. The social settings that make us feel good are not necessarily the ones that produce accurate judgments.”

A rethinking of homogeneity as the baseline used to study diversity.

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Canada’s young men joining foreign jihad: Are we doing enough to stop it?

2014/06/07 Leave a comment

More on home-grown radicalization and extremism (see Suicide bomber killed in Iraq part of wider jihadi base in Calgary):

Mahdi Qasqas, a Calgary Muslim youth leader and psychologist, says early intervention is key to preventing young men from going overseas to kill themselves and others.

“If a mother calls and says, ‘My son needs help,’ how will I look at it? Criminal perspective? Call the police. Risk to self-harm? We have to admit to hospital,” Qasqas said. “If she says, ‘Look, I’m seeing some warning signs.’ If your child listen to other people more than you? Then it’s time to connect him to a mentor.”

A prominent Calgary imam, Sayed Soharwardy, told CBC News he strongly believes that increased radicalization of young local men is happening at a “faster pace now” than a decade ago. He wonders why more potential jihadis have not been stopped at airports before even stepping foot on a battlefield.

“I am convinced that the intelligence people know who is recruiting, who is going overseas, who is fighting there,” the cleric said. “If they do not know every one of them, they know some of them.” …

In Ottawa on Wednesday, Minister of Citizenship and Immigration Chris Alexander offered a warning to potential violent extremists.

“If you’re a dual national and you commit an act of terrorism in Canada or abroad, you will lose your Canadian citizenship,” he said.

Whether that will be enough of a deterrent is hard to know.

Canada’s young men joining foreign jihad: Are we doing enough to stop it? – Canada – CBC News.

And in Europe, following the terrorist attack on the Jewish Museum in Brussels by a young radicalized Muslim who had fought in Syria, a new initiative to identify  and prevent potential jihadists.

Looks a bit like the RCMP initiative here in Canada (RCMP set to tackle extremism at home with program to curb radicalization of Canadian youth) but as the above article indicates, some are arguing that this is not enough:

Une série de mesures pour la « détection, la prévention et la dissuasion » ont été retenues au cours d’une réunion entre les ministres de l’Intérieur de neuf pays — Belgique, France, Allemagne, Royaume-Uni, Espagne, Italie, Danemark, Suède et Autriche — spécialement consacrée à cette menace djihadiste, en marge d’une réunion avec leurs homologues des autres pays de l’UE à Luxembourg.

L’UE va s’attaquer aux réseaux de recrutement de djihadistes | Le Devoir.

 

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Zero-tolerance on FGM doesn’t have to be an attack on multiculturalism

2014/06/07 Leave a comment

While this specific piece by Reema Patel focusses on FGM, it raises the broader issue of how to effect change from within on any number of issues:

Powerful advocates within communities that practice FGM, that support homophobia, or that mandate forced marriage will often say that governments have crossed the line of what is acceptable. They will cite consent or acquiescence from minorities within those communities as justification for allowing such practices to continue, and they will often argue those cultural practices are an essential part of the culture – that governments challenging those cultures are illiberal because they do not make space for free expression of those cultures.

The problem is that many on both sides of the debate feel they have to pick a side. That supporting multiculturalism is somehow inconsistent with supporting rights for minorities – including women. But we know that cultures are not as fixed and unchanging as powerful advocates within them may like to make out – they shape themselves to the conditions around them, to social and economic imperatives, and they often liberalise rapidly in new worlds and environments by combining a healthy recognition of traditions, backgrounds and cultural practices with new and modernised interpretations of what it means to belong to that culture in a globalising world.

We also know that change within cultures can only happen when advocates and allies within those cultures are empowered to change minds and hearts around them – and this is where governments must focus their efforts when tackling such problems. The most powerful voices are always those on the inside, not the outside – and governments would do well to work with those voices in order to amplify them.

New Statesman | Zero-tolerance on FGM doesn’t have to be an attack on multiculturalism.

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Multicultural Britain 2.0 Is the Best Answer to Ukip | Malory Nye

2014/06/06 Leave a comment

Interesting commentary on the politics of multiculturalism in the UK by Mallory Nye:

Such a multicultural perspective is not about celebrating diversity, preaching tolerance, or looking to recognise others. It is instead, about acknowledging the diversity of stakeholders in the national debate. It is about the right for people and groups to be different on their own terms, so long as there is also a common ground of identity where all can feel comfortable. It is about acknowledging the challenges of diversity in an attempt to take us beyond the issues of community v. community, identity v. identity, us v. them.

It is about us and us, together with our differences.Any political party that can articulate this sense of acceptance, of a social and national wellbeing in the midst of its diversity, would earn the right to govern, and would indeed find itself with an electoral mandate to do so.

It would be nothing more than helping us to accept the realities of today, rather than falsely promising a return to the long gone days of empire and ethnic homogeneity.

Multicultural Britain 2.0 Is the Best Answer to Ukip: We Need to Learn How to Live at Ease With Our Diversity | Malory Nye.

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Front commun contre un «djihad juridique»

2014/06/06 Leave a comment

More on the Dalila Awada case against Louise Mailloux, former PQ candidate, who in her blog wrote that kosher and halal foods were a “conspiracy to enrich rabbis and imams and fund religious wars” (PQ reaps the intolerance it sowed with values charter). Pauline Maurois never dissociated herself from Mme. Mailloux’s commentary (Radical Islam is ‘a risk,’ Marois says, PQ candidate intolerance).

Reminds me of Ezra Levant’s crusade against human rights commissions and court cases, and the concern about the possible chilling effect on free speech:

Pour l’avocat de Mme Mailloux, Me Jean Bernier, la poursuite-bâillon est un recours judiciaire qui vise surtout à « décourager le militantisme ». La poursuite contre Mme Mailloux et ses acolytes militants laïques est la plus récente d’une « série de poursuites stratégiques » ayant pour cible des personnes qui ont participé au débat public, notamment sur le projet de charte de la laïcité, croit-il. « Voici maintenant qu’on veut déplacer un débat essentiellement politique devant les tribunaux. »

Not a great fan of recourse to the Courts in these cases as it is better that this be resolved in the political arena. The defeat of the PQ, its values charter, and Mme. Gouin have more impact.

Front commun contre un «djihad juridique» | Le Devoir.

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Suicide bomber killed in Iraq part of wider jihadi base in Calgary

2014/06/06 1 Comment

More on home-grown radicalization, the most recent case being Salman Ashrafi:

Calgary is earning a reputation as a breeding ground for jihadi fighters.

The Muslim convert Damian Clairmont, who later took the name Mustafa al-Gharib, was killed while fighting with Jabhat al-Nusra, an al-Qaeda-affiliated rebel group in Syria whose membership is made up largely of European, Australian and North American extremists.

Clairmont was also raised in Calgary, as were as many as two dozen other young men who, according to sources, have travelled to Syria to join rebel extremist groups to wage jihad in the last two years…..

“He might have been around certain charismatic preachers in the community that might not have had his best interests in mind,” he added.

It’s a thought shared by Soharwardy, the Calgary imam, who has received death threats for speaking out about this topic, but feels compelled to in order to stop men in his city from killing and dying on jihadi missions abroad.

“It is impossible for me to think the intelligence people do not know who is radicalizing Muslim youth. It is going on undercover; it is going on openly sometimes,” he said.

“The thing is they are recruiting Muslims to go and fight in Syria and getting them killed. It is horrible.… What is the Canadian government doing? Nothing. I mean this guy died, many, many … people died from our country. For what?”

While theoretical, given that both Clairmont and Ashrafi are dead, it is interesting to see how C-24 revocation provisions would apply in each case.

Clairmont was born in Canada and likely had no dual citizenship. Asrafi moved to Canada when he was in Grade 5 or 6, became naturalized but also has Pakistani citizenship.

Clairmont would keep his Canadian citizenship; Ashrafi would lose it even though he spent most of his childhood and early adulthood in Canada.

Easy to understand why most lawyers argue that this kind of different treatment would not be ruled Charter compliant.

Suicide bomber killed in Iraq part of wider jihadi base in Calgary – Canada – CBC News.

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One Reason Cross-Cultural Small Talk Is So Tricky – Harvard Business Review

2014/06/05 Leave a comment

A bit simplistic and stereotypical, but there is an element of truth to cross-cultural communications challenges:

A good way to prepare is to ask yourself whether the new culture is a “peach” or a “coconut”. This is a distinction drawn by culture experts Fons Trompenaars and Charles Hampden-Turner. In peach cultures like the USA or Brazil people tend to be friendly (“soft”) with new acquaintances. They smile frequently at strangers, move quickly to first-name usage, share information about themselves, and ask personal questions of those they hardly know. But after a little friendly interaction with a peach, you may suddenly get to the hard shell of the pit where the peach protects his real self and the relationship suddenly stops.

In coconut cultures such Russia and Germany, people are initially more closed off from those they don’t have friendships with. They rarely smile at strangers, ask casual acquaintances personal questions, or offer personal information to those they don’t know intimately. But over time, as coconuts get to know you, they become gradually warmer and friendlier. And while relationships are built up slowly, they also tend to last longer….

So what do you do if, like me, you’re a peach fallen amongst coconuts? Authenticity matters; if you try to be someone you’re not, it never works. So go ahead and smile all you want and share as much information about your family as you like. Just don’t ask personal questions of your counterparts until they bring up the subject themselves.  And for my coconut readers, if your peach counterpart asks how you are doing, shows you photos of their family or even invites you over for a barbecue, don’t take it as an overture to deep friendship or a cloak for some hidden agenda, but as an expression of different cultural norms that you need to adjust to.

One Reason Cross-Cultural Small Talk Is So Tricky – Erin Meyer – Harvard Business Review.

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How a family was built on the basis of forgiveness – The Globe and Mail

2014/06/05 Leave a comment

Powerful family story of forgiveness and reconciliation, in the shadows of Japanese-Canadian wartime internment:

While Mark Sakamoto and his younger brother, Daniel, were still children, their mother became an alcoholic. She left their father. She moved in with a violent man. She drank herself to death in the basement of a skid-row hotel in Medicine Hat while Mr. Sakamoto was in university.

The “gift” from his grandparents was that he brought himself to forgive his mother, to cleanse his heart of the resentment, hurt and sadness he felt toward her.

“I felt that with my daughter when she was born,” Mr. Sakamoto says, “when I was holding Miya, and I was angry because my mum wasn’t there.

“That’s where I started with the link, that my heart was that little daughter’s home, her emotional home, just like my grandparents understood that their heart was their children’s emotional home, and if it was clouded with anger at the Canadian government, at the Japanese forces that captured my grandfather and starved him and beat him, and if they dwelt on those injurious years and passed them on, that would be the real transgression.”

“I didn’t want my daughter to feel what I was feeling,” Mr. Sakamoto says. “And forgiveness is the only escape hatch we have in that regard.”

How a family was built on the basis of forgiveness – The Globe and Mail.

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Écoles juives: les hassidim sont prêts à négocier | Le Devoir

2014/06/03 Leave a comment

A reminder of the challenges of fundamentalism and the limits of faith-based education:

Selon lui [Alex Werzberger, le porte-parole de la Coalition d’organisations hassidiques d’Outremont (COHO)], certaines matières obligatoires au programme ne seront jamais enseignées dans les écoles juives, « point final » affirme-t-il, très catégorique. Exit le cours Éthique et culture religieuse ainsi que les cours de biologie et de sciences. « On ne veut pas enseigner la théorie de l’évolution. À un enfant à qui on a dit toute sa vie que c’est Dieu qui avait créé la Terre, on ne va pas soudainement lui dire le contraire. »

Sur d’autres sujets, comme veiller à ce que tous les enseignants embauchés aient des brevets, il admet qu’ils devront « mettre de l’eau dans [leur] vin ». « Ça doit se faire des deux côtés, réitère-t-il. Dans une négociation, il faut qu’il y ait du give and take. On a l’impression que le gouvernement fait juste take, take, take. »

Écoles juives: les hassidim sont prêts à négocier | Le Devoir.

The reminds me of this article by Patrick Martin in The Globe of some of the medium and long-term challenges facing Israel and the growth of Jewish fundamentalists:

First of all, there has been a sharp decline in the length of formal studies taken by Haredi men. More than 47 per cent of Haredi men aged 35-54 (prime working age) have no more than a primary school education. Ten years ago only 31 per cent were limited to a primary education.

The reason for the substantial decline in formal education has been a steady transition to religious studies, the Taub report states, at the expense of secondary school and academic studies. And the trend will only grow.

More than 90 per cent of Haredi men aged 25-34 chose to take religious rather than academic studies. Fifty years ago, only about half of Haredi men forsook academic for religious studies.

All this has had a dramatic economic impact. “Israel’s poverty and income inequality rates are among the highest in the developed world – and considerably higher than they were in Israel several decades ago,” the Taub report concludes.

Why illiteracy may be the greatest threat to Israel’s survival

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How Buddhist fundamentalism became an international threat

2014/06/03 Leave a comment

Interesting piece by Doug Saunders on the rise of Buddhist fundamentalism:

This simultaneous explosion of fundamentalism in three Buddhist nations does not appear to be coincidental: Extremist monks from Myanmar formerly known as Burma, Sri Lanka and Thailand have held meetings in recent months to share ideas and form a movement. Mr. Arora notes “a common thread among the three groups: a portrayal of a threat to the majority religion, and linking of Buddhism to the national identity.”

This politicization of Buddhism – and the violence that sometimes accompanies it – appears to contradict traditional Buddhist principles and teachings, which are strenuously apolitical and non-violent. But the same could be said for the rise of Christian fundamentalism in the nineteenth century and the Muslim and Hindu-fundamentalist movements it inspired: religions that are theoretically devoted to peace have, one after another, inspired sometimes violent political movements in the name of their faith.

How Buddhist fundamentalism became an international threat – The Globe and Mail.

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