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I still think of Kate Millett’s Sexual Politics as the book that changed my life. Its insistence on the importance of patriarchal structures and sexual hierarchies in literature and history, as well as in contemporary society, was eye-opening.

The 1970s saw the publication of several classic feminist texts, including Shulamith Firestone’s The Dialectic of Sex, Eva Figes’ Patriarchal Attitudes and Germaine Greer’s The Female Eunuch. For the most part, these books grew out of the discussions and consciousness-raising groups associated with the early stages of the Women’s Liberation movement.

Many women who became feminists in the 1970s still ask which of these books was most important to them. For me, the answer is unquestionably Sexual Politics.

I was a graduate student, just embarking on a PhD on a Victorian man of letters, when I first read Sexual Politics (or rather, a review of it that sent me racing for the book). It offered a whole new approach to history and to intellectual life.

Until I read it, I lacked the self-confidence – and even the language required – to address the history of the 19th century from the vantage point of a woman. I had believed in the notions of scholarly impartiality and “objectivity” that were dominant in the 1960s – and would come to be seen as expressing views reflecting the position of privileged white men.

Armed with a new critical stance, I went on to become a feminist historian, teaching and researching women’s lives and the history of feminism.

The term “sexual politics”, very widely used now, was then quite new. Millett was the first person to use it in print. Aware it was not only new, but controversial (and to some, incomprehensible), she explained at some length why she saw sexual relationships – and indeed the act of sex itself – as political.

She explained why we needed to move beyond using the term “political” just to refer to a narrow world of parties, chairmen and meetings. Its use, she argued, should be extended to describe “power-structured relationships, to all arrangements whereby one group of persons is controlled by another”.

Power, sex, Miller and Mailer

To emphasise the power structure in sexual relationships, Millet began the book with an extended passage from Henry Miller’s Sexus, which graphically depicts a cruel sexual conquest. It reads in part:

It happened so quickly that she didn’t have time to rebel or even to pretend to rebel. In a moment I had her in the tub, stockings and all […] I lay back and pulled her on top of me. She was just like a bitch in heat, biting me all over, panting, gasping, wriggling like a worm on the hook.

The brutal misogyny evident in Miller’s laudatory depiction of the way his hero, Val, sexually dominates and subdues Ida, the wife of his erstwhile friend, Bill Woodruff, is as shocking to read now as it was in 1970.

Back then, Millett’s insistence on discussing the misogyny in this widely admired text was striking. So was her refusal to privilege the book’s freedom and sexual explicitness as the topic of discussion. The “almost supernatural sense of power” and dominance a male reader might experience, she argued, was very different from what a female reader might experience.

In a chapter titled “Instances of Sexual Politics”, Millett turned from Miller to another iconic mid-20th-century male novelist, Norman Mailer, and his book, An American Dream. Her discussion underlined the extreme violence towards women the kind of sexual domination in Miller and Mailer’s work could encompass. (Ironically, perhaps, the current cover of the Modern Classics edition of Sexus carries a rave from Mailer.)

On hearing the wife he had separated from had engaged in sex with others (something he had done even during their marriage), Rojack, Mailer’s hero, first sodomises and then kills her. Both Rojack and his creator seem to feel this act is entirely justified. There is little motive for this killing, Millett notes, “beyond the fact that he is unable to master her in any other way”. Rojack is exhausted when he finishes – though he now feels triumphant and follows this act of mastery by buggering her maid.

At a time when there is so much awareness of the link between gender hierarchies and disrespect for women with rape and domestic violence, it is quite shocking to see how recent our consciousness of these connections are.

Both Miller and Mailer, as Millett shows, depict their violent, controlling men as heroes. They are entitled to project their masculinity and demand its recognition in ways that would be unthinkable in ostensibly serious literature now.

Her feminist critique of these immensely influential male novelists was unprecedented. The fact she began and ended her book with this critique illustrates how seriously she took literature and ideas. She saw them as the basis of political consciousness and conduct.

Kate Millett’s feminist critique of influential male novelists like Norman Mailer was ‘unprecedented’.
Michael Ward/Getty Images

But not all literary depictions of sexual cruelty take this triumphalist tone, Millett argues. She cites the example of French writer Jean Genet, who was abandoned by his mother, spent part of his adolescence at a reform school and spent time as a homeless male prostitute. Drawing on his own painful personal experiences, Millett argues, Genet depicts sexual violence and brutality from the vantage point of those subjected to it.

Operating in a homosexual world, he sometimes chooses drag queen prostitutes brutalised by pimps, clients and lovers for this purpose. The abject drag queens at the bottom of this hierarchy show what it is to be female, in this “mirror society of heterosexuality”. Genet also wrote about women, in his play The Maids and other works, using them, too, to show that brutal sexual hierarchies both reflect and provide the foundations for other social hierarchies and structures.

For Genet, Millet argues approvingly, sex and the power structure around it is “the most pernicious of the systems of oppression”.

Naming and defining ‘patriarchy’

As she moved from discussing “instances of sexual politics” to articulating its theory, Millett, like many other feminists of the 1970s, framed her discussion in terms of the patriarchy. The naming and defining of “patriarchy” as a system “whereby that half of the populace which is female is controlled by that half which is male”, was seen at the time as a major step in understanding the nature of women’s oppression.

It offered a framework for showing how widespread the oppression of women was – and the many ways it was reinforced. It was not only a system of government, but an ideology that conditioned both men and women to accept a particular form of sexual hierarchy and to develop an appropriate understanding of their role, status and temperament within it.

Millett, like many feminists of the 1970s, framed her discussion in terms of the patriarchy. Women’s Lib March Washington DC 1970.
Library of Congress/Warren K Leffler

The concept of patriarchy also offered a way of understanding the consequences of the biological differences between the sexes. It could be seen in sociological terms in the constitution of the family. There was an anthropological dimension, too, as it was reinforced through myth and religion.

Psychologically, it was reinforced through the infantilisation of women and in their internalised sense of inferiority and self-hatred. Patriarchy could also be seen in economic and educational systems that perpetuate women’s inferiority and economic dependence – and in the many ways force has been used in legal and cultural systems.

Intellectual courage and imaginative power

Millett’s discussion of sexual politics was extraordinarily wide-ranging. After introducing some of her key literary texts, she provided an extended historical discussion of the 19th and early 20th centuries, as historical background to the present.

Broadly linking Britain and America, she explored what she saw as the “first sexual revolution”: the 19th-century feminist campaigns for women’s education and political rights, and the texts, like John Stuart Mill’s essay The Subjection of Women, that delineated and critiqued the inferior position occupied by women.

In Millett’s historical sweep, the 19th-century sexual revolution was followed by a counterrevolution, comprising the attacks on women’s rights evident in Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union under Stalin, on one hand, and the impact on American women of Freudian psychoanalysis and the ideas of some of the post-Freudians, on the other.

The concept of “penis envy” was a particular target, showing so clearly how women’s inferiority was internalised. The counterrevolution provides the context for the more detailed discussion of the male novelists who are dealt with in more detail in the book’s final section – where D.H. Lawrence is added to Miller and Mailer. These three iconic male writers, who both reflect and shape cultural attitudes, are described by Millett as “counter-revolutionary sexual politicians”.

The scope of Millett’s discussion is impressive. Its breadth speaks both to her own intellectual courage and imaginative power, and to the limited state of scholarship on women at the time she was writing.

Kate Millett.
Linda Wolf/Wikipedia, CC BY

This book began as a PhD at Columbia University. While Millett was allowed extraordinary latitude, she had to make do with very limited resources. If one were attempting to cover the historical span she dealt with now, one would be overwhelmed by the vast scholarship on gender in the history, literature and sociology of the 19th and 20th centuries that she addresses. But all of this was in the future, and she had to make do with a very small number of works, as her own bibliography makes clear.

‘A revelation’ or ‘like homework’?

It was the combination of this broad scope and her incredible intellectual freedom and independence that were most important to me when I first read her book.

Millett was a revelation, with her sharp (and sometimes funny) feminist critique of canonical texts and her critical reading of history that placed women at the centre. I was also struck by her endorsement of some historical figures, like John Stuart Mill, and ridiculing of others, like art critic John Ruskin or Tennyson.

Her analysis of the Victorian period was particularly appealing to me, but so too was her literary analysis. All these things would become central in feminist scholarship in the subsequent decades. But her work linked this scholarly dimension to a contemporary political critique and program.

For Millett, this critical reading of these canonical male texts was in itself a political act, demolishing a canon and allowing a new space for women to read. I found it exhilarating – though it did mean I ultimately abandoned that PhD.

Some found Sexual Politics hard to read and too abstract to be of use to contemporaries concerned about women. In the Guardian, Emily Wilson suggested it could feel “at times, just a wee bit like homework”. But its energy and sweep appealed to many – and Wilson herself concluded “you will undoubtedly be a better woman for it”. Sexual Politics was a sensation, an instant bestseller, and for a couple of years Millett found herself constantly giving university talks and lectures, and appearing in the media.

She was seen by some as the central intellectual figure in the women’s movement – not a status she ever sought or claimed. Shortly after the book was published, she featured on the cover of Time Magazine in August 1970, an extended and rather curious essay titled: “Who’s come a long way, baby?”.

The essay is curious because the author seems to have not quite decided whether to praise Millett or condemn her. Sexual Politics had then sold more than 15,000 copies and was in its fourth edition – despite being, as the essay noted, “a polemic suspended awkwardly in academic traction”. Alongside its presentation of Millett’s views, the essay offered facts and figures to confirm the subordinate status of women in the United States and an account of the lengthy battle waged for women’s rights.

At times, it seemed almost admiring – and to seek to support her overall argument. But it made the discomfort of some of her male readers very clear, quoting one of her thesis examiners, who said reading the book “is like sitting with your testicles in a nutcracker”. The sting was there from the start, however. Millett was described not only as an “ideologue”, but as “the Mao Tse-tung of Women’s Liberation” – which didn’t reflect her sense of intellectual freedom.

The essay also quoted several male anthropologists and medical specialists who questioned her scholarship in their particular area and deplored her lack of concern about motherhood. Some, like Canadian anthropologist Lionel Tiger, then became the subject of feminist criticism. But in the essay, their expertise is unquestioned.

Whatever admiration there was disappeared six months later, when Time published another article: Women’s Lib: a Second Look. This piece consisted entirely of criticisms of Millett’s views and “lack of intellectual sophistication”: from Irving Howe, Tiger (again), and some women, including Janet Malcolm.

In the earlier article, questions about lesbianism as a source of division within the women’s movement had been raised. Here, to seal Time’s disapproval – and make sure she was no longer acceptable –  the magazine outed her as “bisexual”. The discomfort Millett caused male readers became evident in other publications too, especially from literary men. She was subjected to a vicious critique from Irving Howe in Harper’s Magazine and became the central target of Norman Mailer’s extraordinary satirical outpouring of male woe, The Prisoner of Sex.

A forgotten feminist?

Millett’s initial popularity did not endure. She faced hostility from within the women’s movement, too. Some demanded a closer identification with lesbian women, both publicly and in print. Others felt no one should be allowed to occupy the position of intellectual leader in a movement so hostile to hierarchy and structure.

Much has been made of the fact that, by the mid-1990s, Sexual Politics was no longer in print. At this time, Millett was describing herself as “the feminist time forgot”. Sexual Politics continued to be read, however, and extracted for collections and anthologies.

The question of Millett’s continuing influence is a complex one and its form sometimes amorphous. Although it is academics who write most often about her, she did not – and indeed did not intend to – set a research agenda. Some of her ideas and approaches were directly challenged by the new feminist scholarship across the humanities and social sciences that developed in the 1970s and ‘80s. Her antipathy to Freud, for example, was rejected by feminists who saw psychoanalysis as offering important insights into femininity and how women understood and experienced it.

The concept of patriarchy, too, was being questioned by feminist scholars like Veronica Beechey and Joan Acker, who felt this notion of a global and almost universal system of male domination was unhelpful. It lacked specificity. On one hand, it made it hard to analyse the different kinds of sexual hierarchies that existed in different times and places. On the other, it seemed to deny women any kind of agency in negotiating the structures they lived under, or in determining their own lives.

Andrea Dworkin wrote that Kate Millett ‘woke up’ a sleeping world.
Hachette

For many of those involved in feminist scholarship from the 1970s onwards, it was studying women’s lives and activities, their contribution to literature, history and society that seemed important – rather than focusing only on their oppression.

Quite apart from these specific issues, however, There is a very strong sense among many academics, journalists and feminist activists of the later 20th century that Millett who opened their eyes to the sexist world around them. “The world was sleeping,” Andrea Dworkin wrote, “and Millett woke it up.”

Sexual Politics may have been out of print in the 1990s, but it reappeared in 2000. And it was republished again, to much more acclaim, in 2016, with a foreword by noted feminist Catharine A. MacKinnon and an afterword by New Yorker writer Rebecca Mead. This time, it received serious attention from some of the mainstream liberal press (including The New Yorker and The New Republic) that had ignored it the first time round.

There is a strong sense in these articles that Sexual Politics was a product of its time. That emphasis on the importance of critical reading, its linking of cultural criticism with radical politics and its optimism about the possibility of a sexual revolution that would bring about a complete reordering of the sexual hierarchy all belong to the 1970s.

Millett’s death in 2017 led to more discussion of her importance to a whole generation of feminists. Her sense of the importance of ideas and her optimism now seem utopian. But for many of us who read Millett in the 1970s, these very qualities helped give us the courage to challenge the intellectual and political worlds we lived in. For some of us, it changed our lives.

Read more:
What are the four waves of feminism? And what comes next? Läs mer…

The new season of Heartbreak High is garnering mixed reviews.

Critics are writing about the racy story lines, comparing it to other coming-of-age series about teenage relationships and sex such as Riverdale and Sex Education. Both seasons have been praised for their representation of cultural diversity – but I think the reviews are missing the real cultural influence of the show.

In this new season, the representation of culturally diverse characters on the grounds of Hartley High is “banal multiculturalism”. While season one looked closely at the entrenched racism of institutions, season two goes beyond events and institutions to explore a multifaceted, everyday reality.

In exploring this banal multiculturalism, the show gets closer to showing us everyday Australia.

Full young lives

What Heartbreak High excels at, especially in this second take, is in delving deeper into the complexity of the characters, many of whom hail from under-represented and misrepresented social groups.

In the first season, the police attack Indigenous character Malakai (Thomas Weatherall) without provocation when he is walking home after a Mardi Gras event. In another scene, Darren (James Majoos), who is mixed-race, is warned by his father about hiding goods stolen by his white boyfriend as the police were more likely to suspect him of the crime.

Season two does not have these explicit references to race-based political events or racist institutions. Here, backstories and character arcs help us see the everyday aspects of being a multicultural or First Nations young person.

Unlike in season one, this complexity does not render them simply as victims of a brutal system, but as having agency to heal themselves and represent others like them.

Amerie Wadia is sometimes unlikeable – like all teenagers.
Netflix

Amerie (Ayesha Madon) is sometimes unlikeable due to her prior popular girl narcissism in season one. In the new season, she grows into more courage and accountability as she runs for school captain and rescues a fellow student from a school fire, despite the fact he had been conspiring against her the whole term.

Sasha (Gemma Chua-Tran) lives her life with an unapologetic queerness and somewhat imperfect vegan politics. Her Asian-ness only comes to light in one scene where she talks about going to a Chinese restaurant to eat a meat dish. Her overall persona is more “social justice warrior” than representative of a single ethnic group.

Missy (Arrernte actor Sherry Lee-Watson) is a feisty teenager. In a memorable scene where the school captain candidates are headed to a formal event to raise funds for their campaigns, Missy coolly gets rid of her chewing gum by pasting it on the portrait of King Charles II adorning the venue’s corridor.

In not framing these characters as solely defined by their racialised identity – but still conscious of living in a racist society – Heartbreak High gives them new agency. First Nations lingua franca (such as “deadly” and “yarn”) are peppered throughout the season and not explained for global viewers.

This is what I mean by banal multiculturalism: the use of this language is integrated as normal and everyday. This is powerful for communities who have often been positioned as needing translation. Here, they are not so much integrated as centred and normalised.

Towards an aspirational multiculturalism

Race-based stereotyping is still a reality in Australian schools. This new season of Heartbreak High helps us aspire to a multicultural future in which young people can transcend ethnic boxes.

The season certainly has its flaws and unrealistic plots. However, it manifests what I have called “aspirational multiculturalism”.

These depictions are not post-racial, but aspirational: they help us imagine a reality that is more justice-oriented than the current one. While racism exists in society, these students carve out a space in which their difference endows them with confidence and helps them to eventually express solidarity with their peers.

The new season shows us what we could be – and helps shape a more just multicultural society.

The characters deal with the everyday issues of being young.
Netflix

Diverse young voices

The first season of the reboot appealed to both those who watched the series in the ’90s and fresh Gen Z viewers.

The second season may not be able to retain all its older viewers, but some might persist to get another glimpse into the lives of young people and the social issues of the near future.

The coming-of-age genre transcends generations. It is no surprise representing complex culturally diverse characters is trialled in such stories.

Other recent examples on Netflix of diverse young adult content include Never Have I Ever and The Babysitter’s Club (also a reboot). These shows have heralded a new generation of content creators and actors who are centring non-Anglo stories, and doing so in ways that champion culture as a part of the messy story of growing up.

Such young adult shows are inspiring for the next generation of non-white creatives, and signal a social change agenda for all generations.

A lasting legacy

Since 2016, we have seen a doubling of non-European representation on Australian television. But people with Indian, Chinese, Filipino and Vietnamese ancestry are still under-represented, even as their populations in Australia are growing.

It is here I think the reboot could have a legacy beyond helping with the careers of a very talented young cast. Heartbreak High comes at a time of seemingly deep cultural divides, but also of generations of digitally exposed youth who are being more thoughtful about what media they engage with and are shaped by.

What is likely to make a lasting impact is the normalisation of diversity for this generation, setting the benchmark for other local productions.

Banal multiculturalism in screen drama is the future of television. Not just because it is proving to be successful with viewers, but also because it is the future we should shape for generations to come. Läs mer…

Every day is a good day to reflect on our shared responsibility to improve our relationship with the environment, and to consider how some communities are disproportionately more affected by environmental destruction than others. While such reflection is always important, it is especially pressing as the Aamjiwnaang First Nation declares a state of emergency in response to ongoing environmental pollution.

Canada can take an important step towards correcting ongoing and disproportionate environmental harms, and preventing more communities having to take such drastic steps, by enacting Bill C-226.

Introduced by Green Party Leader Elizabeth May, the purpose of Bill C-226 is to “develop a national strategy to…advance environmental justice and to assess, prevent and address environmental racism.” The bill also calls for the strategy to be informed “[in consultation or co-operation] with any interested persons, bodies, organizations or communities…”.

Bill C-226 passed in the House of Commons in March 2023. It is now before the Senate Standing Committee on Energy, the Environment and Natural Resources.

In his recent testimony in support of Bill C-226, Aamjiwnaang Chief Chris Plain elaborated on how his community’s location in Canada’s Chemical Valley — near Sarnia, Ont. — makes it a “sacrifice zone.” At the same time, as Aamjiwnaang leaders remind us, it doesn’t have to be this way.

Bill C-226 — if well-implemented — should bring an end to the creation and maintenance of zones of sacrifice, including in the race to exploit the critical minerals in northern Ontario’s so-called “Ring of Fire.”

As community-engaged critical policy scholars dedicated to interrupting the entangled mess of colonialism, sexism and racism in public policy, we have spent more than a decade working alongside and as members of affected communities to better understand community well-being and respond to factors — including environmental destruction – that undermine well-being.

Drawing on our past and ongoing research and collaborations, and on relevant Senate testimony, we suggest three things that must happen for C-226 to meet its ambitions.

A report on Canada’s “Chemical Valley” produced by Vice.

Meaningful engagement

First, the plan to develop the strategy must be guided by evidence about meaningful and inclusive engagement practices.

The Bill’s preamble states that “discrimination in the development of environmental policy would constitute environmental racism.” But what does non-discriminatory engagement look like? At its core, it centres community knowledge and expertise.

As CanArctic Inuit Networks COO Madeleine Redfern’s testimony before the Senate committee highlighted, “meaningful participation of minorities throughout the process…[including] how one engages and where [is essential] ….” It is essential that meaningful engagement be guided by the valuing of agency, the recognition of knowledge and expertise, and the provision of adequate resources to enable participation.

Read more:
Indigenous consultation is key to the Ring of Fire becoming Canada’s economic superpower

As Aamjiwnaang member Ada Lockridge explains in her poem I Didn’t Know, community members living in close proximity to heavily polluting facilities often become activists (and experts) when they learn that existing policies will not protect them.

Those responsible for implementing Bill C-226 will benefit from taking the expertise of community members like Lockridge seriously.

Planetary health

Second, the strategy must adopt a broader view of planetary health to understand the complexities of environmental racism. Intersectionality — a term coined in 1989 by American civil rights activist and legal scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw — helps us consider how people’s identities intersect with systems of power to create patterns of privilege and oppression.

As the Native Women’s Association of Canada and the Women’s Healthy Environments Network noted in their submissions to the Senate committee, environmental hazards and harms are not experienced equally.

It is beyond dispute that factors such as gender, income, and ability structure the benefits and burdens of resource extraction and development.

Aamjiwnaang community members paddle downstream to their home along the St. Clair River near Sarnia, Ont.
(Laurence Butet-Roch), Author provided (no reuse)

Understanding environmental racism through an intersectional lens requires gathering data about environmental exposures that is separated by factors such as gender, age, income and ability. It also requires thinking creatively and concretely about how to include multiple forms of evidence in environmental policy and planning, including quantitative, qualitative, collaboratively produced, and storied data and knowledge such as oral testimony for decision-making. An example of this includes Indigenous evidence and testimony shared in relation to the Transmountain Pipeline Expansion.

A multifaceted intersectional lens can help make sure the unique experiences of women, 2SLGBTQ+ people, children and others are appropriately documented. It can also help to disrupt ongoing issues with data colonialism, including in Chemical Valley.

Using a broader planetary lens also means increasing respect for all humans and non-humans. As Canada Research Chair in Indigenous Environmental Health Diana Lewis noted at a recent panel about environmental justice, it is time to stop treating certain lives as disposable.

Designing justice

Third, the strategy should be stewarded by multi-jurisdictional, community-driven leadership. We suggest that principles of design justice and policy justice are useful for realizing this commitment. These principles require humility from research collaborators, political representatives and public servants alike.

The strategy’s development and implementation should also take place in collaboration with affected communities. The bill’s preamble highlights the Government of Canada’s commitment to engaging with communities to assess and prevent environmental racism. As such, the federal government should convene and fund critical conversations, listen to community members and leaders and develop recommendations with them.

Read more:
Flipping Indigenous regional development in Newfoundland upside-down: lessons from Australia

As the Canadian social scientist Ingrid Waldron reminds us, dismantling environmental racism and allowing environmental justice to flourish is a critical matter of public policy that affects all Canadians.

Successfully implementing Bill C-226 requires inclusive engagement, a planetary health lens and multi-jurisdictional, community-driven leadership. Läs mer…

The number of people accessing medication for attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) in Aotearoa New Zealand increased significantly between 2006 and 2022. But the disorder is still under-diagnosed and under-treated compared to global ADHD prevalence estimates.

ADHD is a neurodevelopmental disorder affecting the part of the brain that helps people plan, control impulses and execute tasks. It is treated primarily with methylphenidate.

Our new research using demographic and dispensing data from pharmacists – showed a tenfold increase in dispensing of ADHD medication for adults over the study period. During the same time frame, there was a threefold increase in prescriptions for children.

Despite this, there remain serious access and equity issues. New Zealand will need to look at why some people are not getting help, and consider whether the treatment options are fit for purpose.

The rise of ADHD diagnoses

We speculate there are multiple reasons for the rise in ADHD diagnoses and treatment over the past two decades.

In New Zealand and elsewhere, people are becoming more literate about mental health issues, including disorders such as ADHD, depression, anxiety and autism. With increasing literacy, comes greater demand for treatment.

People may be becoming less tolerant of symptoms affecting their day-to-day activities. Generally accepted symptoms of ADHD in adults include impulsiveness, disorganisation and problems prioritising focusing on tasks and poor time management.

Read more:
More adults are being diagnosed as neurodivergent. Here’s how employers can help in the workplace

While everyone may have some symptoms similar to ADHD at some point in their lives, ADHD is diagnosed only when symptoms are severe enough to cause ongoing problems. These persistent and disruptive symptoms can be traced back to early childhood.

The vast majority of medications prescribed in New Zealand are stimulant medicines. There is an assumption these medications will agitate and increase activity in whoever takes them.

But for many people with ADHD, the medication allows attention to be better focused. In fact, people become less agitated and more able to function within the demands society places on them.

An estimated 2.6% of adults in New Zealand have ADHD but just 0.6% receive treatment for it.
LightFieldStudios/Getty Images

The treatment gap in New Zealand

While there has been a significant increase in prescriptions for adults with ADHD since 2006, our data suggest it is likely there is a large number of people with ADHD who are not receiving treatment.

In 2022, 0.6% of the adult population in New Zealand was receiving treatment for ADHD. This compares to an estimated 2.6% of adults with the condition. This suggests a large treatment gap exists.

There were noteworthy gender and ethnicity differences across the age span within the data. Three quarters of children dispensed ADHD medication were male, whereas the gender split was more even for adults.

There is debate about the differences in ADHD symptoms between the genders. Some have suggested males tend to exhibit more external symptoms of ADHD, including hyperactivity. They are, therefore, more likely to be diagnosed as children. It is believed females are relatively under-recognised because they exhibit less obvious symptoms such as anxiety.

Dispensing of ADHD medication for Māori for all ages was in line with population demographics. However, adult Māori only made up 10% of people receiving prescriptions for ADHD medication, despite making up 17% of the population.

The barriers to diagnosis and treatment

Receiving treatment for ADHD relies on access to a range of assessment and treatment options. Also, the prescription of methylphenidate requires special authority from Pharmac (the government body overseeing funding and supply of medications) and endorsement by a paediatrician or psychiatrist.

In Aotearoa New Zealand, access to public mental health services is heavily restricted due to a workforce facing considerable strain. Some district health boards do not assess adult ADHD at all.

Read more:
ADHD in adults is challenging but highly treatable – a clinical psychologist explains

This means many ADHD assessments are now undertaken in the private sector at a cost of between NZ$1,000 and $3,000. The price of diagnosis and treatment is creating access and equity issues for those unable to afford the expensive assessments.

It is possible that, with greater access to ADHD assessments and treatment, the negative individual and societal effects would reduce. The known burdens associated with ADHD include lower productivity, health and education system costs, and reduced quality of life.

Increasing access to ADHD assessments and treatment will require more professionals with the skills to complete ADHD assessments, as well as revisiting the current prescribing restrictions and PHARMAC authorisation system.

This won’t be straightforward – but it needs to be a priority if New Zealand is to address the gap between those who have ADHD and those who are able to receive diagnoses and treatment. Läs mer…

The recent arrest of Timur Ivanov, Russia’s deputy defence minister and close ally of defence minister Sergei Shoigu, has rocked the country’s politics. Ivanov was an important part of a powerful group which included Shoigu as his direct patron but that also includes the billionaire oligarch Gennady Timchenko – a close associate of Vladimir Putin – and the powerful mayor of Moscow Oblast, Andrei Vorobyov.

Ivanov was reportedly known as “the wallet” of the Shoigu-Timchenko clan. A wallet is the nominal holder of assets and funds belonging to the clan. Putin’s wallet is thought to be his old friend Sergei Roldugin, a cello player.

Ivanov was well-known for his lavish lifestyle and was reported to own property worth far more than his official salary could justify. His “divorced” wife, Svetlana Ivanova, was a regular visitor to the ski slopes at Courchevel. Their divorce was alleged to be a way to avoid sanctions imposed on Ivanov by the EU in October 2022.

After an intense and lengthy siege destroyed the Ukrainian port city of Mariupol in the early months of the war, Ivanov was put in charge of rebuilding the city as part of his brief which included major military construction projects. In the role there was plenty of opportunity for graft and over the years he became known as “king of the kickback”.

But his family’s lavish lifestyle was no secret. He was the subject of a 2022 investigation by researchers working with the late opposition leader and anti-corruption campaigner Alexei Navalny.

Corruption among the political and military elites are a hallmark of Putin’s Russia. So why has action been taken against Ivanov now? There are several theories.

Firstly, it could be that he simply took too much. Few Russian officials live off their salary alone. But there is an unwritten law that officials should not overdo it. With Putin having recently directed the Federal Security Service (FSB) to investigate corruption – most likely as an attempt to raise flagging popular and elite support – Ivanov was an obvious target.

The fact that Ivanov is alleged to have milked funds from the reconstruction of Mariupol – funds which had been channeled from Putin’s hometown St Petersburg – would have made it personal.

But there are also suggestions of an intense rivalry between Ivanov and the head of military intelligence (GRU), Vladimir Alekseyev, who is thought to have masterminded the failed Skripal poisonings. The GRU and the ministry of defence have clashed over control of the remnants of the Wagner Group after the suspicious death of former Yevgeny Prigohzin in August last year.

This elite infighting reportedly extends to attempts by the intelligence services to weaken the power of the ministry of defence and Sergei Shoigu. There was talk of Shoigu’s weakness in the autumn of 2022 when Russia suffered setbacks on the battlefield as a result of Ukraine’s successful counter-offensive.

Now – despite recent military successes in Ukraine – there are signs that Russia’s economy is in danger of overheating thanks to Putin’s massive military overspend. Shoigu’s rivals, keen to preserve their share of the pie, may see this as an opportunity to weaken his position.

Cats fighting in a bag

Ivanov was arrested immediately after a meeting with Shoigu and, in the game of smoke and mirrors that is Kremlin politics, it may never be clear who was behind the arrest. The FSB, interior ministry and national guard all had reasons to want to weaken the defence minister.

But such an attack suggests that Russia’s elite clans are fighting among themselves. There was an unwritten rule that the “wallets” of each clan would be left alone. Ivanov’s arrest would appear to have destroyed this gentleman’s agreement.

There are two likely candidates for the role of Ivanov’s “nemesis”. One is the head of the National Security Council, Nikolai Patrushev, and his close allies, including FSB chief, Aleksandr Bortnikov. These two have been in a state of undeclared war with the defence ministry since 2014.

Patrushev has long been a major regime stakeholder and has long been known to be highly ambitious, perhaps to replace Putin himself. Anything that weakens Shoigu will be to his benefit.

The other likely suspect is the head of Russia’s national guard, Aleksandr Zolotov. Having long attempted to get his protégé, Aleksei Dyumin – a former head of Putin’s security detail and a man tipped as a rising star – promoted to minister of defence, Zolotov may have decided to act now. It would be in the interest of Zolotov’s faction to undermine Shoigu.

In and out of favour: Vladimir Putin with his defence minister Sergei Shoigu.
EPA-EFE/Alexei Danichev/Sputnik/Kremlin pool

The Russian system relies on otmashka, a concept which reveals a lot about Russian politics under Putin. It essentially means that when a subordinate presents Putin with a scheme and he agrees, he does so in a way that provides no explicit instructions.

It is up to the subordinate to interpret his approval for themselves. This gives Putin plausible deniability should things go wrong, while taking praise if things go well. It also allows the Russian leader to balance Russia’s elite factions by acting to weaken one or another when he deems it necessary.

All of which means a great deal depends on the conduct and outcomes of the war in Ukraine. The arrest has been widely seen as a signal from Putin to Shoigu and those around him.

With Russia having made some incremental gains on the battlefield in recent months, it may appear a strange time to instigate inter-faction rivalries. But the various Kremlin factions never cared much about anything but their own self-interest, something the Machiavellian Russian leader will be well aware of.

According to the Institute for the Study of War, Russia’s influential milbloggers (an online community mainly made up of former or serving Russian military) is awash with speculation that Ivanov’s arrest is the first act in what could be a major purge at the top of the Defence Ministry. Läs mer…

Over the past few days we seem to have been hearing more about the protests roiling the campuses of some of the most prestigious universities in the US over the ongoing crisis in Gaza than about the ongoing crisis in Gaza itself.

To say the conflict is a divisive issue is a massive understatement and other countries have seen their share of bitter debate and confrontation during protests on the streets of some major cities. But the US protests raise an issue tied to a key question about how universities should be run: the need to protect free speech and rigorous debate.

On countless occasions student protests have spread across civil society and prompted important change. But universities also have a duty of care and the absolute need to guarantee the safety of their Jewish students in the face of massive anger at Israel’s conduct of the conflict has presented huge challenges for university administrations.

But the news focus on the violence and arrests taking place on the US campuses has failed to pick up on some of the more interesting aspects of the demonstrations. Robert P. Jackson, a political philosopher at Manchester Metropolitan University, has recently been based at Columbia University in New York researching a book on the Palestinian thinker Edward Said. Said was himself a longtime professor of literature at Columbia.

Here, Jackson bears witness to some of the less discussed aspects of the protest camp at Columbia.

Read more:
US student Gaza protests: five things that have been missed

While the student protests have dominated nightly news bulletins in the UK, the killing has continued in Gaza where the death toll, according to the Gaza health ministry is approaching 35,000 people killed and 77,816 injured. Israel remains poised to launch its assault on Rafah, where more than a million Palestinians remain trapped.

But there are tentative suggestions that the frantic diplomacy of the past couple of weeks may be bearing fruit. A report in the Washington Post timed at 2.30pm on May 2 (an indication of how quickly things can change in this volatile situation) said that Ismail Haniyeh, chairman of Hamas’s political bureau, said the group views the Egypt-hosted negotiations in a “positive spirit”.

Gaza Update is available as a fortnightly email newsletter. Click here to get our updates directly in your inbox.

The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, meanwhile – after meeting with the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu – said the proposal “would produce an immediate ceasefire, get the hostages home, alleviate suffering of the Palestinian people in Gaza” in the short term, adding that Israel had made “very important compromises” that “demonstrate its desire, willingness” to get the deal done.

Constructive talks: US secretary of state Antony Blinken meeting Israeli prime minister Netanyahu in Jerusalem, May 1 2024.
EPA-EFE/Haim Tzach/GPO handout

We spoke with John Strawson of the University of East London, who has been writing and researching about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict for several decades, who kindly answered our questions about the likely success of the ceasefire deal and its implications for a lasting settlement which might even lead to the establishment of a Palestinian state.

He explains how a lasting solution to the Israel-Palestine question will require the involvement – and cooperation – of much of the Arab world and will reshape the Middle East.

Read more:
Gaza war: success of Egypt’s peace deal would set blueprint for future of Middle East – expert Q&A

There maybe some tentative diplomatic optimism that some sort of a ceasefire deal may be taking shape. But while the assault on Gaza has dominated attention, certainly in the west, violent incidents on the West Bank have steadily increased over the past seven months.

Many of those incidents have involved ideologically extreme settler groups. But there appears to be strong evidence of the involvement of units of the Israel Defense Forces. One in particular was named recently by the US government which announced it was looking into sanctioning a battalion called Netzah Yehuda for human rights abuses on the West Bank.

Netzah Yehuda is made up of ultra-Orthodox Jews, or Haredim, who are usually exempt from service on religious grounds. They have been implicated in the widespread mistreatment, including some deaths, of Palestinian civilians on the West Bank.

In the event, after talks between Blinken and an extremely angry Israeli government, the US secretary of state said he would hold off on sanctions while he examined fresh evidence. Carlo Aldrovandi, whose research is centred on Middle East politics and whose PhD focused on ultra-Orthdox groups, explains Netzah Yehuda’s history and extreme ideology.

Read more:
Netzah Yehuda: the ’violent and aggressive’ IDF unit the US is thinking of sanctioning

Beyond Gaza

As with pretty much everything that happens in the region, outcomes will very much depend on the domestic politics of all the players involved. Whether Netanyahu will be able to agree to the deal brokered by Egypt could depend on the acquiescence of two of the far-right members of his fractious and unstable cabinet: national security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and finance minister Bezalel Smotrich, both of whom are urging Netanyahu to proceed with the assault on Rafah without delay.

Hamas, meanwhile, is separately in talks with rival party Fatah, which runs the Palestinian Authority (PA) in the West Bank. Representatives of the two groups have been in Beijing in talks about reintegrating Hamas into the PA, something that would change the calculations once more.

But Hamas will also be consulting with Iran, which has its own agenda. Ben Soodavar, a political scientist at King’s College London who, focuses on the psychology of political decision-making in war, has looked at the tit-for-tat strikes, earlier this month, between the Islamic Republic and Israel. He believes the exchange – which had the world holding its breath in fear of a possible escalation – was largely performative, aimed at projecting an image of strength to their own unhappy populations.

Read more:
Domestic politics will be a key factor in how far things escalate between Israel and Iran

No safety

Meanwhile in Gaza itself there are reports that more aid is finally beginning to trickle into the trapped enclave. This is not to say that famine is not still a serious threat. And there are reports that some Israeli extremists are trying to block aid trucks from crossing into Gaza.

The US is reported to be building its pier off the coast, and there was a BBC report last weekend that the UK ministry of defence was considering sending British troops to help unload aid supplies on the pier and deliver them to distribution points. But this report has not since been confirmed.

Al Jazeera report that some bakeries are reopening in northern Gaza.

An independent report into the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (Unrwa) has found there was no evidence to support Israel’s claim in January that the agency had been infiltrated by Hamas or that any of its staff had been involved in the October 7 massacre.

This, writes Anne Irfan, a specialist in Palestinian refugee history at University College London, should satisfy the many countries that suspended their donations to Unrwa when these shocking allegations emerged. Many already have. But not the US or UK.

Read more:
Gaza war: ’no evidence’ of Hamas infiltration of UN aid agency, says report – but US and UK dither on funding while famine takes hold

The distribution of aid in Gaza is a desperate and dangerous business. This was amply demonstrated when an IDF drone strike killed seven employees of World Central Kitchen (WCK) as their vehicles travelled along the Gaza coast road on January 1. Israel called the incident a “grave mistake”, but WCK said it had notified the IDF of the route its employees were taking that day.

Under a practice called “deconfliction”, commonly used in conflict zones, this should have ensured their safety. Deconfliction was first developed in the early 2000s and adopted by the United Nations as a way to keep its workers safe. But the concept was first developed by militaries to keep their own troops safe from friendly fire, and then adopted by journalists working in war zones.

But deconfliction has proved singularly unsuccessful at guaranteeing the safety of journalists, writes Chris Paterson, professor of global communication at the University of Leeds. He has been tracking journalists’ deaths since the early 2000s and seen how, especially when one or another warring party doesn’t approve of the news coverage, deconfliction has a way of breaking down.

As Peterson notes, in Gaza, where foreign journalists have been denied access so the world is dependent on locals for their coverage, deconfliction has failed completely, with 109 media workers killed so far – 10% of the total working there.

Read more:
Too many journalists and aid workers are being killed in Gaza despite rules that should keep them safe

Gaza Update is available as a fortnightly email newsletter. Click here to get our updates directly in your inbox. Läs mer…

There’s a strange trend in mathematics education in England. Maths is the most popular subject at A-level since overtaking English in 2014. It’s taken by around 85,000 and 90,000 students a year.

But many universities – particularly lower-tariff institutions, which accept students with lower A-level grades – are recruiting far fewer students for maths degrees. There’s been a 50% drop in numbers of maths students at the lowest tariff universities over the five years between 2017 and 2021. As a result, some universities are struggling to keep their mathematics departments open.

The total number of students studying maths has remained largely static over the last decade. Prestigious Russell Group universities which require top A-level grades have increased their numbers of maths students.

This trend in degree-level mathematics education is worrying. It restricts the accessibility of maths degrees, especially to students from poorer backgrounds who are most likely to study at universities close to where they live. It perpetuates the myth that only those people who are unusually gifted at mathematics should study it – and that high-level maths skills are not necessary for everyone else.

Research carried out in 2019 by King’s College London and Ipsos found that half of the working age population had the numeracy skills expected of a child at primary school. Just as worrying was that despite this, 43% of those polled said “they would not like to improve their numeracy skills”. Nearly a quarter (23%) stated that “they couldn’t see how it would benefit them”.

Mathematics has been fundamental in recent technological developments such as quantum computing, information security and artificial intelligence. A pipeline of more mathematics graduates from more diverse backgrounds will be essential if the UK is to remain a science and technology powerhouse into the future.

But maths is also vital to a huge range of careers, including in business and government. In March 2024, campaign group Protect Pure Maths held a summit to bring together experts from industry, academia and government to discuss concerns about poor maths skills and the continuing importance of high-quality mathematics education.

Prior to the summit, the London Mathematical Society commissioned a survey of over 500 businesses to gauge their concerns about the potential lack of future graduates with strong mathematical skills.

They found that 72% of businesses agree they would benefit from more maths graduates entering the workforce. And 75% would worry if UK universities shrunk or closed their maths departments.

A 2023 report on MPs’ staff found that skills in Stem subjects (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) were particularly hard to find among those who worked in Westminster. As many as 90% of those who had taken an undergraduate degree had studied humanities or social sciences. While these subject backgrounds are valuable, the lack of specialised maths skills is stark.

Limited options

The mathematics department at Oxford Brookes has closed and other universities have seen recruitment reductions or other cuts. The resulting maths deserts will remove the opportunity for students to gain a high-quality mathematics education in their local area. Universities should do their best to keep these departments open.

This might be possible if the way that degrees are set up changes. For many degree courses in countries such as the US and Australia, students are able to take a broad selection of subjects, from science and maths subjects through to the humanities. Each are taught in their respective academic departments. This allows students to gain advanced knowledge and see how each field feeds into others.

This is scarcely possible in the UK, where students must choose a specialist and narrow degree programme at aged 18.

Another possible solution would be to put core mathematics modules in degree disciplines that rely so heavily on it – such as engineering, economics, chemistry, physics, biology and computer science – and have them taught by specialist mathematicians. This would help keep mathematics departments open, while also ensuring that general mathematical literacy improves in the UK.

The relevance of mathematics and its vast range applications would be abundantly clear, better equipping every student with the necessary mathematical skills the workforce needs. Läs mer…

The UK High Court recently dismissed the case against environmental activist Trudi Warner, who was referred for contempt of court in March 2023. Civil liberties campaigners hailed the decision as a “huge win for democracy”, but is it?

Warner had stood outside the Old Bailey, England’s most important criminal court in central London, with a sign that read “Jurors have an absolute right to acquit according to their conscience”. She did so at the start of a trial of climate activists who had been charged with public nuisance for obstructing traffic. Warner’s sign paraphrased the text on a plaque on display at the Old Bailey itself.

Warner outside the Old Bailey.
Emily Pennink/PA Images/Alamy Stock Photo

Known as jury equity, the legal principle evoked by this statement dates back to 1670 and is often cited, not least by leading legal figures and in the decisions of the higher courts, as a cornerstone of English democracy: juries can decide according to their conscience, and cannot be bullied into finding as the law dictates.

Indeed, many legal commentators saw the case against Warner as perverse. Since the threat of contempt proceedings was brought by the solicitor general (a government minister responsible for legal advice), Warner’s protest has been repeated outside courtrooms throughout the country at the instigation of campaign group Defend our Juries.

Why have juries became so important for protesters in the UK – and are they any more secure in their right to protest as a result of the High Court’s decision?

Jury equity and protest trials

Among recent protest prosecutions, Warner’s case is unique: as she saw it, her aim was to educate jurors on their rights.

For most non-violent disruptive protests being dealt with in English courts, defendants (like Warner) typically accept they did what they are alleged to have done, but argue they had a lawful basis for doing so. This is the case in many trials, from Extinction Rebellion to Palestine Action.

Over the last five years, this basis has been whittled away through government referrals to the Court of Appeal and decisions by that court which have removed the protection of lawful excuse and necessity defences in protest cases.

Meanwhile, new public order legislation has turned minor acts of disruption (such as occupying the highway) into serious acts of criminality punishable by prison sentences. The Court of Appeal endorsed long sentences for two non-violent activists who closed the Queen Elizabeth II bridge on the M25 in October 2022. Such is the parlous state of the court system following a decade of austerity that judges are under pressure to manage trials quickly.

The UN special rapporteur on environmental defenders criticised the UK’s crackdown on protest.
Gareth Fuller/PA Images/Alamy Stock Photo

Warner’s case brings each of these dynamics into sharp focus. Activists now regularly find themselves in court unable to present a defence in law for their actions, but remain committed to justifying them, because being publicly accountable is important to them. The only way they can avoid potentially severe punishments is by persuading juries not to convict them through the sincerity of their arguments and the public utility of their actions.

As such, jury equity is now often their only recourse. But judges, seeking to manage trials, regularly impose limits on what defendants can say in court, and for how long they can say it, particularly when they have no defence in law. In fact, Warner’s action stemmed from the widely publicised rulings of Judge Silas Reid in several Insulate Britain trials, who forbid defendants from addressing the jury on the climate emergency, and imprisoned two defendants for contempt for defying his order.

Restoring faith in British justice?

Does the High Court’s denial of permission to prosecute Warner indicate that the courts now seek to give greater protections to non-violent, disruptive protesters? Warner herself seems to think so, saying the decision “has restored my faith a little in British justice”.

The High Court ruled that Warner’s actions did not meet the threshold for contempt and that it would not be in the public interest to prosecute her. In fact, the court noted it would be “a disproportionate approach to this situation in a democratic society”. This can be read as affirming that protest is central to democratic life, rather than an irritant existing outside of it, and certainly gives some support to Warner’s faith.

But other elements of the court’s reasoning are less supportive. By noting that jurors swear an oath to make decisions according to the law, the court upheld a principle we have seen in numerous climate activist trials: defendants cannot invite a jury to apply the equity principle, nor even to inform them of it. This decision may allow people not involved in a case to do what Warner did, but in the courtroom itself, jury equity is to remain something of a dirty secret to be kept from jurors.

In deciding whether Warner’s actions were sufficient for contempt, the court also made much of her passivity in simply holding her sign; Warner did not attempt to engage with anyone entering the Old Bailey. She was, in both her own words and those of the judge, simply “a human billboard”.

Would the court have decided differently had Warner been more assertive? Where is the line between her permissible actions and those that would be deemed an unlawful hindrance of jurors entering the court?

A closer reading of the judgment suggests that, despite Warner’s victory, little has changed in the law’s view of protest. There is a good chance that Warner’s actions were tolerated for the very qualities that made her case so compelling: through her deliberate passivity, in the eyes of the law, she corresponded to the ideal of how protesters should behave. The court’s decision very much fits with a tolerance only of protest which is not disruptive (and, we might argue, not particularly effective).

It is unlikely then that the Warner outcome signals a return to a more liberal understanding of the role of protest as a democratic right. The court’s decision, if welcome, serves rather to underline how diminished the opportunities for real democratic agency are in Britain today.

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Paul Auster, who has died at the age of 77, grew up in New Jersey in the post-war years of the 1950s, where a bookless household laid the foundations for his obsessional focus on human behaviour and the complexities of the shifting world.

As “a young Jew in New York” with a voracious appetite for literature and a fascination with writing, Auster attended Columbia University, where he studied English Literature, influenced by Edgar Allan Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne and Samuel Beckett.

Faber & Faber

In 1982, Auster planted himself on the literary scene with The New York Trilogy – a genre-bending work that deftly merges elements of hard-boiled detective fiction with an effortless postmodernist style via a classically Austerian lens of existentialism and angst.

City of Glass, Ghosts, and The Locked Room – three connected novellas – engross readers with deliciously complex plotlines, enigmatic characters and philosophical thoughts on language and identity. The New York Trilogy established Auster as a literary genius, earning him international acclaim through his masterclass in storytelling. His relationship to his characters is unmatched.

In interviews, he revealed a paternal love for his craft:

The novelist is not a puppeteer. You’re not manipulating your characters. You’ve given birth to them, but then they take on an independent life. I think your greatest requirement in writing fiction is to listen to what they’re telling you and not force anything on them that they wouldn’t do. They call the shots.

When I first read The New York Trilogy I instantly wanted to become a creative writer. I felt inspired by Auster’s unparalleled explorations of chance and coincidence, fact and fiction, and his use of innovative techniques to blur the boundaries between author, narrator and character. In the plot of The New York Trilogy, Daniel Quinn is mistaken for the character/author Paul Auster.

His remarkable sophistication, innovation of genre and embodiment of the city flaneur (someone who wanders observing life) is folded into multi-layered plots that mask as existential invitations to question reality and reflect on the way fate shapes our lives.

Essays, memoirs and films

Alongside his novels, Auster prolifically penned numerous essays and memoirs, showcasing his versatility and intellect. The detailed and cinematic quality of his noir-esque writing also made for sumptuous storytelling on screen. His success as a writer brought opportunities to realise his youthful ambitions to become a film director.

In 1995 he adapted a Christmas story he’d written for The New York Times and, alongside Wayne Wang, co-directed Smoke, a film set in a Brooklyn smoke shop that interweaves the stories of the people who cross paths there. Auster went on to co-direct the follow-up Blue in the Face (1996) – again with Wang – which he wrote about in Smoke & Blue in the Face: Two films (1995). His debut feature as sole director was Lulu on the Bridge (1998), about a saxophonist whose life changes after he is shot on stage.

Autobiographical books such as The Invention of Solitude (1982), Winter Journal (2012) and Report from the Interior (2013) offer poignant reflections on grief, fatherhood and the passage of time.

Written in the second person – a rarity in literature and a publisher’s arch nemesis – the memoirs use of the awkward viewpoint cleverly deny the reader comfort, qualifying them as further examples of Auster’s lessons on how to start living uncomfortably.

Auster’s distinctive authorial voice, characterised by vividly realised gestures, wit, intellect and existential angst, masterfully and universally resonate, leaving the reader spellbound. Permeating popular culture, the author continues to inspire new generations of writers and artists.

The New York Trilogy is now a brilliant series of beautiful graphic novels. It also appears in Ia Genberg’s book, The Details, recently shortlisted for the International Booker Prize 2024, where she perfectly sums up the experience of reading Auster:

The book in my hand is The New York Trilogy: hermetic but nimble, both smooth and twisted, at once paranoid and crystalline, and with an open sky between every word. Auster turned into a true north of mine when it came to both reading and writing, even after I forgot about him … His discerning simplicity became an ideal, initially associated with his name though it endured on its own. Some books stay in your bones long after their titles and details have slipped from memory.

Like Genberg, The New York trilogy moved me in a way that I, too, had never understood until I read her newly translated novella. Auster was nominated for the Booker Prize in 2017 for his novel 4 3 2 1. By then he was the author of a trove of bestselling books such as Sunset Park (2010), Invisible (2009), and The Book of Illusions (2002).

It took him more than three years to write 4 3 2 1 – a book set in the US in the 1950s and 1960s which follows Archibald Isaac Ferguson through a life which takes four simultaneous but entirely different paths. It was his first book for seven years.

Auster with his wife the novelist Siri Hustvedt at home in Brooklyn in 2020.
TT News Agency / Alamy

‘The story is not in the words; it’s in the struggle’

The last years of Auster’s life were mired by the tragedy of the death of his grandchild, and then his son, Daniel, at 44 years old. He spent the pandemic locked down in his brownstone house in Brooklyn, but continued to write, reflecting in an artistic essay which travelled the borderlands of far Eastern Europe in which he explores the mythical Wolves of Stanislav (a Ukrainian folk story) as a parable for Coronavirus.

In December 2021, Auster’s wife Siri announced his battle with lung cancer while he was penning his last novel, Baumgartner (2023). A most tender book on love, ageing and loss, it describes newly widowed 71-year-old Sy’s reaction to the death of his wife, Anna Blume (who is the narrator of his 1987 post-apocalyptic novel In the Country of Last Things).

Auster’s legacy is not merely confined to the pages of his novels or frames of films that were adaptions of his work. He transcends boundaries of art and literature and defied genre, leaving an indelible print on contemporary literature.

Through unparalleled storytelling – labyrinthine narratives where chance and fate intersect, unravel mysteries and blur identities – Auster’s literary testament bequeaths the power of imagination, the inimitable ability to capture the human experience, and the inexhaustible possibilities of language. Läs mer…

A wave of protests expressing solidarity with the Palestinian people is spreading across college and university campuses. There were more than 400 such demonstrations by the end of April 2024 just in the U.S., with many more in Canada and other countries.

The specific demands vary from place to place. What unites them is a call for schools to use their financial leverage and other kinds of influence to apply pressure on Israel.

The protesters are demanding divestment, meaning the sale of financial assets either related to Israeli companies or shares in other corporations perceived to assist the Israeli military. In addition, many protests include calls for the disclosure of those financial ties. They also feature demands for colleges and universities to distance themselves from Israel by ending study-abroad programs and academic exchanges.

The demands are mostly a response to Israel’s bombings and other military operations in Gaza that followed the Oct. 7, 2024, Hamas attack on Israel.

They also stem from broader concerns around Israel’s long-running blockade of Gaza and half-century of military occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. Both of those concerns have been behind the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement for nearly 20 years.

I have spent decades teaching and researching Israeli-Palestinian relations and the global politics surrounding these issues. Along the way, I’ve learned that the discourse around the activism related to this Middle Eastern conflict is at least as relevant as the direct effects of the activism itself.

BDS tactics

In 2005, 170 Palestinian civil society groups came together to initiate a call for boycott, divestment and sanctions. Many student organizations, academic associations and other kinds of groups later embraced the initiative.

BDS activists call for consumers around the world to boycott Israeli-made goods and refrain from spending money on Israeli movies, music and other cultural products. They discourage non-Israeli bands from performing in Israel and urge scholars and students not to study at or engage with Israeli academic institutions.

The movement also promotes divestment from holdings that support Israel’s military operations. And it seeks to impose sanctions, which could hypothetically include arms embargoes, asset freezes or trade barriers.

In other words, the U.S. government would have to participate for sanctions to work. Due to its close ties with the Israeli government, this is extremely unlikely. Nevertheless, the U.S. has recently sanctioned certain far-right Israeli entities.

U.S.-based BDS activists have, for this reason, focused on boycott and divestment rather than sanctions.

BDS goals

Along with those tactics, BDS has three goals, or pillars. The first is ending Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza.

The second is dismantling the separation wall snaking through the West Bank.

The third is attaining full equality for Palestinian citizens of Israel and the right of Palestinian refugees to return to their ancestral towns and villages in historic Palestine. About 750,000 Palestinians fled or were forced to move to surrounding areas prior to and during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war.

Two-thirds of Gaza’s current residents are refugees and their descendants who were uprooted from their homes in 1948. This right to return is enshrined in international law.

While Israel has never let these Palestinian refugees return, it does maintain a “law of return” for Jews.

Toronto Metropolitan University students in Canada attend a protest against the school’s ties with Israel on April 30, 2024.
Mert Alper Dervis/Anadolu via Getty Images

Response to BDS

BDS has caught on with many Palestinians and their supporters across the globe. But there’s been a concerted effort in Israel and the U.S. to legislate against it.

Israel has barred some BDS supporters, with Jews among them, from entering the country. And 38 U.S. states, as of 2024, have enacted anti-BDS legislation. Such laws require state contractors to pledge that they will not engage in BDS, or they require states to not invest funds in companies that support the movement’s goals.

To some Jews, boycotting Israeli products evokes the Nazi boycott of Jewish businesses in Germany in the 1930s. Other critics believe academic and cultural ties should never be restricted for any reason.

There are also BDS critics who find the tactics legitimate but object to one or more of the movement’s goals. The least controversial goal of the three pillars is full equality for Palestinian citizens of Israel. BDS critics almost never object to this goal. Instead, the debate occurs over the degree to which different people view Palestinian citizens of Israel as already possessing equality.

The second goal – ending Israel’s occupation – tends to be opposed primarily by right-wing supporters of Israel. These more conservative Israel supporters either believe that the occupation, including the security barrier that separates Palestinian residents of the West Bank from Israeli settlers and from Israeli residents in noncontested areas, is necessary for maintaining Israeli security – or that there is no occupation at all.

Other Israelis say that Israeli settlers deserve to live in all the lands of ancient Israel, including the West Bank.

Granting all Palestinian refugees the right to return is the most controversial BDS goal because of fears that Jews would perhaps become a minority of Israel’s citizens, causing the country to cease to be a Jewish state.

People with those concerns say making Jews a minority in Israel would be unjust and perhaps even an expression of antisemitism.

Another common concern regarding the BDS movement and the slightly different demands heard on campuses today has to do with the impression that Israel is being singled out for criticism when there are many other countries that commit human rights violations.

Modest success stories

The protests on college campuses in the spring of 2024, including those with prolonged encampments, have had, at best, modest success.

For example, Brown University protesters managed to persuade the administration to hold a vote on divesting from companies connected to the Israeli military. In return, the protesters agreed to dismantle their encampment.

Portland State University administrators agreed to pause its relationship with Boeing, which is a military contractor as well as a civilian aircraft manufacturer.

Perhaps most importantly, though, the protests have helped place Palestinian human rights demands squarely in the public eye. Läs mer…