This paper looks in detail at the educational side of interdisciplinarity and recounts the philosophy and some practicalities of the implementation of University College London’s successful Bachelor of Arts and Sciences (BASc) degree. In particular, we consider ‘framing’ and ‘the ladder of abstraction’ as notions that are useful in the philosophy of education. It is hoped that some of the ideas, challenges and successes described here will be helpful to others wishing to implement interdisciplinary curricula in their own institutions.

This paper focuses on the linkages between postwar economic and social policy development. Examining the relationship between affluence and levels of welfare over the period as a whole reveals a tendency for social expenditure effort to be higher in moderately affluent then in extremely affluent nations. Turning to the question of how economic growth impacted on welfare expansion in the early postwar decades, the paper argues that growth was a necessary, rather than a sufficient, condition of welfare development. Finally, analysis of the era of welfare containment suggests that domestic economic performance has been the main factor conditioning expenditure change

Noam Chomsky is an enigma. To many, he is — and has been for 50 years — the most prominent and courageous academic opponent of his country's militarist ambitions around the globe. Yet among those who admire him on that score, few find it easy to relate to his seemingly obscure theories about language. The academic community acclaims Chomsky as the principal inspiration behind the so-called ‘cognitive revolution’ in psychology and related sciences — an intellectual development reflecting corporate pressures and initially sponsored by the United States military. This article investigates the paradoxical relationship between Chomsky's political activism and his science.

The European Research Council has provided substantial research grants across all disciplines during the period 2007–2013. An analysis of the distribution of the ERC (IDEAS) Starting, Consolidator and Advanced grants shows substantial differences by country. On the one hand, the UK excels in the relative number of awards, in its share among the top receiving institutions, in a high proportion of inwards mobile scholars and in the overall financial gain through ERC as compared with the UK’s contribution to the EU budget. In addition, the Netherlands is among the winners in these respects. On the other hand, Italy fares unfavourably according to these measures. In the search for an explanation of the Italian situation, a comparison is undertaken with other European countries of a similar size. The article arrives at the conclusion that low Italian success in efforts to raise such ERC funds is not due to the low average quality of the Italian education and research system, but rather due to low funding, e.g. to a low proportion of the GDP spent on research.

Artificial intelligence (AI) has finally reached most people on our planet thanks to generative AI tools for text and other media. This has started a controversy about the possible benefits and risks, where responsible AI is key. Hence, we introduce the concept of responsible AI, its relation to AI ethics, and why the terms ethical or trustworthy AI should not be used. We then cover the three main relevant aspects of this new field: principles governance and regulation.

Post-communist Central and Eastern European legal cultures in general, and judicial style in particular, are often characterized as formalistic. This article reconstructs two ideological narratives about the formalist heritage of CEE judiciary, variants of which have dominated academic and policy debates about rule of law, judicial reforms and European integration in the last three decades. As the debate becomes linked to deeply rooted and long-term, sometimes traumatic issues of national and political identity, patterns of ideological thinking resurface easily. While it is symptomatic of CEE political cultures that the debate on judicial method has become a battleground for fierce controversies about collective (political) identity, arguably this exemplifies a broader phenomenon. Other weak or peripheral national cultures also face and struggle with issues of collective identity and inferiority complexes which may resurface in professional discourses and seemingly unpolitical domains.

During the last two decades a dramatic shift in the production and distribution strategies of TV series has taken place on a global level. This article discusses how these broad changes also led to a transformation in the form and the themes of European crime series, which emerge as ideal objects to study the representation of European societies in contemporary popular culture. The article looks at recent serial crime dramas such as La casa de papel, Suburra, and Peaky Blinders, which have abandoned the classic formula of European crime TV series, usually focused on the figure of the detective and primarily addressed to a national audience. Designed for an international market, these series provocatively concentrate on the figure of the criminal and adopt an explicitly sensationalist approach. The article argues that this style and the bleak depiction of European society in these series are both an expression and a critical representation of the rise of populism across the Old Continent.

This essay provides a timely account of China’s recent initiatives in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE), centring on the ‘16+1’ format. It discusses China’s motivation in this part of Europe in relation to its ‘Go Global’ policy and, more recently and relevantly, the ‘One Road, One Belt’ initiative. It argues that China has made big efforts to strengthen its presence in CEE through state-driven commercialism. While there have been some meaningful outcomes, particularly in building institutional ties, China’s ambition in the CEE region faces some practical and deep-rooted obstacles. Put succinctly, there is still a long way to go before China becomes a mature global power.

This Introduction was written in November 2002, when the 16th Congress of the Chinese Communist Party was being held where more than 2000 delegates (representing 66 million Party members) decided on future policies and changes in the leadership. The way these decisions were prepared and endorsed reminds us how China differs from Western democracies. However, apart from the political structures, to what extent is China different?

The following five essays, all written by Chinese scholars, allow us a glimpse into contemporary Chinese culture through informative reports on philosophy, cultural studies, fiction, gender construction and women's poetry, and traditional Chinese medicine. Of course, these articles are far from covering all aspects, or even all major aspects, of Chinese culture, yet they offer us views of specific areas by experts who, from their insiders' vantage points, lead us into the heart of the intellectual debate in contemporary China.

Although the authors of these essays, with few exceptions, hesitate to generalize on present conditions and possible future scenarios, their arguments have something in common and suggest, perhaps unknowingly, important clues for understanding Chinese culture. When reading these essays, I am struck by the following, recurrent aspects.

Why are the rankings of universities not changing? Why is the demographic composition of top universities the same? In this review, these questions are addressed based on physics. Although size matters, higher ranks do not correlate with bigger sizes. The higher ranks belong to universities that have more authors who receive more citations. Citations are a record of how ideas spread from the source to the whole globe, in accordance with the physics of the logistics S-curve phenomenon. The spreading occurs in three periods – slow, fast, slow – and the population served by each idea during its lifetime depends on the size of the first big channel that carries the idea. An idea from a famous university has a larger spreading territory around it than an idea from a lesser-known university. Creativity is key: rankings come from visibility through citations, and, in turn, visibility for an author is aided by the higher visibility of the university. The demographic composition of the top universities is the same: for instance, the percentage of female authors and authors of East Asian origin among the 200 most cited authors does not vary significantly over the 20 highest ranked universities.

This paper deals with the residences of public authority across Europe from the emergence of the state system to the present. It is concerned with the addresses, the buildings, their surroundings and the symbolic significance from the point of view of builders and the public. The building styles have been heavily influenced by the examples of imperial and papal Rome, and a dominant model of a European capital city building has evolved. There are also some systematic differences, particularly for those countries with a dramatic history of constitutional change and for those with a decentralized process of state-building in the early stages of the process. In the second half of the 19th century, and probably again currently, the residences of public authority should be read in conjunction with the positioning of a series of civic institutions. The display of state authority has been increasingly accompanied by the representation of national identity. More recently, however, a touch of cosmopolitanism has been added in many capitals. The reading of these capitals is therefore now more ambiguous. This will probably intensify under the impact of the emerging European multilevel governance system. At the same time, this governance system has become increasingly based in Brussels. For this city to symbolically represent Europe is a very difficult ambition in the context of its multiple capital roles. However, Brussels has a long history of dealing successfully with such urban challenges in spite of major conflicts and drawbacks.

For many centuries, Roma/Gypsy people have been an oppressed and stateless minority. Until 1989 most Roma/Gypsy people resided in the former Central and Eastern European communist countries. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Roma/Gypsy became one of the communities that were regarded as a scapegoat for post-Communist society's ills. Despite much rhetoric to the contrary, Roma/Gypsy communities were not welcomed in the West and much of the persecution they endured in the East they saw repeated in the West. The European Union (EU) has sought to place Human Rights as a focal point of its approach in all matters including the issue of Roma/Gypsy communities. Since 2007, Romania and Bulgaria, two states with large numbers of Roma/Gypsy, have become members of the EU. In the last few years France (and Italy) have been cautioned on their expulsion of Roma/Gypsy people. Not only have these actions contravened the European Union charter on Human Rights, but just as seriously, France and Italy have actually expelled citizens who are members of another European Member State because they were Roma/Gypsies. Turkey, on the other hand, as the home of one of the oldest and largest Roma/Gypsy settlements, had for long periods of time subjected Roma/Gypsy people to a life of social and economic disadvantage. Recently this has changed, ironically as part of Turkey's EU accession process. The aim of this article is to explore and compare the actions of European member States (France and Italy primarily) on the question of Roma/Gypsy integration with their integration in future EU accession states such as Turkey. The EU's moral high ground with regard to minorities seems to be ruined by the deplorable behaviour of some of its member states on the question of Roma/Gypsies while Turkey, which has an uneven record on human rights violations, has shown greater, although contradictory concern for the fate of the Roma/Gypsies.

Research about interdisciplinary research is less and less done by those doing it. This paper tries to reflect upon my own interdisciplinary practices and experiences. In the first part, I present an example of successful interdisciplinary research. Then, I attempt to introduce two nested cases of interdisciplinary scholarship and their development, one being my ‘Fakultät’ (which roughly equals a department) and the other, smaller one, being my research group. In the third part, I attempt to offer explanations for the development described with reference to some of the burgeoning literature on interdisciplinarity. Incentive structures, epistemological challenges such as disciplinary capture and structural effects of the hosting university are discussed. In a final section, othering as an inevitable process is used to elucidate the dynamics of developments within and beyond academia and to draw conclusions about the two cases presented.

Large quoted corporations have become increasingly visible through the media. As a result, such corporations have become role models for other types of organizations. Even universities face pressures to act like these corporations. This paper demonstrates that there are fundamental differences between corporations and universities, particularly in terms of history, products, objectives, and principals. These differences, it is argued, have significant implications for the leadership of universities.

Predictions of the legacies of the ad hoc International Criminal Tribunals reflect far greater expectations for the impact of justice than earlier historical war crimes prosecutions. The most ambitious of these is the promise of peace and reconciliation. Its formal inclusion in the Security Council's mandate for the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda converged with a modern discourse on war crimes prosecutions that infuses the ideals of Nuremberg with the revolutionary aspirations of the human rights movement in a new world order. Contemporary trends invest international justice with powerful assumptions about its capacity to transform post-conflict societies, as is reflected in the Tribunal's own presentation of its role for the future of Rwanda. Alongside the general assumptions regarding the political powers of international justice, are contesting perspectives that make specific allegations of the effects of its failings. Neither rigorously address causality, highlighting the absence of empirical research on international prosecutions and their impact on national communities. It is argued that ambitious expectations have generated ambiguous-and unrealistic- benchmarks for effectively assessing the record of a nascent international justice system. Viable benchmarks are necessary to ground external expectations, and to strengthen and focus institutional performance. To achieve this, expectations should adjust to the modest realities of delivering international justice.

Cultural actions are among the best tools for ministries of foreign affairs worldwide. Many countries who choose to work with cultural actions could potentially reach millions of citizens, inclusive of those living in remote areas. One of these cultural actions is that of establishing and opening cultural centres. This paper presents libraries as providing outstanding service in all these centres. Through a historical and numerical analysis of the libraries of The British Council, the Alliance Française’s Institut Français, the Goethe Institut and the Cervantes Institute, it can be shown that libraries are a real tool for public diplomacy that can exceed its remit of social assistance, social services and education. To conclude, this paper will also look at actions that could be undertaken to improve and cater for network libraries.

The Jews of Spain in the Middle Ages played an important role in the transmission of Graeco-Arabic learning by translating, or participating in translations, of scientific texts. They also composed original works on mathematics, astronomy, astrology and medicine in which they adapted the theories of the ancients for their own time. Science was used by the ruling powers as an element of prestige, and by the Jewish scientists as a way to obtain a high social status. The policy of cultural sponsorship of Muslim caliphs, as well as of Christian kings, was fundamental in the process of transmission of the Greek sciences to the Western world. The School of Translators of Toledo is an example of this process. The astronomical theories developed by Jewish scientists at the end of the 15th century played an important role in the Spanish and Portuguese discoveries of the 16th century. Their knowledge of astronomy, astrology, mathematics, and medicine was also used by the Jewish intellectuals to provide a rational and scientific support for the Jewish religion and tradition, as is reflected in the interpretations of the Bible by medieval Spanish Jewish authors.

The point of departure for this article is the principle of the separation of powers, formulated long ago by the Frenchman Charles-Louis de Secondat Montesquieu. It is argued that this principle is important for the governance of universities, entailing a balance between university boards, university presidents and university senates. To this end, the article presents evidence about the governance structure of two highly-ranked US universities, UC Berkeley (UCB) and Stanford University. It reports on board compositions, the selection of presidents and the role of academic senates. The conclusion is that the principle of the balance of powers (‘shared governance’ as it is called at UCB) has served the two universities well. Therefore, despite differences in other conditions, such as their endowments, other universities might benefit from the evidence reported.

In health care, a trend may be noted to fundamentally question some of today’s assumptions about the traditional roles of medical disciplines, the doctor–patient relationship, the feasibility of medical studies, and about the role of computers as an aid or replacement of doctors. Diagnostics and therapy decision-making become more complex, and no end is in sight. Amounts of health-related data are being collected individually, and through the health care systems. On the example of breast cancer care, technological advances and societal changes can be observed as they take place concurrently, and patterns and hypotheses emerge that will be the focus of this article. In particular, three key changes are to be considered: (1) the growing appreciation of the uniqueness of diseases and the impact of this notion on the future of evidence-based medicine; (2) the acknowledgment of a ‘big data’ problem in today’s medical practice and science, and the role of computers; and (3) the societal demand for ‘P4 medicine’ (predictive, preventive, participatory, personalized), and its impact on the roles of doctors and patients.