2018
September
19
Wednesday

Monitor Daily Podcast

September 19, 2018
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Amelia Newcomb
Senior editor

What does an institution do when a proud history turns out to have some uncomfortable caveats?

Take Scotland’s University of Glasgow. Its staff members figured prominently in Britain’s anti-slavery movement before the transatlantic slave trade was abolished in 1807; among its alumni is James McCune Smith, an emancipated slave who in 1837 became the first African-American to graduate from medical school after being shunned by US schools.

But last year the school acknowledged it benefited significantly in the past from bequests rooted in slavery wealth, and began to explore how to respond. This week it issued a report saying it wanted “to fully engage with the history … recognising that the heritage of historical slavery continues to shape our lives and society.” First steps, it says, include better addressing racial diversity on campus, creating an academic center to study of all forms of slavery, and naming a major building after a “significant” figure (perhaps Smith).

Instead of ducking an uncomfortable truth, the school is moving to embrace it. Afua Hirsch, a Guardian columnist of color, noted that  “the University of Glasgow should be applauded for breaking through the paralysis of fear and denial” when it comes to debating Britain’s history with slavery. The university, meanwhile, noted that it could deploy its values of “justice and enlightenment” to understand its past, “while moving forward in new directions….”

Now to our five stories, including a deeper look at leverage in a trade war, a moderate challenge to political Islam, and how two towns are responding as legal cannabis comes to Canada.


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Today’s stories

And why we wrote them

A deeper look

Zoubeir Souissi/Reuters
Ennahda party member Souad Abderrahim celebrated after being elected the first woman mayor of Tunis, Tunisia, in July. The wider adoption of democratic principles could transform the discourse in a region where – as elsewhere – politics are often bound to identity and bitterly polarized.
Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff
A man works on a pipe beside a carbon injection site well near Reykjavik Energy's Hellisheidi Geothermal Power Plant outside Reykjavik, Iceland. Reykjavik Energy has been working with area scientists to develop technology to extract CO2 from the air and store it in rock.
SOURCE:

United Nations Environmental Programme, World Resources Institute

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Jacob Turcotte/Staff
Sara Miller Llana/The Christian Science Monitor
A worker inspects marijuana plants at 7ACRES, a company that is ramping up employment in Kincardine, Ontario, ahead of marijuana legalization in Canada on Oct. 17.

The Monitor's View

AP
Ethiopia's Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

A Christian Science Perspective

About this feature

A message of love

Mykola Tys/AP
A visitor reads at a book fair during a Publishers Forum in Lviv, Ukraine, Sept. 19. A regional council in western Ukraine passed a motion to ban Russian-language books, films, and songs in the region, voting Wednesday to impose the moratorium and maintain it until Russia withdraws all of its troops from Ukraine.
( The illustrations in today’s Monitor Daily are by Karen Norris. )

A look ahead

Thanks for reading our stories today. Tomorrow, Howard LaFranchi will focus on next week's gathering of nations at the UN General Assembly. The US and Iran may face similar dynamics there – though for very different reasons. 

More issues

2018
September
19
Wednesday
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