Category: democracy

  • The United States as guardian or bully

    The United States as guardian or bully

    The recent United States military incursion into Venezuela and abduction and subsequent arrest of its President Nicolás Maduro and his wife in New York is a major geopolitical event. Like all major geopolitical events, it has several components — historical, legal, political and moral.

    And like all major geopolitical events, it has very different points of view. There is no grandiose “Truth” about what happened. There are many truths and points of view.

    What can be said is that on 3 January 2026, the United States military carried out strikes on Venezuela and captured its president, Nicolás Maduro, and his wife Cilia Flores. The two were then flown to the United States where they were arrested and charged with issues related to narcoterrorism.

    The United States’ intervention in a Latin American country has historical precedents as well as current foreign policy implications.

    Under President James Monroe, the United States declared in 1823 that it was opposed to any outside colonialism in the Western Hemisphere. Now known as the Monroe Doctrine, it established what political scientists refer to as a “sphere of influence”; No foreign country could establish control of a country in the United States-dominated Western Hemisphere.

    (This was indeed one of the central issues in the 13-day October 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis when the United States established a blockade outside Cuba to stop the installation of Soviet missiles on the island.)

    The Trump Corollary

    In the latest U.S. official security strategy document — National Security Strategy 2025 — the Monroe Doctrine was presented in what has been labelled “The Trump Corollary.” In it, the government said that defending territory and the Western Hemisphere were central tasks of U.S. foreign policy and national interest. The document clearly stated that activities by extra-hemispheric powers would be considered serious threats to U.S. security.

    As such, the “Trump Corollary” of the Monroe Doctrine is the justification of the military action in Venezuela based on stopping Russian and Chinese influence in Venezuela. In addition, it can be seen as the justification for the U.S. to acquire Greenland, resume control of the Panama Canal and stop narcotics and illegal migrants coming into the United States from anywhere in the Western Hemisphere.

    But the Corollary and Doctrine are mere national strategic statements. Are they legally justified? The U.S. military operation in Venezuela has been highly criticized by international lawyers as well as United Nations officials. The United Nations Charter, of which the United States is a signatory, clearly forbids the use of force by one country against another country except in the case of self-defense and imminent threat.

    In an interview with New Yorker magazine reporter Isaac Chotiner on 3 January, Yale Law School Professor Oona Hathaway noted that when the UN Charter was written 80 years ago, it included a critical prohibition on the use of force by states. “States are not allowed to decide on their own that they want to use force against other states,” she told Chotiner. “It was meant to reinforce this relatively new idea at the time that states couldn’t just go to war whenever they wanted to.”

    Hathaway said that in the pre-UN Charter world, you could use force if you felt like drug trafficking was hurting you and come up with legal justification that that was the case. “But the whole point of the UN Charter was basically to say, ‘We’re not going to go to war for those reasons anymore’,” she said.

    The legality of an ouster

    Besides the international legal issue, there is also a domestic legal question about the Venezuelan military action. The 1973 War Powers Act was enacted to limit the power of the U.S. president to use military forces with the approval of the Congress.

    It was enacted following the Vietnam War during which the president engaged troops without Congressional approval or a formal declaration of war. The Act clearly requires the president to notify Congress before committing armed forces to military action.

    Trump did not consult with members of Congress before and during the military action in Venezuela. The political implications of the Venezuelan strikes and abduction also have international as well as domestic implications. Internationally, there is a dangerous precedent being set.

    If the United States asserts its sphere of influence in the Western Hemisphere, what is to stop the Russian Federation from claiming a similar sphere of influence in the Baltic countries of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia as well as Ukraine?

    Similarly, what about Chinese influence in the Indo-Pacific region and especially Taiwan? If the United States claims domination in one geographic region, why can’t other powers like Russia and China do the same?

    The Westphalian system

    Within the United States, there have also been serious reservations about President Trump’s actions. That was to be expected from the opposing Democratic Party. But, several members of Trump’s Republican Party as well as loyal members of his Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement argue that Trump was elected on the slogan “Make America Great Again.” One of the pillars of that movement is a focus on internal problems instead of foreign interventions.

    Republican U.S. Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene used to be one of Trump’s staunchest supporters. On 3 January she told interviewer Kristen Walker on the NBC show “Meet the Press” that America First should mean what Trump promised on the campaign trail in 2024.

    “So my understanding of America First is strictly for the American people, not for the big donors that donate to big politicians, not for the special interests that constantly roam the halls in Washington and not foreign countries that demand their priorities put first over Americans,” Greene said.

    Other criticisms have centered on President Trump’s focus on restoring business in Venezuela for the U.S. oil industry, which has the world’s largest oil reserves. Republican U.S. Representative Thomas Massie warned that “lives of U.S. soldiers are being risked to make those oil companies (not Americans) more profitable.”

    Finally, there are moral arguments against the use of force in Venezuela as well as Trump’s threats of the use of force in Colombia, Cuba and elsewhere. There is no question that Venezuelans had suffered under the rule of Maduro; statistics show the rapid decline in the economy as well as a significant democratic deficit.

    Fundamental to today’s notion of international order is what’s known as the Westphalian system of the integrity of state sovereignty. The world has seen an order since the end of World War II and the establishment of the United Nations. That order was based on respect for the rule of law. There are other means for states to act against other states, such as sanctions, below military intervention. One country invading another goes against the basis of the Westphalian system.

    The Venezuelan strikes and abduction have set a dangerous precedent.

     

    Questions to consider:

    1. What is meant by the “Monroe Doctrine”?

    2. When is one country considered part of a “sphere of influence” of another country?

    3. How do you define “national security”?

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  • Ousting Venezuela’s leader was high on Trump’s to-do list

    Ousting Venezuela’s leader was high on Trump’s to-do list

    When a little known politician recently declared himself interim president of Venezuela and called for fresh elections, opponents of the sitting president, Nicolás Maduro, saw a bright future for a country mired in misery and hunger.

    But ousting Maduro has proved more difficult than expected. Optimistic assumptions have collided with a reality once summed up by the late Chinese leader Mao Zedong: “Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.”

    Juan Guaidó, the youthful opposition figure who declared himself president on January 23, has been recognized as Venezuela’s legitimate leader by the United States and almost 50 other countries. But Maduro is still in power, backed by the country’s military and paramilitary forces. Maduro’s international backers include China, Russia, Turkey, Iran, Cuba, Bolivia and Nicaragua.

    What Guaidó and Washington administration officials had in mind sounded optimistic but not impossible.

    After Guaidó emerged as undisputed leader of an opposition long weakened by internal feuds, he brought out tens of thousands of demonstrators who denounced a government they blame for an economic collapse that has resulted in severe shortages of basic goods and services.

    Humanitarian aid and presidential power

    Displays of public anger week after week, or so the thinking went, would convince Maduro to step aside in favor of his 35-year-old challenger. A key test of the dueling presidents’ power — and the military’s ultimate loyalty — hinged on the delivery of humanitarian aid flown in by U.S. military planes in mid-February to the city of Cúcuta on Venezuela’s border with Colombia.

    Maduro said the aid was a precursor to a U.S. military invasion, blocked border crossings and dispatched troops to block convoys of trucks or people carrying supplies. In the scenario envisaged by Guaidó, the troops would refuse to intercept desperately needed aid and instead defect en masse.

    That did not happen.

    Instead, things have gone from bad to worse since the failed aid delivery. Tons of food, medicine and medical supplies remain boxed in warehouses on the Colombian side of the border.

    In March, a week-long power cut across all of Venezuela’s 23 states brought more hardship. With electricity out, scarce food rotted in refrigerators and water pumping stations stopped.

    No early end to the suffering

    One heart-breaking video showed people rushing to catch water in buckets and plastic bottles from a leak in a drainage pipe feeding into a sewer.

    Maduro blamed the blackout on saboteurs using cyber attacks and electromagnetic waves to cripple the power system, operations in an “electric war” waged by the United States.

    The opposition pointed to lack of maintenance and an infrastructure that has been crumbling for years.

    In the wake of the longest blackout in Venezuela’s history, Guaidó launched a second round of protests, but the crowds have been noticeably thinner than in the early stage of the contest between the rival presidents.

    Hopes for an early end of the country’s agony appear to be fading in Venezuela. Not so in Washington, judging from bullish statements by President Donald Trump and his secretary of state, Michael Pompeo. Trump told an enthusiastic crowd of Venezuelan exiles and Cuban-Americans in Miami last month that what he called “the ugly alliance” between the Maduro government and Cuba was coming to a rapid end.

    Soon after, Pompeo told a television interviewer he was confident that Maduro’s “days are numbered.”

    Bullish statements from Washington

    When huge crowds jammed the streets of Caracas and other cities to cheer Guaidó, some U.S. administration officials thought Maduro would soon be on the way out. That he has managed to hang on despite popular anger, international condemnation and painful American sanctions has come as a surprise to many.

    Now, the bullish statements from Trump and Pompeo bring to mind American predictions during Barack Obama’s administration concerning Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad when he faced mass demonstrations, international condemnation and U.S. sanctions.

    In Syria, peaceful protests morphed into civil war in the summer of 2011, and the Obama team’s point man on the Middle Eastern country described Assad as “a dead man walking.” Eight years later, having prevailed in the war with the help of Russia and Iran, Syria lies in ruins, but Assad looks secure in power.

    Shortly before taking office, Trump promised that he would avoid intervention in foreign conflicts and “stop racing to topple foreign regimes.” He has largely stuck to that pledge but is making Venezuela an exception, with repeated assertions that “all options are on the table” — a Washington euphemism for military action.

    There’s no single explanation for Trump’s untypical focus on Venezuela. But it is worth noting that he made his toughest speech on the subject in Florida and that he is running for re-election in 2020. Hawkish rhetoric on Venezuela and Cuba plays well with the large Venezuelan-American and Cuban-American communities in that state.

    Florida, the country’s third most populous state, is of key importance in presidential elections. It is a so-called swing state that can go to either of the presidential candidates, often by very narrow margins.

     

    QUESTIONS TO CONSIDER:

    1. Can you think of a country where a long-entrenched leader recently bowed to the demands of demonstrators?

    2. Why do you think China, Russia and several other countries are standing by Maduro?

    3. The United States has a history of intervention in Latin America. Can you name some cases?

     

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  • The political weaponry of disinformaton

    The political weaponry of disinformaton

    Begoña Gómez, the wife of Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, was born a man by the name of Begoño. Some 500 kilos of gold were once found in her house on the Canary Islands. She is now being blackmailed with material stolen from her mobile phone while she was on a trip to Morocco. Oh, and she headed a drug-trafficking cartel.

    If you believe even some of these stories as a Spaniard, you’d think your country had gone insane. You’d think you were being ruled by a class of deceiving drug traffickers. Lies, or rather disinformation, are nothing new in Spain, but in recent years they have been forming increasingly coherent narratives of an alternative reality.

    They are often a fantasy that sometimes does brush up against reality: last June, several higher-ranking members of the governing party Partido Socialista Obrero Español (PSOE), or Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party, were forced to step down due to a corruption case. Private messages emerged in which they talked about large sums of money and escort services.

    The case was particularly painful for Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, who came into power fighting corruption.

    In 2018, as leader of the opposition, he called a vote of no confidence involving then Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy. That government fell, and since then Sánchez has led consecutive governments, on a promise to finally eradicate the systemic corruption that plagues Spain.

    “This [latest corruption case] is confirming the narrative that all politicians lie, all politicians steal, all politicians are there for their personal gain,” said Alba Tobella, director of Catalan fact-checking platform Verificat. “Every case of corruption serves to further reinforce this idea.”

    A flood of falsehoods

    Through their website and social media, Verificat checks the accuracy of news spread over the internet. They noticed that from the moment Sánchez came into power, institutions on the right have tried hard to discredit him.

    “Anything that can be used to delegitimize Pedro Sánchez will be used against him,” Tobella said. “Any failure in Spain is directly linked to Pedro Sánchez.”

    These disinformation campaigns were particularly evident during the 2017 referendum for independence of Catalonia, when falsehoods from both sides were widespread. That period was one of the reasons Verificat was founded.

    Another surge of false information swept through the country in 2024, following the flooding disaster in the Valencia area in which at least 229 people died. At the time, misinformation spread among the local population quickly, because people felt the government had failed to protect them.

    What is new though, Tobella said, is that hoaxes are becoming increasingly complex and nuanced. She notes a normalization of these alternative realities, which some people are completely immersed in.

    “It’s like a complete disconnection of the audience from the truth, as well as a lack of interest in seeking the facts,” she said.

    The spreaders of fabricated “facts”

    Much of the disinformation reaches people through social media and WhatsApp messages, as is shown on the websites of fact checkers like Verificat. Some websites and media outlets also contain this kind of fake news, and it is sometimes spread by politicians such as Santiago Abascal, leader of radical-right party Vox.

    Now, following the latest corruption cases involving the PSOE, misinformation has again found fertile ground. Even though Sánchez has acted and those involved in the corruption have stepped down, a general feeling of being unprotected persists among the Spanish population. In a Eurobarometer survey this summer, a whopping 90% of Spaniards said they considered corruption to be “widespread” — one of the worst scores in the EU.

    Sebastiaan Faber, a professor of Hispanic Studies at Oberlin College in the United States, sees parallels with what is happening in the United States and elsewhere in the world.

    “What is going on is a very conscious undermining of trust,” Faber said. “Creating doubt about science, about the judicial system, public health institutions. The goal is to push people away from traditional institutions so that maintaining them will be seen as less important.”

    Faber, who wrote several books about Spain, the Spanish Civil War and the long dictatorship under Francisco Franco that ended in 1975, notes clear links between the way misinformation is used as a political tool in Spain and the United States.

    “They, for instance, try to keep sending the message that any left-leaning government is illegitimate,” Faber said. “That goes back to ’36. The Franco regime was based on the idea that the elected government had forged the election results and that they were financed by Russia, with anti-Spanish ideas. It’s always a repetition of portraying the left as immoral.”

    Actual corruption and phony accusations

    Faber sees a clear connection between these Francoist tactics and Trumpism. Figures surrounding Trump during his rise, such as his former political advisor Steve Bannon, represent a group of people that actively try to deconstruct democracy.

    Bannon once famously stated: “Flood the zone with shit.” He was referring to the creation of a deluge of half-truths and lies so consistent that people lose track of reality. Social media are an effective way to do so.

    These tactics of disinformation campaigns crossed the ocean twice, Faber said. It could be seen under Franco, who constantly spread lies about the legitimate Segunda Republica government of Spain.

    That made its way up to the United States. There, similar lies and disinformation campaigns culminated in Trump loyalists storming the Capitol in an attempt to stop Congress from certifying Joe Biden’s 2020 presidential election victory. These same tactics, a deluge of disinformation, are now being copied again in Europe to delegitimize people in power, such as Pedro Sánchez.

    Faber doubts that the public is ready to believe all the disinformation about Sànchez even with the proven case of corruption in the Prime Minister’s own political party. “I would say that the receptiveness for fake news is very much defined by your political preferences and the information bubbles [you] are in,” he said.

    Alienating voters

    The corruption case might leave those on the right feeling further alienated from the left-wing government however, and they might start to believe additional falsehoods about the government and Sánchez.

    And on the left, a general sense of hopelessness has now taken hold, as becomes clear when speaking with Spaniards about the case since the story of the corruption case broke.

    Tobella said that what’s important here, is that people understand that it’s never only ‘the other side’ that behaves badly. For example, from a Catalonian perspective, where sentiments can at times be very anti-Spanish, there’s a long-standing myth that Catalonian politicians are less corrupt than those politicians in the national government in Madrid.

    At the time of the interview with Tobella, the corruption case involving Catalonian leader Jordi Pujol had just begun. Pujol was in power for 24 years, and now faces charges of money laundering and criminal association.

    “These accusations are extremely serious,” Tobella said. “If it is said that there is no corruption in Catalonia, I think that that is maybe the oldest myth going around. It is clear that there are also very serious cases here.”

    So what can be done to counter the weakening of democracy through disinformation, especially when an alternative narrative does intersect with reality, as happens with these corruption cases? Debunk the lies, sift through hoaxes and show where claims rely on questionable evidence. In short, flood the zone with truth.

    “Well, what we already do, right?” Tobella said.

    Questions to consider:

    1. What is new about the latest round of disinformation in Spain?

    2. Why might disinformation campaigns have limited power when it comes to changing the minds of political supporters?

    3. Do you generally trust the politicians representing you in government? What affects how you feel about them?

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  • Disinformation and the decline of democracy

    Disinformation and the decline of democracy

    The unprecedented mob assault on the U.S. Capitol on January 6 represents perhaps the most stunning collision yet between the world of online disinformation and reality.

    The supporters of U.S. President Donald Trump who broke into Congress did so in the belief that the U.S. election was stolen from them after weeks of consuming unproven narratives about “ballot dumps,” manipulated voting machines and Democrat big-city corruption. Some — including the woman who was shot dead — were driven by the discredited QAnon conspiracy theory that represents Democratic Party elites as a pedophile ring and Trump as the savior.

    It’s tempting to hope that disinformation and its corrosive effects on democracy may have reached a high-water mark with the events of January 6 and the end of Trump’s presidency. But trends in technology and society’s increasing separation into social media echo chambers suggest that worse may be to come.

    Imagine for a moment if video of the Capitol riot had been manipulated to replace the faces of Trump supporters with those of known protestors for antifa, a left-wing, anti-fascist and anti-racist political movement. This would have bolstered the unproven story that has emerged about a “false flag” operation. Or imagine if thousands of different stories written by artificial intelligence software and pedaling that version of events had flooded social media and been picked up by news organizations in the hours after the assault.

    That technology not only exists. It’s getting more sophisticated and easier to access by the day.

    Trust in democracy is eroding.

    Deepfake, or synthetic, videos are starting to seep from pornography — where they’ve mostly been concentrated — into the world of politics. A deepfake of former President Barack Obama using an expletive to describe Trump has garnered over eight million views on YouTube since it was released in 2018.

    Most anyone familiar with Obama’s appearance and speaking style can tell there’s something amiss with that video. But two years is an eternity in AI-driven technology and many experts believe it will soon be impossible for the human eye and ear to spot the best deepfakes.

    A deepfake specialist was hailed early last year for using freely available software to “de-age” Robert DeNiro and Joe Pesci in the movie “The Irishman,” producing a result that many critics considered superior to the work of the visual-effects supervisor in the actual film.

    In recent years, the sense of shared, objective reality and trust in institutions have already come under strain as social media bubbles hasten the spread of fake news and conspiracy theories. The worry is that deepfakes and other AI-generated content will supercharge this trend in coming years.

    “This is disastrous to any liberal democratic model because in a world where anything can be faked, everyone becomes a target,” Nina Schick, the author of “Deepfakes — The Coming Infopocalypse,” told U.S. author Sam Harris in a recent podcast.

    “But even more than that, if anything can be faked … everything can also be denied. So the very basis of what is reality starts to become corroded.”

    Governments must do more to combat disinformation.

    Illustrating her point is reaction to Trump’s video statement released a day after the storming of Congress. While some of his followers online saw it as a betrayal, others reassured themselves by saying it was a deepfake.

    On the text side, the advent of GPT-3 — an AI program that can produce articles indistinguishable from those written by humans — has potentially powerful implications for disinformation. Writing bots could be programmed to produce fake articles or spew political and racial hatred at a volume that could overwhelm text based on facts and moderation.

    Society has been grappling with written fake news for years and photographs have long been easily manipulated through software. But convincingly faked videos and AI-generated stories seem to many to represent a deeper, more viral threat to reality-based discourse.

    It’s clear that there’s no silver-bullet solution to the disinformation problem. Social media platforms like Facebook have a major role to play and are developing their own AI technology to better detect fake content. While fakers are likely to keep evolving to stay ahead, stricter policing and quicker action by online platforms can at least limit the impact of false videos and stories.

    Governments are coming under pressure to push Big Tech into taking a harder line against fake news, including through regulation. Authorities can devote more funding to digital media literacy programs in schools and elsewhere to help individuals become more alert and proficient in identifying suspect content.

    When it comes down to it, the real power of fake news hinges on those who believe it and spread it.

    Questions to consider:

    1. How can technology be used to spread fake news?

    2. Why is disinformation potentially harmful to democracy?

    3. How do you think the rise of AI technology will affect the type of information people consume?

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  • Why People Under 35 Are Not Afraid of Democratic Socialism

    Why People Under 35 Are Not Afraid of Democratic Socialism

    For Americans under 35, the term “democratic socialism” triggers neither fear nor Cold War reflexes. It represents something far simpler: a demand for a functioning society. Younger generations have grown up in a world where basic pillars of American life—higher education, medicine, economic mobility, and even life expectancy—have deteriorated while inequality has soared. Democratic socialism, in their view, is not a fringe ideology but a practical response to systems that have ceased to serve the common good.

    Nowhere is this clearer than in higher education. Millennials and Gen Z entered adulthood as universities became corporate enterprises, expanding administrative layers, pushing adjunct labor to the brink, and relying on debt-financed tuition increases to keep the machine running. Public investment collapsed, predatory for-profit chains proliferated, and nonprofit universities acted like hedge funds with classrooms attached. Students saw institutions with billion-dollar endowments operate as landlords and asset managers, all while passing costs onto working families. When Bernie Sanders called for tuition-free public college, young people did not hear utopianism—they heard a plan grounded in global reality, a model that exists in Germany, Sweden, Finland, and other social democracies that treat education as a public good rather than a revenue stream.

    Healthcare tells an even harsher story. Americans under 35 watched their parents and grandparents navigate a system more focused on billing codes than care, one where an ambulance ride costs a week’s wages and a bout of illness can mean bankruptcy. They experienced the rise of corporatized university medical centers, private equity–owned emergency rooms, and insurance bureaucracies that ration access more cruelly than any state. They saw life-saving drugs priced like luxury goods and mental health services pushed out of reach. Compare this to nations with universal healthcare: longer life expectancy, lower infant mortality, and far less medical debt. Again, Sanders’ Medicare for All resonated not because of ideology but because young people recognized it as a plausible path toward the kind of humane medical system described by scholars like Harriet Washington, Elisabeth Rosenthal, and Mahmud Mamdani, who all critique the structural violence embedded in systems of unequal care.

    Life expectancy itself has become a generational indictment. For the first time in modern U.S. history, it has fallen, driven by overdose deaths, suicide, preventable illness, and worsening inequities. Younger Americans know that friends and peers have died far earlier than their counterparts abroad. They see that countries with strong public services—childcare, unemployment insurance, housing supports, universal healthcare—live longer, healthier lives. They also see how austerity and privatization have hollowed out public health infrastructure in the United States, leaving communities vulnerable to crises large and small. The message is clear: societies that invest in people live longer; societies that treat health as a commodity do not.

    Quality of Life (QOL) ties all of this together. People under 35 face rent burdens unimaginable to previous generations, debts that prevent them from forming families, stagnant wages, and a labor market defined by precarity. They face the erosion of public space, public transit, libraries, and social supports—what Mamdani would describe as the slow unraveling of the civic realm under neoliberalism. When they look abroad, they see countries with social democratic frameworks offering guaranteed parental leave, subsidized childcare, free or nearly free college, universal healthcare, and robust worker protections. These are not distant fantasies; they are functioning models that produce higher happiness levels, stronger social trust, and more stable democracies.

    Older generations often accuse young people of radicalism, but the reality is the reverse. Millennials and Gen Z are pragmatic. They have lived through the failures of unfettered capitalism: historic inequality, monopolistic industries, soaring costs of living, and a political class unresponsive to their material conditions. They have read Sanders’ critiques of oligarchy and Mamdani’s analyses of state power and structural violence, and they see themselves reflected in those diagnoses. Democratic socialism appeals because it is rooted in material improvements to daily life rather than in abstract political theory. It promises a society where income does not determine survival, where education does not require lifelong debt, where parents can afford to raise children, and where basic health is not a luxury good.

    People under 35 are not afraid of democratic socialism because they have already seen what the absence of a social democratic framework produces. They are not seeking revolution for its own sake. They are seeking a livable future. And increasingly, they view democratic socialism not as a radical break but as the only realistic path toward rebuilding public institutions, revitalizing democracy, and ensuring that future generations inherit a country worth living in.

    Sources

    Sanders, Bernie. Our Revolution: A Future to Believe In.

    Sanders, Bernie. Where We Go from Here: Two Years in the Resistance.

    Mamdani, Mahmood. Define and Rule: Native as Political Identity.

    Mamdani, Mahmood. Neither Settler nor Native: The Making and Unmaking of Permanent Minorities.

    Washington, Harriet. Medical Apartheid.

    Rosenthal, Elisabeth. An American Sickness.

    Skloot, Rebecca. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks.

    Baldwin, Davarian. In the Shadow of the Ivory Tower.

    Bousquet, Marc. How the University Works.

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  • Can the world’s largest democracy accept all faiths?

    Can the world’s largest democracy accept all faiths?

    Sidra Khan is a young Muslim woman in India who aspires to be a lawyer. Since early childhood, she has valued and respected Islam, the religion she was born into. But her headscarf now meets eagle eyes when she travels on public transport or tries to make a point during college lectures. 

    She feels that anti-Muslim rhetoric in India is causing her peers to judge her on the basis of religion and not merit. This, many Muslim students like Khan feel, is a casualty of having the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi rule India.

    Over the last decade, the government of this secular country long considered the world’s largest democracy has introduced religious-based laws and politicians have incited anger and hatred against those who aren’t Hindu through rhetoric in speeches and AI campaigns. In northeast India’s Assam state, Wajid Alam, a college history student, watched a new election video from the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party with unease.

    An AI generated video shared by BJP’s official social media handles suggested that if the BJP loses power, Assam would be overrun by Muslims. It used AI-generated imagery to depict Muslims in hijabs and skull caps allegedly taking over airports, stadiums, tea gardens and other public spaces.

    It concluded with a message claiming Muslims could grow to 90% of Assam’s population, provoking other religious groups to choose the BJP to get rid of Muslims.

    The politics of religion

    For Alam and millions of Muslims in Assam, the video felt like an attack. And it is not the first time the BJP has been accused of demonizing religious minorities. Under Prime Minister Narendra Modi, India — a country founded on principles of secularism and religious freedom — has seen growing hostility toward Muslims and Christians.

    Some 200 million people in India practice the Muslim faith, making it the world’s third largest population of Muslims.

    Modi became India’s 14th prime minister in May 2014. Not long after, reports of attacks on religious minorities began to climb. In June 2014, Mohsin Shaikh, a young Muslim IT worker in Pune, was beaten to death by Hindu extremists — the first of several lynchings that followed. 

    A year later, in 2015, a Hindu mob in Dadri, Uttar Pradesh, killed Mohammad Akhlaq on suspicion of eating beef — considered a serious offense in the Hindu religion. That made global headlines and signalled the rise of cow-protection vigilantism. 

    By 2016–17, assaults on Muslims accused of trading or transporting cattle spread across northern India, with cases like the lynching of dairy farmer Pehlu Khan in Rajasthan. Christians, too, came under pressure during this period: nationalist groups staged forced reconversion campaigns, disrupted prayer meetings, vandalized churches and invoked new anti-conversion laws to arrest pastors and worshippers.

    Muslims under Modi’s rule

    Together, these incidents marked the early years of the Modi era as a turning point, when both Muslims and Christians began to face growing hostility in daily life.

    At the same time, hostile rhetoric against minorities became increasingly common in election campaigns. BJP leaders and affiliated Hindu nationalist groups framed Muslims as “outsiders” or “invaders,” with speeches warning of demographic “takeovers” or linking entire communities to terrorism and cow slaughter.

    Christians were accused of running covert “conversion factories,” with pastors painted as threats to India’s cultural identity. These narratives — echoed at rallies, on television debates and, more recently, through AI-generated propaganda — blurred the line between campaign messaging and hate speech. For many analysts, this marked a shift: politics was no longer just influenced by religion, but actively weaponizing it to polarize voters.

    These speeches were not isolated slips but part of a larger pattern. Muslims were painted as “infiltrators,” “termites” or participants in a supposed “love jihad” plot to convert Hindu women, while Christians were accused of running “conversion factories” and threatening India’s culture.

    Senior BJP figures, including party president Amit Shah and Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, used such language at rallies to mobilize support. Over time, this messaging blurred into mainstream political discourse, normalizing suspicion and hostility toward entire communities.

    Political divisions

    India’s experience is part of a wider global pattern. Around the world, political movements are blending nationalism and religion to define who “belongs.” A recent Pew Research Center study found that while the United States ranks lower than many countries on overall religious nationalism, it stands out among wealthy democracies for how many adults say the Bible should influence national laws or that being Christian is essential to being truly American.

    In the United States, debates over Christian nationalism have become a powerful current within the Republican Party and Donald Trump’s political rhetoric.

    Trump and allied evangelical leaders increasingly frame America as a “Christian nation,” a message that blurs the line between faith and state power. Commentators warn that this effort to link patriotism with religion mirrors broader global trends — from India to Israel to Turkey — where religious identity is being harnessed for political gain.

    Both the U.S. and Indian constitutions enshrine secularism, which is the idea that the state would keep equal distance from all religions. In India’s case, that principle mattered in a country where Hindus form the majority but millions of Muslims, Christians, Sikhs and Buddhists also call the nation home. 

    A history of strife

    Even before Modi, religion and politics were sometimes entwined: the Congress Party drew on Hindu symbolism, the 1984 anti-Sikh riots scarred the country and the destruction of the Babri mosque in 1992 shook faith in secularism. Still, the political consensus was that India was not to be defined by one faith.

    “But a lot has changed under Modi and the BJP,” said Sneha Lal, a Hindu student studying to become a primary school teacher. “We did not grow up in this India.”

    Lal is bothered by some of the BJP’s tactics that have promoted anti-conversion laws in several states, laws often used against Christians and Muslims accused of proselytizing. 

    In 2019, the Citizenship Amendment Act introduced fast-track citizenship for non-Muslim refugees, a move widely criticized as discriminatory toward Muslims. That same year, Delhi revoked the autonomy of Jammu and Kashmir, India’s only Muslim-majority state. Alongside these legal changes, election campaigns have increasingly featured polarizing rhetoric, and propaganda — including AI-generated videos — has circulated warning of demographic “takeovers.” 

    Critics say these policies and messages together mark a break from India’s founding secular vision, pushing the country toward a Hindu-first identity.

    Can there be a unified national identity?

    Seema Chishti, a senior journalist who has witnessed India’s journey from secular to right-wing, said that mixing religion with politics and diluting India’s unified national identity across religious and ethnic groups is a stated core principle of the ruling party, based on its militant roots. 

    “The Indian Constitution recognises no barriers to being Indian, i.e. nationality is not contingent on faith, caste, region, creed, gender or political views,” Chishti said. “BJP has loudly proclaimed ‘Hindu-India’ and instilled ‘Hindu’ nationalism in politics, education, the armed forces and every other facet of Indian life.”

    An example of Modi’s attempt to link Indian-ness with Hinduism is the Citizenship Amendment Act of 2019 which fast-tracks Indian citizenship for non-Muslims from three neighbours: Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan. “This action echoes ideas of India being a Hindu homeland,” Chishti said.

    On 15 August 2025, on India’s 79th Independence Day, Modi addressed crowds gathered at Delhi’s historical Red Fort, as he did the last 11 years that he has been in power. 

    On a day which commemorates India’s long struggle for self-rule that culminated in self-governance and independence from the British empire, Modi referred to the right-wing paramilitary organization Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh or RSS as a philanthropic organization. RSS has espoused an India for Hindus only. 

    Intolerance and violence

    All this has had tragic consequences. On 25 September, a seven-year-old Muslim boy was abducted from his neighborhood and brutally murdered in northern India’s Azamgarh. 

    But religious hate crimes haven’t only targeted Muslims. On 11 June, a mob allegedly linked to Hindu extremist groups attacked guests at a Christian wedding and set fire to a utility vehicle. And on 25 July, two Catholic nuns were arrested in central India’s Chhattisgarh state following a complaint by a member of an extremist Hindu group.

    India’s United Christian Forum reported that in 2024, Christians across the country witnessed 834 such incidents, up 100 incidents from 734 in 2023 — that comes out to more than two Christians being targeted every day in India simply for practising their faith. 

    These incidents of attacks and even public hate speeches against Christians are not limited to vandalism, they extend to physical assaults, disruption of prayer gatherings, financial boycotts and even motivated arrests. 

    This anti-Christian sentiment has been fanned by Hindu extremist groups in the country, which are indirectly and sometimes directly backed by the ruling BJP and other Hindu nationalist groups. These groups are increasingly using anti-conversion laws created in the Modi era to harass Christians. 

    Christians in India

    Arun Pannalal, president of the Chhattisgarh Christian Forum, said that two things are happening: Lawlessness of mobs who target Christians is ignored by police, while Christians often find themselves subject to seemingly random arrests. 

    “On random calls by Bajrang Dal goons the Police arrested the nuns, without evidence of anything,” Pannalal said. “But when the nuns wanted to complain against the goons, it was not lodged.”

    Chishti said that more than politicising religion, by inserting religion into politics, the BJP is trying to portray itself as the only ‘Hindu’ party and the others consequently as not. She maintains that the BJP has fought elections on issues that polarise Indians, divide them and not on its performance or electoral record. Its electoral dominance has also meant that other parties in the fray, the opposition too find themselves playing on the BJP’s turf. 

    “The BJP has done its best to make the political discourse about faith, symbols of religion — Hindu and Muslim — and portraying themselves as saviours of the Hindu faith and righting so-called historical wrongs,” Chishti said.

    As a result, the media focuses on the religious conflicts, instead of other pressing issues, such as the economic well-being of people, the public health or education systems, joblessness and inflation, Chishti said.

    As India heads toward future elections, the blending of religion and politics raises questions not just for its own democracy but for others around the world. For young people in India, the stakes are immediate: whether their country remains true to its founding promise of secularism and equal rights.

    But for readers everywhere, India’s story is part of a larger global trend from the United States to Turkey to Israel, where religion and nationalism intertwine to shape politics. Understanding how these forces play out in the world’s largest democracy can help us make sense of how faith and power continue to influence politics across the globe.

    India’s struggle shows that when religion becomes a political weapon, democracy itself can become the battleground.

    Questions to consider:

    1. How is freedom of religion protected in India?

    2. In what ways are Muslims being treated differently by the Modi administration?

    3. In what ways to you feel comfortable or uncomfortable in your community expressing your faith?

     

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  • The power of one voice

    The power of one voice

    The reaction to Alla’s interview contrasted with the pro-Ukraine demonstrations that met Russian soprano Anna Netrebko when she appeared on the opening night of Puccini’s “Tosca” at the Royal Opera House in London earlier this month.

    In contrast, the appearance of Netrebko, who has said in an understated way that she is against the war, sparked a debate in the British press about whether politics and art should be mixed.

    But Alla was clear. She said she felt she had to tell the truth for the sake of her children.

    Repercussions of speaking out

    Her interview, lasting more than three-and-a-half hours, ranged over many topics, from her musical memories to her five husbands. But it was when she grasped the nettle of politics — and how politics affected her family — that it became gripping.

    Alla is married to the Russian-Israeli stand-up comedian Maxim Galkin, who at 49 is 27 years her junior (their 12-year-old twins Liza and Harry were born via a surrogate mother).

    Straight-talking and irreverent, Galkin shared a stage with Ukraine’s comedian-turned-president Volodymyr Zelensky for Russia’s iconic New Year’s Eve show in 2013. He opposed the war with Ukraine, when it broke out in 2022.

    After Galkin spoke out, Alla said she was summoned to the Kremlin for a “talk” with Sergei Kiriyenko, the first deputy chief of staff of the presidential administration. The conversation seemed to be friendly enough. But a few days later, Galkin was declared a “foreign agent”.

    Alla said that when their children went to school after that, they were mocked as the children of spies and told that their father was a foreign agent and their parents were enemies. The family packed up and left — first to Israel and then to Cyprus. They spend their summer holidays in Latvia.

    “They call me a traitor,” Alla said in the interview. “And what exactly did I betray? I have said that I could leave my homeland, which I love very much, only in one case — if my homeland betrayed me. And it has betrayed me.”

    Strong words from a woman who has been a celebrity in Russia for decades.

    A performer for the people

    Classically trained to conduct choirs, Alla shot to stardom in 1975 when she won the grand prix at the Golden Orpheus international song contest in Bulgaria with the song “Arlekino” (Harlequin).

    Banned by the Communist Party from collaborating with ABBA, she became huge in her own right — as big as Tina Turner, say, in the United States — and always sang for the people. In 1986, for example, she appeared in a special concert for the firemen who risked their lives in the aftermath of a devastating explosion at the Chernobyl nuclear plant in northern Ukraine, when it was part of the Soviet Union.

    Because Alla never projected herself as a diva but rather as “the woman who sings”, she won the hearts of millions and was loved by everyone, from housewives to mafia bosses. In the 1990s, there was even a petition calling for her to stand as Russian president, which she modestly laughed off.

    Russian journalist and writer Mikhail Zygar, who now lives in Berlin, wrote that Alla’s statements against Putin are important because she had never been a political activist.

    “Millions of Russians always considered her ‘one of their own’ — because through her songs she expressed the pain and suffering of ordinary Russians,” he said. “The fact that she has stopped keeping silent and spoken out openly against the war is a very important signal. She has always been the voice of millions of mute, wordless, unhappy Russians. Now they will think the way she put it — that’s how her interview is being described on social media.”

    Perhaps the biggest indication of the strength of the interview was the speed and viciousness with which the Russian authorities reacted.

    Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova called it a “bazaar of hypocrisy” while parliamentary deputy Vitaly Milonov said: “I believe that in her interview, Pugacheva said enough not only to warrant the status of ‘foreign agent’ but also to fall under several criminal articles, including the justification of terrorism.” The pro-Kremlin ruler of Chechnya, Ramzan Kadyrov, went so far as to call Alla an “enemy of the people”.

    Questions to consider:

    1. In what ways could it be “patriotic” to criticise your own country?

    2. Should art and politics be mixed?

    3. Can you think of other artists or musicians who have risked their popularity by standing out against their government’s policies?

     



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  • PLAN YOUR ACTION NOW (Todd Wolfson, AAUP/AFT)

    PLAN YOUR ACTION NOW (Todd Wolfson, AAUP/AFT)

    Faculty, students and staff are joining together throughout the country to defend and advance higher education. Plan your action now and register it here: https://docs.google.com/…/1bhu9QLt1…/viewform…

    This event is in collaboration with studentsriseup.org

    Students Rise Up (Project Rise Up) is a plan to organize millions of students to disrupt business as usual and force our schools and our political system to finally work for us.

    Right now, billionaires and fascists are attacking our schools because they know that student protest could bring them down. Our power is that we outnumber them. If working people and students unite to use our power of disruption and non-cooperation, we can crack the foundations of their power.

    It all starts on November 7th, 2025 with walkouts and protests at hundreds of schools around the country. Join us.

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  • Who gets to decide what counts as knowledge? Big tech, AI, and the future of epistemic agency in higher education

    Who gets to decide what counts as knowledge? Big tech, AI, and the future of epistemic agency in higher education

    by Mehreen Ashraf, Eimear Nolan, Manual F Ramirez, Gazi Islam and Dirk Lindebaum

    Walk into almost any university today, and you can be sure to encounter the topic of AI and how it affects higher education (HE). AI applications, especially large language models (LLM), have become part of everyday academic life, being used for drafting outlines, summarising readings, and even helping students to ‘think’. For some, the emergence of LLMs is a revolution that makes learning more efficient and accessible. For others, it signals something far more unsettling: a shift in how and by whom knowledge is controlled. This latter point is the focus of our new article published in Organization Studies.

    At the heart of our article is a shift in what is referred to epistemic (or knowledge) governance: the way in which knowledge is created, organised, and legitimised in HE. In plain terms, epistemic governance is about who gets to decide what counts as credible, whose voices are heard, and how the rules of knowing are set. Universities have historically been central to epistemic governance through peer review, academic freedom, teaching, and the public mission of scholarship. But as AI tools become deeply embedded in teaching and research, those rules are being rewritten not by educators or policymakers, but by the companies that own the technology.

    From epistemic agents to epistemic consumers

    Universities, academics, and students have traditionally been epistemic agents: active producers and interpreters of knowledge. They ask questions, test ideas, and challenge assumptions. But when we rely on AI systems to generate or validate content, we risk shifting from being agents of knowledge to consumers of knowledge. Technology takes on the heavy cognitive work: it finds sources, summarises arguments, and even produces prose that sounds academic. However, this efficiency comes at the cost of profound changes in the nature of intellectual work.

    Students who rely on AI to tidy up their essays, or generate references, will learn less about the process of critically evaluating sources, connecting ideas and constructing arguments, which are essential for reasoning through complex problems. Academics who let AI draft research sections, or feed decision letters and reviewer reports into AI with the request that AI produces a ‘revision strategy’, might save time but lose the slow, reflective process that leads to original thought, while undercutting their own agency in the process. And institutions that embed AI into learning systems hand part of their epistemic governance – their authority to define what knowledge is and how it is judged – to private corporations.

    This is not about individual laziness; it is structural. As Shoshana Zuboff argued in The age of surveillance capitalism, digital infrastructures do not just collect information, they reorganise how we value and act upon it. When universities become dependent on tools owned by big tech, they enter an ecosystem where the incentives are commercial, not educational.

    Big tech and the politics of knowing

    The idea that universities might lose control of knowledge sounds abstract, but it is already visible. Jisc’s 2024 framework on AI in tertiary education warns that institutions must not ‘outsource their intellectual labour to unaccountable systems,’ yet that outsourcing is happening quietly. Many UK universities, including the University of Oxford, have signed up to corporate AI platforms to be used by staff and students alike. This, in turn, facilitates the collection of data on learning behaviours that can be fed back into proprietary models.

    This data loop gives big tech enormous influence over what is known and how it is known. A company’s algorithm can shape how research is accessed, which papers surface first, or which ‘learning outcomes’ appear most efficient to achieve. That’s epistemic governance in action: the invisible scaffolding that structures knowledge behind the scenes. At the same time, it is easy to see why AI technologies appeal to universities under pressure. AI tools promise speed, standardisation, lower costs, and measurable performance, all seductive in a sector struggling with staff shortages and audit culture. But those same features risk hollowing out the human side of scholarship: interpretation, dissent, and moral reasoning. The risk is not that AI will replace academics but that it will change them, turning universities from communities of inquiry into systems of verification.

    The Humboldtian ideal and why it is still relevant

    The modern research university was shaped by the 19th-century thinker Wilhelm von Humboldt, who imagined higher education as a public good, a space where teaching and research were united in the pursuit of understanding. The goal was not efficiency: it was freedom. Freedom to think, to question, to fail, and to imagine differently.

    That ideal has never been perfectly achieved, but it remains a vital counterweight to market-driven logics that render AI a natural way forward in HE. When HE serves as a place of critical inquiry, it nourishes democracy itself. When it becomes a service industry optimised by algorithms, it risks producing what Žižek once called ‘humans who talk like chatbots’: fluent, but shallow.

    The drift toward organised immaturity

    Scholars like Andreas Scherer and colleagues describe this shift as organised immaturity: a condition where sociotechnical systems prompt us to stop thinking for ourselves. While AI tools appear to liberate us from labour, what is happening is that they are actually narrowing the space for judgment and doubt.

    In HE, that immaturity shows up when students skip the reading because ‘ChatGPT can summarise it’, or when lecturers rely on AI slides rather than designing lessons for their own cohort. Each act seems harmless; but collectively, they erode our epistemic agency. The more we delegate cognition to systems optimised for efficiency, the less we cultivate the messy, reflective habits that sustain democratic thinking. Immanuel Kant once defined immaturity as ‘the inability to use one’s understanding without guidance from another.’ In the age of AI, that ‘other’ may well be an algorithm trained on millions of data points, but answerable to no one.

    Reclaiming epistemic agency

    So how can higher education reclaim its epistemic agency? The answer lies not only in rejecting AI but also in rethinking our possible relationships with it. Universities need to treat generative tools as objects of inquiry, not an invisible infrastructure. That means embedding critical digital literacy across curricula: not simply training students to use AI responsibly, but teaching them to question how it works, whose knowledge it privileges, and whose it leaves out.

    In classrooms, educators could experiment with comparative exercises: have students write an essay on their own, then analyse an AI version of the same task. What’s missing? What assumptions are built in? How were students changed when the AI wrote the essay for them and when they wrote them themselves? As the Russell Group’s 2024 AI principles note, ‘critical engagement must remain at the heart of learning.’

    In research, academics too must realise that their unique perspectives, disciplinary judgement, and interpretive voices matter, perhaps now more than ever, in a system where AI’s homogenisation of knowledge looms. We need to understand that the more we subscribe to values of optimisation and efficiency as preferred ways of doing academic work, the more natural the penetration of AI into HE will unfold.

    Institutionally, universities might consider building open, transparent AI systems through consortia, rather than depending entirely on proprietary tools. This isn’t just about ethics; it’s about governance and ensuring that epistemic authority remains a public, democratic responsibility.

    Why this matters to you

    Epistemic governance and epistemic agency may sound like abstract academic terms, but they refer to something fundamental: the ability of societies and citizens (not just ‘workers’) to think for themselves when/if universities lose control over how knowledge is created, validated and shared. When that happens, we risk not just changing education but weakening democracy. As journalist George Monbiot recently wrote, ‘you cannot speak truth to power if power controls your words.’ The same is true for HE. We cannot speak truth to power if power now writes our essays, marks our assignments, and curates our reading lists.

    Mehreen Ashraf is an Assistant Professor at Cardiff Business School, Cardiff University, United Kingdom.

    Eimear Nolan is an Associate Professor in International Business at Trinity Business School, Trinity College Dublin, Ireland.

    Manuel F Ramirez is Lecturer in Organisation Studies at the University of Liverpool Management School, UK.

    Gazi Islam is Professor of People, Organizations and Society at Grenoble Ecole de Management, France.

    Dirk Lindebaum is Professor of Management and Organisation at the School of Management, University of Bath.

    Author: SRHE News Blog

    An international learned society, concerned with supporting research and researchers into Higher Education

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  • Religion and politics aren’t supposed to mix

    Religion and politics aren’t supposed to mix

    Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky says religion was one topic his family never mentioned at the dinner table.

    That could be because he’s from the Jewish minority, or because the overwhelming Orthodox Christian majority was split into different branches.

    Ukraine’s Orthodox have gradually become more Ukrainian, to the detriment of a once-powerful pro-Russian Church, and the trend has sped up now that Kyiv and Moscow are at war.

    The conflict between the pro-Kyiv Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU) and the pro-Moscow Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC) gets lost in the international coverage of the drama on the battlefield.

    But with about 80% of Ukrainians identifying as Orthodox Christians, even if probably less than half attend church regularly, this split between the two Churches seeps into politics.

    Christmas in Kyiv

    The religious conflict crept into the news last month when the pro-Kyiv Church authorized all Ukrainian parishes to celebrate Christmas on December 25 if they wished, rather than the traditional Orthodox date of January 7.

    The symbolism of allowing Christmas to be celebrated on the date used in the West was not lost on Ukrainian believers.

    The roots to this clash go back to the communist period. While Ukraine was part of the Soviet Union, it was under the umbrella of the Russian Orthodox Church.

    When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church continued to operate in the newly sovereign Ukraine, but proclaimed its loyalty to the Moscow Patriarchate.

    Ukrainian patriots objected and said they deserved their own Church. Their rival Orthodox Church of Ukraine was created in 1992, soon after Ukraine’s independence. It was recognized as autocephalous (independent) by the Ecumenical Patriarchate in Istanbul — the highest authority in Orthodox Christianity — in 2019.

    The politics of praying in Ukrainian

    The two Churches have the same theology, liturgy and even architecture as the Moscow Church. But the Kyiv Church prays in Ukrainian rather than Church Slavonic and declares allegiance to Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew in Istanbul instead of Moscow’s Patriarch Kirill.

    Originally much larger, the Moscow Church saw parishes defecting to its rival, especially after the war began. Under this pressure, the Ukrainian branch declared its independence from Russia in May, condemned the invasion and refused to recognize Patriarch Kirill in its liturgies.

    It’s unclear now which Church is larger. But the head of the Kyiv Patriarchate, Metropolitan Epiphinius, told Religion News Service in May: “Every day, Ukrainians are gradually coming to understand which Church is truly Ukrainian and which Church is Russian.”

    The Moscow Patriarchate tried to shield off Russian-occupied Crimea by creating its own metropolitanate (archdiocese) there in June. The Kyiv Church refused to recognize this.

    When Putin annexed four Ukrainian territories in September — even though he did not completely control them — he tried to justify the move in religious terms, calling it a “glorious spiritual choice.”

    Sermons, spies and the Security Service

    But Kyiv increasingly saw the pro-Moscow Church as a fifth column, or spies of Putin. In October, the acting head of Ukraine’s Security Service revealed it had found 33 suspected Russian agents among the Moscow Church’s clergy in Ukraine.

    Some preached pro-Russian sermons, Kyiv said, some had anti-Ukrainian literature and some were army chaplains who passed on information about Ukrainian artillery batteries to Russian agents.

    That’s when the Kyiv Church authorized all Ukrainian parishes to celebrate Christmas on December 25 if they wished. On December 1, Zelensky upped the ante by calling for an official ban on all activities of the Moscow Patriarchate’s Church in Ukraine. Parliament was asked to draft a suitable law, which may be difficult given the provision in the Ukrainian constitution of freedom of religion.

    In late December, Ukraine refused to renew the Moscow Church’s lease on the Cathedral of the Dormition at Kyiv’s Monastery of the Caves, traditionally the center of Ukrainian Orthodoxy.

    On January 7, Metropolitan Epiphanius, head of the pro-Kyiv Church, celebrated the traditional Christmas there to show he was the new man in charge now.

    And in its latest turn to faith, Russia called for a 36-hour truce to mark the traditional Christmas on January 7. Kyiv and its western allies rejected this as a cynical ploy, and both sides continued shelling each other as if nothing had happened.

    The battlefield struggle is still the main story, both in its ultimate importance and in the David-and-Goliath story that readers understand. The religious rivalry will always be secondary.

    But these pinpricks on the faith front add up to a new phase in the growth of local nationalism, which helps buoy Ukrainian morale. In hoping to defeat a country he thought would easily give in, Putin has done more than anyone to forge a united and defiant Ukrainian nation.

     

    Three questions to consider:

    1. Why do politicians often appeal to religion during a war?

    2. Do mainstream journalists make religious angles clear in a conflict?

    3. When do separate small events add up to a noteworthy trend?

     

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