In educating a girl, you educate a nation.

The bargain done with her father by the first Maasai PhD graduate, Kakenya Ntaiya, was unfair and brutal, but contains a hidden lesson that does not seem to have had much air-time. Preteen Kakenya "agreed" to traditional Maasai genital mutilation, in return for being allowed to continue her education. (1) The lesson is that in patriarchal societies…

On Upstanding #3

Hannah Arendt introduced the phrase "the banality of evil", as the subtitle to her book on the trial of Eichmann, one lesson of which was how massive tragedies can mushroom from the banal  actions of individuals "just doing their job".[1] She wrote: "The essence of totalitarian government, and perhaps the nature of every bureaucracy, is to…

On upstanding #2

Ella Wheeler Wilcox, American poet, wrote these lines in 1914. The are just as pertinent now as they were then. PROTEST To sin by silence, when we should protest, Makes cowards out of men. The human race Has climbed on protest. Had no voice been raised Against injustice, ignorance, and lust, The inquisition yet would…