Protesters call for police accountability

When protesters marching Tuesday in honor of the late Yale assistant professor Samuel See reached Linsly-Chittenden Hall on Substantial Street, they paused to search up at the windows of the English division constructing.

“That’s the window of Sam’s workplace,” Hannah Zeavin ’12 stated, pointing to the third floor. “This is in which Sam taught.”

Amid chants of “Justice for Sam See!” and “Police Accountability,” roughly forty protesters wound their way from New Haven City Hall to the headquarters of the New Haven Police Division, blocking oncoming targeted traffic as they reduce by way of the heart of the Yale campus. Protesters called for an independent investigation into the circumstances of See’s arrest and incarceration and an finish to the alleged police brutality that they mentioned contributed to his death.

See was detained on Nov. 23 at police headquarters — in the lock-up center administered by state judicial marshals — following a domestic dispute that afternoon with his husband, Sunder Ganglani. Though the males had protective orders against every other, Ganglani had returned to See’s Wooster Square home to retrieve some belongings.

See’s sister, Kelly Flanagan, named in the police right after understanding of the encounter from out of state. See, who allegedly struggled with the arresting officers, sustained a lower over his left eye and was taken care of for the damage at Yale-New Haven Hospital ahead of becoming detained at 1 Union Avenue. State marshals found him dead in his cell the following morning, at approximately 6 a.m. on Nov. 24.

“I referred to as the police for assist for my brother that day, and he’s dead,” See’s sister, Kelly Flanagan, informed protesters gathered in front of police headquarters. “I do not want this to ever come about to another individual once more.”

Flanagan was joined by her brother’s buddies, colleagues and students from the two coasts of the country, in addition to a number of city activists who situated See’s death within what they described as pattern of police brutality. The protest was organized by Nathan Brown, an assistant professor of English at the University of California, Davis. Brown and See were Ph.D college students together at the University of California, Los Angeles.

“It seems [See] was treated in a quite inhumane vogue,” explained Yale English Professor Jill Campbell, a single of a handful of Yale faculty members who participated in the demonstration, along with a amount of graduate college students and undergraduates. “I don’t know the trigger of his death, but the circumstances surrounding his death propose that in his struggles, he was treated with inhumanity.”

However See was on leave this semester from the English division, Campbell mentioned she had stayed in touch with her colleague more than e-mail and that she knew him to be getting health issues. He had been hospitalized a number of occasions over the course of the fall, she additional.

Campbell explained she hoped the protest would place strain on the city and on the police department to perform a “truly independent investigation” into the circumstances of See’s death.

Questioning the truthfulness of NHPD reports that See “fell” even though currently being arrested, Brown stated the cut above See’s left eye indicates that he was taken care of violently by police in his own residence.  He said the distinct tragedy of See’s death is inseparable from its social meaning, calling for the development of far better means of dealing with men and women struggling with psychological health concerns. Having threatened to kill arresting officers, See was charged with threatening in the 2nd degree, interfering with police and violating a protective purchase, in accordance to the preliminary police report.

“We can’t feel a word the police say,” Brown explained, including, “Sam was in a fragile state, and he was thrown in jail and left to die. We want to insist that that’s not acceptable.”

Brown likened the situation to reports of negligence in the same state-administered lock-up center in 2012, when a 44-yr-old woman died after her pleas for assist have been ignored by state marshals, according to a witness in the jail.

Campbell stated See held deep political convictions, and that he would have desired a political response to the terms of his death.

“He wouldn’t want any person to consider his death was significant only simply because he was a Yale professor,” she mentioned. “He would want it to be seen as a component of the inhumanity with which other struggling men and women are treated.”

John Deal with, professor of East Asian Languages and Literatures, mentioned any death in police custody raises questions of accountability. He added that he wished University administrators had reckoned more significantly with See’s death — possibly by expressing deeper grief and condolences. Christopher Miller ’83, professor of French and African-American research, leveled a equivalent criticism in a Sunday e-mail to the News, calling the University’s silence “deafening.”

Yale Spokesman Tom Conroy declined to comment on the protest, as did NHPD Spokesman David Hartman, each reached Tuesday. Conroy stated the University was “deeply saddened by Sam See’s tragic and untimely death” and hopes the investigations — the two into his trigger of death and the conditions of his incarceration — are concluded shortly.

The state Judicial Branch is nevertheless reviewing its internal policies and procedures to make sure there was no wrongdoing on the element of its marshals, Judicial Branch Spokesperson Rhonda Stearley-Hebert stated Tuesday. She declined to comment on the protesters’ phone for an independent investigation until the state’s inner probe is full.

The chief state healthcare examiner’s office has ruled out trauma from the cut to See’s head as his cause of death. A full autopsy report will not be launched till the outcomes of a toxicology examination are obtained.

Protesters call for police accountability

They call it Silicon Fen. So what is the special draw of Cambridge?

Innovation is like motherhood and apple pie, in that everyone’s in favour of it. Specifically governments. They all want more of it. The only issue is that they haven’t the faintest concept of how to make it come about and so are suckers for any person with a Huge Thought about it.

A handful of many years in the past, an economist named Richard Florida found himself the beneficiary of this syndrome. He published a guide with the beguiling title of The Rise of the Innovative Class and the even much more beguiling subtitle “… and how it’s transforming work, leisure, local community, and daily existence”. Florida’s argument was that, as our economies are becoming transformed into understanding economies, creativity is to our century what accessibility to organic assets was to the 18th. Innovative occupations – an occupational class comprising knowledge-workers, intellectuals and artists – were growing to the stage exactly where virtually a third of the US workforce could be regarded as “innovative” and businesses, cities and regions have been bending over backwards to entice them.

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As soon as, the fate of wonderful industrial centres was established by geography – their proximity to normal sources, navigable rivers, harbours, and so forth. But the “sources” of the new economic climate are footloose. The message of Florida’s book for urban planners and municipal authorities, consequently, was that if cities want to do well they have to attract the imaginative kinds. In order to do so, they should cherish the 3 “Ts” – talent (a extremely educated population), tolerance (cultural and sexual diversity) and engineering (the infrastructure necessary to sustain an entrepreneurial culture). In other words, they need to seem a bit like San Francisco.

As it happens, some of Florida’s insights were truly just modern articulations of the suggestions of ancient economists. Alfred Marshall observed numerous years ago that staff in experienced occupations have a tendency to cluster in locations exactly where their peers live and perform. But why did people individuals select to settle there in the very first area?

Which brings us to Cambridge, Marshall’s alma mater and the nearest issue Europe has to Silicon Valley. Inevitably, it has been dubbed Silicon Fen. The “Cambridge phenomenon” – the extraordinary ecosystem of science- and technologies-primarily based firms in and close to the town – has acquired close to-mythological standing. At the second there are some thing like 1,500 of these businesses in the area, some of which have turn into marketplace leaders in the Uk and the wider planet. Five of them have valuations in the billion-dollar region, and a single, ARM, is 1 of the UK’s most profitable firms and the dominant firm in 1 of the fastest-growing markets in the globe: that for the processor chips that power smartphones and other mobile products.

The Cambridge phenomenon has functioned as a honeypot attracting venture capitalists, big consultancy firms, bankers and other professional organisations that attend to the demands of expanding firms in complicated industries. Cambridge is now ranked as one of the top three “innovation ecosystems” in the world, in accordance to a recent worldwide survey. It is in which Microsoft chose to set up its major European research lab. Ditto Toshiba. And it truly is where AstraZeneca has chosen to locate its global R&ampD and corporate headquarters, a selection that will involve investing upwards of £300m and carry about 2,000 researchers and help staff.

Just down the road, in the village of Hinxton, is the Genome Campus, at the heart of which sits the Sanger Institute, named after the only British scientist to win two Nobel prizes, where Sir John Sulston and his colleagues first sequenced the human genome. And not far away is the Babraham Analysis Campus, which specialises in the incubation of bioscience businesses and into which the government not too long ago injected £44m of public funding.

For decades, policy-makers from Europe and beyond have been coming to Cambridge, wistfully eyeing its “engineering cluster”, shaking their heads at the record of vibrant companies that it has spawned, interviewing academics, executives, planners and venture capitalists and pondering what its secret formula is.

There is no formula. Nobody planned the Cambridge phenomenon, just as no person planned Silicon Valley. The two designed organically. That doesn’t mean that similar phenomena can not happen elsewhere, just that they can’t be delivered to purchase. And they consider plenty of time to evolve and mature.

In Silicon Valley’s situation, the story goes back to 1939, when two Stanford-skilled engineers, David Packard and William Hewlett, set up a small electronics firm in a Palo Alto garage. In the situation of Cambridge it also goes back a long way. Simply because of lobbying by the university in the early component of the 20th century, the town had no “legacy” industries – no mass manufacturing, no auto manufacturing (not like Oxford), no smokestacks. Insofar as Cambridge had any industrial sector at all in the 1st half of the 20th century, it was in reasonably clean locations this kind of as customer and broadcasting technological innovation (Pye, founded in 1896) and scientific instrumentation (Cambridge Scientific Instruments, co-founded by Charles Darwin’s fifth son, Horace, in 1881).

The initial stirrings of modify came in the early 1950s, when Cambridge University embarked on the development path that has turned it into one of the world’s intellectual powerhouses. In 1949, in what was then known as the Mathematical Laboratory (and at some point became the Pc Laboratory), Maurice Wilkes and his colleagues had constructed the Edsac, one of the first common-function electronic computers. Not like other researchers who have been creating equivalent machines in other locations, Wilkes &amp Co produced theirs right away obtainable as a computing device to colleagues in a variety of disciplines. This had two results: it led to a series of scientific breakthroughs (for example, plate tectonics in earth sciences) and it established Cambridge as a leader in details engineering and computing.

A 2nd supply of innovation was the discovery in 1953 by Watson and Crick of the structure of the DNA molecule. This was the initial link in a chain that led to the sequencing of the human genome in 2000 – and sooner or later spawned a entire ecosystem of biotechnology organizations.

A third considerable improvement was the founding, in 1960, of Cambridge Consultants, one particular of the UK’s initial technology-transfer organizations. It was set up by three Cambridge alumni to “put the brains of Cambridge University at the disposal of the problems of British market”. As far as the IT section of the ecosystem is concerned, Cambridge Consultants played a vital part, simply because 1 can trace links from a lot of of today’s successful companies (for instance ARM) that stretch back to it.

A fourth element was the change that took spot in the 1960s in the university’s and the regional authority’s mindset to industrial growth in the town. Inside the university, significantly of the pressure came from researchers in physics, engineering and computing who came to see neighborhood industrial growth in their fields as desirable for different reasons: as a way of exploiting their study via startup ventures as a likely source of investigation collaboration and funding and as a way of boosting the employability of their college students. These pressures were amplified by the university’s liberal – some would say relaxed – frame of mind to intellectual property.

On the planners’ side, there were pressures from central government to reverse their earlier anti-industrial bias for the region. A specific cause célèbre had been their refusal to permit IBM to find its European R&ampD laboratory in Cambridge. In the finish, the planners transformed their minds soon after a commission led by Sir Nevill Mott, head of the Cavendish Laboratory, signalled a radical shift in the university’s mindset to industrial advancement. From that minute, the die was cast.

What we see in Cambridge and Silicon Valley today are complex industrial ecosystems. But although a formula is unattainable, we can see that this kind of ecosystems need specified crucial elements if they are to thrive.

Very first of all, the ecosystem demands to have a considerable investigation university at its heart. It has to be in a pleasant urban atmosphere that has a excellent housing stock, affordable transport links, very good state and personal schools, great healthcare and a lively cultural existence. And the local planners have to be sympathetic to the demands of tiny tech-based mostly organizations, particularly in their early phases of their corporate life.

It’s critical that the university at the heart of the ecosystem must be one particular that gives considerable freedom to its academics and has a liberal attitude towards intellectual home. Also essential are legal firms that comprehend IP, and outposts of the global accounting and consulting companies simply because venture capitalists do not truly feel relaxed funding ventures which are audited by nearby firms. And there even wants to be a range of various kinds of hotel – which includes boutique ones – to cater for visiting researchers, financiers and conference attendees.

The ecosystem demands a good deal of tiny specialist firms that can swiftly tackle certain commissions together with a networking method that allows people rapidly to locate a particular specialist when they want him or her. Most critical of all, it needs a considerable population of “angel” investors – experienced entrepreneurs who have acquired wealth through building productive businesses and who are prepared and in a position to invest in, and mentor, companies at the startup stage, lengthy prior to any venture capitalist would deign to look at them.

Cambridge has a club of such angel traders. Membership demands include a net worth in extra of £15m and a track record of at least 1 effective “exit” from a startup. At present, the club has 56 members. It functions as an arena in which innovators and entrepreneurs can pitch suggestions to an audience that is seasoned, sympathetic but essential and exceedingly well-informed. Not each and every pitch that succeeds in this forum outcomes in a profitable new business. But it supplies a valuable reality examine on scientific and technological dreams.

At one more degree, the “Cambridge phenomenon” tells us that innovation ecosystems cannot be bought off the shelf and put in wherever governments want to locate them. Innovation is a complicated and delicate plant. You have to put together the soil carefully, be prepared to wait for the fruits and accept that your administration will be lengthy gone prior to they materialise. Even in swiftly moving technologies, patience is a virtue.

They call it Silicon Fen. So what is the special draw of Cambridge?

Parties reject call to lower age of consent

Nick Clegg, the deputy prime minister, rejected a ‘blanket reduction’ in the age of consent. Photograph: Jeff Overs/BBC/PA

Britain’s three primary political events joined forces to reject a call by a top public health official to consider reducing the age of consent to 15.

A spokesman for the prime minister stated the existing age of sixteen was made to protect children, a see echoed by the Nick Clegg, the deputy prime minister, who rejected a “blanket reduction” in the age of consent.

Labour mentioned the move would not tackle teenage pregnancy.

The 3 events were responding right after Professor John Ashton, president of the Faculty of Public Well being, known as for a lowering of the age of consent to make it less complicated for 15-year-olds to look for contraception and sexual wellness advice from the NHS. Up to a third of teens are believed to have intercourse just before they attain 16.

Ashton told the Sunday Occasions: “Simply because we are so confused about this and we have kept the age of consent at sixteen, the 15-year-olds don’t have clear routes to receiving some help. My very own see is there is an argument for decreasing it to 15 but you cannot do it with out the public supporting the thought and we require to get a sense of public opinion about this.

“I would not personally argue for 14 but I think we ought to critically be searching at 15 so that we can draw a line in the sand and truly, as a society, actively discourage sexual involvement underneath 15. By doing that, you would be able to legitimately organise services to meet the need to have.”

Downing Street gave the proposal brief shrift. A spokesman said: “We reject the get in touch with to reduce the age of consent. The present age is in area to protect kids and there are no ideas to alter it.”

Asked on the Andrew Marr Present on BBC1 what he imagined of Ashton’s contact, Clegg mentioned: “I am not in favour of that. The age of consent has been a British law for generations in order to protect children.

“This wellness skilled is proper in saying there is a problem – we have far too higher levels of teenage pregnancy. I am worried, like everyone is anxious, about the sexualisation, the culture and the data so numerous young men and women are bombarded with.

“That is why I am consistently urging Michael Gove to update and modernise sex schooling in schools, which has not kept up with the world wide web age.

“But do I feel merely a blanket reduction in the age of consent is the response to this challenging dilemma? No. So yes, there is a issue. Yes, we want a debate. Yes, we need to update sex training. But this is not the answer.”

The Division for Education dismissed Clegg’s phone for a alter to the tips on intercourse training. A spokesperson advised the BBC that existing advice supplied a sound framework for sex and partnership schooling.

Luciana Berger, the shadow public overall health minister, endorsed Clegg’s get in touch with for sex schooling to be up to date as she also rejected the call to reduced the age of consent. “Reducing the age of consent is not the way to tackle teenage pregnancy and we are against such a move. The teenage pregnancy charge fell considerably underneath the last Labour government. But sexual wellness clinics are now closing their doors and young folks are struggling to get appointments.

“Labour has named for improved sex and relationship education and tabled amendments to current legislation for it to be manufactured necessary, not voluntary, in all colleges. Regrettably, the change was voted down by Tory MPs.”

Parties reject call to lower age of consent

No 10 rejects call to lower age of consent

Professor John Ashton, president of the Faculty of Public Health. Photograph: Owen Humphreys/PA

Downing Street and Nick Clegg have joined forces to reject a contact by a foremost public health official for the age of consent to be lowered to the age of 15 if the proposal wins public help.

A spokesman for the prime minister stated the present law was created to defend children, a see echoed by the deputy prime minister who rejected a “blanket reduction” in the age of consent.

No 10 and the deputy prime minister spoke out following the Sunday Instances reported that Professor John Ashton, president of the Faculty of Public Well being, referred to as for a decreasing in the age of consent to make it less complicated for 15-12 months-olds to look for contraception and other sexual well being guidance from the NHS. Official figures show that up to a third of youngsters have sex ahead of they attain sixteen, the official age of consent.

Ashton told the Sunday Occasions: “Due to the fact we are so baffled about this and we have stored the age of consent at 16, the 15-12 months-olds will not have clear routes to acquiring some support. My personal view is there is an argument for minimizing it to 15 but you can’t do it without the public supporting the idea and we want to get a sense of public opinion about this.

“I would not personally argue for 14 but I think we ought to critically be searching at 15 so that we can draw a line in the sand and actually, as a society, actively discourage sexual involvement underneath 15. By undertaking that, you would be in a position legitimately to organise providers to meet the need to have.”

Downing Street gave his proposal quick shrift. A spokesman advised the BBC: “We reject the phone to reduce the age of consent. Recent age is in location to safeguard young children and there are no plans to change it.”

The deputy prime minister echoed No 10. Asked on the Andrew Marr Show on BBC1 what he thought of Ashton’s call, Clegg stated: “I am not in favour of that. The age of consent has been a British law for generations in order to defend youngsters. This health skilled is proper in saying there is a issue – we have far as well high levels of teenage pregnancy.

“I am worried, like everybody is worried, about the sexualisation, the culture and the information so numerous young people are bombarded with. That is I am continually urging Michael Gove to update and modernise sex schooling in colleges which has not kept up with the net age.

“But do I think just a blanket reduction in the age of consent is the answer to this hard dilemma? No. So yes there is a issue. Yes we need to have to a debate. Yes we require to update intercourse schooling. But this is not the answer.”

The deputy prime minister utilized his appearance on the Andrew Marr Show to confirm that he is formally pressing George Osborne and David Cameron to raise the threshold for the individual tax allowance to £10,500 by the time of the following basic election. The Tories are expected to agree to the “worker’s bonus” which would exempt an additional .5m men and women from paying out cash flow tax and would save people an additional of £100. It is a single of the Liberal Democrats’ main signature policies. The Lib Dems say they have been the principal driving force behind raising the personalized tax allowance from £6,475 given that 2010.

Clegg said that Lib Dem support for raising the private allowance demonstrates why his party is rooted in the centre ground, in contrast to the Tories and Labour. He explained: “On long phrase fiscal policy it is as well crucial for our nation to have events lurching to the correct or the left. You seem to have this see from the right now that taxes must never ever go up and you should be shrinking the state to an ever smaller size in a somewhat ideological way. In the very same way the left are making a mistake in pondering you can repeat all the problems of the previous and borrow and invest more and a lot more and a lot more and bloating the state. I will not believe we must be ideological about this.”

No 10 rejects call to lower age of consent

Letters: Gove"s wrong choices over call for social work reform

It is heartening to hear Michael Gove acknowledge that his life was transformed by means of the ability of the social workers concerned in putting him for adoption (Gove calls for radical reform of social function, 12 November). Like David Cameron’s recognition in his conference speech that social operate is “a noble and demanding vocation”, Gove’s statement is in welcome contrast to the vilification of social staff in which politicians and the media too frequently indulge.

It’s hard to escape the conclusion, nevertheless, that Gove’s praise amounts to little more than a cover for attacking the social science and ethical basis of the occupation. He suggests, for illustration, that “idealistic college students” are currently being encouraged to see services users as possessing been “disempowered by society” and as “victims of social injustice”. In fact, the promotion of agency, self-determination and independent residing continue to be at the heart of social operate education and social function practice, not least in relation to current personalisation agendas. Social operate is an proof-primarily based profession, nevertheless. When very respected investigation scientific studies such as Wilkinson and Pickett’s The Spirit Degree present the extent to which inequality contributes to social difficulties – and when even a former Conservative prime minister laments the lack of social mobility in the United kingdom – then social staff need to have to recognise this in their practice. The alternative is the sort of victim-blaming and scapegoating of bad and disabled men and women that as well often characterises existing government attacks on folks on benefits.

The main issue dealing with the social work profession at existing is not dogma, but decreased funding, minimal political priority, excessive caseloads and expanding consumer demand. When the Institute for Fiscal Studies calculates that austerity policies will push an further 200,000 kids below the poverty line, and when much more than half a million individuals are forced to depend on meals banking institutions, then to propose that social difficulties are largely the result of people making “the incorrect alternatives” underlines the extent to which the world inhabited by Gove and his public-college colleagues is a really various one from that inhabited by most of us, specially those needing social function help.
Professor Iain Ferguson University of the West of Scotland
Professor Susan White University of Birmingham
Emeritus Professor Ann Davis University of Birmingham
Professor Brid Featherstone Open University
Professor Vivienne Cree University of Edinburgh
Professor Nigel Parton University of Huddersfield
Professor Imogen Taylor University of Sussex
Professor Mike Fisher University of Bedfordshire
Professor Brigid Daniel University of Stirling
Professor Tim Kelly University of Dundee
Professor Ian Butler University of Bath
Emeritus professor John Harris University of Warwick
Professor Peter Beresford Brunel University
Professor Michael Lavalette Liverpool Hope University
Professor Stephen Webb Glasgow Caledonian University
Professor Jim Campbell Goldsmiths, University of London
Professor Ravinder Barn Royal Holloway, University of London
Professor Jane Tunstill Royal Holloway University
Professor Jonathan Scourfield University of Cardiff
Professor Margaret Holloway University of Hull
Professor Jonathan Parker Bournemouth University
Professor Aidan Worsley University of Central Lancashire
Professor Nigel Thomas University of Central Lancashire
Professor Hugh McLaughlin Manchester Metropolitan University
Professor Brian Littlechild University of Hertfordshire
Professor Kirsten Stalker University of Strathclyde
Professor Shula Ramon Anglia Ruskin University
Professor Nina Biehal University of York
Professor June Thoburn University of East Anglia
Professor Roger Evans Liverpool John Moores University
Professor Jan Horwath University of Sheffield
Professor Elaine Sharland University of Sussex
Professor Kate Wilson University of Nottingham
Professor Marion Brandon University of East Anglia
Dr Terry Murphy Teeside University
Mo McPhail Open University (Scotland)
Linda Walker University of Dundee
Mark Smith University of Edinburgh
Di Bailey Nottingham Trent University
Ailsa Stewart University of Strathclyde
Neil Quinn University of Strathclyde
Beth Weaver University of Strathclyde
Evelyn Vrouwenfelder University of Strathclyde
Barrie Levine Glasgow Caledonian University
Vasilios Ioakimidis University of Durham
Di Bailey Nottingham Trent University
Simon Cardy Sophisticated social work practitioner, Wolverhampton

• Possessing run into near-catastrophe with training reforms based on striving to create the circumstances he benefited from, it really is alarming that Michael Gove is making use of the same recipe for social perform. Possessing worked in both schooling and social operate in excess of forty many years, I know that assuming every person responds as you do is generally naïve and stupid. We all have our personal preferred methods of studying and developing, and the skilled worker has to uncover the appropriate strategy for every single personal. Allow individuals who understand the perform define the required expertise, whilst Gove meets his political obligations to supply the needed assets. A excellent starting up stage would be to uncover out the dimension and complexity of the caseloads of the social staff he admires from his previous. As resources grow to be more and more scarce, every worker takes on far more cases. At the very same time, authorities ration assets by taking on fewer consumers all round. Whilst this can sound like an try to rebalance, in actuality only the more complex and time-consuming cases are left. I wonder how significantly time social employees get these days to invest on placements that are going nicely.
Roy Grimwood
Industry Drayton, Shropshire

Letters: Gove"s wrong choices over call for social work reform