Our weekly roundup of the best links from around the web.
Recent links of note:
Why I’m backing Brexit
Michael Gove, The Spectator
A few weeks ago, when we took the temperature of the ongoing discussions over Britain’s remaining in the EU, we noted that what the “leave” campaign lacked most was a recognizable face to lead its campaign. With Michael Gove’s passionate and lucid explication of his views that is no longer the case. And with Boris Johnson also joining the Brexit movement, popular opinion may begin to shift. The whole piece is worth reading but Gove’s penultimate paragraph sums up the arguments nicely.
We are the world’s fifth largest economy, with the best armed forces of any nation, more Nobel Prizes than any European country and more world-leading universities than any European country. Our economy is more dynamic than the Eurozone, we have the most attractive capital city on the globe, the greatest “soft power” and global influence of any state and a leadership role in NATO and the UN. Are we really too small, too weak and too powerless to make a success of self-rule? On the contrary, the reason the EU’s bureaucrats oppose us leaving is they fear that our success outside will only underline the scale of their failure.
All of UK’s publicly owned art to go online
Martin Bailey, The Art Newspaper
In slightly less contentious news from Britain, a major effort has been approved to expand the scope of the digitization of all public art in the United Kingdom. Following on an initiative to photograph all of the publicly owned oil paintings in the country, Art UK, as the governing body has been renamed, will do the same for sculptures, watercolors, drawings, pastels, prints, and so on.
Academic Drivel Report
Peter Dreier, The American Prospect
The reports from academia are rarely bright these days. Free speech is under assault on campuses across the country, college isn’t getting any cheaper, and the Balkanization of academic departments continues apace. And yet there is hope. Peter Dreier, a professor at Occidental College has a brilliant piece in The American Prospect detailing an “academic hoax” he perpetrated a few years ago in which he sent a gibberish abstract to an academic conference and had it accepted, all in the service of exposing the pomposity and mendacity of his colleagues. Bravo to Professor Dreier for admitting what few in his sphere would dare to.
From our pages:
The sheer hard slog
Andrew Roberts
A review of Charles Moore’s latest volume of his biography of Margaret Thatcher.
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