Comments on East Ethnia: Dabogda te posetio Čavoški

Another interesting French-language blog for your ...

2008-08-01T07:28:00.000+01:00

Another interesting French-language blog for your list: http://ytomic.blogspot.com/ (via Blog de veille)
He's got a recent post about Cavoski and the DDD Intellectuals' Fan Club, mentioning the disappearance of the Committee for the Truth about Radovan Karadzic's website. Maybe they lost the password.

Not machine-written, just cue-sheets. The Ministr...

2008-07-30T23:31:00.000+01:00

Not machine-written, just cue-sheets. The Ministry of Structured Pathways through Education to Work aspires to establish us as global authorities on the call-centre model of education. No doubt in five or six years time they'll be funding research projects into the role in higher education renewal of the labour market-driven Belgrade 2008 disseminated networks model.

Anyhow, global pessimism aside, thanks for that insight. I guess the classic tome would be "Party pluralism or monism: social movements and the political system in Yugoslavia, 1944-1949
by Vojislav by Vojislav Koštunica; Kosta Čavoški" Publisher: Boulder: East European Monographs; New York 1985.
ISBN: 0880330821 9780880330824

On my Christmas list already.

Anything but Ofsted! I have spent the last several...

2008-07-30T18:37:00.000+01:00

Anything but Ofsted! I have spent the last several months reading their reports about "a good school with some outstanding qualities," like they were written by a machine.

There are a lot of people in universities who are past their usefulness but entrenched. This is one reason there has been so much opposition to the Bologna reforms among the old guard -- the reforms want to reduce the number of required courses and increase the number of elective courses, and many people are aware that without required courses they would have no students at all, and then be much more vulnerable to forced retirement.

As for old dr Kosta, there was a time during the communist days when people in the west adored him as a "dissident" and he was largely welcomed. A study he did (1981 or so, I could look it up) together with Vojislav Kostunica on the establishment of the Communist political monopoly after 1945 is fairly described as a classic.

By the time these people took leave of their senses they had fairly well established reputations, which is what they coast on now. There is this small circle of people who retain academic jobs but do nothing but politics. Even if they did better politics, it would still be an abuse of the university. But there is a long tradition of a revolving door between academics and politics, which predates the Communist period.

When you have time, it would be interesting to hav...

2008-07-30T18:23:00.000+01:00

When you have time, it would be interesting to have your observations regarding academia in Belgrade and how accommodating or resistant to change the institutions are there.

Cavoski's approach to intellectual objectivity left me rather gobsmacked in the past, and having read some of the output of Darko Trifunovic's Security Studies nichelet earlier this year I began to wonder whether referral for an Ofsted visit might even be appropriate.

I think the tailor/guy with dry cleaning is in fac...

2008-07-29T13:18:00.000+01:00

I think the tailor/guy with dry cleaning is in fact, Ratko Mladic in disguise.

Imagine being a student being examined by professo...

2008-07-28T18:36:00.000+01:00

Imagine being a student being examined by professor Čavoški... I know lawyers from Belgrade who still have nightmares...

Sorry, just seen - you got there first, as usual.

2008-07-23T22:07:00.000+01:00

Sorry, just seen - you got there first, as usual.

Now it's alternative law - he plans to defend hims...

2008-07-23T22:05:00.000+01:00

Now it's alternative law - he plans to defend himself.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/7521383.stm