Confronting A Dark History

正In late May, Canadians learned the remains of 215 indigenous children had been found in unmarked graves on the site of a former residential school in British Columbia.About a month later, hundreds of other unmarked graves were found located on another former residential school in Saskatchewan and a further 182 unmarked graves were discovered at a third site in British Columbia.     

The Levant: A Profoundly Disturbed Environment

An account of two separate expeditions to climb mountains in Tibet, which, while not among the highest in the world, offer a technical challenge equal to the Matterhorn – indeed they are roughly the same height (about 6,500 metres). The first expedition was to Kajaqiao, which the author, Mick Fowler successfully climbed with Chris Watts, the second, a couple of years later, was to Manamcho, which was climbed with Paul Ramsden. The article contains a wealth of detail about the technicalities of this sort of climbing.     

The Female Student on Trial, 1910–1915: Dorothy M. Gladish versus University College Nottingham versus Oscar Wilde

This article examines the student career of Dorothy M. Gladish at University College Nottingham from 1910–1915. By drawing on little-studied archives, a range of narratives about Gladish's multiple embodiments of the female student are analysed. In particular, these narratives are situated within the representational contexts of the Gong student magazine, which are marked by re-writings of Victorian literary texts that re-invent the contemporary female student. In the case of Gladish, the symbolic and literal ‘trial’ was also a feature of her student career. A ‘Mock Trial’ of Gladish is read alongside accounts of the college council’s examination of Professor R. G. F. Dolley, following a complaint by the Gladish family, and their responses to the trial of Oscar Wilde in 1895, contained in a hitherto restricted archive. Consideration is given to how this case study extends our knowledge about women’s roles in civic universities at this period.     

The Georgians

Matthew Edwards gained his BA (Hons) in History from the University of York and his MA in War Studies from King's College, London. He currently works at the UK Ministry of Defence. The views expressed in this paper are those of the author and not necessarily those of the UK Ministry of Defence.     

Legislative Transparency and Credit Risk

Open governance requirements are designed to improve accountability, which implies that transparent governments are more trustworthy stewards of their publicly invested power. However, transparency may also reduce institutional effectiveness and inhibit political compromise, diminishing the capacity to manage resources responsibly. We assess empirical support for these competing perspectives in the context of American state legislatures, many of which have become exempt from state sunshine laws in recent decades. We leverage variation in the timing of these legislative exemptions to identify the effect of removing transparency in a crucial governing institution on investors’ risk perceptions of states’ general obligation bonds. Our analysis of these data during the period 1995–2010 suggests that removing legislative transparency reduces state credit risk. We conclude that while openness in government may be normatively desirable, shielding legislative proceedings from public view may actually be better for states’ debt repayment capacity, improving their overall fiscal health.