green, green

I've decided to keep a blog of my teaching trip to Europe as an efficient way to stay in touch with family and friends. I've brought my camera but not the little device that uploads photos so for now we will make do with web photos.

First stop: Canterbury Christchurch University, Kent, UK, for a symposium on race and diversity, sponsored by the university's dept of Crime and Policing Studies. Christchurch University is England's newest (just a few years old), a split-off from Univ. of Kent. The symposium is meant as part of their training program for Kent police department. The two topics are hate crimes and "people without voice." I am delighted to participate in a conference with non-academic practitioners.

First fiasco on Thursday morning upon landing at Heathrow after seven hour flight (arrival time 6 am local time, midnight CDT): where is my driver? I find a guy with a sign that says: "Professor Mae Tunbridge-Wells." I ask him if he's there to take me to Canterbury, he says no. I wonder about another person named Mae with a posh-sounding hyphenated surname. Page driver for Mae Ngai twice. No answer. I've no phone number for my contact. So I hired a car to take me to the place--which turns out to be the university's conference center on an estate fifty miles from Canterbury, on the outskirts of a village called... Tunbridge Wells. Oh well. Second fiasco: my ATM card and credit card don't work! The local Lloyd's bank kindly did a transaction for me; I finally found out that one must tell one's bank before leaving that one is traveling abroad, otherwise they asusme your card has been stolen. Travelers take note.

The conference is at the Salomons Centre, the former estate of Sir David Salomons, a banker (founder of Westminster bank, now Nat-West) and first Jewish Lord Mayor of London (1855). 30+ acres, beautiful grounds and buildings, now owned by the university. (for more on history of Salomon and the estate, see LINK, left) Conferences, seminars, weddings and Sunday "carvery" brunches, they do it all. From the terrace looking out I spotted an egret by the pond and rabbits on the lawns. Beyond, rolling green meadows, cows (can be heard mooing); but this also somewhere becomes a military firing range (sign on fence by road-keep out!)... In the area are acres of fields planted with yellow flowers that produce grapeseed oil. The landscape looks like an impressionist painting.

The symposium was organized by a law professor, who is from Argentina, LLM Harvard PhD Oxford. The assistant chief constable for Kent is a very smart, very professional man, whose portfolio includes the police diversity initiative. Other participants are heads of their various "action groups" (for women, for sexual and ethnic minorities--largest minority-group in Kent is gypsies--for older people, etc etc) and a police officer whose beat is the coastal border (i.e. the channel tunnel to France) -- he spends time in Calais and works with French immigration people. This latter guy is an Irishman from Ulster who used to be in the Ulster constabulary, patrolling streets of Derry during the worst days of conflict. They are all proud of their heritage as policing from consent and their autonomy from the political process (in theory, at least), and refuse to define themselves as law enforcement officers, but rathersee their mandate as ensuring the well being of the community. They are disinclined to cooperate with immigration enforcement, i.e. removals. A bit too rosy a picture? They are sincere, I am convinced, but I think there is a gap between their commitment and the reality.

I spoke on the origins of illegal immigraiton in the US. Other speakers: a criminal-law professor from Argentina who was recently appointed to the supreme court. A controversial figure there, the only openly gay member of the court and an "abolitionist," which is to say he thinks "crime" should be decriminalized. A criminology professor from Univ of London, on the legacies of colonial thinking. A criminologist from Rutgers on cultures of denial. I am the only historian (indeed, the only person who is not a criminologist).

Dinner at a village a few miles away called Goudhurst at the Star and Eagle, a pub and restaurant in a very old Tudor inn (and I mean old--14 century) that had been taken over in the 18th century by the Hawkhurst gang, vicious sheep and gin smugglers (it's very close to the English channel). Now owned by a chef from Spain. Dinner: fresh fois gras sauteed in a mild orange sauce, followed by brill (like a dover sole) stuffed with smoked salmon and baked in pastry shell, served with cream sauce. The conference is over and we drink scotch and malbec. As they say over here: "just lovely."