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This note presents new archival evidence about John Maynard Keynes’ attitudes toward Jews. The relevant material is composed of two letters sent by Robert G. Wertheimer to Bertrand Russell and Richard F. Kahn along with their replies. Between 1963 and 1964, Wertheimer – an Austrian-born Jewish immigrant then professor of economics at Babson College – wrote to Russell and Kahn asking for their personal reminiscences concerning Keynes’ anti-Semitic utterances. In their brief but still significant responses, both Russell and Kahn firmly denied any hint of anti-Semitism in Keynes, thereby providing significant first-hand testimonies from two of his closest acquaintances.

This chapter focuses on accountability and accreditation policies and practices in teacher education in the United States, England, Wales, and China. Despite the differences between countries, issues and problems of teacher education from country to country are remarkably similar. As a profession, we must examine where we are and where we need to be to meet the needs of our global society. We can begin by defining quality teaching and the essential skills for 21st-century teachers and students. As part of a global profession, teachers and educators must not work in isolation. It will be up to the leaders in the profession to educate political and accreditation bodies by sharing models that will meet the needs of our changing world. Can we give up the nostalgic notions of education and provide assistance to education preparation professionals to move toward new rapid-change models?

Oneness is the prime attribute of God. Divine oneness is the singular moral foundation of “everything” invoking socio-scientific intellection in the Islamic worldview. In this ontological sense, this concept of conscious oneness means that the ultimate and indivisible absoluteness and completeness of creatorship, knowledge, will and power over all things, rest with God alone.¹ Because God's oneness belongs to the domain of purity (Ikhlas), removed from the material and cognized worlds, it marks the topological domain of the fullness and purity of the knowledge stock. It exogenously by itself creates, governs, and acts upon the created universes of all kinds, abstract, and evident. By itself, the precept of oneness of God is not causally affected by anything. It creates all but is never created of itself, or by any other.²

This exploratory paper discusses the undemocratic agenda setting of elites in Britain and how it has changed politics within a form of capitalism where much is left undisclosed in terms of mechanism and methods. It argues for a more radical exploratory strategy using C. Wright Mills’ understanding that what is left undisclosed is crucially important to elite existence and power, while recognising the limits on democratic accountability when debate, decision and action in complex capitalist societies can be frustrated or hijacked by small groups. Have British business elites, through their relation with political elites, used their power to constrain democratic citizenship? Our hypothesis is that the power of business elites is most likely conjuncturally specific and geographically bounded with distinct national differences. In the United Kingdom, the outcomes are often contingent and unstable as business elites try to manage democracy; moreover, the composition and organisation of business elites have changed through successive conjunctures.

George Spencer Brown is best known for his book Laws of Form, which elaborates a primary algebra of distinctions and forms capable of dealing with self-referential equations reflective of paradoxes in logic. The book has received little attention in mathematics, but it has greatly influenced cybernetics, communications, and ecological theories. But Spencer Brown also published poetry and stories, often under different names, and he practiced as a psychotherapist. Our chapter elaborates the utility of Laws of Form relating to organizational paradox before considering Spencer Brown’s other works in relation to his mathematics. Invoking philosophy, psychoanalysis and art, we suggest that these indicate a further distinction that sets all forms against the “nothing”: a wholeness or unity from out of which all distinctions, all words, meaning and life – but also all silence, nonsense and death – emerge in paradoxical opposition. Reading Spencer Brown not through the prism of mathematics, but as an evocative invitation to engage with the fissures that animate art and human life, highlights the paradoxical interplay of organization and violence; and how tragedy, suffering, sympathy and love should be more prominent in organizational research.

The ideational connections between social democracy and basic income is the theme of this article. Social democracy is not a fixed doctrine, but as a movement it shares some key ideas with the policy of basic income, like solidarity, equal opportunity, freedom and social security. Due to current challenges emerging from waves of digitalisation, globalisation, etc., the support for a universal basic income has taken off, but not among social democratic politicians. The article argues that the social democratic policy of full employment implies an increasingly tough work orientation that is challenging to reconcile with de-commodifying social rights, which has characterized social democratic welfare states. It is further argued that a strict reciprocity-based policy has not proven effective in getting people into work on a permanent basis, and that the current challenges require new policy ideas. Two alternatives are discussed: guaranteed jobs and a basic income. The article argues that the lack of enthusiasm for the last option among social democrats is based on the misconception that a basic income will harm people's motivation to work, their self-respect, the social economy and the principle of justice. The article sheds light on this misconception. In the closing remarks, the proposal for an ‘emergency basic income’ is considered in view of the current global corona crisis.