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Current AffairsPolice crack down on women’s branch of Czech neo-Nazi movement
The Czech police have cracked down on a group called Resistance Women
Unity, a women´s branch of the Czech neo-Nazi movement National
Resistance. Fifteen women were arrested and charged with promoting and
supporting a movement aimed at suppressing human rights and freedoms. I
spoke to Miroslav Mareš of Masaryk University in Brno, one of the Czech
Republic’s leading experts on far-right extremism, to find out more about
the role of women in neo-Nazi groups in the present day Czech Republic. More
Current AffairsRoma kids from special schools put Czech education system to shame in Great Britain
Thousands of teachers around the country are up in arms. They are unhappy
about the government’s plans to gradually phase out special schools –
or schools for children with a mental or physical handicap – and
integrate as many of these children as possible into the education
mainstream. More
Current AffairsScandal-plagued Plzeň law faculty will have to close its doors
The scandal-plagued Plzeň faculty of law appears to have come to the end of
the road. On Wednesday the Czech Accreditation Commission announced that
the West-Bohemian law faculty’s undergraduate programme had failed to
pass muster and its accreditation would not be extended past this autumn.
On Thursday some 300 of the faculty’s 2,000 students gathered outside
their school to protest against the decision and have appealed to Education
Minister Josef Dobeš to intervene. However their chances of success are
meager, since under Czech law the minister is not in a position to question
the verdict of the accreditation commission. We spoke to its chairwoman
prof. Vladimíra Dvořáková to find out what was behind the commission’s
decision. More
From the ArchivesTransforming token integration into good faith: Martin Luther King talks to Czechoslovak Radio
“I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the
true meaning of its creed: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident: that
all men are created equal.’” The unforgettable words of Dr Martin
Luther King Jr., delivered on August 28 1963 on the steps of the Lincoln
Memorial in Washington DC. The speech, addressed to a crowd of a quarter of
a million, was a defining moment in the American civil rights movement, and
its echoes reached as far as communist Eastern Europe. In Czechoslovakia
the civil rights movement had already aroused considerable interest, and
not just because of the pleasure that the regime took in pointing to
America’s shortcomings; Czechoslovak Radio's correspondent in the United States,
Karel Kyncl, had already interviewed Dr King in March of that
same year. Here is a short extract from the interview, where Dr
King has just been outlining the progress made so far in ending
segregation: More
Current AffairsTeachers seek to revive Latin at Czech schools
Latin once used to be the cornerstone of classical education. Until the
middle of the 20th century, some knowledge of the language was a
prerequisite for any career in the academia, and Latin was taught at every
grammar school. But the numbers of students taking up the language has
dropped by a half over the past decade. That’s why a group of Latin
teachers launched a campaign to revive the teaching of Latin at Czech
schools. More
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