· March, 2014

Stories about Western Europe from March, 2014

Why Learning Italian Still Makes Sense

  31 March 2014

As Italian publishing company Alma Edizioni was busy organizing an event about the Italian language in Rome, they received an unexpected letter [it] from someone who defined himself as a “disappointed student”: Why? What's the point of studying Italian today? […] No one wants to study a language that no...

The “Happy Voting” Project Encourages Young Europeans to Vote

  28 March 2014

Drawing on the Pharrell Williams worldwide hit “Happy” and the associated equally renown music video (over 143 million views on YouTube), the Brussels-based film company Full Tunes Production has recently launched on facebook an enthusiastic project  called “Happy Voting” that strives to encourage voting for the next European elections. The project...

MENA: Hijab and Western Discrimination

Egyptian blogger Nadia El Awady wrote a blog post in which she questions if women wearing Hijab face discrimination in western countries or not. Nadia, as an Egyptian who grew up in the US and lived prolonged periods in Europe, adds from her personal experience in regards to reactions she...

750 Million People Expected to Speak French by 2050

  25 March 2014

Countering the assertion by John McWhorter at the New republic that learning French is pointless, Pascal Emmanuel Gobry  writes on his Forbes blog that French might just be the language of the future: French isn’t mostly spoken by French people, and hasn’t been for a long time now. The language is...

Returning Human Remains is Not an Apology, Says Namibia to Germany

  24 March 2014

Human remains who were killed during the colonial war (early 20th century) were returned to Namibia by Germany in March. However, Namibians still demand a formal apology from the German government as Tendai Marima,  a post-doctoral researcher in African literature, wrote on the Think Africa Press website : The skulls and skeletons that...

The Daily Lives of Sub-Saharan Immigrants in Prague

  21 March 2014

Chadian blogger Réndodjo Em-A Moundona [fr] writes about the daily lives of African immigrants in Prague [fr] :  Une petite discussion avec ces Africains suffit pour se rendre à l´évidence que la communauté n´est ni menacée, ni totalement intégrée. Comme fille africaine, il est quasi impossible de trouver un travail conséquent [..] En général, les...

Academics and Experts to Discuss Digital Discrimination in Barcelona

  12 March 2014

The ICUD International Conference: Digital Discrimination and Social Networks takes place on March 13 and 14, 2014 in Barcelona, Spain. It will be a discussion space for academics, researchers, Internet and sns experts, NGOs, knowledge providers, and anyone interested in the issues surrounding discrimination on the Internet, especially in regards...