A specialist consultancy providing bespoke advice and creative solutions for complex cultural, ethical, and religious issues in contemporary geopolitics.
Oxford House Research publishes weekly briefing papers on topical and global issues authored by associates and a range of external contributors. Members receive these by email each week.
Immediate issues have magnetic power. It can be hard to resist their pull. Pressing matters in international relations dominate minds and media coverage: North Korean missile tests, meetings between Xi Jinping and US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken (b. 1962), Vladimir Putin’s clash with Wagner Group leader Yevgeny Prigozhin (b. 1961), the catastrophic loss of […]
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My theme is Indonesia, specifically the nature and importance of its Islamic identity. Since the fall in 1998 of authoritarian President Soeharto (1921-2008; Pres. 1968-1998), Indonesia has been on the ascendant. With 88% of its 276m citizens Muslim,[1] it is the largest Muslim-majority country and the third largest democracy in the world. For the past […]
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The American Civil Rights activist and martyr Dr Martin Luther King, Jr (1929-1968) wisely observed: ‘Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.’ As he continued, ‘We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny.’ That is, like a garment without seam, humanity exists in an unbreakable, but […]
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The plight of the Rohingya in Myanmar is widely known but little understood. From August 2017, when the persecution and displacement of hundreds of thousands of Rohingya finally made the front pages, the atrocities meted out against this ancient Muslim minority inside and outside Myanmar have drawn comparison with the Jewish ‘Holocaust’ in Nazi Germany.[1] […]
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The juxtaposition of old ideas, modern resources, and paradoxes in human behaviour can be fascinating. This Briefing looks to these sources for the light they shed on Western materialism; more especially, on how and why many in Britain and the West, despite acute financial pressure, still choose to celebrate Christmas lavishly … if not excessively! […]
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Speaking of Russia’s intentions in 1939, the British parliamentarian, soldier, and best-selling author, Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965), famously observed: ‘I cannot forecast to you the action of Russia. It is a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma; but perhaps there is a key. That key is Russian national interest.’ Commentators today on Putin’s […]
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How is it that two cultural systems with apparently clear moral expectations can produce two Communist dictators who apparently hate the West? Behind President Xi Jinping (b. 1953; Pres. 2012-present) and China’s ruling cadre lie more than 2500 years of Confucian philosophical-moral formation that has left a lasting impression on the way Chinese today see […]
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‘Church-State’ relations are inherently complex; perhaps especially so in a world now sensitized, in deep, divisive, and dangerous ways, to a nation’s distinctive cultural and spiritual identity and the rights of a person to believe, or not believe, in a certain way. The separation of ‘church’ (qua religion and/or spirituality) and ‘state’ in the Indian […]
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I am delighted to introduce the work of our outstanding Argentinian Associate Dr Pablo Baisotti. Pablo is a historian and social scientist (with an MA and PhD from the ancient University of Bologna, Italy), whose multidisciplinary approach to Latin America studies sheds important light on contemporary global issues. There is much here to make one […]
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I am delighted my brother Jonathan and I have been able to collaborate on this week’s Briefing. Jonathan was educated at Highgate School in London, and then at Oxford and Harvard Universities. He was in the education profession for 42 years and served as Head of two American independent schools for 34 years. He continued […]
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