I think that the emphasis should be on getting us back to our roots as a country. What do we believe in as a basic set of principles and really what this country is about is liberalism in the classical sense. The idea that people should be able to free, should be free to make their own decisions about their lives and government to the extent possible should just stay out of it. Justin Amash was a Republican congressman from Michigan, once described by Politico as the new Ron Paul in Congress because of his willingness to buck party line votes on principle. He switched his affiliation to the LP in his fifth and final term, making him the party's highest office holder since its founding in 1971. He explored a run for the Libertarian Party presidential nomination in 2020 before changing his mind, paving the way for the nomination of longtime Libertarian Party member Joe Jorgensen. Amash was in Reno, Nevada during the Libertarian Party's national convention, during which the Mises Caucus took control over every leadership position. Amash is not a member of the Caucus but plans to remain in the party. At one point during the convention, he read quotes from a book on the subject of political liberalism. Anarchism misunderstands the real nature of man. It would be practicable only in a world of angels and saints. Liberalism is not anarchism, nor has it anything whatsoever to do with anarchism. Alright, I'll read you some more quotes. Every single one of those quotes is from Mises, one of my heroes. In this book, liberalism, that's just one book. Amash says he read the Mises excerpts not because he agrees with every word or to criticize anarchists but to point out that to compete on the national stage, the Libertarian Party needs to appeal to more than just purists libertarians. If Ludwig von Mises or Justin Amash, or pretty much anyone in this room, is not libertarian enough for you, it's not going to work. At the end of his speech, Amash received a standing ovation. Reason sat down with him in Reno to ask about his views of the Mises Caucus, his vision for the future of the party, and his plans for 2024 and beyond. Justin Amash, thanks for talking to reason. Thanks, Nick. Libertarian. A libertarian is a person who believes that the government should not be making coercive decisions and people should be making decisions for their own lives. So we believe above all in human cooperation. That's how I would frame it. Human cooperation is at the center of it. And the reason we believe in things like decentralizing power, the reason we believe in divided powers, separation of powers, is because we want people to be able to make decisions for themselves, not because it is to their own benefit alone, but because it's the benefit of all of society for that to happen. We're a diverse country. We have people with lots of ideas who come from lots of backgrounds. As we go about our days, we learn lots of things that other people don't learn. We know things as human beings that are inherent to us, because we exist in a certain time, in a certain place, and we learn those things. And when you centralize power, you're basically saying some outside entity that doesn't know anything about you is going to make decisions, but this really limits our ability to work together. If you have some outside party planning for you, it throws off our own plans. So I'd like to see us and what libertarianism envisions is people working together using their own knowledge and that voluntary human cooperation is built on this idea of diversity and decentralized power. We are at the Reno Reset, the Libertarian Party Convention in 2022. The Mises Caucus has run the table. They now run the party. What are your thoughts about that? I think we have to wait and see what happens. When someone comes in and they're promising a whole bunch of new stuff, I think you have to give them the opportunity and see how it goes. And I think it's too early to make an assessment. What's your sense of what the Mises Caucus wants to do? I think they mostly want more energy. So there are people who come to the Mises Caucus for different reasons. But what seems to unite them is this feeling that the party doesn't have enough energy, that there was this Ron Paul movement at one point that brought a lot of people in to the Liberty movement and they want to recreate that within the Libertarian Party. I don't know that it works the same way. There's a lot of difference between having a figure like Ron Paul and having a movement within a party that doesn't have that same figurehead. So I think it's a lot harder to recreate than they might imagine. And they're also in a position where they have to run an organization now. So it's not quite the same thing as running a campaign for president where you get a whole bunch of energy behind a candidate. But I think that's what they're mostly hoping for. What is the primary function of the Libertarian Party? To organize people to win elections. I don't think there's any reason to have a political party just for activism, which is why I've actually objected to the idea that the Libertarian Party is a movement. There is a Libertarian movement, but I don't think the Libertarian Party should be the center of that movement. The Libertarian Party is here to bring people together from that movement, from activist organizations, from individuals who are going out there and making Libertarianism something that is appealing to the masses. But when it comes to the party itself, we have to be about winning elections. If we're not about winning elections, then what are we doing? I think it's an error to say, well, we've tried that method. Now we have to try something different. I don't think that that's what the Libertarian Party has been doing. I don't think the Libertarian Party has been organizing people to win elections for the past 50 years. They've had some small successes, but you can tell that a party that's only gotten to about 3% in any presidential race has not really done the job of organizing people to win elections. I also think that the idea of turning it into an activist organization will not be successful because there are functions that a political party has to engage in and activism is something very different. What's an activist activity and then what is a kind of political party activity? When you have a political party, I think you have to bring people in who already agree with you. And there are millions of Americans who agree with Libertarian principles. They're not going to agree on every point in the platform. They're not going to agree on every principle that every other Libertarian has or every issue that every other Libertarian has, but they generally agree with Libertarian ideas. Many of them might not even call themselves Libertarians, but if you ask them to choose between the Republican Party, the Democratic Party, and the Libertarian Party, they're choosing the Libertarian Party. Those people are out there. We can get those people. That's the function of a political party. Bring those people in who you don't have to win over and convince them of the principles of Mises or Hayek or the founding fathers or whoever. Bring them in. They already agree with you on these things. An activist group is going out there and saying to people who have very different views, hey, this is why Libertarianism is better than what you're doing. This is why it's better than socialism. This is why it's better than conservatism or better than nationalism and trying to convert people into Libertarians. I think these are very different functions and they can be at odds. If a party is spending all of its time and energy on trying to convert people, I think it loses sight of the bigger picture, which is there are people out there, we have elections in front of us, we have to bring these people together. These things can work together. They can be complementary, but I don't think they should be done by the same organization. So I applaud Libertarians who are out there working on activist groups, trying to build out a Libertarian movement. And I think that's important. And we want those people to come into the party, but I don't think the party needs to be the center of that messaging or should be the center of that messaging. The Mises Caucus has also talked about getting rid of language in the platform denouncing racism and bigotry. Do you think that makes sense? I don't think it makes sense to get rid of denouncing racism and bigotry. Is it an essential element in any party platform? It's not necessarily a position on legislative policy, for example, or governmental policy. On the other hand, removing it makes some kind of statement about what your values are. And I don't think there's any benefits for removing that, and I think it will probably hurt us with a lot of people who might otherwise say, this is a party that endorses that. We want to be clear that we don't endorse it. And a lot of times, especially people on the left, will say that because the Libertarian party is a party about freedom, freedom of choice, freedom of opinion, that means we endorse bigotry. Because inevitably, when you have freedom in any society, there are people who are going to say and do bigoted things and racist things. And I think we should be clear that just because we support freedom doesn't mean we endorse what's done with freedom. As you've seen people associated with the Mises Caucus messaging, are they getting it right or is this going to become a problem? I think bolder messaging is important. But we don't need edglording. We don't need posting stuff just to troll people or saying outrageous statements just to get attention. There are some people within this party who think that if you just say the most outrageous thing possible and you get a lot of attention for it, that that's a positive thing. It's almost like any news is good news for you. It doesn't matter. Any publicity is good publicity. And I don't agree with that. I think if you put stuff out there, you may get some attention for it. It's true that major media outlets may cover it, but if they're covering it because you said something crazy, that doesn't help your program. Before the convention started, the Southern Poverty Law Center released an article that was titled, Mises Caucus, Could It Sway the Libertarian Party to the Hard Right? Its opening sentence is, high-profile Mises Caucus members espouse hateful rhetoric and collaborate with white nationalists and individuals linked to former President Donald Trump. Do you think that's an accurate read of the Mises Caucus? And if so, is that a good thing or a bad thing? I don't think it's an accurate read of the Mises Caucus on the whole. Most of the people within the Mises Caucus are young, activist types. A lot of them are new to libertarianism. In other words, they're not even that familiar with all of the principles, all of the philosophy, but they know there's something wrong with the way this country is being managed at the governmental level. They don't like what's going on in the Republican Party or the Democratic Party, and they're here because they want to bring that energy to something. It's about channeling that energy in the right direction. I don't think they're coming here because they're nationalists or bigoted or any of that stuff. That's not to say that there aren't people within the Libertarian Party, just as there are within the Democratic Party and Republican Party and throughout the whole world who are bigoted and racist. There are people like that, and I think we should call out people like that, and we should denounce those kinds of statements. But do I think that the Caucus as a whole is like that? I don't think so. Yesterday you gave this an important speech in the middle of the convention, and you started reading without attribution a bunch of quotes from Ludwig von Mises, the namesake of the Mises Caucus. What were some of the quotes you read, and then what was the response? Well, I read some of his quotes that I thought would be perceived as being maybe a bit to the left, or a bit inconsistent with a lot of modern Libertarian thought within the Party. And I wanted to make the point that we sometimes are jumping all over each other and at the same time we are praising individuals like Mises who will say some of the same things that are said by people we're jumping all over. So we need to be more respectful of each other. We need to think more about the breadth of Libertarianism, that it's a much broader philosophy than a lot of people think, that it encompasses a lot of ideas and a lot of principles, and sometimes Libertarians get things wrong. Sometimes they have views that don't always, when taken out of context, seem to mesh with other things, just like any individuals in any party or any philosophy. So we need to be careful about taking things out of context, misrepresenting things, looking at a tweet and saying, well, that person's some kind of leftist or that person's some kind of right-wing nationalist, just because they said something in a tweet that we don't necessarily agree with or we don't understand the full context of.  What happened? So as I was giving the quotes, people started to boo, which is what I expected. I expected they would boo the quotes, especially where Mises calls for the necessity of the state or calls for a world state. There's another quote where he said it wasn't shameful to be ruled by others. These are things that I think a lot of Libertarians within the party would find troubling. They're not necessarily troubling when taken within the context of all of Mises's work. But you have to understand the full breadth of what he's saying to get the context. And I just wanted people to see that, hey, we're too quick to jump on each other. Here's a guy we hold up as a hero within our philosophy. And yet, if he were here today, he might be called a woke leftist or ridiculed or rejected, or they might call him blue-pilled. Do you feel comfortable in the Libertarian party as the Mises caucus takes over? Yeah, I do. We have to see how things go. I don't think they were going great under the previous administration or previous ones before that. We have a lot of work to do as a party. That's not to say I don't respect and appreciate a lot of the work that was put into it. But we have a lot more work to do. And it's not going to be easy to get this party on track. So it's an uphill battle. I want to give them the opportunity. You talked yesterday of essentially getting up to 33%. You're kind of saying the Republicans have a third of the electorate. The Democrats, the Libertarians need to be at that level. Yeah, as a rough estimate, I would say that the two old parties have about a third of the electorate each. What are the immediate steps that the LP should be doing? I think we need to get our messaging right. We need to make sure that we have a message that shows people we care about them and that is broadly appealing. If we're just messaging to 1% of the population, well, that's what kind of party we're going to have. We're going to have a party that is 1% of the population. We have to accept the idea that there will be people in our party who don't agree with us on everything. The way I look at it is if you divided up the country into thirds and you said a third are Republican, a third are Democratic, and a third are Libertarian, we want all the people who would be closer to us than to the other two parties. We want all those people. Where does that messaging take place? Well, I think a lot of it takes place through activism outside the party. But you have to get into very basic messaging. When you look at the Republican Party and the Democratic Party, you couldn't even tell me what their platforms are. They're not arguing over the details of anything. They are centered around larger-than-life figures like Donald Trump. I'm not sure the Democrats have this kind of figure right now, but they have in the past with people like Barack Obama. And usually that's what drives those parties. Having some figures, some very central ideas that drive everything. And I think we've gotten too bogged down in the small details of everything. And we need to present a simpler, clearer message about where we stand. And to me, the difference between us and the other parties is we believe in liberalism and they believe in illiberalism. And to me, that couldn't be clearer. I mean, it's clearer now than ever. They increasingly want to control people and dictate to people. And we believe that people should be allowed to make their own decisions in their lives. Do you want to be that person in the Libertarian Party, the figure that is the main kind of messaging or messenger? I don't know that I have to be that figure. I do feel like I am in a position to be a figure like that because of my background, because I served in Congress. I understand what goes on in Washington. I have more training and skill in this area than a lot of people within the party, because there just haven't been that many people who have been elected to higher office within the party. Do you think the Libertarian Party responded properly to COVID lockdowns and vaccine mandates? I think for the most part, they responded properly. Whether they got the message out there or not, that's a different question. I don't think enough people out there knew what the Libertarian Party's stance was. I don't think there were many people who were drawn to the Libertarian Party during this time, because you had many Republicans, for example, out there who were in prominent positions. Rand Paul is a good example of one who is out there on the national stage making the case for why we shouldn't be for the lockdowns or why vaccine mandates were a bad idea or why the universal masking might be problematic. So there were Republicans who were out there doing that, making the case in a stronger way than the Libertarian Party. But part of that is the fact that we're a small party. What should the Libertarian Party position on abortion be? I think we should have a neutral stance on it. As many people know, I'm pro-life. But I think it would be a bad idea for the Libertarian Party to take either a pro-choice position or a pro-life position. We already have two parties that are basically completely one way or the other. The Republican Party, if you're not pro-life, you basically can't be in the party. In the Democratic Party, you basically have to be pro-choice. And increasingly, these parties are taking very extreme positions on it, where the Republican Party is going closer and closer to conception, making it illegal. And the Democratic Party is moving more toward you can have an abortion all the way up to very end. So from my perspective, I don't see why the Libertarian Party should get into the middle of all that. We should say we're a party that will have a common-sense perspective about this. We understand there are rights on each side of this issue. There's the right of the unborn child. There's the right of the mother. We take that all into consideration and we're not going to be all one way or the other. We understand that there's a balance that must be met because you have conflicting rights. And this is why we have a political process. We're going to make our case to the public on an individual basis. If I run for office, I'll say what I believe. Other candidates can say what they believe. And you let the public decide. And it may actually shape some of your views on this based on the public viewpoint of what's appropriate. What should the Libertarian Party position on immigration make? I think we have to have as close to an open system of immigration as possible. You're not going to get there completely because there are going to be a lot of Americans who push back and say we have to have some security and that's understandable, especially because you have a lot of government involvement in our lives now. So when people come into this country, there are various benefits that are given out. Now, many of us who believe strongly in immigration would say that immigrants provide much more than they take out in any benefits. But it's a case that has to be made. So I would like to see us get as close to an open policy as possible where people can come into this country and live their lives and they're not stopped at the border simply because they're from another country. And let's see what happens. You were elected as a kind of tea party in a wave of tea party activism. Over a decade ago, the tea party seems to have faded. Occupied Wall Street seemed to have faded too, but it's kind of making a comeback. But more broadly, the libertarian movement seems to have kind of faded in a significant way with the emergence of Trump. Can the LP regain some kind of mojo? I think it can, but it does have to have figures who are driving it. This idea that it's all going to happen by running a bunch of county commissioners or county commissioner candidates or local candidates is not really plausible in my mind. Any big movement that's going to be successful has to have some figures at the national level or at least at the state level running for governor, running for Senate who are making an impact. So I think that kind of energy can be brought back, but it's not just going to manifest itself because we're running a bunch of local candidates and talking about local issues. Those things are very important. I want to be clear. All of the community work that libertarians do is very important, but I don't think that's going to create the movement. If we want to build a new movement, we have to have those activist organizations outside the party working on that. And we have to have figures perhaps within the party who are running campaigns that are driving that energy. Flash forward to 2024. What would success look like for the libertarian party between now and then? I think we have to have infrastructure in place so that we can run high-profile candidates in some of the big races. I do think we have to have a presidential candidate who is high-profile and can make a real impact, not a 1% or 2% impact, but an impact that is upwards of 10%, 15%. Because the party is not going to be put on the map until you get to that point, until you have national figures who can reach something like 15%. That's the hardest point to get to. Once you've reached something like 15%, getting to 30% is a lot easier. It's the first 15% that's very hard. So we have to have those figures out there and we have to have the infrastructure to allow those people to get to that point. And to me, that is a metric. If after a couple years, there's not really infrastructure in place, there's not resources coming in to help our candidates, I think we're in trouble then. How will you make a decision whether or not you're going to run for the LP presidential nomination? Well, I haven't decided on anything and I haven't really thought about whether I would run or not at this point, but I can say that I'm interested in running for office again in the future. For me, there would have to be the right kind of infrastructure in place. What do you mean by infrastructure? You have to have a party that is behind you that is a viable party. I'm not interested in running as a Republican or as a Democrat. So if I'm going to run in the future as a libertarian, I want to know that I have a party behind me that is viable. So that's like ballot access in every state, local people that can motivate messaging and voter turnout and things like that. You have to have the whole infrastructure because one person can't do it by himself or by herself. You have to have a whole team of people. You have to have a 50 state strategy. You have to have the resources coming in, the donors who are available to make it happen. And for me to run for office, it's not just a vanity thing. I'm not interested in running for office so I can say I was the libertarian nominee and I got 3% or 4%. If I run for office, I want to get 20%, 25%. I'd like to win the election, but if you're not going to win the election, you at least want to put the party on the map. And in order to do that, you have to have the infrastructure. What do you think are the subpopulations or the groups out there that are the ones that libertarians really should be capturing or paying a lot of attention to? I think we don't do enough to reach out to black Americans, to Hispanic Americans, to immigrants. I think there are lots of people out there who would find libertarian principles very appealing, who already have very libertarian views and could be brought in. I know that during my time in Congress, I dealt a lot with people in the NAACP and we had very good relationships. We didn't agree on every issue, but they certainly appreciated a lot of what I was doing to advance civil liberties, civil rights, making sure that we had criminal justice reform and addressing some of the issues that affected their communities, including a lot of the police actions that we've seen and police abuses. Those are people we can reach and bring into the party and I think we haven't done a very good job of that. What are the three priorities in terms of issues that the libertarian party or libertarian should be hammering? Well, I do think we need to talk about the monetary system. We are dealing with massive inflation right now and this is a real opportunity for us to bring people in to help them understand how inflation is happening, that it's a creation of the Federal Reserve, it's a creation of inflation of the monetary supply. So let's teach them about that and bring them into the party through that. That means we're gonna have to have, again, activist organizations working on that issue. Money is also an important issue in the sense of government control because as we saw in Canada and as we see in China with their social credit system, you run the risk when you have the government controlling so much of the means of exchange, which is money, that they can just shut you out of society. They can turn you off basically by telling the banks, hey, don't work with this person anymore, which is why I believe so strongly in decentralizing money, decentralization generally as a concept. I believe strongly in Bitcoin and cryptocurrency, things that are outside of government control because I think these will be very big issues going forward. Another issue I think we should talk about is freedom of speech. I don't think Republicans or Democrats care about the freedom of speech and we have an opportunity to say we are the party of free speech. We're the party of free expression. We want people to share their ideas. We are the party of diversity because we believe people should be making decisions about their lives and be able to talk about those things and challenge each other. We don't believe that one person or one group of people should just sit in government and tell everyone how to think and how to behave. So I think that's another issue that I would really focus on. Do you have a third? Boy, there are so many issues. So I think war is another one. We see what's going on now in Ukraine and my concern is we're increasingly creeping into another war without any authorization. We just got out of this long war in Afghanistan. There are still wars going on around the world all related in many respects, at least the ones that the United States is involved in are related in many respects to 9-11 and the authorization that happened after 9-11. So we need to really work on explaining to the American people how these wars have not benefited the United States and to the extent that we're going to be involved in wars overseas, we had better have the American people behind it. You should take votes in Congress. You should be on the record as a representative or as a senator to say that you support the war and this is what you're going to do. We shouldn't be leading Americans slowly into war and then once it's too late and we're fully involved saying, well, now there's nothing we can do about it. We're stuck with it. Do you worry that Donald Trump is still, you know, kind of the son that everybody is revolving around, even though he's not on social media, he's however many years old and will be that much older in 2024, but until he vacates, is there, you know, can something else emerge? Within the Republican Party, no. I think that they're stuck with Donald Trump for the time being and they have candidates who seem to be pretty talented. I might have a lot of disagreements with them, but Ron DeSantis, for example, seems to be a pretty talented governor in many ways and I think he's just stuck in a holding pattern because of someone like Donald Trump. And the Democrats, I think, don't really have a farm team. They don't have much of anything going on. So you are in this world where it's Donald Trump versus whatever bland candidate the Democrats put forward and that's a real opportunity for libertarians. So we do need to take that opportunity and we should be happy about the fact as a party at least that everything does seem to be revolving around Donald Trump because I think he alienates so much of the country that that is a real opening for us and the Democrats have such a weak team that that's an opening for us. I think we need to be pulling from the right and the left. I mean, I don't view libertarianism as a right or left philosophy. It can pull from both of those sides. We're a full spectrum philosophy and I'd like us to bring in people right now and we have that opportunity. This is maybe the chance of a lifetime over the next couple of years to bring people into the party.


As we approach 40 days with no measurable rainfall, water levels in streams and rivers across eastern Kentucky continue to fall. That has prompted officials with water companies to keep an extra close eye on their intake structures. On Thursday, officials with Southern Water in Floyd County used an excavator to push the intake screens down 6 to 8 inches in the LaVisa Fork of the Big Sandy River at Allen to ensure there will be no issues with water service due to the drought. In Pikeville officials with utility management groups say the river level in Pikeville has not fallen to a level where any action is being considered.


The federal government has extended the deadline to link SIM cards to National Identification Number NIN to June 30th. Director of Public Affairs at the Nigerian Communications Commission Dr Ike Chuku Adindi said they decided to extend the deadline at a virtual meeting chaired by the Minister of Communications and Digital Economy Dr Issa Pantami. They said that almost 54 million people have obtained the NIN and connected it to about 190 million mobile numbers. Recall that sections 27 and 29 of the National Identity Management Commission Act 2007 makes it mandatory for Nigerians to have a national identity number to assess several government services. Hello, hope you enjoyed the news. Please do subscribe to our YouTube channel and don't forget to hit the notification button so you get notified about fresh news updates.


The people's international assembly is particularly very important in this context of the economic crisis of the capitalist crisis. Primarily because we know that capitalists come together all the time and so people's movements need to come together more of the time to be able to collectivize our analysis of the context but also develop strategies that are going to win our movement's advancement that we're going to be able to advance in our victories and our struggles, exchange our experiences not only of oppression but also of resistance. It's very important for us to be in Venezuela today because Venezuela is the epicenter. Venezuela is the actual personification of the anti-peril struggle.


Australia has long been a reliable ally of the United States, but has it become too reliable? 65 years after the signing of the Anzastreaty and amid great strategic change caused by the rise of China, it is time for a fresh look at the Australian-American alliance. In Fighting with America, historian James Curran argues that the current intensity in Cambridge relations with Washington has led Americans and Australians to forget past disagreements between the two nations. As the alliance becomes more focused on Asia, Australian and American interests will sometimes coincide, other times they may clash. For Australia, perhaps the most alarming dimension of Donald Trump's international agenda is his disdain for the US global alliance system. Trump's campaign pitch to make America great again was not a summons to a renewed era of US globalism, rather it was a reflection of the growing pressures to turn inward and focus on the home front. Australia's relationship with America has in the past weathered some profound shocks. But Trump's win will challenge the intense bipartisan consensus and sentimentality that has characterised the Australian-US alliance in recent years.


G3 Tactical. I have called this Taurus' best semi-auto polymer frame handgun to date. And I stand by that. Optic ready. The 4.5 inch threaded barrel. It's suppressor height sights with the rear and the front. They serve code to slide. They call that Patriot Brown plant dark earth frame. And the MSRP on this is 590. I'm seated all over the place for lesson 450. Heavy nylon case. 217 round magazine. Very nice trigger. I'm measuring it closer to five. Short reset and restrike capability. Siley Wolf Pro 3 MOA dot shake awake in the housing. Very strong metal. It's a nice optic.


Mr. Chairman, Director, Ladies and Gentlemen, first of all to our graduates, I should like to add my congratulations to those of the Chairman and Director. We do hope your time at SOS has been rewarding and that it will stay with you as you progress in your career. As alumni, you're important ambassadors to the school and we do hope you'll keep in touch with us. I know that many years on, some of your sharpest memories will be of the people who have taught you and that brings me to the presentation of this year's Director's Prize for Teaching. The school has many brilliant teachers. We rank very highly in our specialist areas of Africa, Asia and the Middle East. National surveys rank so as at the very top for expert lecturers and our own in-house surveys show high levels of satisfaction among our students with the teaching they receive on their courses. What makes a great teacher? It's not just expertise in the subject. It also requires passion and communication skills and the ability to inspire, excite, encourage and guide. All these qualities we see in abundance here at the school. We reward these qualities by recognizing and honoring each year the best of our teachers. Director's Teaching Prize is one of the most important awards we make. It awards excellence in teaching and its purpose is to stimulate teaching and teaching related and other creative activities, particularly at the undergraduate level. The prize is open to any member of staff and nominations are welcome for both individuals and teaching teams. Since its inception some seven years ago, a wide variety of awards have been made to celebrate innovative teaching in such areas as modern and contemporary Japanese, Chinese languages and literatures, culture and development and world music on BBC. Nominations for the Director's Teaching Prize are judged by a panel comprising the Pro Director, Associate Deans for Learning and Teaching, Director of Academic Development, Representations from Students' Unions and we also have external members from other colleges of University of London and beyond. With each year's nominations throughout, the panel finds it increasingly difficult to choose between so much exceptional work. We've seen a record number of nominations this year, both in terms of quantity, we've had over 70 nominations but most important in terms of their quality. The task of selecting winners from the final shortlist of four was all the more difficult but also highly rewarding. Let me begin with the outstanding runner-up, Dr. Kersti Rowan, Senior Teaching Fellow in the Department of Linguistics. The panel was impressed with the reflective practice of her teaching methods and the developmental approach she took to the discipline. Dr. Rowan has been with us at the school since 1998 when she first joined as an undergraduate student and was subsequently appointed in 2004 as Senior Teaching Fellow. For the first time this year, graduate teaching assistants who contribute to teaching while undertaking the doctoral studies were also recognized for their excellence. Ms. Sarah Stivano, a PhD student in the Department of Economics, was awarded this year's Director's Prize for Teaching. She was commended for her reflective approach and ways in which she responded to the different abilities of her students. In particular, the panel applauded her experiments with the use of videos in teaching economics. And I now come to the 2013 Director's Teaching Prize. This year's prize goes to Dr. Kevin Manton for his work as a subject lecturer in the Department for International Foundation Courses and English Language Studies. IFCELS, as the department is known, is one of the UK's leading centres of excellence in providing academic and English language preparation for international students wishing to go on to degree level studies. Since 1985, thousands of students have gone on from IFCELS to undergraduate and postgraduate degrees, both at SOAS and elsewhere in the UK. And I know that some of the graduates here today will have started their studies at SOAS on our foundation programme. Kevin was commended by the judging panel for the high standard he sets for his own teaching and his expectations from students. In particular, the panel was impressed by the strategies he adopts to help students become autonomous learners through web-based teaching and podcasts. While we were impressed by the innovation and imagination that Kevin brought to his course, the decisive factor for the panel was an old-fashioned consideration. Kevin's evident love and passion for teaching and nurturing his students. On that note, Mr. Chairman, I would now like to invite Dr. Kevin Manton to come forward to receive the 2013 Director's Prize.


So you're about to start writing your medical school personal statement. What you say is as important as the mistakes you want to avoid. Stick around to find out what those are. For the best medical school personal statement coaching, make sure you hit subscribe and the bell so you don't miss out on any videos I post. If you want a free strategy call with me on your personal statement, book that call in the description below and we'll get started. With so much at stake for your med school personal statement, you wanna make sure that you hit creative, reflective, thoughtful kind of moves throughout the essay. However, these are four tips to avoid so that you want to kind of tell your best story, right? Hi, I'm talking to Josie with Write Your Acceptance. As a writing faculty and personal statement coach, I know how to help you tell your best story. It's your turn, let's go.  It sounds harsh, it sounds aggressive and I'm sorry for that. But you wanna make sure that you are avoiding these kinds of blanket statements that you kind of know the hardships of the ins and outs of everyday life as a physician. If you're watching this, I am 100% confident that you will one day become a physician but you're not there yet. So your personal statement should be made personal about you, really kind of narrate your experiences and you can talk about hardships as long as you've experienced them and observed them yourself, right? So you can talk about kind of negatives or kind of drawbacks of a nursing home, let's say. If you volunteer there and you can kind of lead with a patient-centric experience first. But kind of avoid these blanket statements that you know what it's like to be a doctor. The essay is not asking you if you kind of know what you're getting yourself into. That's kind of implied and then the delivery when you kind of make those sentiments, it kind of can rub people the wrong way. And then you're not really being personal. You're not answering that kind of why your journey and why you've done kind of, you've committed to this field.  Tip two is kind of similar. It's the don't rag on doctors you've come into contact with. So many times students will tell me that they want to write about that like their spark moment and initial experience was the passing of their grandfather or an illness at a sibling illness. And so they are really kind of drawn to writing about that there were careless mistakes or laziness or whatever negative about the medical professional team treating that patient. And I say avoid this. It's tough because I always tell students that you should honor your truth and you should honor your journey. But you also kind of, there are a million ways of telling a story. And if you dedicate let's say two sentences to the passing of your grandfather and then eight sentences to kind of medical negligence then if you look at that as a whole you should not be spending eight sentences on anything but if you see that as a whole then the story is not about your grandfather it's about kind of malpractice or kind of you know. And I would caution against this because you want to make sure that every story one is personal enough where it is kind of advancing your argument about why this is your kind of purpose and calling and how you are showing continued commitment to the field, right? So you're not doing that with that. And to every story that you tell you want to elicit from the reader compassion, empathy, understanding, curiosity to learn more about who you are. And so something negative about the medical field may kind of elicit skepticism or kind of be offensive. And so you want to make sure that you avoid that with your reader because this is a very, very important text, right? I don't have to tell you that. Okay, do you have a story that you want to share in your personal statement but you're not sure if it's radioactive or not? Comment below, I'd love to give you my two cents. Tip three, I would avoid humor. So this is a pretty conservative bunch. And okay, so if I back up with every rule there is a way that a student breaks it inevitably if your natural voice is kind of you know, witty and humorous and that is how you naturally write then I would say keep this as a potential red flag top of mind. But you definitely want to kind of avoid it if it's kind of not your natural speaking kind of voice. So if you want to show kind of wit and an observational kind of depth then do that by analyzing a cultural reference or an image in your experiences. But don't add kind of you know, jokie, self deprecating moments. It kind of comes off as making light of a situation or that you are kind of unsure of yourself and we want to be as confident and precise as possible with our language. Tip four, don't make a negative mark your kind of main premise for the personal statement. So if you have a less insteller MCAT score or less insteller GPA you may be talking about kind of you know, as you're writing about your journey you may talk about kind of dips in GPA let's say or kind of you know, why you took a gap year here or why you had a poor performance this semester but don't make a kind of a negative the main purpose the main kind of crux of the argument in your personal statement. You never know if you are calling attention to something that they already kind of when they're looking at your application holistically that they've already settled on but if you draw them closer to that kind of red flag and all of the real estate or most of the real estate on your personal statement is talking about that red flag then you kind of could potentially have them second guess what they already settled or point to something that they didn't really think was that big of an issue and you've blown it up and made it a bigger issue so definitely kind of if you're gonna talk about something negative you want to spin it as something that you learned from that you adjusted to your systems that you are more resilient, more adaptable ready for the rigors of medical school right but don't make it your central claim kind of apology tour. If you want more personal statement feedback and kind of expert tips definitely book your one-on-one call with me the link is in the description below. If you found this video helpful give us a like, subscribe, share with your pre-med friends I really appreciate it and more will come soon, thanks.


What is up guys and welcome back to the Johnny Q daily vlog? Thanks so much for watching for the last 10 days or so I've been trying to do different content on YouTube not so much long form but posting some of my tiktok onto the YouTube Channel and just see what that would look like and so far really good reaction really good engagement with everybody on on YouTube and you guys have been liking that stuff too But I am making longer form blogs as as well Just I'm kind of just throwing everything into a mix kind of see what sticks and what works So, uh, yeah, I hope you guys have been liking the the daily the daily video is on YouTube The plan is for next time to change out the tarps Because I have kind of a bigger rig so I can make bigger canvases in this little studio this area Not just so much on the drill my my hope is to get some bigger pieces in the works But I have to move I have to kind of you know put together a whole new setup So I can get all these bigger pieces in here and all that stuff But uh, it's gonna be awesome and I'm pumped to bring you guys along on that as well But for this video we'll be doing some more spin art. So sit back relax and Enjoy the Johnny Q art show. Let's get this. Alright guys this first piece. We got a 15 by 20. Let's get it You


Hello everybody, I'm EvilRabbit. We're here on the ESDA practice server because ESDA round one is this weekend So we got my E36 all set up. We do have William Holloway here in the server as well So we're gonna be running some practice solos Maybe some tandems if he wants to run some tandems or if anybody else joins in the official server because qualifying is this weekend So make sure you guys follow me and also should be knowledge from the description box below. Let's get to it So with ESDA qualifying on Friday gonna be definitely trying to get some solo laps in here Do have a pretty decent base tune I got some help from another competitor trying to get some side bite when I first tested the track out because I was having a little side bite issues So we're gonna go see if we can get a solid run. It is a little bit darker, which means I think it's colder So we're gonna go full send though Quick flick in little shallows on that inner clip and a little bit laxed on that transition Perfect on that one though and across the line so um With like I said with getting the side bite actually dialed in the car. I'm having a little bit better Grip when it comes to Transitioning this faster being able to go through the power alley and not obviously use brakes or hand brakes and things like that I can actually get a lot of good angle. So this is the first initial practice We can go and take a look at third-person camera and replay afterwards But I'm gonna be doing a lot of solos and a lot of tandem testing Hopefully we can get into the 32 for round one Long Beach and I are very comfortable with each other. So Click entry in Little left of break there cause me to go offline transition out Throwing it on the wall Quick camera grab and a little break change To get around the final turn. So overall definitely seems to be pretty smooth We'll have to like I said go take a look at the outer camera to really see where I was in relation to the walls But running in this upper view is a little bit different than a lot of other people run I'm running this view for my comfortability. It's Actually third-person. It's actually like the chase camera just put in this position with the pivot from my the active pivot it's not using the Neck effect which I could still go in car and run neck effects if I really wanted to But I prefer running this it gives me a good sense of where I am And it doesn't move as much as say the neck effect does but because I also still like having my first person and Having to move it back and forth for me is a little Little time-consuming so if we can get another solid run here try and get this initiation now Would have fun at that I Could see my tire marks were nowhere near the wall, and I didn't think we were able to hold that angle So I could see where my tire marks are in Relation to the wall here. We're pretty decent here. So I'm gonna drive back. I should always come and try Yeah, I'm not catching this zone. I'm noticing that now and And I am catching this zone, but I'm catching it. Oh, I need to catch it a little sooner But the thing is I'm I'm going a little bit too in on this So we need to correct that and I think what we're doing is I think we're initiating too early or Not fast enough. So we're gonna see if maybe a second gear roll out Will work And not blow our tires off as much a little later of initiation That's kind of where I wanted to be Little hesitation there a little hesitation on that one But not too too bad things that I could actually probably clean up and tighten up I do have this new mentality of running only a couple laps at a time and stepping away and taking a break It was something that Osville mentioned to me when I was talking to him last year at Erie Practicing too much and doing too many runs could also be a problem So, you know run a few take a break do something else maybe come back run a couple more So we're gonna run I think one more and then we're gonna go take a look at the outside of the runs and kind of see where we're at Okay, that's better Like that's right on that wall If I could have held that angle that was one of those times throwing massive amounts of angle but not able To hold it now if I could have held that angle it would have been so much better So they're gonna run one more and then we'll go take a look at the outside cameras So to digress kind of where we were in these runs So what like I said practice is something I will be doing sporadically just to keep my mindset and like I'm super comfortable in this car and on this track so definitely gonna have fun with it and Super excited for the ESDACs to kick off quick to yank at the handbrake not crazy on handbrake dragging See that was the angle that we were able to come into and hold but a little one a little too aggressive on that So it's gonna take a look at the outside of the replay angles and see what we got All right, so we don't actually have cameras. I don't know if I installed the cameras correctly So we're gonna be using kind of the fly camera to just track around and follow kind of what we're doing. It's a little Drone just to kind of check where we're at and see where we're sitting here on those runs Try and catch up to the car So that initiation was definitely very shallow We were actually pretty good on that zone nowhere near that zone. This is really kind of where I want to watch from We're gonna gonna watch it from I Guess the overhead aspect so we could see where we are in relation to these Three clipping points because those are gonna be the major Clipping points that I'm really worried about so let's see where we're kind of at. Okay. That was nice deep on the wall very shallow there About just outside of it. Now we clipped it a little bit Car just smoking up the track. Let's go back and watch this one Kind of see where we're at. So that one was pretty decent in that zone. We did get out to that zone and What are they all I threw too much angle and I thought I would have actually Bifted so as you can see we were nowhere near either so these are things that I'm Making sure that I Get adjusted and take care of That was way shallow there We got it the zone on that one And we just ticked the zone so I have some room that I know I need to back up on Slightly things that I can work on just knowing where my car is really I guess In that view knowing where the back bumper is things that I need to adjust in my visual cues So I know exactly where I am in relation to the wall See where this one's at Okay, that was nice and deep in there. Oh, we grazed bumper there This was the one that we threw so much angle at and it was I Believe we grazed our bumper Through this wall It was a wall to wall and then I hit the left foot brake too much into the letting the car float out to outer zone Against the wall which I if I wouldn't have left for break that probably could have floated out further But I think I think we may have actually went through this wall or just clip the Slow that down a little bit We would have flexed the bumper because my actual collider is right where the bash bar would be so yeah, we would have We would have flexed that bumper a lot and that was a lot of angle So I think the next one we are able to actually get the angle correctly and carry it out. So let's See if we were actually able to carry it out Where I think we did Here's a car starting at the line So make sure you guys follow me on all social media which found through box below if you guys like this You guys want to keep seeing you see a prep. Let me know down in the comment section down below We're just kind of watching from bird's-eye view in the fan tower massive angle And we carried it out All the way to the wall and we just tagged it I think this was another situation where we would have been dragging bumper in this wall Oh, we were in there though Our smokes it out so that's gonna do it for this episode make sure you guys follow me on social media I'll try to find the script box below as always. I think guys come back and watching. I'm evil rabbit. I'll see you on the track