Because Iran pops up in the news frequently and mostly when it pops up It's often about censorship and surveillance and our speaker here Masa Ali Mardani. She's actually an expert on this topic She's a specialist. She currently works at the Oxford Internet Institute where she Researches politics of Iran and of the Iranian Internet, but she also works for the NGO article 19 And in in her talk, which we hope will have to slide slides up very soon In her talk, she's doing a rundown of the current state of censorship and surveillance in Iran So thank you for waiting until now. Please give a give a warm round of applause to Masa Ali Mardani Well, thank you for coming and being so patient to hear me talk today I have to admit I did not anticipate doing this without my computer in front of me But I guess it's a good exercise in becoming less reliant on my devices But I do still have my phone in my hand with the slides. So I think that will be useful so the name of the talk is tightening the net and so as The introduction went I'm going to be talking a little bit about how information controls work on the Iranian Internet You're probably listening to my voice wondering why someone with an Iranian name sounds kind of American I'm I grew up in Canada and I spent most of my life going back and forth between the various countries I lived in abroad and back to Iran So that's why I sound this way. It's a Canadian accent and so I I had slides to accompany what I was going to say next and It had a frightening Iranian vampire that I was going to get into later on But it seems that I can you know replace the frightening Iranian vampire for now So the reason why I am here who am I? Well, I wear a lot of different hats The introduction said that I am oh, that's not my slide. There's a frightening woman in front of me I So I I'm doing my PhD at the Oxford Internet Institute and there I'm studying how social media evolves in Iran's information control space To see how political participation shapes, especially during elections and things like that I also spend the majority of my time at a London base NGO called article 19 And there I work with a Iran team that tracks How freedom of expression and access to information takes shape in Iran and oh, I think my slides are on their way up here No, is it there? It will come. That's promising So article 19 My slides are here. That's so exciting Oh, can I actually Can I actually control it Sorry. Oh, I have to signal. Okay. We can go to the next slide No No This is fun. Okay. So this was the part that would appear when I'm explaining who I am What are you? It's a scene from the movie that I've been referencing. It's called a girl walked home alone And I think you should all watch it So we can go to the next slide So There was a troll on Twitter yesterday when I posted about my talk who were saying that I'm kind of doing warmongering or something Like that, so I just want to leave a disclaimer. I do work on human rights I am talking about some of the repressive things that happens in Iran, but this is not a Talk to scare you away from Iran. In fact, if you can go back In fact, if it if I weren't here and if I weren't doing this particular type of work I would probably be in Iran with my family for the holidays So I urge you if you have no security concerns, please go. It's like amazing Country lots to see But one thing you will find is that the internet experience is a little bit different than what you would experience here in Leipzig which Kind of brings me around to the topic of my talk. So the Iranian internet is sometimes known as filter net This is a term that a lot of us who do kind of digital advocacy for Iran know and often use I think the term was coined around 2009 or 2010 by a Iranian Journalists who focuses on technology named Nima Akbaipur You can follow the hashtag on Twitter and you can see lots of different things related to internet censorship and surveillance in Iran and so next slide There's also The series that I help run with a number of colleagues at article 19 Which is called tightening the net the name of this talk And if you want to get into the nitty-gritty details of what happens in terms of internet policy in terms of How users are put at risk in Iran? This is a series you can follow and it started initially with the national internet project, which is sort of sometimes known as the Halal net and then We looked at software and cyber tactics in Iran for the next edition and now every Quarter we come out with a rundown of what's going on Online in Iran with a series of advocacy recommendations for various branches of the Iranian government So if you want to get more information beyond the generalities of this talk to check that out next slide So understanding the filter net in order to understand Next slide So whenever I do this means next slide. So understanding What happens online? You have to kind of understand that in Iran there is infrastructure of control that kind of shapes how this works and I can show this to you Here which is kind of a map of what's going on In Iran and you can see that in Iran The head of state is in fact not elected. It's a supreme leader He's kind of a Religious authority, but also he has ultimate veto power over everything that happens in the country and you can see him up at the top I'm not signaling to change. I'm just pointing It's he's up at the top there and everything sort of like falls under his umbrella and What's interesting to know that every four years there are there is a democratic element to the government in Iran and there is a president that gets elected and within the president's cabinet you have the Ministry of ICT information communications and technology and within the Ministry of ICT you see a lot of what happens in terms of Control inside of Iran. So the Ministry of ICT runs the telecommunications company of Iran and they maintain and authorize all the ISPs and so in some ways this has been really good because The current administration that was elected Back in 2013 and it was reelected in 2017 is a moderate administration And so it's done a lot to improve internet conditions in Iran Internet speeds have Improved by huge amounts. So sometimes the Iranian internet was known as Kondnet Which kind of is like slow internet, but that's really improved since This government has come into the power and it's the government of president Roe honey and other things like internet access has come to Villages that often didn't have this kind of access. So in terms of ICT for development There's been a lot of progress over the past few years because of the work of this government and that ministry but in terms of how Surveillance occurs so all internet traffic is routed through the telecommunications company of Iran including private and government ISPs and The TCI as you can see right below the Ministry of ICT is responsible for blocking web pages and blacklisting keywords and In terms of surveillance the TCI also uses proxy servers for surveillance by logging all Unencrypted web traffic, which is why it's really important for there to be HTTPS over websites in Iran What was particularly? Concerning is that underneath the control of the supreme leader. There's a body called the revolutionary guards and so every time there's a protest movement in Iran or there's any sort of opposition to the status quo the revolutionary guards help the regime kind of You know well protesters arrest them gather intelligence and so the IRGC Excuse me In 2009 the IRGC a consortium owned by this kind of paramilitary Organization bought about 51% of the telecommunications company of Iran because the government was trying to privatize it But in essence its ownership falls fell under this kind of repressive body within The establishment so beyond strengthening the The revolutionary guards with you know financial through financial means they had direct access to the data of ordinary citizens, which is Super concerning We can go to the next slide now This was the news back in 2009 when they Got 51% of the shares of the telecommunications company of Iran next slide and so just to go over a brief history of controls because then along with the infrastructure of control there's kind of a Legal mechanism for how this kind of established itself so back in 2001 Filtering really started in Iran because there is a crackdown on Newspapers and a lot of people started migrating online The script for writing Persian on online was developing so there was This huge migration and it was only around 2001 that the government started targeting and doing censorship of these You know more reformist or progressive journalists and activists who are writing and kind of Going against the ethos of the regime you can go back. You want to head too much Is that are you doing it? Oh? Oh, sorry Totally did not make that connection So that was in 2001 and they wanted to codify how this system works in terms of the filtering committee that Enables this and so in 2006 there was a draft law known as the computer crimes law and Actually article 19 The law team and the Iran team. I wasn't part of it because this was before my time at the organization they actually are the only source of Translating and analyzing this law and so it came into a draft form in 2006 and then by 2009 they really wanted to mobilize it and make sure it went into law in 2009 I was when the green movement happened and so the government was kind of trying to reign in control over what kind of discourse was going on online because they They effectively shut down the internet for a small period of time during that protest movement And so right after this happened They picked picked up speed on this and made sure it passed and by 2010 this became law You can take a look at this document in more precise form Different things like article 10 which makes things like encryption illegal came out of this document different things like The filtering committee that decides through multi multi agency network of different ministries and different experts in the government What content needs to be filtered? Do you want me to do this and you can Sorry, I feel bad. I've made you. Yeah Here she is Okay, okay. Yeah, I'm sorry. I didn't I didn't realize and she was crouching here the entire time and that's not cool So So the next thing I have is a video which I feel like it's gonna get really difficult um so The law came into effect in 2010 and different bodies came into Formation as well things like the revolutionary Guard set up their own cyber division known as Geradob in 2009 right after the protest movement Iran's police forces also established their own police cyber force named fatah in 2011 and because The establishment was realizing that the internet was so Basically crucial to the functioning of the nation National security was being compromised things like cyber attacks against the country's infrastructure was happening The supreme leader basically wanted everything centralized to him And so he created the supreme council of cyberspace which its name translated into English is very sci-fi and fun to say sometimes and that happened in 2012 and So this is all kind of like boring and I guess lots of dates and lots of things But it's really important to how things happen day-to-day in Iranians lives and how they Experience the internet and so back in a few years ago a colleague and I Okay at the University of Amsterdam decided to go through the censorship redirect page So every time you want to visit a page that censored it's called pay Vanda dot IR You can probably look this up if you want and so we using the wayback machine We like traced it over the years and how it evolved and how it kind of reflects on this changing internet policy So I'm gonna take a crack at playing this. I'm probably gonna Really mess this up actually but So this is the video Can I do it without? Yeah The different versions of pay Vanda dot IR which contain a literature related to these laws and regulations Evolve as norms of what constitutes as filtered content becomes more entrenched with Iran from the inception of the very first version of the page Whereby users are told in the name of God according to the computer crimes act Access to this website requested is not possible. The message that users are viewing a censorship page is toned down in the next version Whereby users are only told that the links they are viewing are some of the registered links Within version 2 we also see the pay Vanda dot IR website creating pages related to internet policy The third version of pay Vanda dot IR Continues with the theme of religious references with a poem featured that states if you listen to the words of the poet Sadhi, he says he consents to require the consent of him Immediately to the right of this user see the text in the name of God and the merciful as if to subtly tell users that the censorship They are experiencing is by the will of God These religious references are continued in version 4 Whereby the main feature of the page is a changing image that makes references to national holidays and events Maintaining the theme of allusions to Shia Islam and national imams This image for instance depicts a mosque Marking the festival of imam Reza asking users to click on a link to submit ideas for the festival Version 5 of pay Vanda dot IR brings attention to the Islamic nature of censorship The links featured here are perhaps the most related to state propaganda in comparisons to the other versions While the previous version did not display any links all previous versions of pay Vanda dot IR Featured the popular Persian language blogging platform block va. However, this version omits the website The omission of the main image in version 5 makes it hard to establish a firm connection between the previous and following versions This finding is in line with the notion that archives of web pages are not always successful in capturing all of the content However, further research shows that this version still made use of images regarding Shia Islam the after the Green Movement internet controls in Iran from 2009 until 2012 report by the open-ed initiative has Captured and saved the version of pay Vanda dot IR as it was on the 25th of October 2012 This image features curianic writings the last two iterations of the website in version 6 and 7 are very similar in design The sudden change in design was explained by an anonymous source to make filtering more pleasant or Rather to appear as a subtle part of the Iranian internet experience Rather than one presented with indoctrinating aspects of the government The significant change that comes in version 7 however is the prominent feature of the internet policy links Concluding we can say that this historiography of the pay Vanda dot IR website demonstrates a timeline of the beginning of the heightened internet controls from the inception of the page in 2010 to the present day The changes in the page essentially demonstrate the evolution of the ways the Iranian state represents its censorship policies The notions of religious motifs decrease over time Whereas the focus on internet policy becomes more present by the last iteration of the page And that was that And as I struggle to go back to My presentation. Oh, I did it without any glitches. How exciting And so over the years there have been different programs that the government has kind of put into place beyond the censorship That they do things that I have been following through my own work have been the spider program Which comes from the Revolutionary Guards Garadab division the cyber kind of Iranian cyber division of the Revolutionary Guards and intelligent filtering the National Information Network and The different ways that the Iranian government has been trying to attack journalists activists and human rights defenders in terms of That's the attacking these kind of vulnerable individuals that pose a threat There's a lot of different projects article 19 had an Iranian cyber army report about this And there's been really great work to track this being done by the Campaign for Human Rights in Iran by their researcher Amir Rashidi and by two other researchers who've been tracking this with the Iran Threats project Colin Anderson and Claudio Griniere So there's tons of great research being done in terms of identifying these attackers The intelligent filtering Project that the Iranian government has been doing is something that I looked into with another colleague Frederick Jacobs in 2015 and basically at that time we were noticing that the Iranian government was making these really grand Statements that's the Ministry of ICT about how they had a sophisticated means to censor individual pages on different social media and Basically, this has been a old policy that they've wanted to do so sites like Facebook and Twitter were censored after the protest movement in 2009 actually in the lead-up to the protest movement they were censored and so for a long time Various members of the government have said they want to unblock these platforms and find a means to just censor individual pages or Problematic content and leave these websites open However, that's really hard to do unless the government has a relationship with these companies if they have a relationship with Facebook or Twitter And so back in 2015 they made a grand announcement that they had finally nailed it And they were doing this on Instagram and Instagram is one of the more popular social media platforms And so what we noticed was that the censorship intelligent censorship, which is just individual pages or Individual pictures or accounts being censored. It was only being done on the mobile app And the reason was that Instagram hadn't yet rolled out HTTPS on the mobile application it had Enabled it on the browser version of the website and so the Iranian government's great Grand unveiling of intelligent censorship was in reality Just Instagram not doing this. And so We found what kind of content they were targeting, which was really interesting kind of cultural research in terms of how censorship was working and then My colleague got in touch with Instagram and they soon rolled out the HTTPS on the mobile app and then Intelligent censorship came unraveling as the mother board of writer Lorenzo wrote Iran smart Instagram censorship isn't that smart and so that's just one example of these Grand policies that actually don't really add up to very much in terms of intelligent filtering The researcher Colin Anderson recently found This database of your URLs that different ISPs were giving to this Company called Sahab Pair does I can't talk too much about this But this was kind of a public notice he put out to ask anyone interested in this data set to see if this is actually another phase of intelligent filtering however the minister of ICT Did respond to this and said that they are not actually compromising users data And he condemned the work of this company Sahab Pair does which doesn't quite add up Which I guess helps illustrate how confusing Internet policy is in Iran like what are they actually doing where they what are they actually saying? How does it align with the laws and those kinds of regulations and 2016 Through the budget it was announced that Iran was spending about 66 million on the intelligent filtering project However, it's really unclear what that adds up to like what are the deliverables on this work that they're doing so Again, it's kind of like this chaotic quagmire of what's actually happening or not in terms of their ability to silence different voices in Iran they have been kind of targeting different users in different ways in 2015 2016 the Gerdup spider program was round rounding up series of models and people in the fashion industry in Iran that are quite prominently present on Instagram and While some of the Statements coming from Gerdup was saying that they had Technical hacking abilities what they were actually doing was arresting these models and Forcing passwords and getting their accounts that way But during that time, I actually got an Instagram request from one of these seized accounts Nikohang Clothing which you can see over there and you can see that Gerdup had taken it over Because there's a notice that saying because of such-and-such law this Account has been seized under the spider program and so that was happening for a while under this Again more actual physical takeover than technical sophistication of that kind of work another thing That's quite concerning that the campaign for human rights actually was the first report on was the Supreme Council of cyberspace requiring all telegram accounts to register with the government and so Telegram is hugely popular inside of Iran It's almost ubiquitous and it's often used as a social media application and so the public channels are Run by administrators and if you have more than 5,000 followers They basically needed you to register and get approval and by registering they would add a bot to the account And the bot could basically get information of the administrators and the followers Which was quite dangerous because last May when in the lead up to the presidential elections There was a roundup of telegram administrators that a lot of digital activists believe was through this registration program of having all of this personal data Excuse me in terms of the national internet project It's quite a contentious project in that a lot of people say that on one extreme It goes towards being like North Korea's intranet kind of closed off from the rest of the world. I Through my own work. I don't think this is what the Iranian government wants to do They do want to localize certain things like banking and different forms of infrastructure against cyber attacks like Stuxnet But in general what they want to do is keep data inside of the country so they can have access and control in Part of this project has been to create imitation versions of foreign companies. So Like I said, they couldn't Force Facebook or Twitter to censor things for them because they don't have a relationship But if they have local versions, they can effectively do this and so And they've come up with alternatives for things like Instagram with Lenzor, which you can see has a very oddly similar user interface But Oftentimes users inside of Iran don't trust these imitation apps. So usage amongst for like Instagram is always much higher than it is for the local alternatives one researcher a few years ago saw that the way that a Telegram Imitation app was implemented kind of traced how the data was going back to the government So there's generally a sense of distrust for this kind of work Throughout the year since 2016 this attempt to localize user content has really increased they put an ultimatum on Platforms that have not been censored yet like telegram and Instagram that they had a year to bring their servers inside of the country Or else it would be censored This obviously didn't work so in 2017 This past year they've been doing different things that kind of have basically added up to Net discrimination like they've been going against net neutrality values by offering incentives for people to Use local traffic access local traffic local platforms and websites over international ones and they've been giving million dollar incentives to developers to create apps and For example, if they got a million users, they would get a million American dollars for developing such a Such a platform Recently, we just translated and analyzed a new policy that's Forming into a law by the Supreme Council of cyberspace policy and action on organizing social media Messaging applications and this is just a set of rules For local apps and foreign apps that need to follow in order to operate inside of Iran Supposed to be a gift, but that didn't work So another point that's kind of come up over especially over the past year is how controls don't only come from the Iranian government, but they also come from abroad so Companies like Apple and Google in order to Comply and sometimes over comply with US sanctions. They've been denying certain services to Iranians So what has been happening? It has been Iranian app developers have been seeing their apps being rejected from the Google Play Store and the Apple the app store Mainly because they were providing Financial transactions over it and even things that weren't directly doing financial payments. We're getting blocked such as One particular app, which is kind of the uber of Iran called snap They were told to remove financial payments over the app or else they would get removed from the app store Once they did remove that it seemed that they knew that there was some sort of financial transaction Occurring offline and they still Remove that app from the app store just to comply with sanctions um there's also a kind of threat to other companies as The nuclear negotiations went through back in 2015. There's a lot of foreign companies going in There's been a huge influx of tele the telecom sector like Vodafone and Orange and Different companies like that going to Iran and there's kind of a fear that social media giants like Twitter and Facebook might find incentive to also go It's always good to keep pressure to For them to remain transparent about their dealings with Iran the new minister of ICT Recently said that he had started negotiations with Twitter to unfilter Twitter in Iran However, Twitter has refused to officially reply or say anything so the thing that I spend most of my time working on in terms of social media discourse is telegram because telegram is Kind of an exciting new territory and understanding social media especially in Iran because internet penetration and telegram Usage are almost on par. So there's about 40 to 45 million internet users inside of Iran and according to the company telegram There's about 25 million daily users and about 40 million monthly users So what this means for how people communicate how people are accessing information in Iran is huge Because oftentimes everything from shopping to staying in touch with friends to getting updates on the weather and traffic and news It comes from telegram and the public channels so understanding this and how How the government is responding to such an important Application for communication is also really important and as always it's become sort of a target For vulnerable at-risk users for example a number of journalists a few years ago. We're having their Their account sees through SMS brute force entry I mean through SMS logins they were able to get in and So there's those kinds of Concerns telegram has been kind of reactive to these security flaws When the journalists had their accounts taken over through the SMS hacks They did help we reinstate them a few weeks ago. There was a flaw in a notification That users got in Iran on telegram that hackers were able to sort of take over you can see in that picture over there and Telegram kind of reacted really fast and fixed the flaw, but the issue though a lot of Digital rights activists on Iran fine as that telegram is so important and it's so crucial to how a lot of Things operate inside of Iran yet. They're not really trying to prevent anything. They're being much more reactive So Yeah, there's also been concerns about how they interact with the Iranian government as well and however, telegram has kind of always made a Took taking a stand to say that they are not cooperating with the Iranian governments and But they they do say large Things boastful things that they stand for freedom of speech yet they have failed to really reach out to civil society and human rights activists for Iran and so There's a general kind of plea towards this platform that's so important for them to be a bit more cooperative And and prioritized These human rights concerns in Iran a little bit more I was going to slightly get into More security aspects of things, but I'll quickly go over it So obviously there's security concerns with telegram It takes up some of the work that I do at article 19 working with civil society and protecting them in that way So I'll just quickly go over it because I wanted to end on a particular note. So this is like a very Standard thing I'd like to say is you don't necessarily apply the same security Concerns to Iran that you would hear So just these grand statements of use signal use tour often don't work Telegram is hugely popular. So I often say why don't we work on making telegram safer because users are not going to migrate away from it Unless signal comes and creates a whole like infrastructure and platforms That's going to cater to those specific needs of being both social media and having the different usability features So that's really the last point. I wanted to take away with But I also just wanted to have one kind of message which is I am super privileged to be standing here and talking about this topic that I I'm really passionate about and I am Really grateful that I've had this opportunity since over the years to work on these kind of digital rights concerns on Iran and I've had certain personal hurdles in terms of without getting into the nitty-gritty of My personal life and the things I've had to go through but there's been this general kind of mood in the past year with the me-too movement and all these different stories of harassment and And Basically I've been really grateful to all the people who have supported me over the years to make sure that the hurdles I've had to encounter for the specific kind of Unfortunate personal events that took place that have affected my career To really help support me and when I was coming to Leipzig. I was super proud to be coming to the chaos computer clubs events and the stories I've been hearing about people who have been victims of harassment have really upset me and I Think it would be I would be remiss to not make a point of saying that I'm a little bit disappointed that I I've been reading these things and And While I really appreciate all of you and all the help you gave me to set up for my talk and I Appreciate that I've been given this platform, but I really hope we can do better because this is just not cool It's not cool for people to not feel safe, and I know how it feels personally and I Hope Dina I haven't seen her yet. I have chatted with her briefly. I hope she's having a great time at this Congress because And I'm really sorry to hear that some of some people that I think are doing great work and should be in the space or not here this year and I just hope we can do better in 2018 and That's about it. Thank you Thanks for your talk master Ali madani and for your patience with our technical problems. Thank you very much Please line up at the microphones. They are for microphones here in the room Please line up there. We have a couple more minutes for Q&A. You want to hold a Q&A? Yes, sure But first maybe there are the signal angels in the back. Is he waving or not? Are there any questions from the internet? No, nothing Okay, thank you There is someone standing at microphone three. What's your question? Hi? Thanks for your last statement really thanks a lot here My question would be about Instagram and Telegram I I don't know if I miss that part But does it mean that then the Iranian government has relationships with them because you mentioned that they help I mean they show these things so you've been blocked and this is because of this So why this why this happens and why is it only these two particular platforms? Like I understood that Twitter and Facebook don't cooperate if you could say more about that. Thanks yeah, that's a really great question and Something that's been really interesting So I think I mentioned that this new government the moderate Rohani administration Has kind of at least in terms of how it's positioned the words it says Has been a bit more open to internet freedoms and things like that And so I think one of the achievements of that government is stopping the censorship of Instagram and Telegram because there's a lots of hard line elements in the establishment that have wanted this to get censored and it's kind of like Come to deliberation to censor it over the years. There have been some rumors that telegram has been working with with the Iranian government although I Think that might be rumors because the Ministry of ICT every so often says that they have a direct relationship And then telegram comes and refutes it So yeah, that's up in the realm of rumors However, but I think it's mainly the work of this moderate Administration that's been able to prevent the censorship So they are in connection with Instagram No, they're as far as I know they're not working with Instagram. Instagram is owned by Facebook So Facebook is censored, but I mean there could be many different reasons, but these are all conjecture Instagram is just kind of more for entertainment So they have less of a reason to block it But also the work of this moderate administration to kind of keep Instagram going although for a short while during the elections They were blocking Instagram live because it was being used for like protests and gatherings and things like that Yeah Microphone number one, please Masa just wanted to thank you for your talk and also appearing persevering through all the adversity Not only of nation-state actors, but of also people inside the community that might a little bit closer to the microphone Please sure I just wanted to say thank you for persevering through all the adversity that has come your way and for being here today to Give this talk. It's important and vital and your voice is valued I have a question about Iran in a geopolitical landscape as it's exerting itself more and Yemen Lebanon rubs other places Do you see that the technology that's being pioneered by the state apparatuses the state bodies inside of inside of Tehran and in Iran? We'll have a trickle-down effect Into other countries that may replicate the oppressive Structures in which that Iran has as placed.  As Iran geopolitically exert its muscle. Well, do you see that some of these the technical sophistication and other things will Be picked up by other actors in the region. Yeah, that's a good question I am I think Iran would like to have the technical sophistication that would be replicated elsewhere and I guess in some ways The capabilities within the Iran cyber Iran cyber army, which is kind of very hard to associate Directly with the government because sometimes the affiliations are very loose They have certain capabilities, but in terms of like the technology I think for censorship and surveillance. I think Iran More models itself on the technology coming out of China and Russia because they have had more effective and more Sophisticated platforms and means of doing it. So I think it's a little bit the other way around Microphone number one, please Thank you for your talk you if I'm not wrong you mentioned some government supporters being arrested Is this correct? Do you see any kind of clash between the revolutionary guard or the religious power and the government the government? Yeah, absolutely. I mean after the nuclear negotiations the foreign minister Jevo Zerif who is like kind of a little bit Westernized he speaks perfect English and He had he has a huge fan base in Iran because he established the nuclear deal He had like almost physical confrontations in Parliament with the hard-line elements. So Yeah, there definitely is that and the reason why some of the telegram administrators who are actually supporters of Rohani Were arrested is because of this kind of clash between Hardline elements like the revolutionary guards and the more moderate administration. So there is this kind of yeah differentiation and nuance that happens I guess we're moving to the last question at MacGyffin number three, please Okay, I just want to ask a question What can we first of all? Thank you for your great talk is very well researched and great information and for your very brave proclamation What can we in the room do other than find your work? Can we put pressure on the companies? That you know work inside of Iran can we put pressure on the governments of the nations where citizens in like what's The next step for people who are listening and want to do something. Thank you Yeah, I mean especially if you're not American I think the Iranian government would be more open to hearing kind of the non-western perspective But I think like the reason why I think it's so important to be here in Europe is because Europe is actively engaging in Dialogue with Iran So if there's way to put pressure through the different companies that are going into Iran like like I mentioned There's you know the British Vodafone and like Francis orange that are going in if they can make certain demands for you know human rights Standards and things like that that would be that would also be really great I mean campaigning and putting pressure different ways through social media is always helpful the main thing that I think we could Perhaps have effect on is hopefully a company like telegram is listening and they can make The security and privacy of Iranians one of them one of their bigger priorities So that's really the place that I think can have The most change because we can't have more We can have easier dialogue with like Facebook telegram and all these different platforms to ensure that Privacy and security is upheld Awesome. Alima Danny. Thank you very much for the talk and please give her a warm round of applause


Hello and welcome to NewsClick. Today we have with us Harsh Mandar and Seema Mustapha. And we'll be discussing the debate about how the Muslims are slowly being rendered invisible in Indian politics. Seema you have written about this after the Gujarat elections that the Congress seems to have appealed for the Muslim vote but kept them out of either the number of candidates put up, the speakers who were there and even the Muslim leaders of the Congress not being visible. Do you think this is something that is far more insidious than simply targeting the Muslims which the RSS and the BGP are doing? Yes, in fact you know if you look at all the recent assembly elections after the BGP came to power at the center the regional parties as well as the Congress who talk of secularism have kept the Muslims away from the front lines. The Muslims themselves the voters tell you that don't ask us for anything. We are voting where we are voting because they are also very aware of the fact that if the Muslim even asserts his preference they are not going to, the voters will consolidate. And the Congress instead of fighting this is contributing to the RSS and the BGP's plan to push the Muslim away from the front by not fielding candidates, by not supporting, not allowing the Muslims to come out and assert their support it's like just tucking them away making them invisible. Harsh, you've written this piece which has generated quite a bit of controversy that other leaders have been saying the Muslims can come to the meetings but they should not carry the markers of their identity and this interestingly enough is something which some of the liberals have also sort of spoken about but no such demand is being made of the markers say of the ayangas who have the caste marks or shall we say other marks which are also there and this is becoming increasingly a Hindu identity assertion which we didn't see 30 years back for instance. We saw yesterday or day for yesterday this tablo which had even ragger in the tablo. So do you see that this retreat of the liberal to arguing for what would be called in French terms the secular ideals in which all religious identities are banned but essentially asking only the minorities to come without their identity? I think we're hurtling in that direction and so the piece that I wrote I really wanted to underline the fact that the BJP may have rendered the entire Muslim community politically irrelevant but it is secular political parties which are actually rendering them politically untouchable and cast away and it is a very conscious decision as Seema said I also wrote after the Gujarat election that it is so conspicuous even in Rahul Gandhi's speech it was a good speech he spoke about the other two crises that India is facing which is jobless growth and the agrarian crisis but he didn't talk about the rising hate and the targeting and the lynchings that are going on he talked about Oona but pointedly they didn't talk about the Muslim but there's a you know this council of despair and I've been attending many meetings as I wrote my article where Muslim friends sit together and they actually even they are saying that our presence if it polarizes let us become invisible almost as I said my article I said they're almost saying to save us abandon us and I think it is terrifying that people are even thinking about this seriously for many reasons one of them is that it is assuming that every Hindu is communal now we're already in a Hindu raster and we have to sort of you know negotiate our political and social spaces within a Hindu raster within a majoritarian consensus so I think that by accepting this logic you are actually reinforcing and becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy if instead secular political parties say that no I mean they should have the courage and you know Mahatma Gandhi is somebody I keep remembering I mean imagine a million people had died a million people had died in Hindu Muslim rights a Muslim country had been formed people were here in anger there were grief and in the middle of that you say no this country belongs in every way equally to Hindus and Muslims and his last battle was they had taken over the cannot place mosque and converted into a temple and he wanted them to be returned I mean I feel that that is the only way that we have to fight this battle right up front we cannot accept the logic of Hindutva and then try to negotiate which is what I am seeing secular political parties doing of course what the secular political parties are doing is one part do you also see the impact also the Muslim community for instance in Gujarat the retreat from public space but also therefore accepting the markers of the identity therefore shall we say also taking over the Muslim community by forces which would like a kind of secluded space where the Muslim identity is certain and political identity is not yeah I think you know also just before I answer that directly I think this assault on the Muslim community began even under the Congress and under Manmohan Singh where the intelligence network was used to target Muslims they were arrested innocent people in Hyderabad locked up beaten by the security agencies same in Maharashtra so this process of bastardizing the Muslim had begun and it has become of course under the right wing government and coalition today it has become much much worse the Muslims in this whole period of 15 years in particular have been completely rudderless you know and they don't know where to go to because what they depended on they've always voted for non-Muslims as the Muslim leaders and suddenly they're being told that you should have your leader who can speak for you there are the liberal Muslims why are others not speaking for you and they found themselves bereft, rudderless, without sanctuary and started then moving into all kinds of directions which also took the form of regression you know so if you go to Gujarat today and you go into the villages of Gujarat you will find hardly any women visible where the Muslim areas are and all the Muslim men with the identity markers because they feel that by asserting your identity you are somehow preventing it from being subsumed under the assault now that is the real issue are you or are you not is religious symbols a solution or do they become a problem in what is a very vicious circle of Communism that is being created you also have written recently about the Burqa which has drawn quite a sharp response from different people because of the shall we say the state of siege and partly the Ram Guha article what would you say that how do we fight this twin assaults one for making you Muslims invisible and the other for the regression of both communities including the Muslims see it's pretty clear to me I wasn't really I mean I think that what Ramchandra Guha said about Muslims not coming to rallies and their skull caps and Burqas is reprehensible and totally condemnable I was actually coming from another side of the debate which is an argument amongst women, Muslim women about the Hijab and about the Burqa and how valid it is in today's context or yesterday's context I think that all of us who have been part of women's movement and the secular movement have taken great very strong positions and trying to move Muslim women away from the Hijab and from the Burqa and from religious identity and move more towards empowerment so it was really my argument and what I've written is coming from that perspective I believe that you have to take you cannot mesh the two you cannot say that I will I'm going to fight for secularism as a Muslim or I'm going to fight for secularism as a Hindu you are going to fight for secularism as secularist it's a political ideology that you have to fight for I do believe that you cannot wear a tilak and saffron dhoti or a Burqa and a beard and a pajama and actually stand up for much more than your own identity and your own community That's an interesting question and I have to look to you for answer on that that is it possible for a Gandhi for instance who asserted he was a Hindu and yet was a secularist so the religious identity and the secularism in that sense is not a religion how do you negotiate this complexity of identity See on the last thing that Seema said I don't agree and I think all of us from the left have had a problem over time in dealing with people's religious beliefs I'm an agnostic but when you look back and it's important to remember in the freedom struggle that the two people who fought and sacrificed the most for the secular idea of India were Mahatma Gandhi and Maulana Naza deeply devout and Maulana had his dadis, he had his cap he was a very deeply practising Muslim but I think he's done more he and Mahatma Gandhi have actually the reason why India is a country where Muslims and Hindus and people of every faith live as equals the two people who fought most were religious states Savarkar was a self-professed atheist and Jain was a non-practising Muslim so I think we're getting confused it is not a battle I think that with your dadi and with your tiller you can still be deeply secular and without any markers you can actually be deeply... the worst in our drawing rooms I mean all of us go to Delhi's upper middle class drawing rooms and I see the worst communism in people who look very vain so I think let's do that but I wanted to make one more point in this discussion because we're talking about politics I think what secular political parties are doing is deeply worrying but I'm even more worried about secular civil society and let me unline that see what has happened in my opinion is that the last four years, it's the last 15, I think it's the last 25 which was the first moment of triumph for majority in Hinduism in this 100 year fight that they've been fighting since the formation of the Hindu Mahasabha and since then they never looked back they've gone from strength to strength but the last four years I think is a distinct phase because we have a leadership right from the very top who is legitimized hatred and prejudice in a way that is which is brazen Mr. Modi didn't ask Shambhulal Reger to go and hack somebody to death but he has created an environment where this kind of hatred has got legitimized within that I think a sense of fear that I see that has settled in the hearts and minds of Muslim brothers and sisters across the country, across class is something that is unprecedented and every friend is telling me the mother says, you know, don't reply salam alaikum on a train if I call you somebody should make out if there's an argument, never get into it never let people know that you're Muslim and this is really appalling that we have allowed our country to come to this path you know in the Karwan when we go out I've now gone to 10 states it's not just that they're attacking Muslims but the brutality with which they're attacking them and we came back from Bengal for instance these three Muslim boys were called up and they were called cow thieves they would return the bodies of their families got their bodies with their genitals stoned where is this hatred coming from? these are strangers so I think in this context what is civil society doing? and I'm finding that even civil liberties groups even progressive friends, comrades are hesitant in the end to be seen as defending Muslims and so in every state I'm finding I'm finding it difficult for people to come forward so I'm saying that the data shows 86% of people killed in lynching a Muslim and 8% are Dalit 6% are identity unknowns so it may be a little more so I will stand with Muslims and Dalits when I'm fighting against hate violence how can I not be standing with them? and so I think that there's a crisis we are living in these four years in a majority in consensus nearly Hindu Rashtra and if we accept the logic of it try to manoeuvre our progressive agendas within this I think we've already given up the battle I think on that note we're going to close this discussion thank you very much for watching NewsClick do keep coming to our website YouTube channel and our Facebook page


So, let's calculate the energy of the n equals 2 state of the hydrogen atom in Joules per atom. Okay? So, let's see if we can do that. So in order to do this, we have to use Bohr's equation. So, remember, E n equals negative R hc over n squared, and it said that the energy level of our hydrogen atom is n. So what is the energy level? Negative. So, again, I like to put them all together to where I can cancel the units out. So, the Rhyberg rule in this case, right? So hopefully you guys can see we can cancel out meters there, meters there, seconds there, seconds there, and we're going to get Joules, and this is Joules per hydrogen atom. So, a small value, okay, you would expect a small value from one atom or we'll say 5.45. We'll say it's set to three significant figures, because with these ones, the only significant figure is real. N is an integer, so that would be to n-hemp and number of signals per atom. And then there's another part of this equation that says, what is the energy in Joules per mole? Okay? So, let's just continue along with this. So I'm going to erase all of this down here. Is everybody okay with that? Joules per atom, right? So energy to 2 times 10. That'll give us a kilojoules per mole. What's about this one? Think, though.


As what I was saying, I don't know if anyone heard this before. We're looking at this session as more, less a presentation. I do have some slides and I'm going to be talking about them, but this is going to be more interactive. It's going to be a lot more talking to, talk of like hearing from you. We're going to tell you a little bit about ourselves, just so you're clear on what our group is. We would love to have you if this is, if this group sounds like something you'd be interested in. Absolutely. Please join us. Again, we'll tell you more about it. In the chat section, I've put my email address. So if you would like to be on the mailing list, please just email me and I'll be happy to add you. We also have a group page. It's a Google, share Google doc. That link is in the, that link is in the chat. And finally, we do have monthly meetings. It's the third Wednesday of each month at 2pm Eastern time. It's Zoom evening. And if you'd like to join us, we're open to everybody whether you're on the mailing list or not. Okay. So anyone has any questions, please ask in chat. Or if you feel, if you feel comfortable, please feel free to just speak up. So anyone have any questions before we get started? Actually, before we get started, my name is Sally Evans. I'm the coordinator of university dissertation and thesis services at George Mason University. I'm also a USCTDA board member. And I'm going to be talking to you today. Well, I'm going to be showing you slides today about our formatting industry. Anyone have any questions? Let me know. One second. This is kind of weird. I'm getting used to hop in. This is the first time I've really used it. And I'm real. I don't know if I can see chats while I'm doing a presentation. I don't know that I can. Okay. So can you all see my slides? Yeah. Good. Good. Okay. Yeah. So I might be doing this wrong. There may be a better way to do it, but I unfortunately cannot see chats right now. So if someone knows how to do that, I'm just not noticing. So before we get into anything else. Is there anybody out there who's having issues with issues in their job? If they're having specific challenges or problems, we would love to hear from you. So whether that is about specifically formatting or processes, et cetera. If you'd like to share in chat. Stacey, if I could ask you to look at either chat or Q&A because I can't see it because I have slide up. If anyone would like to share in chat or Q&A or absolutely please unmute and ask. We would love to hear from you because this is again, not a presentation. This is a talk. Anybody? I'd like to say something. It's really not a problem for us, but it was mentioned in one of our meetings in the past week or so. I think Larry brought it up about. So in the old world, we went from paper now to electronic. Everything had to be double spaced. And now some people are saying, you know, that's outdated. You should use single space. And I actually did some research, tried to do some research in a Google research. Is that what we all do to see if I can find any articles, subjects that I really couldn't find much. If I wanted to say, here's the research that says it's really better to read in, you know, single space because that's what journals are doing, whatever. I know we can come out and say, this is what others are doing. But I think it'd be great if anybody knows where there's some really solid research to back up when we want to present changes to our schools or our universities or our rules or formatting rules. Yeah, no, that's great. And that's great, Janice. That is something we have talked about in a limited capacity. That's not the right way to put it. We've talked about it in our group, and it's something that we've discussed a little bit, obviously, but I think really merits looking into it further from this point. I think it would benefit all of us. So thank you. Anyone else, any other issues you'd like to share, challenges, questions you're having right now? Sally, can you click on hide? There's a notice that says you're sharing your screen, but you can click on it where it says hide. Oh, right there. Okay. Okay, I clicked hide. There. Now we can see your captioning. There we go, jerks. Okay. No, you're not jerks. I'm angry with you. Okay. All right. Thank you. So anybody else, any other, any challenges, questions, et cetera? Hi, this is Terry. Can you hear me? Yeah. Hi, Terry. I'm following up on what Janice was talking about. It's occurred to me because I've often looked like, should we be using serif instead of sans serif font, et cetera. And since I think the guidelines that I would follow would be for accessibility, right? And so the majority of folks are reading, you know, articles and ETDs online. And so what produces the most accessible and best reader experience? Regardless of whether or not, you know, they're using a screen reader, just a simple act of reading online is really very different from print. And so that's what I would look at. Yeah. Yeah. No, that's a good point. Do you have a point on the chat to talk about accessibility because it seems like a lot of consideration. You're kind of breaking up, Stacey. Yeah. It's, yeah, they're friends. And we were a little crackly moments today. Okay. So if anyone else, if no one else has anything that they'd like to share, I'd like to tell you a little bit more about our group and then we can open it up for further discussion or questions. So I don't know about you, but I know that a lot of the people who are in the group now and a lot of people we speak to at our conference are kind of in the same boat that I'm in. Often we wear a whole lot of different hats.  And you may even know what they're talking about, but they have no idea, you may know what they're talking about, but they have no idea what you're talking about. Do you have problems or issues in your position that nobody around you seems to understand or care about? You have daily issues, you need help, but your people have no idea what you're talking about or they just don't care. And finally, do you despair of ever fixing your latex template? I do. So if you're suffering from any of these issues or anything similar, the USETDA formatting users group is here to help. So Sally, there is something in the Q&A. Okay, great. If you don't mind reading it to me. Happy to. It's from Roxanne. We are currently dealing with an issue of whether to have separate formatting requirements for monograph and multi-paper format thesis and dissertations. Oh, that's a really good experience with this issue. That's a great question. Anybody want to share? I can share a little bit. We allow multi-paper formats and our requirements are pretty low except every time there is a new paper in this multi-paper document that has to have a statement that they have the permission to use this as part of their document because sometimes these articles are previously published in a journal somewhere. So we have some minimum formatting and then they still have to follow whatever style guide is recommended by their department and their college. But we have just a little bit of a standard that they have to have a statement that they have permission to use this. And this is at Birmingham University. You have to be careful when you're using published journal articles, for example, because many of the journals will very carefully state that you must use a submitted version. You cannot keep the copy and paste directly from journal information because that's their value product. In other words, that's what they really, when they have a copyright, that's what they're interested in preserving. That's their format. And they don't want you using their format. And so you can get in big trouble if you copy and paste directly from a journal. So I've warned students about that all the time. You can use your last submitted version that you submitted to the journal that was accepted, but you cannot take it directly from a journal, either the graphics or the tables or the text. I've personally had the inverse of what Larry's talking about. Where students have documents, I mean, once they've published them, if they've already been published, they're not quite papers or under consideration, that they're already published. And let's say the publication that the document is in is their format is dual column single-spaced link text. And the journal or whatever says, this is exactly what it always has to look like, period. Students will want to, you know, ever. You can reprint it, but this is what it has to look like every time you reprint it. So what I tell students, and I don't know if anyone else has this issue, is anything that you put in the body has to adhere to our formatting guidelines. Anything in the body of your dissertation or thesis from chapter, from the first word of chapter one to the last word of conclusion or whatever has to adhere to our rules. You can, if you have a document that you want to include, but it has to stay in the formatting of that, of the journal or source, that's fine, you can include it, but it has to be an appendix. It cannot be a chapter. If they will not let you, if they will not let you just use the original text and reproduce it as a chapter, then absolutely you can include it, but it's not going to be considered a chapter. You know, I started thinking about inclusion of previously published information. And even information that hasn't been published, but what I'm seeing in student work now is that when they provide an ETD, each chapter will be almost a standalone publication in some journal once they're finished. Yeah, I think that might be... The only thing I tell them is you can't put the abstract in there because we only allow one abstract in the manuscript. So they can't do that. We say you've got to take the abstract out and you've got to tie everything together. I started thinking about that earlier day during one of the meetings and I'm just wondering if we either should require this to be put in an appendix rather than as a chapter within the main body of the manuscript itself or maybe a supplemental data, especially if it's previously published. And then they refer to it directly in their manuscript whatever happens to be in there that they need, whether it's a graph or a table, no matter what it is, they could refer to it directly and it would sure save a lot of hassle in the main body of the manuscript in terms of placing figures in tables, which is a real bugaboo for a lot of students. No matter what they use, whether it's Word or Latech or no matter what it is, easier in Latech, but in Word it can really be a mess. Yeah. I switch down to this slide so I can actually see people. But no, I think, and it's anyone else, any other experience that they're having with either formatting, document, Terry, go ahead. Oh, I just wanted to ask who is actually creating the guidelines or rules or policy on the inclusion of manuscript chapters? You know, at University of Toledo, it's the Graduate Council and the Executive Graduate Council that determines everything from the format to what is able to be included and a lot of that is actually, it reverts back to that particular college or department or faculty member to make the determination of whether or not they can include the manuscript chapter. We have an ETD advisory committee and that committee, since we're made up of five faculty members and five students are voting members and their advisory to me is the director of the ETD program. And so we take issues that we develop within the advisory committee and if the vote in the advisory committee is positive, we take that information to the Graduate Studies Council and then the Graduate Studies Council either approves or disapproves. I've yet to have them disapprove anything that the advisory committee would approve. So that seems to work very well for us. And it gets students involved in the ETD process early because they're really involved with, and I'm having students scramble to try to get onto that committee right now. I've got a waiting list for students to get on the committee. So it's working very well in that respect. Thank you. I just wanted to add that I pasted in in the chat our guide for theses and dissertations and on page 24 is where you find out information about compiling articles as a dissertation. And it's similar at UF as well. We go to the Graduate Council if we need to make changes. Right. Yeah. For us, for the purposes of just my job and for what my job encompasses, I tell students all the time, your document can say, your actual document can say literally blah, blah, blah for 200 pages if that's what you want. If your committee approves blah, blah, blah for 200 pages, that's fine. It just has to be formatted correctly. So for me, what is actually in the document itself? So Larry was saying that it can be in like three completely discreet documents that aren't chapters and may sort of incidentally refer to one another or not refer to one another but refer to topics that the others are discussing. But they're completely separate manuscripts. It's not a traditional dissertation or thesis the way we've seen it for a long time. And I tell our students, we actually allow them to, for each individual chapter, they can have an appendix for each chapter. They have to have an overarching appendix for the whole thing that says in this dissertation, I will discuss blah, blah, blah, whatever. But for each chapter, they're allowed to include the chapter for, I mean, I'm sorry, for each individual chapter slash manuscript, they're allowed to use the abstract for that. That's just us. I think we also allow that. In fact, if there's more than one article, each article could be about a different topic and an abstract is helpful in telling you what you're going to learn there. And we've taught our students to, if you're going to have more than one abstract, in the bookmarks, you can't just use the word abstract. You have to say, you know, abstract one. You re-label it so it's helpful to the user who's going to be reading it online. Yeah. I find that really surprising. We're like Larry where we even require them to tie those articles together. So they have to have kind of an overarching theme of what pulls them into one study and what makes them one bound body of work. So it, and this is a prime example of what we kind of do in this group. I mean, this is, this is what we do every month. And, you know, it's great. It's great to find out how different we all do things. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, I'm going to quickly share. So that's, that's a good point. I'm just going to bring this one slide up really fast. I unhid because it was kind of not making any sense. Okay. So share one second. Okay. So I'm going to share this for a second. So hopefully you can see my slide. Now it says who are we. And like Stacy was saying, this is what we do. Let me get rid of this. This is what we do the, and I can give us a little bit more history later, but we are at our monthly meetings, which are set for an hour, but that's a, that's a very fluent setting. So we do have a lot of meetings. We do have a lot of meetings. We do have a lot of meetings. Sometimes it takes us 30 minutes to get done sometimes.  So it's, you know, but you're of course welcome to drop out whenever you would like to. We understand people have lives way beyond this. So yeah, it's usually there about 45 minutes long. That's pretty normal. But we just get together, discuss issues we're having. People throw out questions just like rocks and it. You know, you can't say anybody helped me with that.  So like I said, we meet every month. I put the zoom link and the information in the chat. colleagues from various schools who are members of the group who have come and given presentations about their processes, talked about issues they're having. When ProQuest was bought out by Clarivate, we had Austin McClain and Jillian Smith from ProQuest come and speak to us and tell us more about the situation and take questions and answers and that was very helpful for us and hopefully for them too. So that's what we do. These are like recent discussions, presentations we've had about accessibility and we are that's a big question that's come up and we're going to address that more in the future. Format standardization which that's sort of what we're talking about now and also modernizing formatting rules and that's what we were talking about earlier you know with the Janice brought up with single space versus double space. Digital ETDs that is the most unclear thing I've ever typed in my life. It means like born digital dissertations that are almost entirely online so that it's like the dissertation itself is not the item the online material is the item. So this is it's been very helpful for me at least I can I can speak for myself and anyone else please jump in. I've gotten help with a like a word issue that I was having I could not fix this problem with the table of contents and a colleague was able to help me fix this bizarre problem. I am I've spoken with I have I just had a meeting and we'll be having meetings about a ProQuest issue it's not it's not a ProQuest issue it's it's an issue that my my school is having with a crosswalking problem but I was able to find people who could help me when I couldn't find anybody who could help me at my own university. So that's why we're here. This we're going to go back to the discussion in a second but our Google doc the link is in the is in the chat if you would like to join the mailing list again please email me my email address is in the chat. We welcome anybody and everybody I think we have about gosh four year 50 people in the group if you have a colleague that is not part of USETDA the benefit from this first see if you can get them to you know come to USETDA it's a lot more helpful than people outside of our field think it is. Also if you think that they would be interested not so much directly in ETDs but in the conversations we have especially about like scholarly commons or technical issues with word absolutely if they would like to join and be on the mailing list that they'd like to attend please pass our info on. I'm going to unshare this. I also think it's a good place if you've got something that's a really good practice this is a good group to share this with. I know when our university went from optional ETD to requiring ETD I sat down with my colleague we just looked at a bunch of different universities how they formatted and we just made up our rules as far as what was on the title page and we learned a lot from everybody who was already out there you know a few years ahead of us and if you guys have great things you do for you know teaching or training you know share them with the rest of us so that we can copy your content you know. Absolutely I need I don't know if actually Messersmith is here today but I need to talk to her about overly stuff but actually if you're here I'm going to be emailing you next time next week. Yeah Janice is completely right this is if you're especially if you're either a school that is not electronic but hope to be there or as we work when I first joined US EPA if you're partially electronic then then you want to make the whole jump this would be a good place for you and already so if you know anyone any colleagues at other schools that either are not electronic at all or are trying to get there or partially there this is a good place to go so they can see you know either a see how great someone did it be use them as a as a teaching tool what not to do. Sally there's a comment in the chat that asks do you have a recording of that merger talk with Austin and Jillian? I do. Is that in the Google Doc? It's in the Google Doc. Oh hey Ashley. Oh sorry for some reason. Yeah, Gw I do and you can if you go to our Google page the share group doc if you go to the share group doc the chat with Austin is there I I'm gonna have to look and see I believe I might may have specifically named it as that but if not I'm gonna go I can go check in a second so yes I do have that. And just one last thing. Yes John if you John if you could please post the ProQuest video please do that would be great thank you. I was just gonna say that this group is very much a believers and open access sharing too so that's what I have found has been like Janna said go ahead and steal our texts go ahead and use our templates I think we've always shared amongst this group and that's that really helps all our institutions raise higher learning. Yeah it's helpful for a lot of people especially if you're at a public institution that doesn't have any money it's really helpful to get free things shared from colleagues who are there to help. Any other questions we especially want to hear from anybody who is who has not been to our session especially if you're having issues if there is something you'd like to talk about we're sure welcome to come to our upcoming sessions. Exactly, exactly. One second Janice you're kind of breaking up. Janice if you would use the Q&A and type in your statement. Sorry I'm catching up on the chat and I clicked on the wrong thing but we've found it really really valuable I'm probably in the next couple of months I ask a question both on the EGD listserv and within our group about an issue I was having about on-campus access and I mean sometimes all you sometimes you need true help you don't know where you don't know where to go other times you need a sounding board you need to find out is what I want to do or what I'm thinking normal and if in asking people to do this am I asking am I being ridiculous or if I don't ask people to do this is that ridiculous in a different way so sometimes it's just good to as I start with one slide it's nice to have people who understand what you're talking about. I actually have a question is anybody thinking or contemplating if you have templates about changing your templates so they need accessibility requirements. That's a great question Valerie and I think that's anything anyone has to say today great that's something that I think we should definitely tackle up in the next session in the future. Is anyone and is anyone beyond beyond thinking about it which I think we all either are or should be is anyone taking any has anyone taken any steps toward it yet and if so that we would love to hear from you when we would love for you to come and tell us about it. Cool so looks like Monica and Lily are thinking about it GW has planning it for our next ETD committee meeting yep Erica great. We have a question in the chat for schools that are using word templates to facilitate submission what has been the greatest challenge for students to properly use the template are there certain word template areas such as preliminary pages word main body text bibliography you that they consistently run off course and need to be a re-thrack good or yes I mean yes. Hey Sally can I interrupt real quick Stacy I need to borrow you at what 5.25 I'm gonna hop over to the stage for the poster presentation but if you can hang out here for a little bit longer but we need you to moderate and I sent you a direct message if you're not sure so okay thanks bye go ahead so yes I saw you as a message thanks but that's a great question Ron and doesn't what anyone like to speak to that first again for schools that are using word templates to facilitate submission what has been the oh okay great what has been the greatest challenge for students to properly use the template for run in my experience and this is this and this this is actually one of those perfect example of what we do the issue that I often see we have a biography at the end of our at the end of our theses and dissertations it's students are welcome to say whatever they'd like but but it's a required page and that's the most common thing that gets deleted and I don't I need to make this much more clear at our directions clear apparently clearly I do because like students who are in the English Department and I say this isn't as a former English student freak out because they don't have anything to put the list of equations but then delete the biography without even thinking twice about it they don't even ask should I have this do I need to have this meanwhile they're like should I just put an E equals MC squared no but put your biography back in and say something so that's that's the big issue we have pagination also is an issue but it's that's mostly just not following directions and I see there's a question in Q&A if anyone else has any like input about like word yeah Larry is going to talk about overly right great thank you yeah we definitely want to hear about overly chat though thank you Ron any other questions thanks easy oh and where we have about eight minutes left I was gonna share this with folks one second let me get back into here feel free to if anyone has anything they'd like to ask about any questions they'd like to raise I'm just pulling something up real fast that's a really good point GW says word is a lot less power user friendly than it was last century oh that's a Janice that's great my response to questions about signature pages is why have them in the document at all oh I agree I think they're archaic and ridiculous I think they're I think they're ritual for this for ritual sake and I like rituals as much as the next person but if if I can click a button online that says yes I'll pay you hundreds of thousands of dollars to buy a house surely I can say yes your dissertation is okay we don't use them at GW anymore yeah they're just well I'm at Mason I'm I'm this has been going on for a few years and COVID kind of got in the way of it but we're trying to move away from using signature sheets at all we're trying to fully automate that's way far down the road but yeah I well oh and actually GW says we're considering removing them from all of our digitized dissertations we actually don't like these signed signature sheets we don't share them online that I mean in the past there are some older ones that in the past like they all were but then every now and then one ends up there that's a long story that won't bore you with but yeah so Sally what we did was we replaced that signed signature sheet with what we call a certification page it just says that the school certifies blah blah blah and then they just list the committee members mm-hmm yeah what we do is we actually generate a Google form and all of the committee members and the mentor go into the Google form and it's password protected so they're the only ones that can get into it oh that's great they provide their pool and we just copy that approval and it goes directly into Google document and we put the Google document that goes into the file yeah so that's I but our school and this is just a quick anecdotal thing our school is very new George Mason has been around since about the 50s or 60s it's very very new and right now and I don't know if anyone else has this I would love to hear from them but on call on signatures and sheets depending on the college in school and within Mason they have signatures for the program director and or department chairperson and or Dean so they have like the Dean at least one Dean has to sign every signature sheet that comes through it like per their college and I understand why it was that way in the beginning because it was very small school and oh yes definitely actually it's important work for physical signature requirements I want to get rid of them all together but I won't put them online so but yes and we should definitely list committee member names absolutely Roxanne Lilly SC also signatures in the ETD correct great that's excellent but with us I think people started doing it in the beginning because it was you know this nice idea of having a communal experience and the Deans are you know very involved in your work and in your study and that's that's great when the school had like 6,000 people but we're now the largest public school in the state of Virginia and we're bigger than Virginia Tech and UDA so not together but that would be huge that'd be like Ohio University or Ohio or Ohio State but we yeah like we're a big school and it just doesn't make any sense that the Dean of the College of Science has to sign like 50 signatures years for especially for thesis and dissertations he's never or she's never going to see beyond just like maybe maybe reading the title so I want to get rid of them all together maybe that's maybe that can be our like viva revolution within our group get rid of signature sheets that's a really tough one yeah yeah and I don't know why everything is electronic now you just click on yeah but again I think it's ritual for ritual sake sure yeah and it I mean it's in some ways I know it's it's a nice idea but I I just I mean again like others are saying ruining physical signature replacements due to fraud issues absolutely um yeah it's I I would love to get rid of them I would be thrilled if they would if I could make that decision on my own at least from Mason they would have been gone in 2012 the like the first year after I started because they're ridiculous and I mean that for everybody it's not just ours approve it yes sign it who cares so any these are great any other questions comments et cetera or or jenna says our online system allows for approvals within the system and the department of college and the department and college approvers have to be authenticated by law and yes exactly I mean you have to be authenticated somehow I mean to do anything to look at stuff to look at specific materials within the library system to your time sheet whatever yeah no I I think that's a really great point I don't know why this is so hard I don't know why it's so hard to just say yes why you can do all of that other but you can't click a button that says I approve yes yes no more papers or chasing signatures Allison do you have a question just a comment can you hear me yeah okay well and sometimes it's it's at least in my institution because we're just kind of getting off the ground with um and with an ire um sometimes it's it's difficult to convince the departments to go away from the old way they're so used to doing things that it's it's kind of hard to convince them to um go completely electronic or still continue to submit bound versions of their of their work so what we and okay I'm sorry I just realized um we have about one minute left but I'm going to put this in this is I'm putting in a um if anyone wants to keep talking about this I would be more than happy to um I am putting in a zoom link to the absolutely totally unofficial unofficial uscgda um non-related uh happy hour chat about what we've been talking about if anyone has any further questions that they would like to discuss uh if you have um issues that were not that were not um discussed here please absolutely join our zoom meeting the link is in the chat so I'm starting that now so if anyone wants to keep talking about this come on over if not have a great rest of the day so uh last minute thank you all for being here today we hope to see you in further meetings again if you want to join our if you want to join the um group list please just please just email me ask me to add you and I will be happy to and thank you to all of our what I call the founding members of the uscdda um formatting users group thank you to our always active members who are there and thank you to Larry Janice and Valerie for being here on the panel as well today and thank you to everyone for your excellent questions again what you're talking to you thank you thank you guys have a good rest of the day bye


Hey everyone, it's Gabrielle with Oxmerotic Group. I'm here today at Oxmer Toyota for our Facebook use vehicles of the week now this week I picked out three Pre-owned trucks to share with you guys. So we're gonna go over some detail on this first one now. This is a certified pre-owned It is a 2010 Toyota Tundra. It is a limited Now the exterior color is called Pirate Micah. So the vehicle has 18 inch alloy wheels This is a TRD off-road. It has a package. There is heated leather seating is four-wheel drive That interior color is a sand beige So the mileage on this one is 61,311 which is extremely low for a 2010 and the price is 25,271 Moving on to our second This is a 2016 Ford F-150 XLT Now the exterior color is called race red has that black racing stripe This vehicle does have alloy wheels. There is a panoramic sunroof Also has the running boards. There is Bluetooth. There's the back-up camera This vehicle does have a clean car fax that interior color is black Mileage is 20,057. The price on here is 35,995 for our last vehicle This one's a 2016 Ram 1500 SLT big horn The exterior color is in a black This vehicle does have running boards There's the trailer tow mirrors, which are the more extended mirrors on the side Vehicle does have Bluetooth. Back-up camera also has a clean car fax. That interior color is black Mileage on here is 36,918 The price is 29,000. If you guys have any questions, please feel free to let us know. The best phone number is<PHONE_NUMBER> Also, make sure to check out our new express store on our website, which is oxmortwayota.com I'll have a link to each one. I just went over in the comments. Thanks guys, and we'll see you all soon. Bye Thanks for watching


Welcome to another episode of NAME YOUR PRISE! There we go. Yes! Join on in. Welcome, please. As per usual, there's a lot of seats up front. Together in... That's right. I believe it's time, though, to introduce our first guests. Here we are. Oh, look at them. They're so enthusiastic. Oh, yeah. Oh, yes, look at them. Look at them. They're so happy to be here. Oh, my God. Hey, don't all smile at once, folks. I mean... Yes! All right. Schlatt, what do you think? You're muted, Schlatt. S-Van, what do you think? S-Van. Schlatt, you're muted. Oh, God. Use your hands, boys. They're in an OTK meeting. Give them a sec. S-Van, unmute your microphone. Oh, no, I was just doing that. Oh, okay. We're out of applause. There we go. Uh, okay, so... What was the question? What year... What year and month did this package expire, S-Van? You won't wait for me, Zao. You won't wait for me, Zao. I think that it expired on November of 2002. Was that a reference to Jackie Chan Adventures by the way? November 2002. The correct answer was... What AD? Was May 2002. You were very close. S-Van, 20 points. That's right. Schlatt, are you there? Schlatt. Schlatt. Schlatt. Schlatt. S-Van. And Schlatt. Schlatt. Mez. No, I'm here. Oh, okay. Blank if you're... Blank it.  Oh, Schlatt disappeared. All right, all right, all right. Oh, he's back. PogChamp. PogChamp, round of applause. Schlatt, can you hear me? Schlatt. Schlatt. Schlatt. Schlatt. Schlatt. Schlatt. Schlatt. Schlatt. Schlatt. I think Schlatt's aspect ratio just went back to 30. Schlatt. Schlatt. Schlatt. Schlatt. Schlatt. Oh, now I'll answer. Oh, now he's going to leave. Mez, come on, get over here. Schlatt. All right, moving on. We'll just lock in. Oh, there he goes. Okay, there he goes again. You know what? Let's take a quick break. We'll be right back. We're going to fix Schlatt. We'll be right back. One second. Schlatt. Schlatt. Schlatt. Schlatt. Yes, we can hear you. No, we can't.  I thought we had audio. Wait a minute. Hold on. No. Something else is going on. No. Nothing's going on. It looks perfectly normal to me. Are you sure? Everything looks absolutely normal. Everything looks great, doesn't it? That's right. Doesn't that look, I mean, it looks, I mean, there's nothing different to me, right? I don't remember Miz give being that handsome. Neither do I. He looks hot. Doesn't he? How you doing, Miz? Oh, I'm good, you know, just running out of decay and stuff. We got a new merch coming out. It's great. That's him. All the time. You just show your org.  Oh, what do you do as fan? You're just sitting there. Not even saying anything all day. Yeah. How is the FIFA earlier as fan? You know, it is what it is. It was good. I liked it a lot. It was a short stream about 15 hours. It wasn't really my long one, but I'm happy. You're really phoning in this impression right now. Miz give, I love your hair. Oh, thanks, you know, it's I'm doing something different with it because I saw Hassan do something and I'm trying to copy whoever. Oh, yeah. Anytime I see somebody bigger than me do something, I just want to copy them. Hold on. What are my monitors not working? Oh, yeah. Oh, why is that? What are you going to? Oh, hold on. There's another only fans girl that's coming in. Let me go get the door. Oh, okay. Oh, never mind the door. The door is already open. The door is already open. They can just walk in at a moment's notice. All right. Sure. Yeah. Miz give what what new content you have coming up? No, no, no, not Espan. Not Espan. Miz give me this. No, no, no. This is the problem with Espan. Anytime Espan comes on a show, he cannot stop talking. He's trying to talk for every single person. It is so annoying. He's funny.  But sometimes he talks a little bit too much.  And I love you so much. And honestly, what you did at Horseshoe Bay was one of the best artworks I've ever seen in my entire life. Yeah. I mean, I know it was great. It really was. And you know what? I love that we built two houses right next to each other. But I wish my house was as good as yours. I really do. I wish my house was as good as yours. It is a little bit better. I wish your house was as good as yours. Yeah.  I'm glad we have a mutual respect there. Wait. No, you're actually a good guy. I actually like you a lot. All right. Now let's take a moment of self-reflection. Mizkiff, if there's something you could improve about yourself, what would it be? All right, that's fabulous. Let's start with you. I did a better headset. Oh, yeah. For sure. Mmm. Was that a question? What would you improve about yourself, Mizkiff? Maybe, you know, maybe tell my friends I would appreciate them more sometimes. Yeah. Because sometimes I have some friends that are really, really helpful and nice. And you know, they really do a lot for me. But you know, I don't really show that I appreciate them enough. This one's cutting real close to the bone, isn't it, Mizkiff? All right. I'm fine. I don't have emotions. Hang on a moment. Schlatt! Schlatt! Schlatt! Can you hear me? Yes! Yeah! All right. Let's bring out the next item. Here we go. Bring it on out. Ladies and gentlemen, it's a bottle of cough medicine. That's right. Oh, baby. I'm hearing double. It's all right.  Damn it. It's the best we can do. Let's put it on the commercial break. All right? Yes. Oh, Mizkiff, in honor of our unboxed cough suppressants, you're going to unbox one of those video games right now, aren't you? Oh, I would love to. But here's the thing. This is more expensive than your house. Oh, okay. All right. And I have about 20 of them. Why don't you just pop one out of the box for us? Yeah, come on. Unbox one of them for us, huh? I'd love to. I'd love to. Just pop it out of that box right there. Come on, right? Pop it out of the box. All right. Yeah, let's pop it out of the box, Mizkiff. I don't know how to open this thing. Oh, too bad. Too bad. All right, Mizkiff, what's the price? Excuse me. What year did this expire? Year and month. Well, I didn't hear anything you said. Sorry. My mic wasn't working. What did you say? Mizkiff, do you want to guess? I didn't ask Mizkiff. When will this expire? What year and month? Oh, yeah. Sorry. I was listening. Sorry. I was thinking about it. Yeah, I think it probably expires October. 19th. 1998. October. 1998. Okay. Take a look. Take a look. Here it is. Looks kind of good as new to be completely honest with you. Looks very new. All right. Yeah, but here's the thing. Here's the thing, Austin. You have to realize when I was a kid, my mom would always come over. And whenever I was six, she would always bring me Vicks vapor rub. So that's how I know. 1998. Yep. Yes.  S-Man. S-Man. What's your guess? Was that cough syrup? Yes. I'd probably say the best year ever for everything. And cough syrup's a great thing. It was probably November of 2004. Now, S-Man and Mizkiff, if you were to switch bodies back... Do you mind if I stream during this? No. Look, please, S-Man. I would prefer nots, okay? I'd prefer nots. Stop. Come on. We're streaming for eight hours. Look, S-Man and Mizkiff, do you guys want to switch places or do you want to stay like this? Stay like what? Never mind. Never mind. All right. Let's bring out the next item, ladies and gentlemen. It's a jar of peanut butter. Oh, it's minx. That's right. No, it's not minx. It's not the next item. Oh. Okay. As good as that 44D look, this looks equally bad. Look at this peanut butter right here, folks. Take a look at this. Take a look at that. Oh, my goodness. Look at that. Can I go first? You can go first, S-Man. Go ahead. Yes, you may. Peanut butter is one of the greatest things I've ever seen in my entire life. So I'm probably going to guess November of 2004. November 2004. Wow. That's right. November 2004. Very good guess. S-Man, what do you, or Mizkiff, what do you think? I think November 2004 is good, but I had a friend in high school and what he did was he actually had a dog and he took some peanut butter. Long story short, it was the same exact peanut butter. Oh, yeah. So it was. So I'm going to guess it probably October. No, January 2007. January 2007. All right, Schlatt. That's 2.2. You got the last one. You know, I would just remind you guys, I've never even heard of the brand J-F-G. No, it's an airport. Oh. That's JFK. That's right. Good one, S-Man. Are they through? I can't hear either of the other contestants and the music is so loud I can't even hear myself now. I wonder if there's some kind of bit going on. No. Wait, who are you? Like completely wrong answers, but I think I know that one. I think I saw this in the supermarket aisle earlier on April 7th, 2022. Wait, wait, wait. You're going to guess this expires in a few days. You know, it's already been expired. Well, that's today. Oh, it did? That's today. Oh. It's already expired. Then probably like, I don't know, this looks like it's from the 70s. Give me anything in 1970. Okay, you need to give me a year. December 1970. Final answer. Final answer.  Actual expiration date, October 12th, 1982. October 12th, 1982. Yeah, Slats, keep telling me everything you're telling me. Slats, the print of the troll's on right now. Do we have a timer or a stopwatch in the control room? Do we? Okay, this is a bonus round and this one is worth 10 points. Okay, this is what we're going to do. I need you guys to guess how long it's going to take for Ms. Kiffin S-Fan to switch places and close. The closest to the correct answer will get 20 points. Wait, why would we do that? That's weird. That's weird. We don't even live right next to each other. I thought it was a good idea.  Go ahead.  Let's bring out the next time. Hey, out that next item. You desperately want them to switch places and they're not going to do it. You know what they say in improv? Yes, no. That's what they tell you. Wait, Austin, question. Yeah, go ahead. Do you want me and Ms. Kiff to switch places? Yes, I did, but yes. No, dude, I don't want to do that, man. I wanted you to switch, but that's okay. This is my day off. Hey, Ms. Kiff, can we get that iconic fake laugh out of you before we move to our next product? There it is. Oh, not you, S-Fan.  This, ladies and gentlemen, is a jar of mayonnaise. The plastic quality seal on the lid is intact. Take a look. Oh, my God. Kind of like minks. Oh, my God. Look at the plastic here. It looks like my yeast infection. Oh, my God. Ms. Kiff. I would say, I mean, this is hard, right? This is hard because I remember whenever I was a kid, my dad would come home from work and all my friends in the neighborhood would always come over and my mom would make my dad and me and my friends all sandwiches after we'd come in from playing outside. So this is the same exact mayonnaise that was on the sandwiches that she would use. So I'm going to guess it was actually February 1978. 1978. Wow. And, S-Fan, your last one was expired. Can I ask you a favor, S-Fan? Could you give us your answer as your classic GTA-RP character, Cornwood, please? Well, yeah, sure I could. It's me, Cornwood, over here. I'm just going to say, listen, when I was a kid, my mom used to use this mayonnaise right here, you see, to make me sandwiches when I was younger. And I would have to say all the kids around the block, you know, we would all get together. We would have some mayonnaise and some sandwiches, you know, it's really good stuff. I'm going to have to go with, if I'm going to go with something right here, November of 1980. I don't think that happens. Wow. November of 1980. Cornwood right there. And guess what, S-Fan, you are amazing, because you just got 20 points. Wow. That's right. There you go, S-Fan. 20 points. I'm sure date, February 1st, 1991. When we come back from our short break, ladies and gentlemen, S-Fan and Ms. Kiff are going to switch places. We'll be right back. Natty Austin's mad at us. Hey, everybody. Welcome back. Welcome back.  What's up? I don't know. Welcome back. S-Fan and Ms. Kiff. Nothing's changed, folks. Nothing's changed.