Hello everyone, I'm Jonathan Erkenbrock. I have the pleasure to introduce my colleagues in the School of Law this evening, and I'm really pleased that you joined us. I think this is going to be really interesting. I'm going to share my PowerPoint with you now. And to help us to talk a little bit more about the School of Law and its particular characteristics because I'm very excited about this law school that I work with. It's an extremely close knit community. I have a deep knowledge of the study of Asian and African legal systems. I know that's something that many schools may say but in fact we've been doing this and focusing specifically on Asia and Africa for the duration of our incorporation as a university. We focus on China, Africa, South and Southeast Asia, the Middle East, and our global South expertise provides a kind of perspective that makes sense of not merely the global South, but of the world as we know it. It's not merely area expertise that we bring to the table, but in fact it's a methodology, a way of seeing the world and of addressing the most pressing problems. We have particular expertise in human rights, environmental crises, equality, the role of multinational corporations, trade, finance and the global economy, or simply the rule of law and justice. And the methodologies that we employ are hugely important. We deal with doctrinal studies. Of course, black letter law is fundamental to understanding municipal legal systems. We employ critical legal studies, regional studies, historical interpretation, interdisciplinary work is very much an emphasis as a socio legal methodology. We have particular strengths in international law, transnational law, human rights, commercial law, environmental law, and socio legal method. Now, you know, beyond our expertise I think it's really crucial that you have a sense of the culture it's so as because the culture is a big part of what I think is a really attractive part of studies. It sets the tone for your studies. It's the intellectual environment in which you will study, you will learn, you'll engage in conversations with your peers and those conversations along with conversations with your lecturers are equally important means of learning. And so I'd like to really focus on the fact that this is an institution which challenges convention. I do that not merely culturally, but this is really an embodiment of our research focus, and that research find its finds its way into our teaching. So I consider this to be a very progressive institution I think that we, we show that through our emphasis and our leading emphasis amongst universities on decolonizing the curriculum. We've had a campaign knows the so as justice for cleaners campaign in which we've ended outsourcing as a university. These are two aspects that I think are important but but more fundamentally, we are aware of privilege structural inequality rooted in class, race, gender and income. And these this awareness is embodied in the kinds of discussions that we have amongst ourselves amongst students. And these are also of course aspects of what we're interested in in researching as academic lawyers and and some as practicing lawyers as well practice in these areas. So a student body is really passionate and politically active. I did my PhD at so as I've been here for quite some time. And I can assure you that this is one of the most cosmopolitan student bodies that I think you'll ever have the privilege of experiencing. It's not merely international in terms of the North Atlantic. It's not really Europeans that you're going to meet or North Americans. In fact, you're going to meet people from those parts of the world that we in fact study we study parts of the world and people from those parts of the world come to sell us to learn because of our expertise and I think that that's really distinctive. And last but not least the student societies are extremely active at so as so that there's a real idealism and political activism amongst so as students that I think really distinguishes it as an institution. I've often felt that when I've gone out into the courtyard and and, you know, interacted with students that you're experiencing such a colorful panoply of life such a colorful representation of the world that I think is just really valuable. Well, I'd like to just give you a very quick run through of what we do in terms of taught master's degrees. We do a general LLM and we focus on environmental and sustainable development. We do international commercial law we do human rights conflict and justice. We do national law, Islamic law, one of the very few law schools that teaches Islamic law as a family, a system of law in a law school, law and gender law development and globalization. I think you, you can see that we have a very strong emphasis on the issues that relate to the global south and of course have applicability worldwide. MA degrees are generally geared towards students without a law degree. The MRes is a research oriented master's degree and a PG certificate program is a new one term master's taught program in which you can get a taste for what we offer it so as to get a certificate from having done so. And there we offer environmental law, human rights, international law, Islamic law, a general legal studies program, as well as those two specialized programs. So I come to the part of the evening that I know you've come to us for and this is the lectures, the, the tasters of the type of lecturing that we do it so as and, and I have the privilege of introducing to you to very talented colleagues. And the first is Dr Michelle Staggs Kelso. She's a lecturer in international law since 2018 and she studied in Australia with flying colors and did a master's in public international law at the LSE and finally got her PhD from Nottingham. And she's had considerable experience in the human rights field. Most recently she was deputy director for the Human Rights Resource Center for ASEAN, and a human rights officer for the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights various she's occupied various leadership positions with NGOs, where she applied research regarding Southeast Asia and West Africa. And this evening, she is going to talk to us about her expertise, and that is specifically business and human rights and that's a module that she teaches at SOAS, and the intersection between human rights, corporate governance and corporate social responsibility. So if I turn things over to you, over to Michelle rather, I'm going to introduce really the big gun of the evening. And that is Professor Mashud Badarin. Professor Badarin has been with us since 2007. He was the head of the law school. From 2009 to 2012. He has published widely in the fields of Islamic law, human rights, international law, and law and development in Africa. His most recent publication was Islamic law, a very short introduction, which, if you know Islamic law is quite a feat. He published a very important monograph on international human rights and Islamic law, both of those works are published by the very prestigious Oxford University Press. He's been appointed as an independent expert on the situation of human rights in the Sudan by the Human Rights Council in the 19th century session on in March 2012. He did his LLB in Nigeria, and he did his LLM and PhD at Nottingham. He's a barrister and solicitor of the Supreme Court of Nigeria. And this evening he will also provide a taster lecture on a module that he teaches here at SOAS and that is law and development in Africa. So SOAS is a very special place. I hope that gives you somewhat of a breadth of perspective about what the law school is all about. Thanks very much for your attention. Michelle, I turn it over to you. This evening's taster lectures. I too, I'm going to share my slides, but just to briefly introduce myself, though I don't have to say much thanks to Jonathan. As he mentioned, my teacher at the School of Law and the master's program I teach here is business and human rights and the global economy, which is both a theoretical component and has a clinical component in which students are encouraged and get the opportunity to work with practitioners in the field. But tonight I really want to look at just one of the strands of the discussions that form part of my class. And to give you a sense of what it would be like to come and study with us. I'm really looking at in the course how we understand the turn towards business and human rights at the start of the new millennium, and why this field of academic inquiry, policy development and legal practice emerged in the aftermath of the global financial crisis in 2008. In particular, I'm wondering how the field of business and human rights might change the way in which international lawyers theorize and practice international human rights law in the 21st century. But those are the central questions I'm grappling with and that will be further discussed in a forthcoming book on the work with the working title rights incorporated that looks really at the the history of the emergence of the movement tracing it back to the new international economic order in the 1970s and looking at how the movement essentially de-radicalizes the demands of the global south at the time and becomes what is essentially a much more sanitized version of what the global south was asking for. But one of the things that I'm grappling with the moment and that I thought I should share with you and I'd love to get your thoughts and feedback on is really this notion of corporate wokeness and whether or not there is a difference in which the corporation as we understand it in the 21st century is shifting in its function from being solely about ensuring profits for shareholders to in effect engaging in the rights and interests of stakeholders, a new stakeholder capitalism, which has been showcased at Davos, which of course in some ways the World Economic Economic Forum is kind of the pinnacle of economic discussions in the international sphere in the last couple of years. And I'm grappling with what business and human rights and its interaction with stakeholder capitalism is really doing to our understanding, both of the corporation and of human rights. But first of all, to situate us to put us in a context, I wanted to start by showing you here, both the front page of a report issued by the UNCTAD, the United Nations Commission on Trade and Development, just last year in 2000, October 2020, and juxtaposing that within the same month as a lead story on the front page of newspapers about the extent to which tech companies are now amassing staggering profits after the aftermath of COVID-19. So, as you can see that the title of the of the article there is as COVID-19 surges the world's biggest tech companies report staggering profits. At the same time in that UNCTAD report, what they say is among developing countries, the pandemic on poverty rates is expected to be severe, particularly in Africa. And LDCs, because of their LDCs, sorry, are lowest developed countries or least developed countries, because of their high vulnerability and limited capacity to adjust and respond to shocks are in effect the most vulnerable. Africa accounts for about 13% of the global population, but is expected to account for over 50% of global extreme poverty in 2020. The lack of social protection and labour programs in these economies makes it challenging to cushion the impact on vulnerable groups. So, this is the context in which the discussion on business and human rights is operating. And I raise it here because business and human rights is a global movement seeks to respond to this by arguing that transnational corporations should continue to put front and centre those most vulnerable to corporate human rights abuse principle 24 of the United Nations guiding principles on human rights, which were unanimously endorsed by the Human Rights Council in 2011, ostensibly states that that is the purpose of the guiding principles. And just to give you a brief overview of what the guiding principles are. They're essentially a set of 31 principles that were agreed by the Human Rights Council, the primary human rights body of the United Nations in 2011. And I've got here, John Ruggie is missing. Professor John Ruggie and Gerald Pashew and Caroline Reese, the kind of dream team of those who drafted the guiding principles. John Ruggie is currently a professor at Harvard, Caroline Reese works as president of shift and non governmental organization and Gerald Pashew represents 21 multinational corporations who are committed to respecting human rights. And what the guiding principles say they do and what the movement which has come out of the guiding principles attempts to do is to prevent corporate human rights abuses from occurring through a three pillar system in which the state has the duty to protect human rights and obligation of conduct to ensure that human rights institutionalized and internalized in all their legislation and corporations have a responsibility to respect human rights, in other words to do no harm and both together ensure access to remedies for victims. But the question that puzzles me or that I continue to ask myself is, to what extent should we think that the, the motivation and the mandate behind the guiding principles and the stories which those who operate in the business and human rights movement are actually able to achieve this rather lofty goal. And I think that there are three ways in which we can think about the guiding principles and business and human rights and the narratives that the global movement tells itself that give us some insight as to what we can anticipate and expect from the movement in the next years. I suppose, when I talk about narratives what I'm really thinking about is the way in which the movement itself animates the stories that it tells itself about its foundations about its purpose and about what it is members of the movement stand for. And although some might cynically say well, you know business and human rights, the corporation is always going to be able, they can never be anything good about the corporation. I think what we need to remind ourselves is that the only way to fully understand the manner in which the movement is, is, is attempting to, to create social change is to see it first and foremost on its own terms before we then critique what it is it sits to do. So one way in which we can think through what the narrative is that animates business and human rights is really to see it as another form of work capitalism. And I understand and I'm very aware that in using the term work I'm of course co-opting a narrative which has been utilized by black persons and peoples to to signal and to push for social emancipation. And many have said that the fact that corporations are now talking about work capitalism capitalism is an effect to the detriment of that initial and original narrative. But let's think first through how the corporations themselves conceive of this role. And I'm drawing here from the work of Jennifer fun amongst others who talk about work capital in a series of articles recently drafted touching in particular on this issue. I think the with with respect to work, the role of the transnational corporation and business enterprises in the 21st century, as seen as embodying that of a natural person in the legal person of the corporation. In other words, the corporation becomes in and of itself a mode which is funding and supporting social causes. And this narrative shifts the role of the corporation from maximizing profits as I mentioned of its shareholders to maximizing its value for stakeholders. The classic view of the corporation embodied in conservative economist Milton Friedman's view of 1970 was that the one and only social responsibility of business was to use its resources to engage in activities designed to increase its profits. Stakeholder theory on the other hand assumes that corporations require a social license to operate with large and challenges the corporations to broaden their role in society and enlarge their obligations beyond the bottom line. The problem I think with this narrative is that it assumes business and human rights can intersect with other social movements in a manner that remains value neutral and objective with regard to the central underpinnings of a system that has made its wealth through developing and perpetuating racial inequality amongst other forms of inequality, most notably gender sexuality and ability or ableism. In their recent book Stay Woke, a People's Guide to Making Black Lives Matter, to Harmalopes Bunyasi and Candiceworth Smith, analyse how the original accumulation of capitalism using industry in the West came through the extraction of wealth from colonies, piracy and the slave trade. And according to Bunyasi and Smith, the US state apparatus was created to facilitate the expansion and entrenchment of institutional racism in both slave and non-slave holding states at the time. The 14th Amendment of the US Constitution was passed at the end of the Civil War to give equal rights to black people. However, as Howard Zinn has shown through his people's history of the United States, despite the amendment being passed to prevent the various states to take away life, liberty and property from African Americans at the time, black people today, between 1890 and 1910, there were 307 cases brought to the US courts and 288 of these cases were in fact brought by corporations claiming legal personhood and only 19 of which were brought by black Americans. So in other words, judges applied these rights to capital and property, stripping them from people. So if we know this about the narratives that inform the capitalist system, the question becomes whether or not engaging in business and human rights as a narrative, as a work narrative in effect detracts rather than ads or furthers the social emancipatory causes which corporations claim that they are going to go about undertaking through processes such as human rights to diligence and other forms of ensuring respect for human rights in their daily operations. And here I've got Coca Cola recently had a claim together we must in the aftermath of the horrendous acts of police brutality last year and made claims with respect to how it was going to institutionalize equality diversity and inclusion in the company itself. The question becomes whether or not we can really take seriously these claims, which leads me of course to my second narrative. The possibility that in effect this at the present moment, it's almost as though business and human rights is acting under the narrative guys of a comedic role. So in other words, not so much work as it is Joe. In other words, business and human rights forms a way in which we convert your signal to one another that in effect, we agree with human rights, and we care about human rights concerns, even although we continue to maintain our status as wealthy and affluent in various contexts. I buy my coffee from Starbucks, I can rest assured that there's fair trade in the coffee and that the employers that are being taken care of, even although the system is a whole, the relationality and systematicity of hope corporate human rights doesn't need to be questioned. So when we think about it in these terms, what business and human rights does is kind of create a panacea in which humanity can temporarily triumph over the world. And the different forces at play can be reconciled and harmonized through this act of ensuring that I'm responding to the, the, the grossly unfair circumstances in which many in the global south find themselves. And finally, and here I'm sorry I've just got a snapshot of Kofi and now I'm saying that at the World Economic Forum in 1999 that this would, in effect, the UN global compact would allow for a human face to the global market, and subsequently from the from from global compact in 1999, the guiding principles evolved from there. And finally, one final way I think we can think about it is neither to see it as quite so cynical as being a joke, nor so emancipatory as being being a work, but instead to see it as bespoke. So it's human rights becomes tailored to the business transaction itself. And this is what I really think based on my research of the archives of the, the UN from the 1970s till 2011 is essentially what the UN finally comes down on. The notion that in fact, what we can all that we can do is secure human rights one transaction as a time at a time. We need to embed shared social values into transnational corporations, and to do so pragmatically in all in other ways, in other words always to ensure what works for the transaction. And there are of course, limitations to the notion of pragmatism. Those of you who have who are familiar with pragmatic schools of thought from the turn of the last century will note that pragmatism as a school of philosophical thought, essentially prioritizes that which can be empirically defined which works in the in the particular frame of the demand or the discovery that's going to be determined. And I think what that does is essentially limit the extent to which human rights can play a part in securing any kind of pushback between the systemicity of human rights abuses. And what you have instead is that where there was an older view of the economy is being embedded in society. And here I've chosen a pasta Malam from, from Southeast Asia where I used to live and work, but we could also choose a market in the middle of Rome or or another market in another part of the world. But essentially what I'm showing you through this photo is this notion that transactions are part and parcel of everyday life, but it's life that gets prioritized. It's the other things going around the buying and selling of objects, or the commodification, commodification processes in question. This new economy this note new notion of embedded pragmatism instead sees social values embedded in a global economy in which we're all networked and transactional. So I think it very much individualizes us and secludes us from any notion of community and precludes certain ways of thinking through problem solving in the everyday and relies on theoretical processes that prioritize that which which is functional, utilitarian and which works over that which may take longer term thinking in order to bring to fruition.  I'll do it too. If you close your eyes with me now and just think of the first things that come into your head when I say these three words. Apple. Amazon. Shell. Okay, can open your eyes now. And the question is, did your images look like this. Or like this. And if it looked anything like the latter I think that's really what I'm getting at the extent to which we think through the world now in terms of corporate understandings and how that affects and influences for human rights futures. Thank you. I'll interject here. Masoud, would you like to give your presentation please. Thank you so much, Jonathan for the kind introduction you did for me earlier. And I just wanted to build on Michelle's very interesting perspectives on human rights and corporations. Now I'll just be giving you some snippets from one of the courses I teach that is law and development in Africa. Now if you search around to be able to see that I mean, I always say it's a unique course. It's only taught at source. You'll find law and development modules in many universities, but specifically law and development in Africa. You won't find it anywhere else and we created it in 2010 for a particular purpose. Now we know the question of, I mean, Africa's development has rightly so been on the international agenda for quite a while. And also many African countries are also trying to deal with that point, but at the beginning of this century, you know, the World Bank released a report in April 2000 titled, Can Africa Claim the 21st Century? That's the title of the report, Can Africa Claim the 21st Century? The report noted that, I mean, although there have been some developmental gains during the half part of the 1990s towards the end of the 20th century, it's still found out that Africa entered the 20th century, you know, as a poor, mostly colonized continent then, but yet it still faces enormous developmental challenges entering the 21st century. So it raised the bar and you found out that a lot of, I mean, academicians and also practitioners in development started looking much more carefully at the question of, I mean, development, particularly in relation to Africa. Now, the report indicated that, yes, Africa could claim the 21st century. Particularly, this would depend on Africa's ability, aided by its developmental partners to overcome the developmental traps that has actually kept it behind during the 20th century. Now it identified certain strategies, improving governance and resolving conflict, investing in people, increasing competitiveness, reducing aid dependence and things like that. But I mean, on my own studying of the report then, not very much was said about law. Everything, the concentration was on economics, economic development, economics, you know, and I started reflecting, thinking about this, that what is the role of law in all this? I mean, law should have a role in this, if we say, I mean, because, I mean, if you look at many of the traps, many of the courses of underdevelopment for Africa in the past, one would be able to be able to find out that I mean law had played a role in it. Now, so I started thinking around that. In the context that, I mean, the relationship between law and development is not new. There's a general perception of law and development. And if you look at it, I mean, the history of it, it had a longer history and also a shorter history. The longer history of law and development usually is taken back, I mean, quite fine to the 18th century, usually related to Adam Smith's discussion of the economic effect of mechanicalist legislation. I mean, and the shorter discussion of it is in relation to the effort, you know, headed, I mean, spearheaded by the United States during the 1950s in order to try to promote the rule of law in the global south in developing countries in that perspective. Now, but if you look at all those perspectives in relation to general law and development discourse, it doesn't focus specifically on Africa. There's no section of it. It's very theoretical. And I thought, perhaps, I mean, there's a need to look at this specifically in relation to Africa. It took me some time, I mean, over six years to look at materials and I found that there wasn't any material specifically talking about law and development in Africa. And I thought so should really be focusing in that in that perspective. And when we look at it really certainly law should law should law has or should have a road to play in relation to development is an important tool of social engineering. And, but when one looks at it from the context of Africa, it should not only be, I mean, from the context of liberal legalism, or, I mean, in neoliberal perspectives, I mean, just transplanting, you know, the traditional law and development, I mean, connotations and just transplanting it into Africa. Now it's very important. I mean, for one to be able to know what to do in this perspective, I thought personally there's a need to look back and see what has actually caused the developmental tragedies of Africa over time. The one also needs to contextualize what we mean by development and contextualize what we mean by law. So I'll look at these three perspectives, I mean, in a little bit. When we look at, I mean, a development contextualizing it a lot of the time, you find out that I mean, in general law and development context, development is contextualize economically GDPs, you know, and up till now we look at in the context of GDPs. And many African countries are still measured from that perspective. But I mean, development should not actually be seen only from that perspective. Because you find, I mean, many some African countries are doing well now as the numbers indicate Botswana, even Congo, you find the GDP some African countries are said to be, you know, I mean, the highest developing countries in relation to their GDP is growing up to the lowest and 7%. But if you look at it critically, you find out that these gains actually does not filter to the grassroots. You don't see you don't see the effects of it in relation to the, I mean, the poor people on the ground and things like that. Therefore development, I thought development should be contextualized when we look at law and development in Africa. Therefore, it should be seen in the context of human development. You know, when we talk about development, we look at it in the context of human development first. And it is in the area of human development, particularly that it interjects with some of the issues being raised by Michelle. Now, when we talk about human development and we are talking about issues in relation to, I mean, relating to human rights and development that empowering the individual. Looking at development, for example, I mean, we look at it from two perspectives from the basic needs approach when you look at human rights and the basic needs approach, I mean the basic needs of individuals on the ground. I mean, this should be factors to show whether an African country is developing or not, not only in relation to GDPs. Then the second point would be from the human rights approach to development, you know, which actually sets a minimum sort of, I mean, a base ground for what people should respect. And part of it is also, I mean, we normally look at forming elements in relation to human development, human rights generally, then we look at women rights and empowerment, that empowerment of women in Africa, because women I mean play a very, very significant role in development. I mean, anyway, so we need to look at it also from that then education and capacity building. And when we talk about human development, education plays an important role, then the third one is human security. A lot of the time, I mean nation states, we talk about state security. I mean, when human rights are violated, when corporations don't do what they need to do, a lot of the time the state is bothered about, you know, its own security. And also, I mean, watching the borders. But the argument relation to human security is if human development is prioritized, I mean, many of those things that leads to state failures.  If human security is looked after, you know, basic health requirements, you know, basic education, employment, you know, the threats against state security will be minimized. So especially in relation to African countries. So we look at the role of law, how can law actually be used to facilitate, you know, the enjoyment of human rights, women empowerment, education, capacity building and then human security. And the third one is socio-political development.  If you look at Africa, a lot of, I mean, the conflicts, I mean, happening on the ground relates to management of resources, I mean, resource control, underground resource control, conflict and development in Africa. Michelle was talking about, I mean, when we talk about socio-political development, the third point is corporate social responsibility. I mean, the corporations play a very big role in socio-political development and we do discuss quite a lot of interesting things. I mean, see us as a social, I mean, corporate social responsibility is usually seen as a voluntary trend for corporations to be able to make input into their communities into the society. I mean, and there are a lot of materials on actually arguing, can this be made an obligatory requirement on corporations in relation to, I mean, their acts on the ground. Then the fourth one is civil society engagement. Civil society plays a very important role in socio-political development. So we look at how law, you know, how law ought to regulate this and actually what is happening on ground in Africa. The third then comes to economic development. Economic development is important. Now we talk about, I'm going to talk about human development, socio-political development, you need some sort of economic development to be able to do all these things. Now, economic development, we look at trade and development in Africa, technological innovations, economic and financial regulation, then, you know, corruption, particularly in relation to regulation of corruption. Now, I mean, looking at it now, we contextualize this within, I mean, the courses of underdevelopment themselves and the courses of under development, if you look at to learn from it, you know, could be external or internal. In relation to Africa externally, you know, identify, one can identify two main external courses, and that is the impact of colonial legacies. I mean, if you, I mean, African countries are not monolithic, but there are certain factors that unify all of them in relation to the underdevelopment. And these are some of these four, I mean, two external, two internal. The external one is, as I said, impact of colonial legacies. I mean, there are many writings on this, you know, colonialism changed the faith of Africa forever. Now, it changed because I mean, the trajectory, the argument is, well, perhaps maybe the trajectory, maybe if not for colonialism, things could have been worse. We don't know, but we know that it is colonialism that has actually pushed it into where it is now in relation to this. And we can see, we can look at a lot of materials in that perspective and how law has played a role. Now, if you look at, I mean, during the terms of colonial occupation of many of African countries, I mean, law played a role. And there are documentations to that regard. Many of the African colonies were seeded by treaties. You know, they were seeded by treaties. I mean, law was used to legalize those occupations. You know, now if one says that, well, that was a deliberate colonial initiative, then it shows that actually law can be used deliberately to achieve certain ends. If it was not a deliberate colonial feature, then it means that law should be used consciously in order to avoid unintended consequences of not using it properly. So it's very essential. I mean, it gives us, I mean, if you look at South Africa, for example, apartheid was legalized by law. I mean, so law can play a role in relation to, I mean, and that is in relation to using law consciously. That is one important fact in relation to law development. African countries need to use law consciously in order to. Then the second external factor is the impact of international policies. You know, many of it, I mean, Michelle have indicated, although, I mean, an African woman in Nigeria and head to the World Trade Organization now, you know, I mean, it's perhaps we will see what will happen as her first visit has been to the country in Nigeria and African country in Nigeria. But if you look at, I mean, I mean, initiatives like I mean structural adjustment programs of the IMF for African countries and created a lot of problem relation to development. So an impact of international policies is also an external factor which we look into and see how law on the ground can change that. Now internal factors, we look at after colonization, colonization went away 60, 50 years ago, but yet, Africa still grapples with development.  Then the second internal factor is, I mean, the impact of negative cultural and religious practices, negative cultural practices on the ground. And there are so many of them and we do have a look at this and also engage with them. Now, I mean, due to time, I mean, we, we, we look, we look at different African countries in relation to practice. You know, we need to look at a lot of African countries relation to practice. If you look at the theoretical connotations discussed of, I mean, traditional law and development studies, you find out that the theories usually propose for African countries. I mean, circles around what the so-called modernization theory that is African countries need to modernize as Western countries they have to learn from the, you know, move from the traditional societies to modern societies following, you know, I mean, the, the Western path. And this usually leads to the dependency theory whereby, therefore, African countries have to depend on, you know, the Western countries in order to be able to follow and do whatever. And we critique this a lot. And based on that, you know, I mean, based on materials, primary materials, I mean, resolutions of even the General Assembly.  African needs to address this need for a self-reliance theory. Not for Africa to stand alone, I mean, to be on its own known. The self-reliance theory, I categorize it into, I mean, individual self-reliance and collective self-reliance. That's African countries who are individually should look within to be able to, in particular, in relation to those two internal element factors that impede development. And then collective, I mean, self-reliance. I mean, AFRIC AU is doing quite a lot now in relation to, I mean, free movement, free trade and things like that. African countries should need to, I mean, collectively, I mean, self-reliance. And then the collective self-reliance also relates to international cooperation. A lot of the time, when we have student criticism, are you saying that African countries should be on their own? No. You know, it relates to, you know, taking control of their own features. The last point I want to talk about now is, I mean, legislating for development. I mean, I also push, they said, theoretical push also on the need for African countries to legislate for development.  You know, I mean, the way laws are made in many African countries to follow the colonial track. I mean, making laws. Legislative houses need to look, you know, there needs to be a higher objective for law in Africa. You know, the higher objective for law is law to aid development and legislators should legislate for it. That is every legislation, the argument is every legislation should have a developmental objective. You know, it should have a developmental objective. Even criminal laws, I mean, they should have a developmental objective in relation to, you know, which will be consciously monitored in relation to how it fulfills those objectives. You know, where those objectives are very well established, then even the judiciary in interpreting the laws, you know, they will be influenced in relation to those developmental objectives. It's a very interesting course really, it gives us opportunity to be able to see how Africa itself can serve it, using law, you know, in various areas, touching on various areas. Three of us teach the course, as you see, it's quite a broad course. I mean, with different specializations, and I'm not an expert in trade. You know, we have Olivia there who does trade and Amelia also teaches on it. And therefore it's very, very interesting. At the end of the course, students are really very fascinated.  And we do get back a lot of, I mean, feedbacks, you know, many students tell that many of our students made from law from development. One law student was telling me that, you know, he studied law, he knew law, but all he knew about law was about law and order, you know, law is just about law and order. Now, by taking this course, you know, he has really found a career path, which he really wants to move on into. So it's quite an interesting, and these are some of the, you know, novel things that we do at SOWAS, which really makes SOWAS very different. So if you have any questions, I'd be happy to answer them. And I hope as maybe you make some benefit from what I've just said. Thank you so much. Thank you very much for your very interesting lecture, many lectures, both of you. I'm captivated. I think now we should open it up to the Q&A session. And if I understand correctly, Kim, students will just submit their questions to the Q&A icon at the bottom of your screen. Is that correct? That's correct. So if you have any questions, please feel free to drop them into the Q&A, and then they'll pop up if you just open up the Q&A and any questions will be in there. And then we can answer them either through typing in or through answering them directly in live. So do feel free to pop any questions that you have in there. It could be about the content of today's session. It could be about Laura in general. It could be about Laura at SOWAS. It could be about SOWAS itself. Yes, indeed. Please, anything you'd like to address, we're very happy to speak with you about. Don't be shy. Have one. The question is, what are the qualities we look for in a student? Shall I address that? I suppose I am the postgraduate admissions tutor. You know, we look for students who've done well academically. And I believe for postgraduate taught courses, you'll have to have a high 2-2. That's around a 57% average depending upon where you come from. But we also look for extracurricular activities. We're interested to know what you've been engaged in if you have shown an interest in law or in social justice activities. So how passionate you are for study at SOWAS specifically? What you have in mind in terms of your career? Why, you know, why you'd like to study at SOWAS? So there's a wide range of characteristics that we take into consideration, not merely academic ones. And they can be used to augment, for example, marginal shortcomings where your academic results may not achieve or may not meet our requirements. Further questions, I hope. More substantive ones aimed at these very fascinating lectures, professors that I have. Would you recommend doing a law MA full-time over one year or does it make little difference doing it over two years? Any comments from my colleagues on that? Well, I mean, I actually just had an inquiry from a student who is my personal advisor regarding this, because we also have the three-year route. I mean, the part-time collider will be two years or three years. Now, she initially was doing a part-time of two years because she's working fully. And I mean, even that, she found out that, I mean, because of the nature of her work, she was finding it, I mean, quite difficult to be able to cope. And she was considering whether to move on to the three-year route, and therefore she got in touch with me too. So a lot will depend on what you do. The two-year and three-year routes are for those, perhaps maybe who want to do it on part-time basis, and they will have time to work. Because, I mean, the one-year route, although students, I understand, also do some part-time job. I mean, all master's programs in the UK are intensive. I did my own master's in the UK as well. I mean, they are very demanding. If you want to really do well, if you want to do well in them, you hit the ground running, and you have to really commit time to it. So you have to decide, you know, what you want to do. In one year you do it quickly, and you get it done, but for you to do well and get a good grade, you have to really commit time to it. Otherwise, I mean, if you want to work full-time, the right thing to do is to do the part-time route, either of two years or three years. That sounds pretty sensible to me. Absolutely. It's very intensive, and I did my master's at the LSE, in fact, and I found the same, that if I'd done it over two years, I may have done a little bit better, because it simply was so intensive. That being said, the 12-month route is quite attractive, I think. Yeah, and just to add to that, I think it also depends on what you want from your master's course, what your intention is. I think that the one-year route is a good way of also being able to collaborate with peers and to meet other people engaged in the master's course. I think part-time it's possibly more challenging, because you're not necessarily part of a group that's intensively studying in that one year. So just to add to what both Jonathan and I should have said, which I fully agree with in terms of intensity of the course and workload and whether or not you're working. Let's move on to the next question. I'll just read that out, Clara, if you don't mind. Thank you to the excellent panelists. Well, that's all Michelle and Michoud. What do you think are the prospects of a face-to-face teaching in 2020-21, and what is the SOAS plan to address studying during the pandemic? I mean, if I just answer briefly from what I know, the plan is that in September, the academic term of 2021, that in fact face-to-face teaching will recommence, Clara. And in the event that there is some sort of restrictions with respect to COVID, the institution will conduct so-called blended learning, so a mix of face-to-face and remote learning. But I think, you know, by September, the vaccination program in this country has been, is quite successful, it's fast moving, and everybody anticipates to be able to have some degree of face-to-face interaction. I don't know if somebody, if you'd like to add to that, Michelle or Michoud. Just to reiterate really what you've said, Jonathan, I think all our plans are to be back on campus in September, and the goal is either full back on campus or a form of blended learning in which there'll be some online activities and some face-to-face teaching, depending on how things have progressed in terms of the vaccines in the UK and also in terms of the number of students who are, of course, overseas students because there may be various things we need to take into account with respect to their capacity to make it with us on campus. Yeah, I mean, I agree totally.  I mean, whatever decision will be taken by SOAS will be guided by government regulations. I mean, depending on whether there's another lockdown or not, so, but we hope with the vaccine, hopefully things will pipe down and we'll be, we're all looking forward to get back on campus, definitely. That's for sure. Let's move on to Neva's question. She writes, I will be applying to an MA in another department, anthropology, but I'm really interested in law. Does the law department conduct lectures for other masters? Or can we join some of your lectures even if we register to another MA? And thank you for your presentations. That, to the best of my knowledge, Neva, if you do enter as an MA student in law, you should have some elective modules if I'm not mistaken. And those elective modules would give you the ability to study in other departments. But if you're studying, say, an anthropology, you should have the same capacity to take a law module in the law department as part of your anthropology program. And it's all done in terms of credits. The easiest way to figure that out is plain and simply to go to that MA program in anthropology and look at the structure of the program, which will say specifically how much freedom you have to visit courses in other departments. So moving on to J.A. Maldonado Andrews question, he's thanking you both for your presentations. Professor Badarin, you talked about the importance of legislation and development from my experience in a colonial context, Puerto Rico, law and legislation can be very rooted in colonial practices. Would you share any thoughts on how to confront traces of colonialism from a legal system? Yes, I mean, thank you so much. That's a very good question. I mentioned it earlier. If you see how law, for example, is how legislation is done in many African countries today or perhaps maybe other countries in the global south. It's rooted in a colonial context. Now there have been a lot of research on this. And Seaman and Seaman have written a very good article on this in relation to how legislation, particularly in the region in Africa should be moved on with. One question that usually comes up when we talk about, I mean, legislation relation to development or law in relation to development is that well, there's no need to think about legislation or there's no need to think about the law. It's implementation that is the problem. People talk about the fight implementation, but usually research has found out no. If you want to say good legislation actually should incorporate, you know, processes of implementation, good implementation. So if a law cannot be implemented, then it's not good law. I mean, so that's part of the new processes we are talking about. Previously the colonial means of legislation doesn't look at that. And that is where legislation for development comes into the issue. Now if you have a developmental objective, the law itself then must provide ways by which, I mean, implementation is monitored to make sure that it follows the trend of development. It's part of the debate. There are quite a lot of materials on this, rather than, now one question that one of the students raised when we're looking at this, I mean, in actually this year was that where he said, but that's not how law is made. Now, for example, he was talking about it from the colonial context, he was talking about it in the terms that when law is made just have a title to the law and then you see still the substantive of the law. Now, who says this can change? Now, who says that is how should be done all over? You know, I mean, I think that's exactly why this course is important. I mean, to look at possible ways by which, you know, we change the process of legislation and also, I mean, taking policy into consideration and ensuring that I mean the law is good for implementation to achieve its objective. Thank you. Narayan writes, may you speak a bit about the scope of employment after completion of a master's in international relations, so as considering the post pandemic situation. Of course, we are stewards of law, not international relations, we do deal with public law and I suppose that is related to international relations. I mean, employment is very tough, Narayan, I think globally in relation to the pandemic. I've just read an article, actually in the FT on exactly students, you know, situation in this regard. And all I can say is it's really critical, I think, to focus on distinguishing yourself as best you can in your master's degree. So that because you're competing with a large body of candidates, candidates that have lost their jobs, but also recent graduates. And so the pool of particular candidates for any position is much greater than it has been in recent years.  What makes you special, what makes you different. I don't know if my colleagues want to add to that that's a very hard question. The second part you mentioned, sorry, Michelle, go on. The second part you mentioned Jonathan, I think it's important. I mean, there are so many master's programs all over the world. I mean, what makes you special as you rightly mentioned, particularly in relation to area of study. Now, at source, as we said earlier, many, if, for example, if you're interested in joining international organizations, a lot of international organizing, most of the work of international, the UN and even EU. Now they are trying to have impact on the ground in Africa, they are looking to through to Africa. So having that specialization may give you an edge. Now, language also plays a very important role in it. I mean, at source, people have opportunity to do languages as well. Languages of the global south. You know, if you have an ELLMA, you know the language of family particular, I mean, it gives you an edge above, for example, employers will look at, okay, if you want to send somebody maybe to Kenya, and this person can also speak Swahili.  Yes, Michiona. Yeah, just to add to what my good colleagues have said, I think, yeah, it really depends on the kind of career that you're thinking about. Certainly, certainly, I think having a master's degree from SOAS in certain careers and certain fields is seen as a very, very reputable and prestigious institution to have gone to. So certainly at the UN, of course, where I've worked, that's something that will set you apart initially and then, as my colleagues have said, it will also be your own personal story, and what it is about you that they can see fits with the organization and the aspects that they're looking at in a, in an employee. But one of the things that we do at SOAS is that every student is given an academic advisor. And certainly, I'm sure, depending on who your academic advisor is, they can provide some guidance or at least some discussions, discuss with you your prospects, postmasters, what it is you intend to do, and certainly we'll be able to write references, I believe that's what we do here at law anyway, we write references for all our academic advisies with respect to any future employment that they go for. Yes, indeed. And we have a very good career services well, which offers a wide range of services. So you, you know, it would be a good idea I would think that at the very beginning of your studies that you start strategically planning for the particular type of job you're listed in and doing everything you can to, you know, to develop your CV so that it meets the specifications of the type of candidate that that that type of job is potentially looking for. Let's move on. Charlotte, you mentioned that there was a clinical component to the business and human rights module. And are there other opportunities like that in other modules. Michelle, are you aware of, of that clinical. To my knowledge, there is a small clinical component available in one of the asylum and immigration courses as well. We currently have a clinical legal scholar who's coordinating all of our efforts. And she's probably the best person to speak to with respect to your query so I can certainly give you Clara's detail so that you can speak to her clarity or crotch with respect to clinical legal components that are available to master students. I was also thinking of Lin's human rights clinic. Oh yes of course. That's another human rights colleague who runs the human rights clinical components so the entire course is in effect, clinical legal studies and you will be attached to a particular organization and then engage in a particular human rights issue. You can write particular reports with respect to that issue or engage in particular kinds of activities around that. It sounds like a fun module. It's great she's on sabbatical at the moment so momentarily available. Right. I'm coming with a background in international relations what preparations do I need before joining sauce in September. Amrita, you, you basically just need to bring yourself in September depends on whether or not you've been admitted and and I would presume that you would apply for an MA with an IR background. That background is perfectly suitable for law study. In fact, I think it's very useful it's very, very related in particular as I mentioned to public law colleagues again my wise colleagues might know more than me. Certainly public international law you'd be well placed I had some international relations students both in my business and human rights class and subsequently in international law classes as well so we happily have you join us. Any questions. Any further questions. I don't see any. Anything else written there any follow up that you'd like us to address. Okay, well then, I guess, what remains to be done is simply to thank you for your time and and and interest in the so school of law, and of course, to thank my colleagues for their erudite lectures, I'm sure all of you really enjoyed, or I hope you did at least. If you'd like to say anything machine Michelle, you're free to do so otherwise I'll just bid you farewell and hope to see you at so us. I just want to thank everybody for their time for staying tuned to the end. Thank you so much. We look forward to seeing you.


सुडव्गरु, you have talked of how a seed has to go through the pain of losing its safety. शवड़ु, please, the seed has to go through the pain of... शीड has to go through the pain of losing its safety, its shield, how it has to become vulnerable in order to sprout. अंतल the sprouting happens, do seekers have to live their lives in increased states of fragility and vulnerability? Isn't that particularly hard on them? The seed in making itself vulnerable is not forsaking safety. Its only safety is in sprouting, growing and multiplying. That's only safety. If you do not know this, you already know this definitely, but in case you do not know it, the more insecure a particular population on the planet feels, the more they will reproduce. You know this? The poorer societies on the planet always have a higher rate of reproduction than the more affluent classes on the planet because there is a certain insecurity about that existence. So the safety lies not in remaining a seed. The safety lies in sprouting, growing and multiplying. So you are not forsaking your safety by becoming vulnerable or by becoming available to change. Once a man came and told his friend, long time ago I was an invalid. His friend asked, what's your problem? What do you mean you were an invalid? Not till I was one year of age I was an invalid, I was crawling. Your childhood or even before that is like being a seed. If you did not sprout and grow, would you be safer? You would be an invalid. I know these days it's become fashionable for people to claim, I am like a child. Even the so-called spiritual people are going about claiming, I am a child. If you say I am a child, don't think it is some celebrated status. When you say I am a child, you are saying I did not grow up. Let us say your body, your body has grown so we cannot take that as an example. Let us say your mind remained stagnant from the age of three, how you were it remained at the same place, only your body became the way it has become. So what are we supposed to call you spiritual? So there is no safety in stagnation. A seed is meaningful only for a certain span of time but seed is a stagnation. Seed is life, potential life very important but it is a state of stagnation. If you try to keep anything in a state of stagnation for sure you will lose it. The only safety is to make it grow.  The only safety is in making it happen, not in trying to preserve it. Try this with your body and seed. Many of you have tried haven't you? Because you want to live for a long time from tomorrow eat all the best food and save it. Don't use it. If you want we can provide you a coffin because anyway you will need it very soon. Try to save it. There is no safety in trying to save it. That's not the way life is made. The only way to save it is to use it. So the only way a seed can be safe is for it to sprout and become a plant in the tree. That is the only way there is safety for the seed. In stagnation there is no safety but your mind would speak otherwise. Your mind would always say a seed is safe because generally it's in a hard case and it looks more solid, more preservable.  Anybody can stamp on it. Any animal can grab it and eat it up. But that's not how life happens. A young boy came home one day and told his father, ''Daddy, I have some good news for you.'' The father asked, ''What's the good news?'' The boy said, ''You know I took the math test.'' He said, ''Yes, what happened?'' You said, ''If I pass the math test, you are going to give me 2000 rupees.'' The good news is, you saved 2000 rupees. That's not safety.


In this video I'm going to talk about solving inequalities. This is actually very similar to solving equations except for we have the inequality symbols which are less than, less than or equal to, greater than and greater than or equal to. Those are our four different symbols that we have for inequalities. Okay, so not only are we going to solve these but we're also going to graph them on a number line so we can see kind of what the solutions look like. Okay, so now the rules for solving these inequalities is actually the same rules that we use for solving equations. We treat this inequality, we treat it just like an equal sign. For the most part we treat it just like an equal sign. So I'm going to add some tracks, multiply, divide on the left and on the right side of this inequality so that I can solve for this variable. So basically what I'm looking for is I'm looking for when, what numbers here, if I plug in some numbers here, what numbers are going to be less than 28? So if I plug in the number 1, 1 times 3 plus 7, so that's 3 plus 7 is 10, 10 is less than 28 so 1 is an answer here. But what other solutions are there? What other numbers can I use? That's what I'm going to find out. What I'm going to attempt to do is find out all of them, not just a few of them but just all of them. Alright, so again when I'm solving this I want to do this just like I do any other equations. So as I see here what I want to do is I want to get rid of this 7 first. So subtract 7 from both sides. So 3x is, excuse me, 3x is less than 21 and this 3 is multiplying times x so I'm going to divide by 3. So x in this case is less than 7. x is less than 7, let's put a little, let's put a little extra there for the 7th so we know the difference between our data qualities and our 7th. Anyway, now what does that mean? x is less than 7 which means all of my solutions, all of the numbers that work are going to be smaller than 7. All the numbers that work are smaller than 7. Okay, so if I look, if I want to check that, so what's a number smaller than 7? Well 6, 6 is smaller than 7. So if I plug in 6 here, 3 times 6 is 18, 18 plus 7 is going to be 25, 25 in fact is smaller than 28. Okay, that doesn't work. Okay, but what about 7 itself? What about 7? 7 is not smaller than 7 but let's see what happens right at 7. So if I plug 7 in, 3 times 7 is 21, 21 plus 7 is going to be 28, 28 is not smaller than 28. So that actually doesn't work. So 7 doesn't work in this case. But anything smaller than that, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, anything smaller than that works. Okay, so let's actually look at this, let's actually graph this. I'm going to make myself a number line. Now since I only have one number in my solution, 7 is the only number in my solution, I'm actually going to put that right in the middle. 7 is my number that I'm going to put right in the middle. And from there I want to illustrate all of the possible solutions that I have. All of my solutions are smaller than 7, so that means all of my solutions are going to be this way on my number line. All of my solutions, all the x's are going to be right at 7 and then anything that's smaller than that. Now look here, I do have a circle. Now when I use, when I graph my inequalities, I either use an open circle or a closed circle. Now the difference between them, actually I'm going to illustrate that up here, is if I have a less than or greater than, I use an open circle. If I have a less than or a greater than, keep messing that one up, if I have a less than or a greater than, I'm going to use an open circle. If I have a less than or equal to, or a greater than or equal to, I'm going to use a closed circle. Okay, now what that means is the open circle means I do not include that number. The closed circle means I do include that number. So in this case, we do not include 7. As we saw earlier, if I plug in 7, I actually get 28, but I don't want 28, I want something that's smaller than 28. Okay, so 7 doesn't work, open circle to show that 7 doesn't work, but anything smaller than that is going to work. So 9, 6.8, 6.7, and then all the way down, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, 0, negative 1, negative 2, all those numbers down this way on the number line, all the numbers down this way, all the numbers down this way are going to work. Okay, so that's what this, that's what it means when we solve inequalities. We're finding all of the solutions that work, not just one number, but we're finding a lot of numbers that work. Okay. All right, let's try a different example. Let's show you a different example of solving and graphing inequalities. Here we go. How about 12y minus 3 is less than or equal to 57. So now we got less than or equal to, so as I kind of mentioned earlier, when we graph it, we're going to use that closed circle. Okay. So again, when I solve these, I solve these just like normal equations. All right, what I'm going to do is I'm going to add 3 to both sides, so 12y is less than or equal to 60. And now I'm going to divide by 12, I'm not going to stuff over here, I'm going to divide by 12, which means y is less than or equal to 5. Y is less than or equal to 5. So what does that mean? All the solutions that I want, all the solutions that work here are going to be less than or equal to 5. So all the numbers smaller than or equal to 5. So 1 is going to work, 2 is going to work, 3 is going to work, 4 is going to work, and 5 is also going to work. 6 on the other hand is too big, that's not going to work. Okay, so let's test this, let's see what happens. So if I take, let's say I take 5. Since my solutions are less than or equal to 5, let's actually use 5. So let's take 5, plug it in. So if I take 12 times 5, I get 60, 60 minus 3 is 57. 57 is less than or equal to 57. That actually works because of this or equal to part. Okay, so 57 is actually okay to get as opposed to last time when we had a different symbol. Okay, if I put in the number 4, so instead of 5, a number less than 5 would be 4. So 12 times 4 is going to be 48, 48 minus 3 is 45, 45 is smaller, is less than 57. So that does work. Okay, so let's graph this now. Let's see all the different solutions. I'm going to make my number line. And now the only number I'm really concerned with is 5, so I'm going to put that right in the middle. We'll put a 4 down here, we'll put a 6 out here to show numbers get smaller as you go left, numbers get bigger as you go to the right. I'm going to use a closed circle. The reason I use a closed circle is because 5 is included, it does work. It does satisfy my inequality up here. I can see that by the or equal to sign here. And then the y's are smaller than 5. My solutions are smaller than 5, so the smaller numbers are that way. Smaller numbers are that way. Okay, so all my solutions, 4.9, 4.8, 4.7, 4.5, 4, 3, 2, 1, all the decimals, all the fractions, anything that is less than 5, or 5 itself actually works. Okay, so there's another example. Let's do one more to give us a better understanding of this. Let's do one more. 2 times the quantity 4 minus x is greater, excuse me, less than, is less than 10. Okay, so it looks like I got to do a little bit of distribution first. Got to do a little distributing first before I can solve this. No trouble, let's just take 2 times 4 and 2 times x to get 8 minus 2x is less than 10. Okay, I'm just following my normal rules for solving equations. So I'm going to get rid of this 8 first. I'm going to subtract 8 from both sides. Negative 2x is less than negative 8. Okay, now to get x by itself, I got to divide by negative 2, divide by negative 2. Now, this is where I need to stop and explain something. This is where inequalities is different from solving regular equations. If I multiply or divide by a negative number, I need to flip my inequality symbol. So, that's why I stopped here because right here I'm dividing by a negative 2. Dividing by a negative 2, which means this cancels, that's all the same. And then on this right side, negative 8 divided by negative 2 is 8 positive 4, but my inequality symbol is going to flip from a less than to a greater than. Okay, that's one thing you got to remember when solving inequalities is if you multiply or divide by a negative number, you need to make sure and flip your inequality symbol. Okay, so now my solution says, all my solutions, all of my numbers that are correct, all my solutions, all my answers are bigger than 4. All of my answers are bigger than 4. Okay, so what's the number bigger than 4? 5 is the number that's bigger than 4, so let's use that number. So, I'm going to plug this back up here. 4 minus 5 is going to be negative 1. Negative 1 times 2 is a negative 2. Negative 2 is in fact smaller than 10. Hey, it doesn't work. Okay, and I can keep going. I can keep choosing different numbers. I can choose any number that's bigger than 4, that would be 5, or 6, or 7, or 8, or 9, or 10. What about 10? 10 is bigger than 4. What about that one? Well, 4 minus 10 is negative 6. Negative 6 times 2 is negative 12. Negative 12 is smaller than 10. That does work. So again, with these inequalities, we're not just getting one answer, we're getting many, many answers. All right, so let's graph this. Let's see what all the answers look like. Graph my number line. The one important number I'm looking at is 4. I'm going to put some numbers around it. We'll put 3 over here. We'll put 5 here. Numbers get smaller. Numbers get bigger. And now I'm going to use an open circle at 4. And all of my solutions are bigger than 4. All the numbers that I want are bigger than 4. So where are the bigger numbers? They're that way. Okay, so that's what the graph of this solution would look like. All right, that is solving inequalities, solving and graphing inequalities. And kind of a short explanation of all the solutions that we're getting. The couple of things to remember, you solve these equations, you solve inequalities just like you do normal equations. The couple of things you've got to remember is if you multiply or divide by a negative number, you must flip your inequality symbol. That's one thing you need to remember. Also, when you are graphing your inequalities, make sure you use the right circle. You use an open circle with less than or greater than, and you use a closed circle with less than or equal to and greater than or equal to. Just a couple of things to remember.


YouTube team keep it clean Shout out to Jamie got Jamie Gonzalez Jamie Gonzalez had commented on the video I mean not Gonzalez Jamie Gomez he comment on a video and said You seem super relaxed lately in a good way. I'm glad you enjoying yourselves. I tell I appreciate that and um While I hadn't even noticed Maybe it's cuz while I do miss him I do miss him And that's my baby boy. Maybe cuz it's cuz Carter's at school now Maybe cuz Carter's at school now I just went up there today and They had us like build a little airplane with him And then it was just playing in the park with him and stuff. It was super fun. It was super fun If y'all follow our Instagram to y'all saw Carter was on a little the Whatever you call that thing. I don't know what it's called. But anyway Carter. Um, that's my baby boy But he he is at school. So he's not here with me as much as well Not nearly as much as he used to be But he's been enjoying it. It was tough. It's tough for me at first and it's tough for him still a little more tough for him In the mornings, but when I go to pick him up, he always tells me daddy I don't want to leave so yeah, he's adjusted pretty well. Anyway, somebody else that's been adjusting pretty well has been Lamar Jackson now We we finished watching the Ravens press conference a little while ago Maybe it was about maybe like 30 45 minutes ago that we finished watching it when you see this video It will definitely not be 35 45 minutes ago. But anyway and Marsha yonder spoke Matt Jude on spoke John Harbaugh spoke Earl Thomas spoke and Lamar Jackson spoke Now we're gonna talk about some different things that each of the guy each of those guys said but in this video We're gonna be focusing on Lamar Jackson And something that I just I noticed and I commented during the live stream is that when When you hear this guy like he just he just has a good vibe about him that just makes you smile It just makes you smile. He just got such a good vibe about him and it's like, you know, he's gonna be just fine He's gonna be just fine Now over the past couple of days, of course, it's been Ravens of their mandatory mini camp And in the first day they said oh Lamar was on fire. He was doing this thing. He looked good Then they said the second day.  They made some nicer place I believe James and Hensley said he was five or seven in the red zone And I know shout out to Tarell bonds because they say yesterday Tarell bonds The remember the videos we did on Tarell bonds shout out to the bonds family. I ain't forget about y'all But they said that Tarell bonds he picked Lamar Jackson off twice yesterday in the red zone But they said today that Lamar he was let me let me uh, let me just double-check it Because I believe it was five for seven. They said Oh Yeah in the red zone, he was five for seven Okay, perfect And he threw touchdown passes to Mark Andrews because Edward Seth Roberts Hayden Hurst and Willie Snead So that's good. And again, they're no pads on And you're not going against guys that really want you to lose But you are going against guys that are fighting for their jobs and really trying to hold down their jobs because This is their career right here Because there's other guys on that roster that they're bad at that that they're battling with so That was cool, man. That was cool to know that but again training camp six weeks away So it's this gonna be the last time we see these guys for a long time It's gonna be the last time we see these guys for a long time about a month and a half, man Whoo, that's a long time, but you know team keep it clean. We ain't going nowhere. So I We got we got a little we got a little drought to go through. We got a drought to go through so y'all just Bear with us. I will bear with you. You please bear with me. We will get through this football drought together I promise you we will get through this football drought together Because there's like unless they're even signed somebody unless they make a trade or something like that There's not gonna be anything going on because this is like their vacation This is these football players vacation like hope we can finally get away now and get away for a while now We don't have to come back for over a month But anyway It is what it is So Lamar Jackson or QB1 He during his part of the press conference they he talked about how He explained himself With the story that was going out going out about him not knowing that there was gonna be a new offense Even though we had cleared that up already, but he pretty much said the same thing He just he didn't know that every a lot of it was gonna change so much He also talked about How he was going to be again Again because he's done it already He said he was going to be getting together with his wide receivers again Again He already did it before the draft and now he's doing it after since they're gonna have a lot of those guys signed and He said he's gonna be getting together with the running backs to Again Again his first year starting This is his first year starting again It's it's crazy that um This guy got thrown in there Throne in there Flacco got hurt Lamar got thrown in and of course they really wanted him on the field because they really they coming up with all these packages for him and stuff. Um, but they he got thrown in there and Started what seven eight games started eight games, I believe and His first offseason as a starter Gets with his wide receivers gets with his wide receivers and then they go through the draft they go through um And he got together with them like I said before the draft so they go through the draft They go through all that then now they go through they go through the OTAs They go through Mini camp and now he says he's gonna he's gonna do it again. He's taking the initiative the initiative And then he said he's still probably gonna work with um with Josh Harris the QB coach down here in Florida and he He also said that he might even be working with Tom House and that's the QB. That's that's that throwing guru now Shout out to my guy Let me find him real quick because I don't want to leave him out because he's the one that he wanted to make sure that we We had talked about this in a video and now of course when I got to find his name I believe it's Yasha When I got to find his name my phone wants to play games. So shout out to this iPhone 6 plus But I'm already used to yeah, my guy Yasha Yasha y'all He said please do a video of this because that would be great if he does because they I believe it was Ryan Mink who asked Lamar Jackson. Um, he said are you gonna be working with Tom House? That QB guru and Lamar Jackson said I might and he said I might I might he said it's not guaranteed He said I might One thing that I do not understand How can people keep hating on this dude? How can you keep hating on this dude? My guy silver gorilla he sent me a video that somebody made that's talked about Lamar Jackson well not talked about it But it showed Lamar Jackson Working on his throwing his mechanics during the Ravens camps and stuff and it was really a video that somebody just took Jamison Hensley videos and they took any all the Ravens videos that they put out there on their Twitter and stuff and they just put them all together but It would just showing everything all in one and my guy silver gorilla was saying that Lamar has really been stepping into his throws now. So he's seeing that change. He's seeing that improvement Let me see what he said Lamar looks a lot smoother and he's learning to lead the receivers instead of throwing behind them And let's hope that it translates into an actual game. So yeah, we definitely want that to happen But the fact that this dude has been working and this is from last year. This ain't even nothing new This ain't even anything new But the fact that this guy has been working so hard to improve his game This dude has been working like crazy to improve his game I do not understand how people can continue to hate on him even Ravens fans And I thought in quotations up there super high when I say Ravens fans How can people continue to hate on this guy? I? Understand if if you he wasn't your favorite choice for the Ravens to draft him as the quarterback. That's fine I get it. Well, I don't get it, but that's fine. Everybody's entitled to their own opinion, which is great I get it if you don't think he's the best passer in the world. That's fine, too I get it if you don't even think he's a good passer. That's fine, too But to hate on Lamar Jackson when this dude is doing nothing but trying to improve his game Wouldn't you want that from your quarterback? Especially the this is gonna be his first year starting week one first year starting week one and This dude has been going above and beyond to make sure that he is on point And now he's gonna be working with Tom house now Tom house was a name that I had heard about before But I was like, you know what like John Harbaugh said in the press conference today He said because he was calling some media people out and I loved it. I saw petty Harbaugh I love it He was calling some of them out because there was one reporter who asked the question and he was like Oh, wasn't that you who put out that um that that false reporter something like that about I believe it was about Marquis Brown not being back yet or being back already something like that Hey, but he called the reporter he called that report out He said wasn't it you that reported that and that's and that's not true He called him out right then and there doing a live press conference and the reporters like no, they were that wasn't me And he was like, oh, maybe I misinterpreted your report, but he knows what these reporters are He knows what these people are so even is the top guy Well, not the top guy because that's the GM and owning all that but one of the Ravens top guys they had coach He's paying attention to the media too. He's paying attention to the media too. So that's reports that go out Could even be YouTube videos. I don't but anyway He What was I saying? I forgot now, man But anyway, John Harbaugh He he called he called him out and he put the dude on Blast on blast but anyway, um, I had to make sure that when I Talked about Tom house. I knew who he was because I don't need John Harbaugh calling me out. I don't need him calling me out Well, I call myself out if I mess up on something anyway, but So I look I watch a documentary on this dude watch that I watch a whole documentary on this dude And um, he is a he's a throwing coach. He's a throwing professional. He worked with pitchers and the um in what nbl, whatever whatever's called baseball league is called and he He breaks it down man, even to what you're drinking. He's saying alkaline water is the way to go He said that's the way to go and I know a lot of people know that already But anyway, when it took when it came to the NFL and They'll what was the pitchers name that he said he worked with and he said when he said he said the picture was already pretty good I think it was Nolan Ryan. I believe Forgive me baseball people because you know, I'm gonna mess it up But he said Nolan Ryan was already pretty good But then when he worked with him he had the best years of his career and Then um, but I was like, okay, that's baseball. So that's one thing and yeah They got us throw the ball a certain way and pitch it a certain way But then he translated it to football and he talked about the guys that he worked with in football some of them and two of them With Tom Brady and Drew Brees Tom Brady and Drew Brees if Lamar might possibly work with Tom house If he might possibly work with Tom house That means that they have either been talks between him or his mom who is his agent in Tom house Or they have been That there's a want to work with him It's a want for him to work with Tom house if the Tom house reached out to him He read he reached out to Tom house I would think it would be him reaching out to Tom house because I'm sure Tom house ain't got to look for no work work finds him but again, how how can people continue to hate on Lamar Jackson and whether they Ravens fans are not How can they continue to hate on his dude when he is doing literally nothing but trying to improve? How how is that possible? I don't get it It's just it's the craziest thing, but this guy is really trying to take his game that much further That much higher to that next level. He is really really trying to improve really trying to improve And again last year Yeah, there was one on cuz you know every year Ravens Facebook live stream, you know, it's always It's about it's usually about two to three trolls in there Depends on how much traffic is going through there sometimes it may be a little bit more But it's usually about two to three So one of them was saying oh man, um the charges they exposed Lamar Jackson last year. They exposed them They exposed them He's he said the Ravens beat them up in that first game, but then that second game He they they exposed Lamar Jackson because he kept doing the same thing over and over And I was like wait, wait a minute and I respond I said I said I know you're trolling. I say this obvious that you're trolling Because you said that Lamar kept doing the same thing over and over I Said the only person that they exposed in that game was the person that was calling the plays and he's no longer with the Organization that's the one who got exposed and we talked about that plenty of time We talked about that that same day once we left the playoff game. We talked about it in plenty of videos Martin Marty Mordenweg Mordenweg. I mean excuse me. Um, he got exposed. He got exposed because There was no plan B There was no plan B same thing. We've been saying everybody was saying all this offense isn't sustainable Remember this is not sustainable. It's not gonna continue to work, but they was just stating the obvious But it was a limited offense, but at the same time with a limited office that would have a limited offense They are gonna be obvious limitations.  That's it You're going back up to the locker room. Go clean it out and going back home and that's what happened No backup plan. Boom. You're done and Ravens. We're done so It's I'm really excited. I was already super excited for this season But this this this press conference that we got to watch today and if you didn't watch it check it out I mean It ain't nothing special, but it is something that can if you If you like Lamar Jackson if you're a fan of Lamar Jackson and you watch this press conference at least his portion of it You're gonna love him even more If you somebody that does not like Lamar Jackson If you're not a fan of Lamar Jackson's Whether you're Ravens fan or not and you watch a press conference. I think it could change your mind It can change your mind Because just his his work ethic it continues to show it continues to show This guy again, he he is just trying to do everything that he can to be great Now we talked about something in the live stream. Um a few days ago and Some people again like a lot of people always feel like with Joe Fleco With his career doing while he was with the Ravens them like they'll they'll be like man Flacco before the before the Super Bowl Yeah, he don't know these they feel like he did a lot worse after the Super Bowl Well, he just changed into he just chased the money and he got the money then after the money then he fell off and Some people say oh man, well, I blame him and he just he kept on having kids Him and his wife just kept having kids that he was just so focused on having kids then that's why he never was a great quarterback It's like really y'all y'all really just gonna blame him for loving his family.  You want to have a big family with your wife?  Like some people do not know how to separate personal and business That's his personal life the man have as many kids as he wants to Cuz I see literally nobody unless it's some people in a charges fan base that do it and I don't hear about it But I see nobody complaining about Phillip Rivers having a whole football team. He ain't got no Super Bowl. I See nobody complaining about that, but they did they do it with Flacco They did it with Flacco.  Yeah, where's your Pro Bowl at? Well, he turned down an invitation to the Pro Bowl So because his wife was giving birth He can always take a trip to Hawaii and go throw the football around because that's all they doing at the Pro Bowl It's not a real game He can always keep that Lincoln afford to go to Hawaii. His pockets are not hurting at all but professionally Joe Flacco After the Super Bowl nothing changed he was the same type of quarterback same guy Same guy about 20 25 touchdowns about 12 14 interceptions same guy But more like 23 24 touchdowns type of Flacco That was about that's about it. But after Super Bowl, I think it was like kind of even but anyway, um His overall the type of quarterback he was did not change Didn't change before and after the money didn't change at all But with Flacco one thing that we we noticed and I've said this before too But we talked about in the stream the other day is that yeah, he did get with his receivers Sometimes not much. He did it last year. He did it. I think he did it a year before the Super Bowl He did it a few times At least it was put out there The other few times that he did it if he did it more times and I don't know about hey, please inform me but Flacco just He always just seemed to be the nine to five quarterback and again There's nothing wrong with that There's nothing wrong with that if because he just did his job He did his job He came in went to work when work was done. I'm out a Lot of us are the same way if we go into work Come in do our job. Hey, uh, you guys are for an overtime Yeah, we are you want to sign up for it? No, I'm out. Bye. That was Flacco came in did what was required of him and left and That's not a problem. It's only a problem for somebody who wants to be great Just feel like Flacco just never wanted to be great He was cool with doing what he had to do and he did what he had to do To keep his job to maintain his job into it to do a decent job of his job But he he never put in that he never consistently put in that extra work to try and be great And it's not a guarantee that putting in that extra work makes you great But it all starts up here It all starts up here. You put in that extra time to something you put in that extra effort to something It can show you it starts with your mentality If you got that mentality to try to really be good at something to really be great at something Oh, you're gonna put in work man. You are going to put in work work From jump and Lamar's been putting it in from jump And again, that's it's not a diss to Flacco anything They don't need the whole Lamar vs. Flacco war starting up again, even though some people did not even pass that But it was just it just serves as a reminder That all QBs they not built the same You can have a strong on you can have the fastest legs in the world You can be able to fit the ball in some tight windows But if you don't have that mentality to be great Then you're not gonna get there and That's why I am super excited for not only this year for Lamar Jackson, but for his career Because if this dude is showing all these signs of trying to be great this early this early think about that Think about this dude was drafted last year. He was a rookie last year that played in eight games He played in eight games One of them being a playoff game He played in eight games last year. He was having trouble Gripping the ball. He used to throw ducks. I just felt like grabbing the football. You know, I did let me throw a pass real quick Okay, there we go touchdown. But anyway, he was having trouble gripping the ball He was having trouble grasping the offense. He was having a lot of trouble doing some different things and just getting used to the NFL What did he do? Did he just say, you know what all right seasons over I'm gonna just wait till we got to meet up with the team And Baltimore when I got to go back up there. Let me just chill in Florida go vibe go back home This too well, he was down here back home, but he was working He said hey all the receivers y'all come through come through. Let's work together He worked with Jalen Smith to and now you're on the same team for now But this dude has been doing everything to try to get better and he's gone straight to work That's why I just I don't understand how people can dislike this guy. How can you possibly dislike this guy? If you frustrated with some stuff that he did last season on the field, okay, cool That's fine. But to not even try to really give this dude a chance And this dude is working working and To be so young but still be working. That means you got it up here. Shout out to his mom shout out to his moms Because that work ethic if you put that work ethic in somebody No matter the education level no matter the age no matter what is against them They will know how to work hard at whatever it is that they doing they'll know And he knows he gets it He gets it big time so Team keep it clean. I man This is gonna be a fun year. It already has been but this is gonna be a fun year I am a soul so excited to just see this dude take leaps and bounds forward. I Can't wait till that first game in Miami when they come down here. Oh team keep it clean I hope y'all show out for that game. I Hope y'all I know it's a lot of y'all that say y'all coming through Let's see if y'all actually do I ain't even by my tickets yet, but I'm gonna definitely be there Oh, we would definitely be there definitely gonna be there But I don't know if y'all can hear this raining right now Hopefully it won't rain on at that game. But even if it does man, we are gonna show out My voice is I guarantee is going to be going that game because I'm going to be cheering The loudest I've ever cheered before because I'm just I'm super excited for it. I can't wait Lamar got he got my support as a Ravens quarterback And I know he got a lot of y'all support too. I know some of y'all do not support Some of y'all like oh man Lamar Jackson get this guy out of here, but guess what? You ain't got no choice but to watch and see If you want Lamar Jackson going that's fine You can have those feelings, but guess what you ain't got a choice, but to watch and see watch and see what happens No, it's a lot of Ravens fans rooting for him to fail It's tough That's tough. Am I saying this guy's gonna be the best quarterback in the world just because he's trying to be great No, I'm not saying that at all, but the fact that he's trying to be great and especially to be 22 years old 22 years old and doing the things that he's doing Trying to work with Tom house working with his other quarterback coach Josh Harris Getting together with his receivers in the off-season before the draft and now post draft to and the running backs to This dude is really doing everything to try to build the chemistry with his team Everything and you know He's he's a starter. He's the guy People gonna flock to this guy. They really oh shout out to the Ravens But people gonna flock to this guy and they they're gonna follow his lead They're gonna follow his lead and that vibe is contagious It's contagious if they see that their quarterback is really doing everything that he possibly can to be great What's gonna happen with them? They're gonna try to do the same thing They're gonna try to do the same thing and they're gonna do everything in their power to try to be great, too It's contagious man It's contagious So hopefully this this Wanting to be great mentality it affects all these different Ravens players and Even though some of them who will be trying to be great with Lamar, too. Some of them won't make the team We got to be straight up about this, too Every receiver that he practices with is not gonna make the team every running back that he practices with is not gonna Make the team every player that he practices with is not going to make the team But hopefully for their sake they can carry that mentality over to whatever the next move might be Team keep it clean appreciate y'all. I love y'all and I'm out