Introduction
Conservative economist Milton Friedman once said, “The [only] social responsibility of business is to increase its profits.” Noam Chomsky was more blunt. He stated, “Corporations [have] no moral conscience. [They] are designed by law to be concerned only for their stockholders, and not…their stakeholders, like the community or the work force.”
Should Bridge International Academies be allowed to experiment on African children? That’s the crux of a question academics, politicians and parents have been trying to answer for the last year.
Bridge, which is backed the World Bank, Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg among other luminaries, has been at the center of intense controversies across Africa. Earlier this year, the Ugandan government ordered Bridge to close down 63 of its schools, citing the use of unqualified teachers working in unsafe premises at unregistered schools. Bridge refused to stop its operations and took the government to court. This month, the High Court ruled in favor of the government, but Bridge plans to challenge the ruling.
Labor Network for Sustainability
As United States Energy Transfers Partners began building the Dakota Access Pipeline through territory sacred to the Standing Rock Sioux tribe, the tribe began an escalating campaign against the pipeline. By this summer nearly 200 tribes around the country had passed resolutions opposing the pipeline and many hundreds of their members joined nonviolent direct action to halt it. Amidst wide public sympathy for the Native American cause, environmental, climate protection, human rights, and many other groups joined the campaign. On September 9, the Obama administration intervened to temporarily halt the pipeline and open government-to-government consultations with the tribes.
