Engage: Conversations in Philosophy

Hypatia: The Movie

2009-09-10T09:56:00.000-07:00

Later this year comes a major motion picture depicting the life and death of Hypatia of Alexandria. It's called Agora and you can watch a teaser trailer below (the film looks quite stunning in its recreation of the ancient world!)

Hypatia preserved the legacy of Plato and Aristotle until she was attacked and murdered by Christians that mobbed Alexandria in 415 CE.

Lest you think that the Christians were mindless thugs bent on destroying philosophy, everyone should be reminded that the patron saint of philosophy is also a woman: St. Catherine (also from Alexandria, though she preceded Hypatia by more than 60 years).

Alexandria must have been quite the interesting city to unite both pagans and Christians around women philosophers.

Best Philosophy on the Internet: Vote Now

2009-09-01T10:30:00.000-07:00

The folks over at 3quarksdaily are having a contest for the best philosophy blog posts of the past year. Our recent ruminations on the Sotomayor nomination are among the choices. So go over and check out some of the philosophy available on the internet and let them know what you think (and voting for Engage is good for your karma).

Should College Graduates Swear an Oath to Social Responsibility?

2009-09-01T00:10:00.001-07:00

Peter Singer writes favorably about a new trend at Harvard Business School. New MBAs are taking an oath to use their skills and credentials to promote corporate social responsibility rather than just the bottom line. For years, mainstream capitalist theorists, such as Milton Friedman, have argued that the only responsibility corporate managers have is to make as much profit as they can for their stockholders (as long as they obey the law). Now, with the meltdown of the housing and credit markets, some MBAs are thinking they need to have a wider ethical perspective.

Singer admits that over 80% of Harvard MBAs have not signed on board to be more ethically minded, but he has hope.

This made me wonder whether college graduates shouldn't be encouraged to think about their social responsibility. As Singer points out, the idea of professionals swearing to "do no harm" is not a new idea. We should remember that the idea of a bachelor's degree comes from the medieval notion of having succeeded at being a baccalaureus--literally a squire to a knight. That is, one has mastered a set of special skills supposedly to be used for the benefit of society (saving widows and orphans and such).

There is a Graduation Pledge Alliance that champions the idea of college graduates taking such an oath. The oath goes something like this: “I pledge to explore and take into account the social and environmental consequences of any job I consider and will try to improve these aspects of any organizations for which I work.” The idea has not really taken off beyond a few liberal arts and religious schools.

Is the idea of college graduate social responsibility an idea whose time has come or naive wishful thinking?

The Right to Deliberate: How the Health Care Debate Might Get with the Times

2009-08-16T17:39:00.000-07:00

News reports from the past week suggest that Obama has fallen prey to the romanticism of the colonial New England; he has a nostalgia for the town hall meeting. These get togethers allowed village members to gather together to voice their views on matters of common concern in front of town officials and one another. They were sort of the nice version of the Salem witch trials.

Obama, and other Democrats, have been using this forum to raise awareness of the his health care reform proposal. But it seems that in many of these events, well-organized protesters have been able to take the focus off the specifics of legistlation and onto the expression of their anxiety, fear, and willingness to shout down anyone who disagrees with them.

James Fiskin suggests that maybe we should get over this nostalgia and update our political interactions in favor of deliberative poll forums.

Instead of a forum that gives a self-selected assortment of activists an opportunity to vent their anger and frustration, a deliberative poll forum encourages deliberation among participants. This means that people are chosen as representatives of the variety of opinions in a community, are given packets before the meeting that contain information and data about the specific question at issue, and then are charged to talk ("discourse") with one another. It is not sufficient to simply chant or repeat the views that one had at the beginning of the meeting. The hope is that the group can actually think through the issue together, weigh evidence, looks at counterexamples, and perhaps come away with a different understanding of the problem than they had when they came in.

Fiskin notes:

"...we have collaborated on more than 50 deliberative polls around the world. The process has certainly been shown to help overcome sharp divisions. In a 2007 deliberative poll in Northern Ireland on education reform, the percentage willing to agree that “most Catholics” or “most Protestants” were “open to reason” rose 16 points. Those agreeing that most Protestants or Catholics were “trustworthy” also increased considerably.

One we held in Bulgaria, about policies toward the Roma, or Gypsies, produced strongly reconciliatory policies at a time when loud fringe groups wanted to build walls around the Roma communities. And in a deliberative poll in Brussels just before the recent European Union elections, people from 27 countries, partaking in discussions in 21 languages, moved to support more tolerant policies toward immigrants.

If deliberative polls can produce mutual understanding in such cases of sharp ethnic and political conflict and across such linguistic divisions, surely this process can help members of Congress have civil, constructive conversations with their own constituents about health care."

For all the talk about politicians such as Obama tapping into new technology, like Facebook and Twitter, for campaigning, maybe we should also consider new ways of doing democracy that don't harken back to the days of powdered wigs and horse drawn carriages.

Religiosity and College majors: Where are all the Faithful?

2009-08-12T18:29:00.000-07:00

For some reason, education seems to be the major that attracts, keeps, and strengthens the faithful in college, according to this study. Interestingly enough, the scientists are not turning the youth into atheists with their theories of evolution and such (yet, even though they don't think its important, they go to services anyway?). Seems that honor goes to the folks in departments like sociology and political science. The humanities are not far behind in making us secular humanists, though.

Sexist Jokes Promote Violence Toward Women

2009-08-10T14:37:00.000-07:00

As readers know, I've been interested for a while in the use of humor (particularly satire) for social justice work, as well as understanding what makes racist and sexist jokes morally problematic (check out the philosophy of humor tag). Now Spanish researchers have done a study that suggests that young men who listen to sexist jokes somehow become desensitized to statements that justify aggression and violence toward women.

Surprising?

Sotomayor is Confirmed 68-31

2009-08-06T16:02:00.000-07:00

I spoke to a group of Latin@ high school students today and told them we need them to be the leaders of the community in the future. I told them we need to achieve like Sonia.

Democracy and Civil Disobedience: Philosophy Cafe @ Powell's Books: Aug. 1

2009-08-02T17:27:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, I participated in the Philosophy Cafe at Powell's Books. Its a new event organized by a new friend of mine, Brian Eliot, and his colleague, John Farnum. The hope is to involve everyday folks in philosophical discussions about a wide variety of topics. My talk yesterday focused on "Democracy and Civil Disobedience". Brian and John told me we reached the highest audience numbers with this one (about 55 people total). After I gave my presentation, the audience asked some questions and then they were broken up into small discussion circles. John, Brian, and I listened in to some of the conversations. There was some great soul searching about whether or not people thought they would be willing to put their lives, jobs, reputations on the line for justice and whether non-religious people could have the same fortitude to engage in social justice work and nonviolence as figures like Gandhi, King, or Chavez, who were all deeply spiritual men. (I pointed out Barbara Deming's, work as a secular theory of nonviolence)

The talk I gave provided two views on the legitimacy of civil disobedience (which I defined, following Rawls, as "the public, conscientious, and nonviolent refusal to obey laws or commands of the government in order to bring a change in such laws or commands").

I offered two arguments from Socrates in the Crito which say that CD should not be allowed because: 1) laws and government institutions are "like parents" in that they provide the conditions for nurturance for a person to live and flourish and as such, they are owed obedience and gratitude by citizens who benefit from them; and 2) to the extent that a citizen stays in a society and abides by the laws and government power without dissent, then an implicit contract is formed in which the citizen agrees to accept the legitimacy of the laws and government. If a citizen does not like the laws, then he can leave; if he does not, he accepts them and the power they hold over him.

I then countered with Martin Luther King's point that even if a rule is legal this does not make it moral. There are just laws and unjust laws. While we have a legal and moral responsibility to obey just laws, we have a moral duty to disobey unjust laws.

I finished by talking about why nonviolence is the method with which we ought to think about making social change. Sometimes, when the injustices of our society are grasped in their enormity, it might seem that only violent upheaval can make the changes needed so that people will not suffer or die any longer. I offered some quotes by Cesar Chavez on how armed struggle rarely results in a situation of social justice and ended with the views of Barbara Deming. She says that nonviolence is the most ethical way to resist evil because it resists oppression "with one hand", but offers the other hand to the oppressor to reassure them that we do not seek their destruction or suffering.

Spurned again by the Academy: Top Ten Philosophy Blogs

2009-07-30T15:19:00.000-07:00

Alas, I again did not make Brian Leiter's cut for being one of the top ten philosophy blogs on the WWW. I feel so much like Susan Lucci (don't know who she is? you need more camp in your life, my friend.)

Leftist Faith: Kolakowski on Religious Feeling at the End of Days

2009-07-22T12:01:00.000-07:00

Polish philosopher Leszek Kolakowski passed away last week. I've never been familiar with his work, but Margaret Soltan writes a very thoughtful memorial about him. She respects him for being a leftist who found a place for religious feeling toward the end of his life. However, it was not some desperate grab for a foundation in life or a calculated bet to win rewards in the afterlife a la Pascal. Instead, Kolakowski simply recognized a sense of mystery and awe about the complexities of life that don't seem to be reduced to a set of philosophical propositions or explainable according to biology or physics:

"People - and by no means professional philosophers only - often have experiences which they describe as astonishment at the fact of existence, awe in the face of 'Nothingness', apprehension of the unreality of the world or the feeling that whatever is impermanent must be accounted for by what is indestructible. Experiences of this kind are not mystical in the strict sense, i.e., not events people interpret as direct encounters with God. They might rather be described as a strong feeling that in the fact of being and of not being - in this very fact and not only in the experiencing person's existence - there is something unobvious, alarming, puzzling, queer, astounding, something which defies all the ordinary, daily norms of understanding. Such feelings cannot be and need not be converted into scientific 'problems'; they are expressed, more or less clumsily, as metaphysical riddles. There is in them no stuff for 'proving' anything if 'to prove' retains the sense it usually has in scientific procedures. Indeed, inserted as links into a chain of reasoning they usually look poor and unconvincing. Yet it is astonishingly foolish to dismiss them, as empiricists often do, as errors generated by the wrong usage of words or subject to explanation as an abuse of semantic standards."

John Woo Gets Punked: Should Nonviolent Protest ever be Mean?

2009-07-17T13:42:00.000-07:00

Via this exciting new blog, Waging Nonviolence, a video from an Australian comedy group confronting Bush Administration torture apologist John Yoo in his class at Berkeley. My favorite part comes when the protester is asked to leave by administration and he says he is going to go to the human rights class down the hall.

Eric Stoner, the blog author, writes that such protests, confronting officials and ridiculing them, make him uncomfortable and can seem unproductive. Is it perhaps because they seem mean-spirited or disrespectful?

Gandhi believed that nonviolence should be done with a spirit of charity and King with a spirit of love and respect for the other who might be doing wrong.

Is ridicule an appropriate form of social criticism/protest?

Should 39th Become Cesar Chavez Blvd in Portland? Interview on the Mark and Dave show (1190 KEX AM)

2009-07-09T15:31:00.000-07:00

(Cesar Chavez Street in Austin, Texas. By Larry Miller via Flickr)

I was interviewed on the Mark and Dave Show on 1190 KEX Am News radio yesterday about the legacy of Cesar Chavez. You can listen in here (the show plays during rush hour from 4-7pm. My interview is during the last hour, about 3/4 of the way through the podcast)

Yesterday, the Portland City Council voted to rename 39th Avenue after Cesar Chavez. Seems like there is a very big political controversy over this. For the past few years, the City Council has made missteps in trying to get a street named for Chavez, angering various groups in the process.

As I said in the interview, I think its appropriate that a major city on the West Coast do something to honor Chavez (especially considering how much agriculture is part of the Oregon economy!) I don't really have an opinion as to whether a street is the best way to do that.

What I think is unfortunate is how the issue of the street becomes one of recognizing Latino/a contributions to the city ( some of the mayor's remarks suggest that this is a way of honoring Latino/a history in Portland). This reinforces the idea that Chavez was an ethnic leader most of all. Chavez always pointed out that the farmworker movement, and the United Farm Workers in particular, was multi-racial. In fact, the first big strike by the farmworkers was organized by Mexican and Filipino workers (led by Larry Itilong). Here is Itilong, alongside United Auto Worker labor leader Walter Reuther, and Chavez:

Personally, I think it would be great if Portland had a public school named after Chavez. Maybe one of the Portland Community College branches? How about a work center for day laborers in NE so they they could have a place to meet, instead of having to stand around the street corners off Burnside? Maybe one that could offer legal advice, provide child care, and even English classes for free? Something that could make a real tangible difference in the quality of worker's lives would truly honor Chavez's legacy.

Guerilla Philosophy: Is there room for philosophical graffiti?

2009-07-02T17:42:00.000-07:00

The London Underground drivers are exposing commuters to philosophical thoughts ranging from Sartre to Gandhi (presumably over the speakers?). Here some philosophers and politicians share what aphorisms they would like to hear.

This made me think of what it would be like to do guerilla philosophy--graffiti with a philosophical twist, spread out across public spaces. Such graffiti is common in Latin America (Eduardo Galeano is good at collecting this "street wisdom." He has said: "The walls are the publishers of the poor".)

(Translation: Poverty is a time bomb)

Anyway, here is my selection for a philosophical nugget in the public sphere:

"With individuals, as with nations, respect for the rights of others means peace"

Benito Juarez

(Photo by Guillermo Campos via Flickr. Street art in Coyoacan, Mexico)

What Good is a Master's Degree Philosophy during a Recession?

2009-07-01T13:14:00.000-07:00

According to these experts, if your Master's is not in law, business, engineering, or medicine, you're wasting your time.

"Men Live Better Where Women Are in Charge"

2009-06-26T12:22:00.000-07:00

Not surprising really.

Ricardo Coler went to live among the Mosuo, a matriarchal ethnic minority in China. He talks about his experience in this Der Spiegel interview.

It would be interesting to get a more ethnographic account of this society (to flesh out what "living better" really means, how "work" is distributed and what the women think about the whole situation). But from Coler's description, it sounds as if the Mosuo live like the bonobos.

The Revolution Will Not be Twittered: Some Skepticism on Twitter and Politics

2009-06-23T22:22:00.000-07:00

Since most mainstream journalists have been neutralized in Iran, news of the protests pouring out to the world has come from social media, particularly Twitter. Twice now, previously in Moldova, and now in Iran, Twitter has become a tool for people to use in revolutionary political circumstances. It has helped to coordinate mass actions and to spread news about authoritarian repression.

But does it transform political action?

Mike Madden, in this piece in Salon.com, thinks not. Social media has been useful in documenting what is going on, getting information out, but it has not been something that radically changes how political action is taking place. Indeed, he worries at how easily social media can be blocked and then subverted by officials to spread disinformation and confuse activists.

Michael Walzer (one of my favorite political thinkers) muses here that its not clear whether the internet has changed political action very much.

In order to change things, people need to get out and be organized. Twitter and Facebook can be useful in getting people information and mobilizing mass rallies. But mobilization is not the same thing as organizing. Getting a bunch of folks to show up to a protest can be a good thing, but really, what matters more is if you can get them to stick around afterwards to do what Walzer calls "scut work"--filling envelopes, handing out fliers, cleaning up the meeting place, and generally showing their dedication to a group ideal.

If you have people who are willing to show up to protests, you have activists. But activism is usually very "flash in the pan" kind of activity--going to a rally, signing a petition, writing a letter. These things are important, no doubt. But what I take Walzer to suggest is that a social movement, in order to challenge entrenched power, needs organizers--people who are willing to do the activism, but also the less visible, and less publicized/glamorous, work of fundraising, phone banking, door to door knocking, and scut. (For an excellent discussion of the difference between organizing and activism, see this essay by Mark Rudd)

Organizing work is more long term and about building relationships with people so that they become aware of an issue and of the group of people who want to do something about that issue. This is not quite the same thing as creating a network, which social media is really good at. To say that people are in a network does not really say much about the quality of the linkage (think of all the people who might be your Facebook friends or followers on Twitter--to say they are all linked up does not fully describe the differences or similarities between them all. After all, we are all networked or linked up to Kevin Bacon by six degrees of separation, but that really doesn't tell us anything very interesting about the power relationships in those links).

There is a really great story that, I think, really captures the difference between activism and organizing (and also hints at the tedium of organizing and why it might not be so interesting to many): Some young activists went to see Cesar Chavez to find out how he made the farmworker movement so successful--building a powerful union out of literally nothing. He replied: "Well, we talked to one person, and then another person, and then another person, and then another person." No, they said, what's the secret to organizing? He answered: "You talk to one person, then another, then another, and then another."

Organizing, then, creates a group solidarity among individuals through discussion and deliberation that they might not have had before. It gives them a sense that they can accomplish actions together (Hannah Arendt says this is what power really is). Instead of being simply an aggregation of bodies at a rally, they are are group of colleagues united in a cause, trying to construct new opportunities for different kinds of political action. Organizing creates those relationships. Social media, it seems, can help the work of a movement get done faster, but it cannot replace the need to raise consciousness and a sense of agency that is the essence of political action.

(Photo: By Kamyar Adl on Flickr)

Mark Rudd as Commencement Speaker? (or What can Kids today learn from a terrorist)

2009-06-17T16:22:00.000-07:00

I can't imagine OSU ever doing this, but one can dream. Timothy Noah, over at Slate.com, suggests that colleges and universities shouldn't recruit successful people to give the commencement speech at the end of the year. Instead, schools should get failures--people who have screwed something up in their lives and can talk about the wisdom they gathered from the experience. One of his examples is our old friend, Mark Rudd. Here is Noah:

"Mark Rudd. Rudd (author of Underground: My Life With SDS and the Weathermen) is a refreshing departure from Weather Underground veterans like Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn, who continue to glamorize their radical past and to deny the Weather Underground's violent intentions. Rudd sees "very little positive" in the Weather Underground and much to be ashamed of, including its destruction of Students for a Democratic Society, the anti-war group the Weather Underground grew out of. He does not deny that the explosives that killed three of the Weather Underground's members in a Greenwich Village brownstone in 1970 were intended to kill soldiers and their dates at a dance at Fort Dix, N.J. He feels bad about the toll his life took on his parents. Worthwhile message: Don't intellectualize violence."

What a great talk that would be! (And I agree with Noah's review of Rudd's work in comparison to Ayers. Fugitive Days is a bore and a tad pompous. Rudd actually has some lessons for people about politics today)

Check out Mark talking about his new book on C-Span here.

Satire and Social Justice: Racial Jokes, Racial Wisdom, and Richard Pryor as a Philosopher of Race

2009-06-08T17:06:00.000-07:00

Warning: this post contains quotations and links that use language that might offend some readers.

From City Journal: an interesting article about Richard Pryor and how, over the long term of his career, he developed some very nuanced views about race and white racism. One of Pryor's monologues explains how he gained some insight into race dynamics in the United States after a trip to Africa:

"One thing that happened to me that was magic was that I was leaving, sitting around the hotel lobby, and a voice said, “What do you see? Look around.”

And I looked around, and I looked around, and I saw black people everywhere. At the hotel, on television, in stores, on the street, in the newspapers, at restaurants, running the government, on advertisements. Everywhere.

And the voice said, “You see any niggers?”

I said, “No.”

It said, “You know why? ’Cause there aren’t any.”

I’d been there three weeks and hadn’t said it. And it started making me cry, man. All that crap. All the acts I’ve been doing. As an artist and comedian. Speaking and trying to say something. And I’d been saying that. That’s a devastating word. That had nothing to do with us. We are from a place where they first started people. I left regretting ever having uttered the word on a stage or off it. It was a wretched word. I felt its lameness. It was misunderstood by people. They didn’t get what I was talking about. And so I vowed never to say “nigger” again."

I've mentioned before how use of humor, and satire, in particular, to explore and challenge dominant ideas in society is a particular powerful tool. But it's a very volatile one.

Recent studies suggest that satire is a form of humor that can challenge, but also reassure and confirm, one's own biases. In one study, liberal and conservative viewers were asked to assess the political humor of Stephen Colbert. Liberals tended to think he was using humor to poke fun of right wingers; conservatives thought he was using satire to make fun of liberals.

This kind of indeterminacy of satire as a tool of social justice makes me think about Dave Chappelle. During the last season of his wildly successful show on Comedy Central, Chappelle developed a series of sketches about racial stereotypes called the Pixie series. The idea was to show the kind of burden certain stereotypes impose on different ethnic groups. But he decided to abandon the show, in part, because he wasn't sure that his humor was having the effect he wanted it to have. He wasn't sure whether he was challenging the stereotype or, instead, retrenching the stereotype in the mind of some viewers. Here is a clip from the show:

Chappelle's Show

Pixie Stereotypes - In-Flight Meal

comedycentral.com

Buy Chappelle's Show DVDs

Black Comedy

True Hollywood Story

Should people concerned with social justice trust humor, and especially satire, as tools to raise critical awareness about issues such as racism?

New Film on Cesar Chavez in the Works!

2009-06-05T11:00:00.000-07:00

I received an email from director Dieter Heisig about a new biographical film on Cesar Chavez in production right now! Finally! Here is the press release:

Cesar Chavez and the grape boycott of the late 1960s will be the subjects of a new feature film to be produced by German production company MN Visionen. “This is a long overdue project on one of America’s great heros – the man who fought for the underdog, and who first popularized the famous phrase in the recent US presidential election: ‘Yes, we can!’,” said MN Visionen head Dieter Heisig. During the 1960s and 70s, Cesar Chavez – an American migrant worker and union organizer – helped create and lead the United Farm Workers Union. Using methods of non-violence protest inspired by Martin Luther King and Mahatma Gandhi, Chavez and the movement labored against phenomenal odds under the slogan “Si, se puede!”. His fasts and the famous March on Sacramento in 1966 were honored by many, including Robert F. Kennedy, while the Grape Boycott received international attention. The completed screenplay for this powerful film is based on the contemporary biography Cesar Chavez: Man of the Migrants by Jeanne Pitrone. It tells the story of a man and a movement dedicated to gaining the same civil rights for migrant workers as for all other American workers. It is estimated that well over a million U.S. citizens are still employed today as migrant workers under bleak conditions, many of them children.

MN Visionen is a newly formed independent German production company. Company head Dieter Heisig has worked as a producer and publicist for countless film, music and television productions in Germany, France and Austria.

For more information on the directer, go here (for those who read German).

Is Marriage Equality Radical Enough? Judith Butler on Same Sex Marriage, Polyamory, and the State

2009-06-04T00:16:00.001-07:00

New Hampshire becomes the sixth state to legalize same sex marriage today. The New York Times calls it another step in "mainstream Amerca" coming to "accept" the idea of marriage equality.

Judith Butler, in this new interview in The Monthly Review, talks about the conservative trend behind the marriage equality movement. She worries about it having the effect of normalizing certain kinds of relationship configurations, namely two individuals in a special legal/romantic bond, while making other kinds of romantic bonds seem perverse or unnatural. Moreover, she also considers that the marriage equality movement reinforces the idea that recognition by the state should be something that our affective relationships require for validation. Here's an except from a really good read:

Butler :"Of course, if marriage exists, then homosexual marriage should also exist; marriage should be extended to all couples irrespective of their sexual orientation; if sexual orientation is an impediment, then marriage is discriminatory. For my part, I don't understand why it should be limited to two people, this appears arbitrary to me and might potentially be discriminatory; but I know this point of view is not very popular. However, there are forms of sexual organisation that do not imply monogamy, and types of relationship that do not imply marriage or the desire for legal recognition -- even if they do seek cultural acceptance. There are also communities made up of lovers, ex-lovers and friends who look after the children, communities that constitute complex kinship networks that do not fit the conjugal pattern.

I agree that the right to homosexual marriage runs the risk of producing a conservative effect, of making marriage an act of normalisation, and thereby presenting other very important forms of intimacy and kinship as abnormal or even pathological. But the question is: politically, what do we do with this? I would say that every campaign in favour of homosexual marriage ought also to be in favour of alternative families, the alternative systems of kinship and personal association. We need a movement that does not win rights for some people at the expense of others. And imagining this movement is not easy.

The demand for recognition by the state should go hand in hand with a critical questioning: what do we need the state for? Although there are times that we need it for some kinds of protection (immigration, property, or children), should we allow it to define our relationships? There are forms of relation that we value and that cannot be recognised by the state, where the recognition of civil society or the community is enough. We need a movement that remains critical, that formulates these questions and keeps them open."

Empathy, Equity, and the Wise Latina Judge: Sotomayor and the Supreme Court Oath of Office

2009-06-01T01:12:00.000-07:00

The conservatives may have point about Sonia Sotomayor. Some pundits have pointed out that the oath of office for the Supreme Court seems to dismiss the kind of judicial attitude espoused by Sotomayor and Obama. That is, it seems to disallow "empathy" as a judicial tool, and certainly prohibits anyone from claiming that certain "standpoints" (perhaps such as those by a "wise Latina judge"--that now infamous phrase of Sotomayor's) ought to be epistemically privileged in legal decision making. Here is the text of the oath:

“I, (name), do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will administer justice without respect to persons, and do equal right to the poor and to the rich, and that I will faithfully and impartially discharge and perform all the duties incumbent upon me as (title) under the Constitution and laws of the United States. So help me God.”

One commentator (who has a philosophy degree from Stanford!) suggests that these words immediately disqualify Sotomayor from the Supreme Court. According to Bryan Fischer, she has said that she will take into account "persons" and will rule based on factors such as empathy with the identity of the petitioners in court, rather than strict impartiality as the oath calls for.

I don't know much about the history of the word-smithing behind this oath but the phrase "...I will administer justice without respect to persons," is a curious one. Given the clause that follows ("and do equal right to the poor and to the rich"), the phrase might suggest that a judge is not to allow the identity, or reputation, or influence of an individual in a case, to sway an understanding of the appropriate application of the law. This would be a general warning against bias or favoritism.

Yet, commentators are taking this wording to suggest that "impartiality" means not taking into account any particularities of a person's background or history. In laying out his criteria for choosing a justice, Obama said he thought we needed:

“... somebody who’s got the heart — the empathy — to recognize what it’s like to be a young teenage mom. The empathy to understand what it’s like to be poor or African-American or gay or disabled or old — and that’s the criteria by which I’ll be selecting my judges.”

Jonah Goldberg, of The Nation Review, calls this deeply offensive, i.e, racist, and nonsense:

"The reasoning here is a riot of dubious assumptions. Obama and Sotomayor both assume that a firsthand understanding of the plight of the poor or the African-American or the gay or the old will automatically result in justices voting a certain (liberal) way. “I would hope,” Sotomayor said in 2001, “that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.” This is not only deeply offensive, it is also nonsense on stilts. Clarence Thomas understands what it is like to be poor and black better than any justice who has ever sat on the bench. How’s that working out for liberals?"

These views seem to imply that the administration of justice is a mechanical thing. Law is like an algorithm: anyone can plug in a few variables and get the same answer. Indeed, some commentators are now using former Justice O'Connor's saying that a wise man and wise woman should come to the same conclusion as some kind of repudiation of Sotomayor and Obama.

If this is how the oath of office is to be interpreted, then I say so much the worse for the oath. It seems to assume a very simplistic idea of legal decision making that ignores a fundamental virtue of jurisprudence: equity.

As Plato and Aristotle understand it, equity is a kind of correction to the written law administered by real live judges.

In The Statesman, Plato writes against the idea of the law as some of kind of system of rules that can be applied like a logical proof:

"The differences of men and actions, and the endless irregular movements of human things, do not admit of any universal and simple rule. No art can lay down any rule which will last forever...."

Equity, then, is an art (or more accurately, the practical wisdom) of learning how to take into account certain details of a particular case and consider them relevant in deciding how a law applies. It is an art in the sense that it is not a codified science, but more like a knack, a practice, that seasoned practitioners know how to do.

Aristotle calls equity "justice that goes beyond the written law" and offers an example: Imagine a law that prohibits the infliction of wounds with iron weapons. X strikes Y while X is wearing an iron ring. In addition to the general assault, shouldn't X face of charge of inflicting a wound with an iron weapon? Aristotle says this is a case for equity--learning to see the case in a wider perspective that takes into account: "not to the action itself, but to the moral purpose; not to the part, but to the whole; not to what a man is now, but to what he has been, always or generally." Clearly, justice, according to Aristotle, can only occur if we have some sense of the people we are dealing with.

An oath is not necessarily a job description (even though federal officials can be charged with treason or high crimes for violating their oaths). But it seems that, in the case of the Supreme Court oath of office, we ought to reconsider whether we are committing judges to an unsophisticated kind of jurisprudence. We should recall Cicero who said that only "the crowd" identified law and justice with the written decree; true law has to do with reason and the wisdom that comes from experience interacting with persons in the real world.

Gays are good for it: The money, that is

2009-05-27T23:09:00.000-07:00

According to the folks over at The Faculty Lounge, Massachusetts saw over $100 million injected into the state over the last 5 years as a result of legalizing same sex marriage:

"According to one study, "marriage equality resulted in an increase of younger, female, and more highly educated and skilled individuals in same-sex couples moving to the state." And according to another, same-sex couples’ weddings injected significant spending into the Massachusetts economy and brought out-of-state guests to the state, whose spending also added to the economic boost."

California voters may want to rethink their decisions on Prop 8 as they watch their state go down the economic sinkhole.

Is the U.S. ready for a new economic paradigm? America, Argentina, and a New Paradigm of Dignity

2009-05-23T17:54:00.001-07:00

Back in December 2008, I compared the take over the the New Republic Window factory in Illinois with the factory take overs in Argentina in 2001.

This interview with a couple of Argentine journalists describes how the economic situation in Argentina in 2001 is similar to what is taking place in the United States today. They say we are now faced with making choice about whether we want to go back to a system in which banks control the economy, or a "new paradigm" in which work builds the economy in favor of the dignity of people and of society. Is the U.S. ready for a new anarchist inspired worker's movement?

Thanks to Latin American News Review.

We Get Excited Easily: Habermas on Obama and Human Rights

2009-05-22T11:43:00.000-07:00

Jurgen Habermas received the Spanish Brunet Prize for Human Rights recently. He was asked about the implication of Obama's election for human rights. Here is what he said:

"Obama is an American phenomenon. After eight years of Bush, Obama has been a great gift...Something that sets us apart from the Americans is that they have a great willingness to get excited with things. The history of Europe in the twentieth century has been quite complicated, with disasters and dictatorships. Perhaps it is appropriate that here in Europe we are less enthusiastic and have both feet on the ground."

After these last two weeks--in which Obama has adopted the Bush position on not releasing military abuse photos from Iraq and Afghanistan, has decided to keep the flawed military commissions system for trying detainees in Guantanamo, and has pledged to keep some detainees in permanent preventative detention--maybe we should learn to be more European.

What Good is a Philosophy Degree in a Recession?

2009-05-21T16:41:00.000-07:00

Not much, according to business folk over at Business Week. Forget about critical thinking. Less than 5% want people with liberal arts degrees. They want you to show them that you know how to take orders.

Grad school? They say its a waste of time. Just find a job.

Spielberg to Make MLK Biopic; Cesar Chavez Movie Far Behind?

2009-05-19T14:13:00.000-07:00

Steven Spielberg has announced that he has cleared that way with the estate of Martin Luther King, Jr. to make a biography movie about MLK.

I wonder how long it will be before a Cesar Chavez film comes along? I'm officially throwing my hat out there to be a film consultant for whatever project materializes.

I remember speaking to Luis Valdez a few years ago about whether he thought a movie would come out about Chavez. He said that it was still too early and it would be too controversial for some people who were involved in Cesar's life.

I have some casting suggestions already though. I always thought that Clifton Collins might have a shot as a young Cesar:

Here he is in Capote (2005). Brown him up, sorta like Lou Diamond Phillips in La Bamba, and you might have a Chicano leader:

A Modest Proposal: Anti-Fascism Day April 20

2009-04-20T23:20:00.000-07:00

I don't know whether there is such a day on April 20 (the day Hitler was born). This is Holocaust Memorial Week, but it seems we should also have a day to rally against the attitudes and political habits that generate intolerant and arbitrary government. This great speech by Charlie Chaplin, from the film, The Great Dictator, is relevant, even over 60 years later (in fact, Chaplin's call reminds me of the ideas of Martin Luther King, jr--read his "Beyond Vietnam" speech, in which King talks about the need for a revolution of values)

Cesar Chavez Day 2009

2009-03-31T04:58:00.000-07:00

Sorry to have been away for so long. For the past few weeks, I've been touring around the country, talking about Cesar Chavez.

Today is Chavez's 82nd birthday. Check here to see if there are any events near you celebrating his life and work.

If you are in Detroit today, come see me at the University of Detroit-Mercy!

Que viva La Causa!

CEDAW Update for International Women's Day: Will this be the Year?

2009-03-08T15:58:00.000-07:00

Nancy Pelosi has urged passage of the Convention for the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women in the U.S. Senate as soon as possible. CEDAW was drafted almost thirty years ago but the U.S. has never signed on. It joins an exclusive club of about 8 nations, including notorious human rights violators, such as Sudan, Somalia, and Iran, in avoiding the treaty.

Even though the Senate is Democrat controlled and Obama favors the treaty, it looks like it will be a hard fight toward ratification. Conservatives argue that ratification means the U.S. will give up national sovereignty and be forced to recognize a right to abortion and legalized prostitution. They are unlikely to vote for ratification without provisos that exempt the U.S. from certain portions of the treaty. These exemptions anger liberals who may not want to vote for a watered down CEDAW.

Here is a list of the Senators on the Foreign Relations Committee. You can contact them with the following talking points and urge passage of CEDAW:

I urge you to support the Treaty for the Rights of Women and work toward full Senate ratification.

The Treaty for the Rights of Women addresses basic human rights of women. It can be an effective tool in reducing violence and discrimination against women and girls, ensuring girls and women receive the same access as boys and men to education and health care, and securing basic legal recourse to women and girls against violations and abuses of their human rights.

As the leading superpower, U.S. ratification would lend weight to the Treaty and provide valuable support to women seeking reforms in countries around the world. Without the United States as a party to the Treaty, repressive governments can easily discount the Treaty?s provisions.

The United States played an important role in drafting this Treaty, which 185 nations have ratified. But our country is now 1 of 8 that have yet to ratify the Treaty, alongside Sudan, Somalia, Qatar, Iran, Nauru, Palau and Tonga.

(Cross Posted at the OSU Philosophy Department's Ideas Matter 2009 Blog)

Dolores Huerta Becomes a Cultural Icon (Finally!)

2009-03-05T02:04:00.001-08:00

Glamour magazine recently did a photo layout of young actresses and singers portraying "women in history" (even though some of the women depicted are cultural icons or fictional characters and not actual persons).

But among them was America Ferrera (of Ugly Betty fame) as Dolores Huerta, co founder (with Cesar Chavez) of the United Farm Workers union.

Its about time this woman got the icon status she deserves.

I recently was excited to get a copy of the A Dolores Huerta Reader by Mario Garcia. Hopefully, this work can start to attract scholarly attention to Huerta's role as a nonviolent activist in U.S. history.

Are Romantic Comedies Dangerous to Our Emotional Life?

2009-03-03T23:38:00.001-08:00

According to a new study, this woman might be one of the most dangerous people in the world:

Researchers have found that people who are fans of romantic-comedies, such as Sleepless in Seattle, tend to hold attitudes about relationships that likely to lead to disfunctionality because they are so unrealistic. For instance, "rom-com" fans are more likely to believe that 'sex should always be perfect', and that people should hold out for 'soul mates' who will understand their needs without ever having to ask or be told about them.

This genre of films is also commonly referred to as "chick-flicks", suggesting that they appeal to young women in particular. There is a quite a bit of feminist research on how certain kinds of media, such as Disney films, present damaging ideals of femininity to young girls. Are romantic comedies similarly damaging by perpetuating warped notions of relationship and emotional expression?

Singer's Plan to End Global Poverty

2009-02-19T23:31:00.000-08:00

Peter Singer's new book lays out his plan for ending global poverty, in which over 3 billion human beings live on less than $2 a day (and a shocking 1 billion live on less than about $1.25 a day for all their essential needs). As this profile in The Observer explains, here is a way for the most privileged human beings to discharge their duties to the most poor:

Every person in the developed world ought to give at least 5% of their annual income to poverty relief efforts (such as Oxfam or Unicef). The rich ought to give more.

And to address the ad hominem that always follows Singer's argument: He gives about 25% of his annual income to Oxfam.

Blood Diamonds at the Oscars?

2009-02-18T10:29:00.000-08:00

The Oscar awards are this weekend. Some groups are calling on performers not to wear diamonds that are displacing native peoples in Africa. You can check out the story and get involved here.

Muhammad Yunus Inspires Young People to Change the world

2009-02-17T11:57:00.000-08:00

Nobel Prize winner Muhammad Yunus talks about the importance of young people using their imagination and creativity to envision a better world and not focusing on the trappings of grades and success as the centerpoint of a meaningful life.

CFP: Society for Philosophy in the Contemporary World

2009-02-04T23:54:00.000-08:00

Society for Philosophy in the Contemporary World
Call for Papers
16th Annual Conference
July 18-23, 2009
Pine Lake Environmental Campus, Hartwick College, Oneonta, New York
http://www.hartwick.edu/x446.xml
(Shuttle Service from Albany Airport will be available)

We invite submissions for the 16th-annual conference of SPCW. We welcome paper on all topics, from any and all philosophical traditions. The society fosters and supports productive philosophical exchange in a constructive environment. New members are always welcomed!

This year, the society will hold SPECIAL SESSIONS on the following topics:
1) Living Mindfully: Food, Environment, Technology
2) Whither Liberal Arts?
3) Sport, Play, and Leisure

Additional possible topics might include any of the following, many of which have been themes of conferences over the past 16 years:

Work, Labor, Creation
Philosophy of Place
Bridging Analytic and Continental Philosophy
Aesthetics
Literary Theory
Religious and Secular Institutions in the Contemporary World
Discourse and Dissent
Tradition and Memory
Multiculturalism and Philosophy
Human Nature and Human Habitats
Philosophy and Everyday Life
Authenticity, Autonomy, and Authority: Problems of Authority in the Contemporary World
Intersubjectivity: Self, Other, and Lifeworld
Time, History, and Social Change
Philosophy and Humanistic Studies
Culture and Ethics
Power, Law and the Possibility of Peace
Applying the Virtues
The Relevance of Philosophy
Justice and Identity in a Global Context

Please Note: As an open society, we welcome and encourage papers on any topic related to philosophy on the contemporary world (broadly construed).

Standard submissions: papers with a maximum length of 3,000 words. Alternative presentation and creative proposals will be given consideration. Electronic submissions are preferred.
Submissions are due March 1, 2009
Questions and submissions (prepared for blind review) should be sent to the following address:
Email: wisnewskij@hartwick.edu

Conference Co-Chairs:
Ramon Das Jeremy Wisnewski
University of Wellington, Victoria Hartwick College

Amartya Sen Defends the UN Declaration of Human Rights

2009-01-30T21:37:00.000-08:00

n the most recent edition of The New Republic, Nobel Prize winning economist and philosopher Amartya Sen argues for upholding the importance of the UN Declaration of Human Rights sixty years after its signing.

Sen argues that:

1) the UNDHR makes an important contribution to ethics by establishing the priority of morality to law. Human rights do not depend on governments to establish laws to enshrine them--they apply to human beings as such regardless of their nationality.

2) the UNDHR empowers many different kinds of organizations, not just governments and law, to protect human rights, such as international non-governmental organizations (Amnesty International, etc)

3) the UNDHR goes beyond many of the great documents protecting rights (such as the American Bill of Rights or the French Rights of Man and Citizen) by making explicit mention of social, economic and cultural rights, and tying issues of wealth and poverty to political and civil liberties.

4) the UNDHR, again unlike other rights documents, is explicitly universal in scope, with the hope of including within the sphere of moral concern many different groups that have been marginalized throughout history.

You can read his powerful defense of the UNDHR here.

(Cross listed from the OSU Ideas Matter 2009 Blog)

Carnival of Feminists # 71

2009-01-28T23:43:00.000-08:00

The carnival of feminists #71 is now on line, with some of the best of feminist blogging on the web. Check out the Engage entry!

Citizens Not Americans: Obama's Political Metaphysics on Power and Privilege

2009-01-22T10:07:00.000-08:00

Philosopher Linda Hirshman argues that within the first few words of his inauguration speech on Tuesday, Obama changed the political metaphysics of the United States. He opened by calling out to his "fellow citizens" not "my fellow Americans."

Her view is that citizenship harkens back to ancient Greek ideals of someone (she acknowledges the gender and class bias in the ideal) who is prepared to engage in the work of the community--making laws in the Assembly or defending the homeland as a soldier. Citizenship involves an understanding of self that is involved and commitment to one's relations in the civic sphere.

American identity, on the other hand, is about individualism and isolation. It privileges being left alone by government, and by the community, in order to pursue one's one private goals.

For Hirshman then, Obama is calling us back to a more ancient sense of virtue and active participation in public matters. Citizens not Americans.

While Hirshman recognizes that the old Greek role of citizen was built on a foundation of sexism and slavery (free, propertied men had other people to do their work for them, enabling them to engage in all this civic virtue), she fails to recognize that there was another group in the ancient Athens she glorifies. This would be the metics, the resident non-Athenian aliens, who usually were merchants and could utilize some public services, but were not allowed in the law making roles of society. They were forced to accept laws not of their own choosing in exchange for the privilege to remain.

The idea of the metics is important to remember because American citizenship has usually meant something very different than the ancient Greek ideals. Judith Sklar, in American Citizenship: The Quest for Inclusion, points out that American citizenship was always a status role--it meant you were in, you were all right, and usually, you were all white. Groups fought for inclusion into citizenship, not because they wanted to get more involved in the public matters, but because they wanted to be on the inside of power and privilege.

Today in the United States, it is estimated that there are close to 16 million undocumented immigrants who perform many of the same services to the community that the metics did for ancient Athens. They have rights to some public services, but unlike some European nations, most immigrants have no way to influence public decision making. The longer they stay without a voice, the more they become second class members of society who serve the first class citizens. As Michael Walzer has said before in his book Spheres of Justice, such a condition is intolerable in a democratic society

In addressing himself to fellow citizens, is President Obama calling us to civic virtue, or is reminding the group with power and privilege, served by another class of people with neither of those goods, to continue to enjoy their hegemony?

Perverts and the Examined Life: Philosopher's Guide to Movies

2009-01-16T09:56:00.000-08:00

Two new films with philosophical subject matter coming out soon. The first is a documentary, Examined Life, that captures the peripatetic experience with deep thinkers such as Peter Singer, Cornel West, and Judith Butler.

The second film is a project of that philosophical wild man, Slovoj Zizek (who is also interviewed in Examined Life), that analyzes psychoanalytic themes in a variety of American classic films. The Pervert's Guide to Cinema seems worth it just to watch Zizek trying to pilot a small motorboat.

The Ethics of Polyamory and Relationship Diversity: The Complete Series

2009-01-12T08:17:00.001-08:00

The final webisode of the interview with Christian Matheis is finally up. You can now listen to all four webisodes:

Webisode One: "What is Polyamory?" Definitions of Relationship Diversity

Webisode Two: "What is Polyamory?" Fairness and Jealousy in Polyamorous Relationships

Webisode Three: "What is Polyamory?" Polyamory and Patriarchy

Webisode Four: "What is Polyamory?" Final Thoughts--Caution and Human Potential in Relationship Diversity

The theme of relationship diversity has arisen in the popular press recently with the new book Opening Up (2008) by former Village Voice columnist Tristan Taormino.

And perhaps more than anything, polyamory is a movement that is spread over the internet. There are numerous sites and blogs devoted to the subject. For an interesting insight into the dynamics of such relationships, one can look to: The Journal of a Polyamorous Triad, (two men and woman sharing a house and raising children together) or for updates about polyamory worldwide, Polyamory in the News (which includes an interesting post as to whether we ought to read Sartre's No Exit as a fable about polyamory!)

Polyamory and Patriarchy

2008-12-22T00:51:00.001-08:00

In this third installment of the series, "What is Polyamory?" with Christian Matheis, we discuss how patriarchal culture affects the practice of polyamory.

There are many feminist criticisms of polygamy that are well known. Martha Nussbaum rehearses some of the issues in this piece. However, she asks, what exactly is wrong with plural marriage among consenting adults? Not much, she concludes. Some of the commentors suggest that what she is actually talking about is polyamory.

My colleague, Lani Roberts, has shared with me the following piece that offers a radical feminist critique of polyamory. The general lines of the argument follow the ideas of Catherine MacKinnon:

In a patriarchal culture, gender inequality is pervasive. Women are subordinated economically, politically, and socially to men. In such conditions, we cannot talk about women having the absolute freedom, the capacity, to choose how they want their lives to be. This is especially true in the case of sexual consent. MacKinnon makes the point in this 2006 interview:

"The assumption is that women can be unequal to men economically, socially, culturally, politically, and in religion, but the moment they have sexual interactions, they are free and equal. That's the assumption - and I think it ought to be thought about, and in particular what consent then means. It means acquiescence. It means passivity."

The critique in regard to polyamory (at least, heterosexual polyamory) is that, under conditions of patriarchy, women may seem agree to polyamorous relationships, but they have been conditioned all their lives to think of themselves as sexually available to men. A polyamorous set up is really to allow men to have sexual access to more and more women.

Christian does not deny the effects of patriarchy in all our relationships, but holds out polyamory as one possible way to chip away at patriarchy through its insistence on mutuality, communication, and autonomy. Is his position persuasive?

What is Polyamory? A New Engage Podcast Series on Relationship Diversity

2008-12-16T23:00:00.000-08:00

This past summer, Woody Allen released a quirky film about relationships called "Vicky Cristina Barcelona". The movie follows a couple of young American women who become involved in a complicated romantic relationship with the same man. He is an artist who is divorced, but his wife re-emerges, and she proceeds to become involved with him again, along with one of the Americans.

In part of the trailer for the film that you see here, the wife (played by Penelope Cruz) tells one the American girlfriends (Scarlett Johansson) how happy it makes her feel to hear her and her ex-husband making love in the next room. For many viewers, the question is: how could that be? How could she really be happy and not wildly jealous?!

In a series of webisodes, I explore the idea of polyamory (usually translated literally from the Greek and the Latin to be "many loves")--the idea of being involved in more than one romantic, affective, and/or sexual relationship at one time--that might provide answers to those questions. My guest for these webisodes is Christian Matheis, a graduate of OSU's Applied Ethics Master's Program, and who now works as a professional faculty for the Associated Students of OSU.

The first webisode here tries to define polyamory in comparison to traditional ideals of monogamy and distinguishes it from polygamy and polyandry. The second webisode here explains how fairness works in a polyamorous relationship in which there might be three or more partners involved with one another, and how jealousy is dealt with in such a situation.

Look for more webisodes soon, in which Christian and I discuss issue of polyamory and patriarchy, polyamory and queer identity, and the limits of polyamorous life.

Hope Reaches Guatemala: What Obama means to the Mayans

2008-12-16T02:32:00.000-08:00

Dennis, over at Rhetorical Wasteland, has a thought provoking discussion about whether progressives should celebrate the Obama inauguration event on January 20, 2009. I tend to think his conclusion is spot on: we should not celebrate the man, so much, as the organizing that got him to where he is today.

At the same time, Obama is an exceptional person and has made a profound impact on not just U.S. history, but global history. Over at The Seditionist, a report from a Guatemalan Mayan village about the reactions of people there to the Obama victory. Xeni Jardin recounts:

"Despite many years visiting their homes and sharing their difficult life experiences, we were surprised by their reaction to the Obama election. It was of great symbolic importance. That sudden jolt of aspiration felt around the world? It struck here. Hard. It meant hope. It meant a renewed belief in change, for a people who have survived natural disasters, racism, and 36 years of civil war that many describe as the Mayan genocide. If a black man can enter the Casa Blanca, they are saying, maybe a Mayan person can one day become president of Guatemala. Maybe we will live to see a true democracy here, the thinking goes—a government that represents the rights of Guatemala’s First People, instead of representing their destruction."

Should Latino/a Workers Occupy a New Republic (Windows and Doors)?

2008-12-08T01:38:00.000-08:00

A group of mostly Latino/a workers, who were laid off from a window factory in Chicago, have decided to stage an occupation of the factory rather than be turned out. You can read about this group of workers and the national attention they are bringing to the worries of ordinary working people here.

It seems that the workers feel they were not given full consideration of federal law before being laid off and are asking the owners of the factory, who claim they are broke, to give them the entire severance and vacation pay they are due. The workers claim that they will stay until Christmas, if need be.

The union to which the workers belong claims that they are simply engaging in an action that goes back to the 1930s when American workers would nonviolently occupy factories to pressure owners with their demands.

The occupation by the Republic Windows and Doors workers reminds me of the factory take overs in Argentina after the 2001 economic crisis. There, many factory owners also went bankrupt and simply left town, leaving the workers with little or no notice of a shutdown. Instead of simply accepting defeat, the workers of many of these factories went back to work and occupied facilities. They started to run the factories on their own, creating their own forms of management and production. Workers began to develop their own theories of a non-hierarchal work place, and of democratic decision making on the shop floor, that started to spread throughout the country. Soon, neighborhood assemblies were forming, in which people could talk about their reactions to economic crisis, and plan collective action that was independent from the state institutions and political parties. Some of these citizen activists called this kind of grassroots democracy horizontalism. You can read more about this movement here and also here.

The Republic workers aren't currently thinking of running the factory on their own. They simply want to get what is due to them. But wouldn't it be a great example if ordinary workers could take production matters into their own hands and demonstrate how the economy really works because of them and not because of the generosity of capital lending financial institutions which are pocketing so much of the taxpayer bailouts?

Museums, Memory, and the Logic of Coercive Institutions

2008-12-03T04:45:00.000-08:00

National Public Radio has a new series on museums in the United States. People often think of Americans as sports fans or infatuated with pop culture entertainment, but it turns out that we quite the museum goers. Almost 900 million people visit museums annually.

Why are museums so popular?

Philippe de Montebello, former Metropolitan Museum of Art director, answers: "A museum is the memory of mankind."

But we know, too, from many psychological studies that human memory is a very fragile and confusing thing. It is often unreliable and susceptible to being framed and influenced by extraneous forces. We know too often that sometimes people remember things that did not actually happen or not in quite the same way according to different people's recollections.

That why The Pinky Show offers a very interesting take on the museum as a cultural institution. Instead of being neutral repositories of our collective memory, museums may in fact be coercive institutions, run by elite groups who take it upon themselves to disseminate "official" (that is, ideological) versions of history for the masses. Actually, that sounds too Marxist. Kim the kitten puts it better:

Sit or Get off the Pot: The Toilet as a Human Right

2008-11-28T03:54:00.000-08:00

I was talking with a friend the other night and she told me she thought that a key issue for world peace in the near future would be food security and access to clean water. I said that I thought she was right, but that after reading this article, I also think that we also need to consider where all that food and water will eventually end up. Maybe we need to think of the toilet as a human right.

Many years ago, on my first trip to Europe, I remember my friend Phillip and I wandering through a train station in Florence, looking for a bathroom. We found the men's room and he went in. A few minutes later he returned with a puzzled look on his face. He said that there was no toilets or urinals in the bathroom. Just a hole in the floor. We both knew about squat toilets in Asia (there are cultural differences, even in defecating). But we were in the middle of Italy!

We were lucky to find public toilets, actually. Cities in the developed world are decreasing the number of public facilities. In the last eight years, the number of public toilets in London dropped over 40%. Why worry about the lack of toilets? One suggestion: A Japanese national disaster prevention panel found in a recent study that:

"nearly a million people would be unable to find a toilet if a magnitude 7.3-quake struck Tokyo at noon on a workday, sending 12 million people pouring out of office buildings and creating a potential hygiene and sanitation nightmare of biblical proportions."

In the developing world, access to some kind of toilet is rare. Open defecation leads to water pollution and the transmission of disease. In terms of preventing death in the developing world, nothing beats the toilet as a tool:

"Improved sanitation means more jobs, more economic growth, and less poverty. According to a recent WHO study, every dollar spent improving sanitation generates an average economic benefit of $9. The “sanitary revolution” — that is, the introduction of clean water and sewage disposal — has been the greatest medical advance of the last century and a half, according to a poll by the British Medical Journal. Though vaccinations certainly helped curb the spread of disease, they didn’t altogether stop it as much as the toilet did. A simple toilet is one of the cheapest medicines, adding decades to the human lifespan — when it’s used."

Lest you think that the idea of a toilet as a human right is a joke, consider this testimony from an Iraqi prisoner in Fallujah. It seems to make a case for the idea that being denied a toilet is a human rights violation. Abbas Abid claims he was tortured by American forces. Some of the methods included preventing him from urinating or defecating. Sometimes he was put into a room with many other men who had no access to a toilet. Instead, they were all given plastic bags that had to be stored in the cell with them and these bags were sometimes knocked over and spilled throughout the cell.

Such practices make a hole in the ground in Florence sound like heaven.

What Should Obama's Global Ethical Priorities Be?

2008-11-22T01:19:00.000-08:00

Ethicist Peter Singer outlines some of the moral challenges on a global scale facing the new Obama administration:

1) Restoring the U.S.'s image internationally by following through on the promise to close Guantanamo prison and pulling troops out of Iraq.

2) Helping to usher in reform at the United Nations by making it more democratic--meaning that something needs to be done by reducing the power of the five permanent members of the Security Council: the U.S., the U.K., France, Russia, and China.

3) Increasing the amount of foreign aid the United States provides to the world (currently about $25 billion/year, but still far less, as a percentage of overall GDP, than most industrialized nations)

4) Reducing carbon emissions and finding a way to become part of the discussion on enforcing the Kyoto treaty for the reduction of greenhouse gases.

What other global issues need to be addressed?

I would add a couple of considerations:

a) joining the Rome Statute and becoming part of the International Criminal Court system. The U.S. has failed to join because of worry that the Court might be used by other nations to engage in politically motivated prosecutions of U.S. leader and military personnel. We should move fast to become part of this growing system of global law with a policy of "constructive engagement" so that the U.S. regains its footing as a prime mover of global law and ethical norms. As it is now, our legal ideas are becoming less and less relevant to the world.

b) examining our commitment to trade agreements, such as NAFTA, and other bilateral agreements that we have with numerous Latin American nations and ensure that we are engaging in fair trade. NAFTA has undoubtedly affected immigration to the U.S., and that has raised issues of human rights along the border and the treatment of immigrants within the country (now that we have a vastly expanded immigration enforcement bureau under Homeland Security)

Should Students be Publically Humiliated for Plagiarism?

2008-11-15T16:03:00.000-08:00

An instructor at Texas A & M International University was recently fired for his treatment of plagiarism in the classroom. According to the report on Inside Higher Ed, Loye Young informed his class that any acts of plagiarism would result in public humiliation in addition to any penalties given by the university. When he found six students engaging in academic dishonesty, he published their names on his course blog.

In my discussion of academic dishonesty with Courtney Campbell, we talked about plagiarism as a kind of moral harm against the academic community, disrupting bonds of trust and amounting to a kind of theft. On this issue, we agreed with Loye Young on the seriousness of the problem.

The question is whether the penalty of public humiliation, above and beyond the failing grades, is justified. At Oregon State, there is a procedure to follow in informing students of allegations of plagiarism. Students are usually given a chance to see the work and the evidence amassed by the instructor that led her/him to accuse the student. Based on that discussion, the case can be sent to the administration and the student may have the right to appeal. In addition to academic grade penalties, the student may have to attend workshops.

Its not clear that the students were given a chance to know about the finding of suspected plagiarism and had a chance to respond. From Loye Young's blog, it appears he completed the grading and posted their names almost immediately. This seems to me the wrong way to go about it. I often find it the case that students simply do not know what constitutes academic dishonesty, especially if they come from backgrounds in which they are the first to attend university. In those kinds of instances, there is an opportunity for education of academic standards. I've never hesitated to fail a student on an assignment for plagiarism, but I have sometimes not recommended further discipline if I felt, after a discussion with the student, that they were simply uninformed or ignorant. In other words, ignorance of the law is no excuse, but leniency in sentencing is sometimes called for.

Loye Young seems to think that shaming is an appropriate response to academic dishonesty. I assume the idea is that if plagiarism is a harm against the community, then the community should know how it was harmed and by whom ( a form of punishment not unfamiliar to our Puritan ancestors). Assuming that students had been informed about the policy beforehand in the course syllabus and the students had been informed that they had been caught in academic dishonesty, would public shaming be a just punishment?

This is Your Brain on Love

2008-11-11T23:59:00.000-08:00

Researcher Helen Fisher argues that the feeling of romantic love creates changes in the brain that are similar to those undergone by someone with narcotic addiction.

This does seem to describe very well the kind of obsession that many people talk about with eros.

One hesitation I have about her discussion is her description of romantic love as a feeling, distinct from sexual attraction, that singles out one person as worthy of exclusive attention for the purpose of mating. This seems to essentialize heterosexual monogamy into biology.

Did the Obama victory represent a revolution of ideas?

2008-11-07T13:47:00.000-08:00

This week in my political philosophy course, we talked about the anti-democratic design of the federal government--that fact that certain institutions, such as the Senate and the Electoral College, were created to put a brake on popular movements in society.

Its also interesting how the election results in both the Electoral College and the popular count give drastically different impressions of the support behind Obama. For instance, Rep. John Lewis called the victory a "nonviolent revolution", and a revolution of ideas, that represents a culmination of the hopes of Martin Luther King, Jr.

If you look at a map of the Electoral College results, it certainly seems like a landslide in favor of change. (The graphic also gives you a chance to look at different results going back to 1996.)

But the results of the popular vote are less decisive. Obama won only with about a 5% margin, as was predicted by the polls. Not quite the landslide.

Some other interesting points: the youth vote did not particular surge this year, anymore than it did for Kerry in 2004. What Obama did do is to solidify a coaltion of people of color behind him, particularly Latinos/as (who seemed to have been the ones to win it for him in New Mexicio and Colorado). You can see some interesting analysis here.

Does it Matter Who Wins? Obama, Palin, and Strategy for Social Justice

2008-11-04T13:09:00.000-08:00

No matter which party wins today in the presidential race, it will be an historic election. One the one hand, we might have our first African American president. On the other, we might have the first woman vice president. Either way, the end result will be an individual in a position of power who would never have been allowed there by the Founding Framers of this country.

Courtney, over at Feministing, reports on the feeling in the air in the multiracial, multicultural streets of Brooklyn, NY. If Obama wins, she writes, it will provide hope for youth, and renewed faith for elders that social justice movement can work.

Undoubtedly, we are in historic moments. Some cautionary notes:

Malcolm X, speaking in 1964, on the eve of the passage of the historic Civil Rights Act, warned his audience not to be content with making reforms in the United States. He urged them to think more broadly, in terms of human rights. He said of American politics:

"Well, I am one who doesn't believe in deluding myself. I'm not going to sit at your table and watch you eat, with nothing on my plate, and call myself a diner. Sitting at the table doesn't make you a diner, unless you eat some of what's on that plate."

It is certainly true that an Obama administration will be different, and perhaps, more receptive to social justice concerns. But social justice will require more than just having the right people in place at the table or in the White House.

William Lloyd Garrison, the famous abolishionist, refused to vote in elections because he felt it gave legitimacy to a political system that behaved immorally. I think it is problematic to think of voting as an expression of purity. There are those who will not vote for either McCain or Obama because they believe both represent compromised positions. They will vote for third party candidates, who will most certainly not win, because they cannot bring themselves to tie their fortunes to someone they consider distasteful.

There is perhaps another way to think of this. Machiavelli taught us (in the Discourses) not to think of politics as a game of virtue, or to honor our politicians because of their honorable characters. Instead, he taught that politics is an arena of struggle. If you don't participate, you risk allowing other groups into that arena who might threaten your liberty. Political action, then, ought to be strategic; how best can you defend your views? Voting should be seen as a strategic move rather than as a direct expression of your views, making sure that the political arena is open enough to allow you to manuever in it. In this sense, voting third party in U.S. elections might not be the best thing to do, since it is most certainly a wasted vote and unlikely to create any strategic space in the political arena (though it might make you feel personally good)

Garrison wrote, in 1838:

"There are those who disapprove of every form of political action, on the part of abolitionists.... We cannot yield to this reasoning. It proceeds, we think, upon a narrow view of the subject. Politics, rightly considered, is a branch of morals, and cannot be deserted innocently. …We, however, view political action chiefly as a means of agitating the subject.... To conclude this part of the subject, our true policy is not to turn party politicians, but in politics as elsewhere to stand firm by our principles, and let the politicians come to us...."

Despite whomever wins in the presidential race today, the power to make change will still depend on grassroots organizing and ordinary people who will push those in office. We will have to be strategic.

New Interview on KUCI's "Justice or Just Us?"

2008-11-03T01:57:00.000-08:00

Last week, I had a great interview about Cesar Chavez and the Common Sense of Nonviolence on KUCI's program "Justice or Just Us" with activist-scholar Jarret Lovell. You can listen to it here

Legacy of Genocide: Philosophy and Columbus Day, 516 Years Later

2008-10-13T02:59:00.000-07:00

In honor of Indigenous People's Day (the alternative to Columbus Day), here are a couple of past interviews from Engage.

The first is with Allison Davis White Eyes on American Indian worldviews confronting modern scientific and philosophical perspectives.

The second is a lecture by Dr. Alejandro Santana entitled "Did the Aztecs Do Philosophy".

Can we Trust Joe Biden? Plagiarism and Moral Character: A New Engage Podcast

2008-10-07T03:10:00.001-07:00

Last week, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper had to face down a peculiar political scandal. It seemed that he had been caught plagiarising a speech from Australian Prime Minister John Howard. You can see Harper's notorious speech next to the original here.

In an article for the website Inside Higher Ed, Jonathan Beecher Field wonders why we in the United States aren't outraged that Joe Biden is a contender for one of the highest public offices in the land, considering that he is habitual plagiarist. It seems that not only did Joe Biden fail a class in law school for plagiarising, he was later caught stealing from a speech during his 1988 bid for the presidency. Field says that all academics should be outraged at the choice of this man for the VP position.

In the newest Engage interview, Dr. Courtney Campbell, the Hundere Professor in Religion and Culture at OSU, talks with me about the moral nature of plagiarism and why it should be condemned as a practice. We discuss what kind of harm plagiarism causes and how we should understand and evaluate the character of people, such as Joe Biden, Martin Luther King, Jr. and now, Stephen Harper, who are public figures, seeking the trust of their communities, but have been shown to exhibit this kind of moral failing.

You can listen to this interview at the new Engage site here.

Distinguished Woman Philosopher Award for 2008: Nancy Tuana

2008-10-02T18:43:00.000-07:00

From the Society for Women in Philosophy:

The Society for Women in Philosophy is pleased to announce that Nancy Tuana has been named the Distinguished Woman Philosopher of 2008.

Biography:
Nancy Tuana is DuPont/Class of 1949 Professor of Philosophy, Science, Technology, Society, and Women's Studies at Pennsylvania State University and Founding Director of the Rock Ethics Institute (http://rockethics.psu.edu ). Her contributions to feminist philosophy include: Series Editor of ReReading the Canon (Pennnsylvania State University Press), co-editor with Laurie Shrage of Hypatia: A Journal of Feminist Philosophy, Editor of the APA Newsletter on Feminism and Philosophy, co-editor (with Sally Haslanger and Jenny Saul) of the Stanford Encyclopedia's entries on feminist philosophy, director of two NEH Summer Seminars on Feminist Epistemologies, and numerous publications in the field of feminist philosophy. With Joan Callahan she is working on an in-depth oral history project Feminist Philosophers: In Their Own Words. Her most recent project is an investigation of the intersections of feminist philosophy and climate ethics.

Recipients of the Distinguished Woman Philosopher Award:
Nancy Tuana (2008)
Joan Callahan (2007)
Ruth Millikan (2006)
Linda Martín Alcoff (2005)
Susan Sherwin (2004)
Eva Feder Kittay (2003)
Sara Ruddick (2002)
Amelie Oksenberg Rorty (2001)
Marilyn Frye (1999)
Linda Lopez McAlister (1998)
Claudia Card (1997)
Gertrude Ezorsky (1996)
Alison Jaggar (1995)
Iris Marion Young (1994)
Kathryn Pyne Addelson (1993)
Virginia Held (1992)
Jane Roland Martin (1991)
Sandra Harding (1990)
Hazel Barnes (1989)
Leigh Cauman (1988)
Elizabeth Flowers (1987)
Mary Mothersill (1986)
Marjorie Greene (1985)
Elizabeth Beardsley (1984)
(no recipient was honored in 2000)

Revisiting "Torture and Democracy": Rejali wins major award

2008-09-30T16:54:00.000-07:00

One of our most popular interviews is the one done with international torture expert, Darius Rejali. His monumental book (literally, it is over 800 pages long!), won a major award this year. The American Political Science Association gave Torture and Democracy its Best Book in Human Rights Award for 2008.

You can listen to the interview with Rejali at the new Engage site here.

Behind the Veil and the Pole: Transgressive Feminism and Democratic Citizens?

2008-09-25T00:23:00.000-07:00

In this commentary, Naomi Wolf makes the point that the veiled Muslim woman is not necessarily a repressed victim of patriarchy. Many in the West, Wolf writes, take the veil as a sign of oppression, the mark of a culture that thinks that women are sources of sensual sin that need to be hidden under layers of clothes, away from the eyes of men. But this is not necessarily so, she argues. For many Muslim women, the veil can be a liberating shield, allowing women to have a sense of release from objectification by men in public settings. Wolf talks about her own experience covering up in Morocco and says she felt free not being glared at by men for her body.

In her book, The Rights of Others, Seyla Benhabib makes a related point: we should not be so quick to dismiss women who veil themselves in European countries as simply brainwashed individuals in the thrall of patriarchy. For some immigrant women, the veil is not so much a sign of fidelity to patriarchal norms, but a badge of honor that represents the women's pride in her cultural specificity. Benhabib thinks we ought to see some of these women as engaging in projects of democratic rejuvenation, trying to transform the liberal notion of citizenship to encompass recognition of difference against governments that wish to maintain the homogeneity of subjects under the law.

There is something to these ideas, and yet...how easy, or effective, is it for individuals to confront and change patriarchal or cultural norms through transgressive dress and behavior? After all, these norms are built on beliefs held by the community. Just because a woman puts on a veil and says she does it to challenge the French understanding of religious worship does not mean that she is not taken by others as a woman submissive to patriarchy.

This point seems clearer when we think of a different phenomena in the U.S.: women who think they are doing something feminist by learning to pole dance like strippers. Some of these women think that they are learning to tap into some kind of sensuality by learning this set of skill and "empowering" themselves as strong women.

There is a very interesting satire of this done on the Colbert Report:

The joke, of course, is that they are just learning to act like strippers. Can putting on the veil, as a transgressive and transformative gesture, be different?

The Cost of the American Dream?: Deaths along the Mexican border soar in 2007.

2008-09-17T11:50:00.000-07:00

Via luchador@s:

The number of people who have died along the U.S./Mexico border has surpassed the number of American soliders killed in Iraq. Since 1995, 4,827 people have died trying to cross the desert wasteland. In August, 2008, the number of soldiers killed reached 4,138.

Last year, then, almost two people died each day. By the first part of 2008, 275 have died so far.

New way to listen to Engage: Conversations in Philosophy

2008-09-16T00:39:00.000-07:00

As many of you know, Engage began as a project to bring podcasts of conversations of engaged philosophy to the public. We have done several podcasts so far.

I'm beginning a new Tumblr site that will allow us to post conversations on the internet more quickly and easily. Hopefully that means you will be able to listen more quickly and easily, too.

I'm beginning the new audio blog with one of our most popular conversations, "What is Diversity?" with Dr. Lani Roberts. Go give it a listen here. And look forward to new podcasts very soon.

Peace Sells, But Who's Buying?: America Now the Largest Arms Dealer in the World

2008-09-13T22:27:00.000-07:00

The United States now accounts for more than half of all arms and military equipment sold in the world today (about 52% of the world market in arms sales). This amounts to about $32 billion in arms profits, up from just about $12 billion, only 3 years ago.

The U.S. government claims this is done in the name of security and the promotion of peace. Peace through strength and force of arms is captured by the idea of "negative peace" (described here by one of the founders of peace studies, Johann Galtung). Negative Peace usually means the absence of fighting or outright aggression. Thus, the U.S. is hoping that by arming the world, there might be more negative peace in the world as nations will be less likely to pick fights with heavily armed neighbors.

It's the same logic that motivates school districts in Texas to allow staff to carry guns--if school shooters know that teachers are packing heat, they will be less likely to go on rampages. Or if they do begin to rampage, then they are more likely to be taken down in a fire fight with armed teachers, hopefully sparing the lives of more innocent students (so the story goes)

But Galtung notes there is another notion of peace--positive peace. This means the presence of political, economic, and social conditions that make it less likely that conflict will devolve into force and violence. Martin Luther King, Jr. usually said this involved the "presence of justice" in the world. The question might become then: how much aid is the U.S. offering the world to try to create conditions of positive peace?

It seems not as much as it spends selling arms. Figures suggest that, in 2007, the U.S. gave out about $21 billion in non-military foreign aid, which is about less than 1% of its gross national income. Sounds like a lot until you consider that in 1998 we spent about $8 billion just on cosmetics and the Europeans spent about $50 on alcohol (and probably spend more now, some 10 years later).

Are we more secure in a world awash in weapons? Is it better that the world use our weapons rather than someone else's?

Bookstore Hall of Fame: Best Place to get your philosophy fix?

2008-09-11T20:11:00.000-07:00

A list of the 10 best bookstores in North America? Certainly some of the best places to go to augment your philosophy collection:

1) Tattered Cover--Denver, Colorado

2) Powell's Books--Portland, Oregon

3) Title Wave--Anchorage, Alaska

4) Mcnally Robinson Booksellers--Winnipeg, Canada

5) Harvard Book Store--Cambridge, Mass.

6) Clues Unlimited--Tucson, Arizona

7) Elliot Bay Book Company--Seattle, Washington

8) Kramerbooks and Afterward--Washington, D.C.

9) City Lights--San Francisco, California

10) Book People--Austin, Texas

I can proudly say I've been to 40% of these landmarks, but I'd be hard pressed to say whether I love Powell's or City Lights more.

Does Following the Money Make us Mean and Lonely? Money and American Political Life

2008-09-09T15:03:00.000-07:00

"Money, its a crime.
Share it fairly but don't take a slice of my pie.

Money, so they say
Is the root of all evil today.

But if you ask for a raise its no surprise that they're
Giving none away."

It turns out Pink Floyd may have had it right about money. Peter Singer writes that the psychological effects of money on us may have some profound ramifications for political and ethical deliberation. Recent studies suggest that when people are cued to think about money itself (such as with pictures of cash, or of play money), they tend to become more isolated, more narrowly self-interested, and less helpful to others.

So think about how one might be solicited for money in regard to all sorts of moral and political issues. It seems each day I get several letters from the ACLU, Amnesty International, Barack Obama's campaign, the local food bank etc, asking me for a donation. Singer believes that such efforts might actually be counter productive in some cases--for those groups that want to foster some sense of community or group responsibility, the emphasis on money might tend to make people feel less interested in assisting others. "Money consciousness" might be disempowering.

So what happens to our politics when issues get infused the language of economics?

Bill Clinton was famous in his first presidential campaign for cutting through political smoke and mirrors when he announced: "It's the economy, stupid."--implying that what Americans really cared about were bread and butter issues concerning their livelihoods. It is not uncommon today to point to experience in business, or as a CEO, as a qualification for political leadership.

Yet, Aristotle, and more recently, Hannah Arendt, both seperate economics (dealing with issues of simply reproducing life) from politics (dealing with issues of acting together to achieve ideals or actualize values). Perhaps the recent turn in American life that collapse politics into economics (resulting, perhaps, in a rise of money consciousness) leads to a fragmented citizenry that has a hard time thinking of what it means to accomplish grand projects together?

Enjoy some classic rock (but don't expect to feel good about it afterwards):

Is Your City Male or Female?

2008-09-02T10:35:00.001-07:00

One of my favorite theorists of modern life is Jane Jacobs, author of "The Death and Life of Great American Cities". Jacobs is famous for her critique of urban renewal projects that essentially eviscerated inner city areas in the United States post WWII. Her view is that mixed use neighborhoods, those that combine rather than separate residential, commercial, and industrial uses, are more vibrant, safe, and amenable to democratic social life than suburban or exurban neighborhoods.

A new study by Cambridge University adds another interesting dimension to this critique. The study found that urban renewal projects tend to cater to the urban needs and interests of men more so than to women.

For instance, public transportation (which is used by more women than men) is usually arranged alone straight routes from point to point. Women usually are making various trips for different purposes when they go out; men usually go from work to home. Public transport tend to favor masculine habits.

Another: urban renewal tends to focus on creating as many open green spaces as possible, usually with big playing fields. Again, the study found this caters more to men who want to play sports than it does to women, who want smaller areas, closer to home, with mixed use potential.

Finally, the lack of public toilets is something that separates men and women's needs, according to the study. The folks at Cambridge suggest that urban projects should follow a more mixed use model if they want to include the needs and interests of women.

When I think of the civic architecture of Corvallis, I have to conclude, using the variables of this study, that it is a city that caters to masculine needs. In what other ways might our public spaces--neighborhoods, workplaces, etc.--be gendered?

Obama on Immigration

2008-08-29T16:56:00.000-07:00

Barack Obama's acceptance speech went on for almost 45 minutes yesterday. Here is what he had to say about immigration:

"You know, passions may fly on immigration, but I don't know anyone who benefits when a mother is separated from her infant child or an employer undercuts American wages by hiring illegal workers. But this, too, is part of America's promise -- the promise of a democracy where we can find the strength and grace to bridge divides and unite in common effort."

Not clear what exactly this position is, as the ImmigrationProf Blog points out.

Special kudos to anyone who can guess (without doing a Google search!) who held this view on immigration:

"All of the immigrants who came to us brought their own music, literature, customs, and ideas. And the marvelous thing, a thing of which we're proud, is they did not have to relinquish these things to fit in. In fact, what they brought to America became American."

Is Russia Killing White People?

2008-08-26T13:17:00.000-07:00

Yes, if you were 18 century "scientist" Johann Friedrich Blumenbach who, in 1795, coined the term "Caucausian" to refer to people of the "white race". He came to his theory of different races through an examination of human skulls and found that skulls from the regions in Georgia, around the Caucus mountains, were "most beautiful". He surmised that this area was the origin of the white race of Europeans. Hence, the birth of word that has now seeped into popular usage.

But as this article points out, the word and its "technical" meaning have not just been a point of curiosity. It was used by the U.S. goverment to make decisions about the rights and privileges of citizenship (in a most confusing way). What the Slate article doesn't mention is that there was a case in 1922, Ozawa v. U.S., in which the court denied citizenship to a Japanese resident because he wasn't descended from Caucausians, meaning people from the region of Georgia. Less than a year later, another man tried to become a citizen and he was a Caucausian in the Blumenbach sense. The court denied him as well, this time saying he was not "white".

Habermas Wins European Award

2008-08-25T17:45:00.000-07:00

Jurgen Habermas, in my mind one of the giants of social and political philosophy in the twentienth century, recently won an award:

European prize goes to philosopher Habermas
The European Prize of Political Culture has been awarded to the German philosopher and sociologist Jürgen Habermas at the Locarno Film Festival.

Habermas' theories have greatly contributed to the evolution of modern social sciences, the Hans Ringier Foundation, patrons of the €50,000 prize said.

The philosopher, born in 1929, is best known for his work on the concept of the public sphere, the topic and title of his first book.

Last year the prize went to Serbian president Boris Tadic; Jean-Claude Juncker, Luxembourg's prime minister received the honour in 2006. The prize is in its third year.

From here. (Tadic was also a philosopher, if memory serves me right)

Why doesn't the United States have such prizes?

Celebrity Morph by MyHeritage

2008-08-24T17:06:00.001-07:00

MyHeritage: Celebrity Morph - Free genealogy search - Antique photos

Are we at the End of World Travel?

2008-08-24T16:18:00.000-07:00

I remember a few years ago trying to organize a summer class that would travel to Mexico for two weeks to study the effects of globalization on immigration. Several students were very interested. At the last minute, every single one of them had to back out because of the high cost of travel. Oil prices had shot up and what was usually a $300 plane ticket had ballooned into a $600-700 one.

Bradford Plumer warns here that as the era of peak oil approaches, cheap air travel will likely disappear. It will be less likely that people will be able to afford going cross country for vacation, or that academics will be able to go to conferences all around the nation. (Last academic year alone, I flew to Texas, Michigan, and Colorado two times to give talks)

It will also mean that economic globalization will slow down and it will be less likely for goods and services to criss cross around the world. No more Australian oranges in summer or cheap Wal-Mart gadgets from China.

But it also means that its less likely that ordinary people will be able to travel outside of the country and see the world, experience new cultures, or different ways of life. We may be able to hear about events all over the globe, but it will be less likely that we will ever have the chance to see the people attached to those events.

Should we be concerned that world travel will be out of reach for many?

What is it that you do?

2008-08-21T15:30:00.000-07:00

I just had a conversation with my friend Dennis about the difference between political philosophy and political theory (as usually taught in Political Science Departments). I tend to think that political philosophy is more normative, that is, its concerned to examine whether or not politics ought to be a certain way, whereas political theory is more interested in explaining the foundations for why politics is the way it is now. For instance, I tend to think political philosophers are more interested in questions of utopia than are political theorists.

From Public Reason: the questions that motivate social and political phlilosophy

1) What Should the Social World Be Like?

2) Should There be Government?

3) What Sort of Government Should We Have?

There Are No Evil People

2008-08-19T11:05:00.001-07:00

But surely Hitler or Stalin or Osama Bin Ladin are evil if anyone is evil. Not according to Susan Neiman. As she sees it (and you can see it here), we shouldn't talk about evil people, but about evil actions. This helps us to understand the phenomenon of evil in the world more clearly, she believes. Thinking this way allows us to see that you can do quite evil things without intending them, or even do evil with good intentions. (This, of course, goes to the kind of discussion we've had here before here at Engage about why it may be morally inadequate to say that some action shouldn't be labled as racist unless the agent intended it to be racist).

Is not liking Obama racist?

2008-08-12T11:21:00.000-07:00

John Heilemann asks why Obama isn't doing better in the polls, considering that so many Americans are unhappy with the status quo? His guess: many older white men ( who don't seem to be very interested in Obama) are racist.

This would not be suprising, given the result of a recent Gallup poll which finds that a majority of Americans (including whites) think that racism against blacks is widespread in the U.S. Via Feminist Philosophers:

The Military-Industrial Complex and You

2008-08-05T13:30:00.000-07:00

"If the law is of such nature that it requires you to be an agent of injustice to another, then I say, break the law." Henry David Thoreau

Thoreau's famous essay on civil disobedience addresses the question of disengagement from government and a reliance on individual conscience. He feared being absorbed in a mob mentality, in general, and lost in a movement of mindless people who utilized the coercive power of the state in particular. Remember, of course, he spent time in jail for failing to pay taxes during the U.S. invasion of Mexico--a war he considered to be especially unjust. His example inspired Gandhi and Cesar Chavez to think that one of the important principles of nonviolence is: non-cooperation with whatever is humiliating is paramount.

I know some people who refuse to pay their federal taxes because they don't support the military and I know a lot more who wish they could bring themselves to take such a stand against the government.

But a new book suggests that our involvement in the military and its operations is far more complex and raises questions about our collective responsibility and culpability. Nick Turse demonstrates that the military-industrial complex is quite wide; that is, the number of corporations that do business with the military is quite vast and many of them provide ordinary goods and services that most people use on an every day basis--the the toothpaste and shampoo we use in the morning, the appliances we fill our house with, to the stations we watch on televsion. We literally cannot escape from some kind of involvement with an organization that provides material assistance to the military and its capacity to cause destruction.

Thoreau had Walden to which he could retreat and experiment with self-reliance. In our highly integrated, technology society, it seems that there is less space with which to exercise the first principle of nonviolent ethics.

Does the size and reach of the military-industrial complex in modern America morally implicate civilians in any violence, destruction, or human rights violations that the military may commit?

Star Trek Still Inspires Moral Lessons

2008-08-02T12:46:00.000-07:00

What happens to a great ship when it is overcome by xenophobia and decides to get rid of all the aliens?

Don't Deport Me, Scotty!

Why Cesar Chavez is Relevant Today

2008-07-30T23:09:00.000-07:00

Podcast of an interview with me on Santa Fe Public Radio.

The Best Description of a Philosopher Ever

2008-07-29T10:44:00.000-07:00

"The jester makes jokes, he ridicules. But if his ridicule is based on sound ideas and thinking, then he can proceed to the second stage; he becomes a philosopher. And if he does these things with dazzling language then he becomes a poet too."

--George Carlin

New Philosopher's Carnival

2008-07-29T10:24:00.000-07:00

is here!

Ten Ideas that Changed History

2008-07-28T11:32:00.000-07:00

Can't argue with the list (which includes heavy hitters such as Plato, Wollstonecraft, Descartes, Marx, and Freud).

Of course, I would have added something along the lines of Locke and the idea of "rights" and the "social contract"--in general, the revolutionary view, at least in terms of the history of political philosophy, that the primary purpose of the state is to promote the general welfare of its citizens.

Anything else that should have been on the list?

Philosophy Talk is the Cure; Society is the Disease

2008-07-27T17:24:00.001-07:00

A nice article in the LA Times about the nationally sydicated radio program, Philosophy Talk.

One of its hosts, Ken Taylor, comments on the improbability of a philosophy talk radio show making it, despite the hunger there is among some for intelligent public discussion:

"I think that our culture, our public discourse especially, is utterly debased. . . . It's meant to manipulate rather than enlighten and inform. . . . It's a disease that we've caught. Philosophy is one elixir, one magical elixir for helping to cure that disease."

That's my hope as well, though I suppose it depends on how we understand "philosophy". Is it a set of tools of rational and critical thinking? Or does doing philosophy mean understanding and thinking about a set of problems typically defined by the traditions of philosophers?

What should philosophy try to do in the public sphere?

Are "Human" Rights Discriminatory? Great Apes and Us

2008-07-22T12:46:00.000-07:00

Peter Singer congratulates the Spanish parliament for endorsing the idea that great apes, such as chimps, gorillas, bonobos, and orangutans, deserve rights of life, liberty and protection from human torture and slavery. Great apes, according to Singer, should only be in captivity for purposes of conservation since they have rich intellectual and emotional lives on par with humans.

Do the great apes deserve the protection and consideration usually given to human beings through international human rights law?

The Only Diet for a Peacemaker is Vegetarian

2008-07-16T18:40:00.000-07:00

Sometimes in my Peace Studies class, students embrace pacifism as a kind of political philosophy, but they reject it as a personal belief system. That is, they think pacifism should be the norm for nations and that there should be no war, but they think that physical violence is sometimes necessary on a personal level. Namely, they want to reserve the right to protect themselves or loved ones in self defense. Some people argue that this is contradictory--if pacifism is an ethical doctrine, then it must apply universally to all people and situations in which aggression presents itself. See this for arguments about possible contradictions in pacifism.

John Dear presents another perplexing issue. He maintains that to be an authentic and effective peacemaker, someone dedicated to the activism of nonviolence, requires a vegetarian diet.

The production, processing, and consumption of animal protein is environmentally unsustainable and unhealthy, Dear says, and he presents various images of peace and nonviolence from Biblical sources to suggest that vegetarianism is a world view best suited to bringing peace to the world.

Is it contradictory to be a nonviolent activist and be a meat-eater?

Here is a video of Cesar Chavez suggesting that it might be:

Cesar Chavez Book Tour: I spend my summers talking about Nonviolence, too

2008-07-14T22:23:00.000-07:00

This past weekend marked the beginning of public readings for my book Cesar Chavez and the Common Sense of Nonviolence (UNM Press 2008). You can find out some of the information about the book and the readings in New Mexico here.

Here's a picture of the book signing at Bookworks in Albuquerque's North Valley:

I was honored by a visit from Mark Rudd at the reading:

Now to get on Oprah and Jon Stewart!

(Photos courtesy of Marta Kunecka)

My Summer is Spent Talking about Torture

2008-07-10T20:53:00.000-07:00

I just finished attending the annual conference of the Society for Philosophy in the Contemporary World (SPCW) here in the awesome beauty of the Rocky Mountains. I listened to several great papers on a variety of topics and we ended with a lively discussion about the agency of military interrogators and ways in which torture practices might affect the notion of self of interrogators and captives. The paper was written by Dillon Emerick. Its part of a larger project calledThe Ethics of Torture, co-authored by Dillion with an old grad school friend of mine, Jeremy Wisnewski. You can read a draft essay of his about why torture practices might be something we want to avoid because they would undermine certain commitments we have to an understanding of ourselves as moral agents.

Some of these works made me think about this video on the Vanity Fair website. Christopher Hitchens allowed himself to be waterboarded and the proceeding was videotaped. He lasted less than a couple of minutes and found the experience to be absolutely dreadful. You can read his account of the experience here.

Its one thing to think about what survivors of these "aggressive interrogation" practices must undergo. Another concern I have is with the people who practice these techniques. Who are these men with the masks who tortured Hitchens? What is it like to be a person whose knowledge includes practices such as these--practices which can reduce other human beings to sobbing animals? What does it mean to be a "professional" in these arts?

Anatomy of the Dirty Joke

2008-07-08T23:34:00.000-07:00

I've posted about the power relationships expressed by sexist jokes before. Now Jim Holt helps to understand what makes a dirty joke funny.

Holt offer three models for analysis:

1) Freudian theory--this holds that a dirty joke is funny because it allows us to release, through our laughter, a little bit of the repressed libidinal energy we have caged up. A dirty joke is like a safety valve. (However, Holt seems to think this theory is not very sound. If it were true, then the most sexually repressed people would be the ones who "got" and loved dirty jokes the most. This is not often the case in his experience)

2) "superiority theory"--offered up by Plato, Hobbes, and Henri Bergson, this holds that laughter is a way at expressing superiority over others, or derision toward them. It explans why some people find sexist or racist jokes funny.

3) "incongruity theory"--offered up by Pascal, Kant, and Schopenhauer, this holds that laughter registers when the normal and ordinary gives way to something absurd. ("Do you believe in clubs for children?" W.C. Fields replied: "Only when kindness fails.") This one, for me, explains the humor of Jon Stewart or Stephen Colbert; they show us how absurd poltics really is today.

Dirty jokes have been with us forever it seems, but Holt does see hopes of something like progress in dirty joke telling, moving us from filthiness to an appreciation of the absurd.

Is there a place for dirty jokes or is such humor simply low brow and demeaning (of both the joker and the audience)?

Thoughts on Independence Day: Are Frederick Douglass's Words Mere History?

2008-07-04T17:03:00.000-07:00

"There is no house that is not a mausoleum": Reflections on Benjamin and Latino Workplace Death in America

2008-06-29T17:41:00.000-07:00

Les Black has a haunting article on the memorial to Walter Benjamin, one of the members of the first generation of the Frankfurt School, who took his own life in 1940. Benjamin was escaping the Nazis and hoped to leave Vichy France and then on to the United States to join the other exiled members of the Frankfurt School such as Adorno. However, he was denied exit by the Spanish Border guards. He decided to kill himself rather than fall into Nazi hands.

On the memorial is inscribed a line by Benjamin: "It is more arduous to honour the nameless than the renowed."

Black takes inspiration from this passage to reflect on the contemporary tragedy of the beach just beyond the memorial. There, the bodies of African immigrants, trying to make their way into the European Union on makeshift rafts and boats, wash up almost weekly. Since 1993, almost 8,800 people have died trying to enter Europe, many of them from Africa.

Black concludes: "This vision of what Europe is turns away from the dark bodies being washed up on the beaches of Puerto Rosario and the faces behind the fence at Melilla. The enthusiastic proponents of a resurgent Europe, not excluding poets and thinkers, would do well to remember those words carved on Walter Benjamin's grave: "There is no document of civilisation that is not a document of barbarism." There is no beach that is not also a graveyard."

This makes me think of a recent government report that shows that Latinos, being the fastest growing part of the American workforce, are also the ones that die as a result of workplace injury more often than other ethnic groups. The causes of these deaths tend to be highway accidents, falling from high places, or being struck by objects (indicating that many Latinos are working in construction and are falling off buildings or being hit by machinery or flying materials).

Not only is most of the food on our tables being handled by Latinos (and largely Mexicans), but most of the new homes and buildings we inhabit or work in were built by Latinos.

Perhaps the memorial we should raise for all the anonymous Latinos who die this way in America should bear this inscription: "There is no house that is not also a mausoleum."

Top 10 Global Intellectuals

2008-06-27T16:11:00.000-07:00

As per Dennis's request, here are the top 10 public intellectuals of the world, according to Foreign Policy magazine:

1). Fethullah Gulen (Turkey)

2) Muhammad Yunus (Bangladesh--winner of the 2006 Nobel Peace prize!)

3) Yusuf Al-Qaradawi (Egypt)

4) Orhan Pamuk (Turkey--winnter of the 2006 Nobel prize in Literature!)

5) Aitzaz Ahsan (Pakistan)

6) Amr Khaled (Egypt)

7) Abdolkarim Soursh (Iran--"widely considered one of the world's premier Islamic philosophers")

8) Tariq Ramadan (currently in Switzerland, but considered to be another top Islamic philosopher)

9) Mahmood Mamdani (Uganda)

10) Shirin Ebadi (Iran--winner of the 2003 Nobel Peace prize!)

The first American shows up at No. 11--Noam Chomsky.

And the top write in candidate: Philosophy major Stephen Colbert!

Time to brush up on my Soursh and Ramadan!

Is Philosophy Engaged Enough?

2008-06-24T23:22:00.000-07:00

From The Philosopher's Magazine: Several prominent philosophers comment on whether or not philosophers have responded well enough to major events of the day such as global climate change or terrorism post-9/11.

Not surprisingly, there is no consensus on whether philosophy has a responsibility to respond to such worldly concerns.

This response seems typical from the establishment types:

Jerry Fodor:
I suppose so; though I don’t think that responding to such issues is plausibly a philosophical responsibility. Has Art History responded adequately to the post-9/11 world? Why should philosophy be different?

As usual, MacIntyre has some wise things to say about the state of the profession:

Alasdair MacIntyre:
Academic philosophers are by and large no more competent at making political choices than other relatively well to do, comfortable, professionalised, middle class people. That is to say, not very competent. The question is: Who is paying the costs of climate change, post-9/11 conflicts, and globalisation? The answer is, as usual: those least able to pay them. Philosophers, including myself, have not focussed sufficiently on this issue, one that brings out the continuing relevance of Marx.

But Nussbaum, as always, seems the most informed:

Martha Nussbaum:
I think that there is a lot more work to be done! On issues connected to the entitlements of animals there has been some good work, and it is exciting to see the menu of theoretical options being expanded (especially by Christine Korsgaard’s recent Tanner Lectures). On the environment more generally, there is certainly a need for more good work. Issues of global justice have begun to receive the attention they deserve, and the nation-based paradigms with which we have all been operating have begun to be challenged, but there is a long way to go. I think that doing good work in the areas you name requires extensive empirical knowledge, and therefore partnerships with other disciplines such as economics, law, and history. Philosophers have not always formed such partnerships. However, I believe that the profession is now much more receptive to such empirically-informed work than it was in the recent past. I would like to see more first-rate philosophers turning to the topic of global justice, so that we would simply have more strong alternatives on our menu. Philosophy advances by argument and contestation, and we need more powerful worked-out theories of different types.

George Carlin (1937-2008) Philosopher? (At least a Buddhist, no?)

2008-06-23T14:46:00.000-07:00

Luckily, Blogspot doesn't have to follow rules about the Seven Filthy words, which Carlin made so infamous, and later made their way up to the Supreme Court in the case of Federal Communications Commission v Pacifica Foundation:

"At some point there leading into the '90s, I divorced myself from any stake in the human adventure or the American adventure. That sounds kind of pompous so let me just break that down. What I decided was that I didn't give a fuck about what happens on this planet to these people. I mean, I see the nice things in people, I see the good things, but I also see what a depraved, sick species we are, the only species that kills its own for personal gain.
I'll go back to square one on this: We squandered a lot of gifts. Human beings were given a lot of great gifts. We were given the ability to reason, this extra-large brain, walking erect, having binocular vision and the opposable thumb, and all of these things, and we had such promise, but we squandered it on goods and superstition. We gave ourselves over to the high priests and the traders, and they are the ones we allow to control us. I think that's a huge mistake and it's disappointing to me. Now, the corollary is, America was given great gifts, this ideal form of government, this most improved form of self-government that has ever come along up until that time, and we squandered it. And once again, on the same two things: gizmos and toys and gadgets -- goods, property, possessions -- and also this country is far too religious for its own good.

So at some point, I drifted away from feeling any allegiance. Abraham Maslow the psychologist once said, "The fully realized man does not identify with the local group." Boy, when I read that, I said, that's me. I don't identify with city, state, government, religion, association, county, organization or species, even. And what I realized was that this feeling of alienation from all that gave me a kind of emotional detachment that was very valuable artistically. To be able to look at things and not give a fuck. To not have a rooting interest in the outcome. I don't really care what happens in this country. I'll be honest with you. I don't give a fuck what happens. I don't give a fuck what happens to this earth, because it's all temporal and it's all bullshit." Thanks to Theresa!

"They all look alike to a person not a Jap"*: The Legacy of Korematsu at OSU

2008-06-17T01:46:00.000-07:00

*Justice Hugo Black, author of the opinion in Korematsu, on the fears many white Americans had about Japanese American citizens during World War II.

This past weekend, Oregon State had its annual commencement ceremony. What was unusual about this year was that OSU decided to correct a massive historical injustice. Forty-two former students of Japanese descent, who had been forced to an internment camp after the federal order in 1942, were given honorary degrees in place of the ones they were not allowed to complete. (You can read the OSU press release here. I'm proud to say that I know one of the students, Andy Kiyuna, who got this process started. Though I can't take any credit for inspiring him to get this underway. From what I understand, that honor goes to my colleague, Lani Roberts)

The internment camps were justified by the Supreme Court in the 1944 case of Korematsu--a case that is widely reviled. Over 100,000 American citizens were stripped of their civil liberties and their dignity by the government's decision. What is even more shocking is that the government supressed evidence that could have been used by the Supreme Court to rule against the executive order.

In Korematsu, the court essentially said that the internment camps were justifed because military leaders had testified to their need for national security purposes. They said that there was evidence of "disloyalty" among Japanese American citizens that suggested that sabotage was possible along the West Coast. As it turns out, the Justice Department had reviewed many different intelligence reports and found the military reports to be unsubstantiated. In fact, the Justice Department told the Solicitor General, Charles Fahey, that he ought to present these intelligence reports in his argument before the court. He ignored these requests and, instead, testfied that everything in the military reports (that the Japanese Americans along the West Coast were not to be trusted because there was good evidence of conspiracy and treachery among them) was accurate. The Supreme Court then deferred to the military leaders and cited their report in the legal opinion.

And we are still picking up the pieces of this injustice here in Oregon...

Archie Tells it Like It is (For Galen B.)

2008-06-10T15:12:00.000-07:00

One of the frequent conversation partners here, Galen, is graduating this year and going off to grad school, where he will no doubt become an amazing and accomplished philosopher.

I spent a whole term trying to convice him that Archie comics contained valuable wisdom and he should attempt a fusion of horizons with them.

I hope he still sends me postcards when he's rich and famous.

Is Getting Married Like Being a Racist? (For Faris)

2008-05-31T13:00:00.000-07:00

Its old news now that the California Surpreme Court has ruled that same sex couples can get married there. My colleague, Michael Faris has some original thoughts on that legal development.

I was recently introduced to this series, The Pinky Show, on YouTube by some students in my Ethnic Studies course. Through the use of animated cats, the creators explore social justice issues in a very sophisticated way (including illegal immigration, globalization, nuclear policy, and war).

But this episode is interesting from an ethics standpoint:

As long as marriage is an exclusionary institution, are married individuals morally culpable for participating in an unethical practice?

Why Ethics Might be an Impossible Task

2008-05-26T20:46:00.000-07:00

Via Cracked (yes, the humor magazine--so expect some adolescent rantings): The Five Psychological Experiments that Prove Humanity is Doomed.

Among these are the famous Stanford Prison Experiment, the Milgram experiments, and more recent Good Samaritan experiments. All of them show that we are very given to abuse one another if given the authority to do so, are told to do so by an authority figure, or simply think we are to busy to care about the abuse someone has suffered.

I don't tend to believe that these experiments display anything in particular about human nature (whatever that means) other than we are social animals. Indeed, several of these experiments suggest that our tendency to abuse one another is situational, not inherent in some kind of hard wiring of our being ( a topic of a recent post). If put in certain situations, we are likely to act out in certain ways. I'm not sure this is the same as saying that human beings are naturally violent, etc.

These experiments do suggest, however, that even though we might know what the right thing to do is, we are likely to try to avoid doing it. Is that a characteristic that suggests we're doomed?

You Say It Likes It's a Bad Thing: Anarchy in the USA

2008-05-21T15:37:00.000-07:00

Last night I had a conversation with two young women who are interns with the Obama for President campaign here in Oregon. Obama won big here and they were ecstatic about the possiblity of him going on to win in the general election. They spoke about how much good they thought he was going to be able to do, bringing change to government.

Today I read this interview with Howard Zinn "Anarchism Shouldn't be a Dirty Word" and saw him say this:

"If you work through the existing structures you are going to be corrupted. By working through political system that poisons the atmosphere, even the progressive organizations, you can see it even now in the US, where people on the "Left" are all caught in the electoral campaign and get into fierce arguments about should we support this third party candidate or that third party candidate. This is a sort of little piece of evidence that suggests that when you get into working through electoral politics you begin to corrupt your ideals. So I think a way to behave is to think not in terms of representative government, not in terms of voting, not in terms of electoral politics, but thinking in terms of organizing social movements, organizing in the work place, organizing in the neighborhood, organizing collectives that can become strong enough to eventually take over -- first to become strong enough to resist what has been done to them by authority, and second, later, to become strong enough to actually take over the institutions."

It is wonderful to see young people excited about politics. But Zinn makes us wonder whether this energy and talent couldn't be put to better use in the service of social change for justice.

The Politics of Pirates (Should Johnny Depp be a Founding Father?)

2008-05-19T10:40:00.000-07:00

"No honor among thieves" the old saying goes, suggesting that those labeled by society as criminals have an inability to work together. Cooperation, as Thomas Hobbes indicates to us, is a feature of developed human civilization as it binds us into webs of mutuality and trust. Outside of those ties, human beings will quickly turn on each other to achieve their selfish purposes. Without law, we are animals preying on one another.

This view, so deeply ingrained in modern democratic theory and the basis of liberal democratic thought, may be pure ideology. A new book by Peter Leeson, The Invisible Hook: The Hidden Economics of Pirates, argues that we might look to pirate ships for more interesting models of working democratic practice.

It turns out that pirate crews of the 17th and 18th century are not entirely best described as lawless bands of cutthroats. These pirates developed various ways of working together that might be seen as social democratic: worker's compensation and health care for injury during service, kinds of checks and balances among pirate officers to keep tyrannical behavior to a minimum, and jury trials for deciding the fate of captured sailors.

Works like this suggest that perhaps we need to stop looking deeper into the legacies of Pericles, or reading more Hobbes, Locke and Mill, for new and interesting understandings of democratic politics. Looking to the margins of society, or to societies that are out of view of major metropolitan, First World, perspectives might bring fresher comprehension of the nature of the state, political power, and control over tyranny. This is part of the argument by anarchist scholar David Graeber in his essay "Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology". (You can dowload the entire essay from there.)

An interesting question might be: where else can we look for examples of this kind of marginalized democratic practice?

May Day: Hopes and Fears

2008-05-01T10:18:00.001-07:00

Happy May Day! Billy Bragg reminds us here about the hopes and dreams of worker solidarity--what ordinary people could accomplish by cooperating together against those small groups who fight to maintiain their privileges:

(I always did like that tune!)

But Orwell reminds us that the need for solidarity, the sense of needing to belong to a larger whole, can easily be manipulated by the privileged. It disconcerting to hear how the filmmakers of 1984 turned the IngSoc (English Socialism) anthem into a version of the Internationale:

It makes you wonder whether its possible to dream for a utopia anymore.

Who are you to say that? Moral Relativism on the Run

2008-04-28T23:49:00.000-07:00

One of my classes never ends without a student bringing up moral relativism. I've said before here that the conservatives are wrong about "tenured radicals". Students don't learn how to be relativistic liberals in the university because of liberals; they seem to come to the university already believing that there is no such thing as a universal morality. One student told me the other day he thinks morality is even "personal"--each person gets to decide what is right and wrong. ( I told him that he had just earned an F for the class. He asked why. I said just because. I asked him if he thought it was unfair of me to do that to him. He said yes. I asked him what fairness could possiblity mean in his world where every individual gets to make up what is right and wrong.)

Peter Singer offers evidence to suggest that not only is there something like a global human ethic, but that there is moral progress. Fewer and fewer people around the world today believe that inequality based on race or ethnicity is justified. Gender inequality is still more acceptable,but less so than it was a few decades ago.

It may be the case that people only say they believe in equality when they actually do not practice justice and fairness. Singer cautions us not to underestimate the power of shaming the hypocrite. Ideals matter and if we can work to make them part of our everyday language and expectations, then we are contributing to moral progress.

Who Makes Us Think? The Top Intellectuals in the World Today

2008-04-23T13:59:00.000-07:00

Foreign Policy and Prospect Magazines are conducting a poll to determine who the top public intellectuals are in the world today. You can vote here for the top 5 individuals who have made significant contributions to their fields and have increased awareness of their ideas to broader spheres.

The third largest group in the top 100 are philosophers. What's interesting about the select group is the number of North Americans and Europeans. Could this be ethnocentric bias or a reflection of the difficulty of doing intellectual work in the rest of the world? What publics do global public intellectuals reach?

Memories of Empire, Part Two: My Old San Juan

2008-04-16T10:44:00.000-07:00

American citizens may soon be surprised to find out that their choice for President will be decided by people who are not allowed to vote in the November election. No, its not a conspiracy of capitalist thugs or some shadow government. Its the people of Puerto Rico.

Right now, Clinton and Obama are running neck and neck to attract delegates before the nominating convention this summer. It seems every state counts. Puerto Rico is not a state, but since 1917, all Puerto Ricans are U.S citizens. They will be allowed to vote in the Puerto Rican primary. And it is going to matter this year. Puerto Rico has 60+ delegates in the primaries. That's more than most states have and ranks it up there with the powerhouses of New York, California, and Florida.

However, Puerto Ricans will not be able to vote in the general election in November. Why? Because they do not live in a state. Puerto Rico is a commonwealth holding of the United States. It has limited powers of self-rule and any laws passed by the government of Puerto Rico can be vetoed by Congress. According to the Constitution, it is the states that get to set the rules for voting (in accordance with federal law and the Constitution). Hence, it is only citizens who are residents in states who may vote in federal elections( thus, citizens of Washington, D.C. don't get to vote either--of course, there are 4 million Puerto Ricans, so its a big difference).

As Antonio Darder point out here, this primary situation is a mixed blessing. Hopefully, some people might be shocked to learn the power Puerto Rico has in this decision making process of leadership--without really having a meaningful place at the table--and start to ask questions.

The reason for all of it, of course, is simple: colonialism. Puerto Ricans are second class citizens and the island, an economic disaster, has been exploited for its natural and human resources for over 500 years, first by the Spanish and then by the United States.

Over a hundred years ago, Mark Twain spoke out over this condition. He became a leader in the Anti-Imperialist League and wrote about the Treaty of Paris between the U.S. and Spain that gave the former control over Puerto Rico, Cuba, and the Phillipines. Perhaps we should finally heed his words:

"It should, it seems to me, be our pleasure and duty to make those people free, and let them deal with their own domestic questions in their own way. And so I am an anti-imperialist. I am opposed to having the eagle put its talons on any other land."

Beyond the Academy Conference: June 10-11, 2008

2008-04-13T22:42:00.000-07:00

An interesting conference that I might be attending:

Beyond the Academy Conference: June 10-11, 2008
Call For Abstracts

The Beyond the Academy Conference is now scheduled for June 10-11, 2008. It will take place on the Arlington Campus of George Mason University, beginning the evening of the 10th and continuing all day on th 11th.
Meeting just outside the nation’s capital in the midst of a presidential campaign year, public scholars from across the country will discuss the ways in which their work is more than “academic,” how it helps strengthen democratic institutions and public life and can bring about civic change.

To be considered for the program, send a 450-550 word abstract by April 28 to nmcafee@gmu.edu with the subject line “public scholars.” Possible topics include, but are not limited to, the following:

* Reclaiming the civic mission of the university
* The incentive structure of university scholarship
* The self-understanding of scholars and their relationship to the public
* How to be the public’s allies in democratic work
* What kind of research does a democratic public need?
* Organic vs. traditional scholarship: How does Milton matter?
* Assessing the engaged campus movement
* Independent scholars, the academy, and the public
* the multiple ways communities, individuals and non-academic institutions contribute to public knowledge (e.g., film festivals, literary festivals, literacy initiatives)
* Advocacy versus Engagement
* Book sessions

For more information go to http://beyondtheacademy.wordpress.com/

Memories of Empire, Part One: Absolut(ly) Aztlan

2008-04-09T13:32:00.000-07:00

Absolut Vodka has created a huge web flurry with this new ad campaign in Mexico. The ad depicts what an "ideal" world might look like from the standpoint of Mexico--one in which Mexico has the national boundaries it had in about 1821. This was before Anglo-Mexican settlers revolted in the state of Tejas and created the Republic of Texas in 1836; and also before the war of 1846-1848 with the United States (regarded by many to have been an aggressive and unjust war for territorial expansion. Young Abraham Lincoln, then a Congressional Represenative from Illinois, voted against the war. Thoreau went to jail for failing to support it with his taxes. Even Ulysses Grant was shocked at the the conduct of U.S. troops during the war).

Blogs all over the web are calling for a boycott of Absolut, calling the ad "racist" and in poor taste.

While Mexico does have many monuments to heros who fought in the war against the United States, I hazard a guess that most Mexicans are not dreaming of any Reconquista (despite what the nativists are arguing).

What strikes me as more interesting is how vociferous and angry the responses have been to this ad among conservative voices.

I'm sure that the anger is not a reaction of guilt for the imperalist impulse that the U.S. embodied in the 19th century, leading it to land grab so much in Latin America. Its more likely the case that the reaction is part of the growing fear being felt in the U.S. about a loss of power and stature on the world stage. Gregory Rodriguez calls the new border fence a "670 mile-long shrine to American insecurity".