Weather-blogging
In the last week, the level of snow in my back yard went from almost 3' in places, to < 1" after a few days of warm weather... back to a foot, after the Friday-Saturday snowfall.
In next week's forecast, there's a 45-degree F swing from the Tuesday night low to the Friday high-- less than 72 hours.
Sunday, March 18, 2007
Red Quebec/ Blue Quebec
I've written a bit, in the context of the Herouxville norms, about the Montreal-vs-rural-regions divide in Quebec politics and in understandings of Quebecois identity. (I've also talked about it in an interview with L'Express that I now fear will feel dated and obvious by the time it sees print.) For the first time, that divide is shaping up as the centerpiece of an election.
It does seem to turn out that a cosmopolitan or internationalist elite consensus-- say, for free trade, or for the EU, or for immigration, or for multiculturalism-- eventually provokes a populist backlash from voters who, rightly, perceive that their concerns have been shut out of mainstream political discourse. In each case, I'm not on their side, and on a day-by-day basis I'm glad when a society's main parties close ranks around what I take to be the decent position. But the resulting dissatisfaction is the elctoral equivalent of low-hanging fruit or a ten-dollar bill on the sidewalk. Someone's going to pick it or pick it up; someone's going to make use of the resource. I wonder whether we can say anything general about the conditions under which that someone will be someone truly scary (e.g. Le Pen, Haider) (because the norms and taboos are so strong that only someone truly scary is willing to challenge them) or the conditions under which it'll be someone tolerably within liberal democratic bounds.
Charles Taylor has complained that we shouldn't call Mario Dumont the Jean-Marie Le Pen of Quebec. OK, fair enough; as far as I can tell Dumont is a fairly ordinary center-right populist, and he's well within the bounds of decent liberal democratic discourse. But the electoral market opening is the same, and for that matter is the same as Ross Perot's anti-trade campaigns: the populist backlash that always comes in response to that kind of bipartisan consensus on such issues, and always but always strikes urban elites as a complete out-of-nowhere surprise.
By the way, this elite-consensus model doesn't only have implications for the multiculturalist/ free trade neoliberals among us. It has implications for all forms of consociationalism and corporatism, too-- implications that are at least as strong, because those two models actualy rely on competing elites working together in one big cooperative venture (the grand coalition government, the union-corporate-ministry meetings to plan the whole economy) that eventually strike the populist imagination like a summit meeting between the Masons and the Trilateral Commission. The target for the backlash is that much more visible.
The attempt to shut out the electoral demand for some given set of policies may be something like the attempt to regulate away a market demand. The demand will find a way to express itself and be met; but the subsequent black-market entrepreneurs who meet it may have some very unappealing characteristics.
The U.S., by the way, has a quirky political culture in which Perots are left with little room to navigate; every presidential election is an overthrow of the elites. Since World War II Americans have only elected two new presidents from directly within the Washington elite, Kennedy and Bush I. Governors are preferred, always vowing to go shake up the stale self-involved ways of Washington. Moreover, Democrats are ostensibly elected to challenge the corporate elite and Republicans to challenge the government-media elite. At least a faux populism runs through the veins of American politics all the time. At the other extreme, France has had a decades-long model of government that is astonishingly elite-centered. French presidential and prime ministerial elections are grudge matches from the 1970s, not easily represented as populist newcomers overthrowing established ways. Next year's presidential election looks different; we'll see.
I've written a bit, in the context of the Herouxville norms, about the Montreal-vs-rural-regions divide in Quebec politics and in understandings of Quebecois identity. (I've also talked about it in an interview with L'Express that I now fear will feel dated and obvious by the time it sees print.) For the first time, that divide is shaping up as the centerpiece of an election.
But with little more than a week to go before Quebecers choose a government, a new dynamic fuelled by regional resentment and a blurring of the usual dividing lines has emerged, leaving even the most intrepid observer unwilling to attempt to predict the outcome.[...]
What the parties all need are committees to polish their crystal balls. While some ridings are two-way races, others are three-way tussles, and the two-way races don't involve the same parties in every region.
For example, on Montreal Island and in regions like Abitibi, the Outaouais and Saguenay-Lac St. Jean, the fight is principally between the Liberals and the Parti Quebecois. However, in the Chaudiere-Appalaches region south of Quebec City, the Liberals are battling it out with the ADQ, while in the Mauricie the fight is between the PQ and the ADQ.
"In general, we think it is a three-way race, but in reality it is several two-way races," explained pollster Jean-Marc Leger, who says Quebec is likely to end up with a minority government, although he can't say for sure which party is likely to form it.[...]
"I have never seen an election like it," said Lapierre, a veteran political organizer. "I'm astonished how Quebec is full of microclimates. When you look at the polls from a Montreal perspective, you don't get an accurate picture, because there are microclimates in each region of Quebec and the battle is different in each region."[...]
The dynamic is also fuelled by a growing divide between urban and rural Quebec.
Observers and pollsters alike say one factor behind the unexpected rise of Mario Dumont's ADQ is a protest vote by Quebecers outside Montreal, who feel the Liberals and the Parti Quebecois are disconnected from their lives and concerns, and have been taking them for granted.
"In the first place, they are voting against the government," Leger said. "They turned to the PQ but they are dissatisfied with Andre Boisclair's leadership and the possibility of a third referendum. So they have turned to ADQ.
"ADQ is a vote against; that is to say, that ADQ is a vote by the regions against Montreal."
Political scientist Guy Laforest, an ADQ supporter, said Boisclair and Charest are perceived as being too close to Montreal's elites. "Mr. Charest is seen as being part of the Westmount/Outremont/Sherbrooke politico-business elite. ... Mr. Boisclair is more connected to the media/cultural elite of the Plateau Mont Royal. Mr. Dumont appears more like a champion of the regions."[...]
Both Laforest and Leger point to the debate over the reasonable accommodation of ethnic and religious minorities as a turning point of the campaign.
"The debate on reasonable accommodation, that debate permitted Mario Dumont to exist," Leger said. "His positions were tied to the Quebec reality and succeeded in becoming credible."
The condescending attitude of Montrealers in the controversy over Herouxville's code of conduct for immigrants just fed disaffection in the regions, where there is little or no contact with other ethnic groups, he said.
It does seem to turn out that a cosmopolitan or internationalist elite consensus-- say, for free trade, or for the EU, or for immigration, or for multiculturalism-- eventually provokes a populist backlash from voters who, rightly, perceive that their concerns have been shut out of mainstream political discourse. In each case, I'm not on their side, and on a day-by-day basis I'm glad when a society's main parties close ranks around what I take to be the decent position. But the resulting dissatisfaction is the elctoral equivalent of low-hanging fruit or a ten-dollar bill on the sidewalk. Someone's going to pick it or pick it up; someone's going to make use of the resource. I wonder whether we can say anything general about the conditions under which that someone will be someone truly scary (e.g. Le Pen, Haider) (because the norms and taboos are so strong that only someone truly scary is willing to challenge them) or the conditions under which it'll be someone tolerably within liberal democratic bounds.
Charles Taylor has complained that we shouldn't call Mario Dumont the Jean-Marie Le Pen of Quebec. OK, fair enough; as far as I can tell Dumont is a fairly ordinary center-right populist, and he's well within the bounds of decent liberal democratic discourse. But the electoral market opening is the same, and for that matter is the same as Ross Perot's anti-trade campaigns: the populist backlash that always comes in response to that kind of bipartisan consensus on such issues, and always but always strikes urban elites as a complete out-of-nowhere surprise.
By the way, this elite-consensus model doesn't only have implications for the multiculturalist/ free trade neoliberals among us. It has implications for all forms of consociationalism and corporatism, too-- implications that are at least as strong, because those two models actualy rely on competing elites working together in one big cooperative venture (the grand coalition government, the union-corporate-ministry meetings to plan the whole economy) that eventually strike the populist imagination like a summit meeting between the Masons and the Trilateral Commission. The target for the backlash is that much more visible.
The attempt to shut out the electoral demand for some given set of policies may be something like the attempt to regulate away a market demand. The demand will find a way to express itself and be met; but the subsequent black-market entrepreneurs who meet it may have some very unappealing characteristics.
The U.S., by the way, has a quirky political culture in which Perots are left with little room to navigate; every presidential election is an overthrow of the elites. Since World War II Americans have only elected two new presidents from directly within the Washington elite, Kennedy and Bush I. Governors are preferred, always vowing to go shake up the stale self-involved ways of Washington. Moreover, Democrats are ostensibly elected to challenge the corporate elite and Republicans to challenge the government-media elite. At least a faux populism runs through the veins of American politics all the time. At the other extreme, France has had a decades-long model of government that is astonishingly elite-centered. French presidential and prime ministerial elections are grudge matches from the 1970s, not easily represented as populist newcomers overthrowing established ways. Next year's presidential election looks different; we'll see.
Wednesday, March 14, 2007
Former McGill Political Theorist Watch
I don't intend for this blog to become all Taylor all the time. But this is noteworthy.
See the official announcement here, and Taylor's interesting reflections on his own published works here.
Mazel tov.
Update And the next day it turns out to be more than 'noteworthy'-- it's the big news. Here's the Montreal Gazette on the news, and Taylor and Montreal; and Taylor's former student, the distinguished Universite de Montreal Canada Research Chair in Ethics and Political Philosophy Daniel Weinstock, on Taylor as a teacher. Here's the McGill press release. And here's the McGill page devoted to Taylor as an intellectual "pioneer."
The funny thing is that, when I was in grad school, the Oxford-Harvard-Princeton crowd treated Taylor's interest in religion as an odd quirk-- something between "interesting trivia you might not have known" [Nozick had a big rent control fight with the author of Love Story, Taylor seems to believe in God] and "interpretive key that will make his whole philosophy make sense at the cost of making it inaccessible and/or uninteresting to people like us." Neither seemed all fair as far as I was concerned, and I'm very glad to see Taylor honored because of rather than in spite of his attention to religious questions and to the relationship between philosophy and religion.
I don't intend for this blog to become all Taylor all the time. But this is noteworthy.
A Canadian philosopher has won a $1.5 million US prize for his theory that the world's problems can only be solved by considering both their secular and spiritual roots.
Charles Taylor was announced as the winner of the 2007 Templeton Prize Wednesday at a news conference in New York.[...]
Taylor, in an interview with the CBC's Alison Smith, described the essential idea behind his work.
"I think the thing that caught the attention of the people giving the prize is that I've always thought that we've had a social science and philosophy that were much too narrow … that hasn't recognized the importance of the religious and spiritual dimension in peoples' lives," he said.
"And the result is, it's not been good for understanding in the world."
See the official announcement here, and Taylor's interesting reflections on his own published works here.
Mazel tov.
Update And the next day it turns out to be more than 'noteworthy'-- it's the big news. Here's the Montreal Gazette on the news, and Taylor and Montreal; and Taylor's former student, the distinguished Universite de Montreal Canada Research Chair in Ethics and Political Philosophy Daniel Weinstock, on Taylor as a teacher. Here's the McGill press release. And here's the McGill page devoted to Taylor as an intellectual "pioneer."
The funny thing is that, when I was in grad school, the Oxford-Harvard-Princeton crowd treated Taylor's interest in religion as an odd quirk-- something between "interesting trivia you might not have known" [Nozick had a big rent control fight with the author of Love Story, Taylor seems to believe in God] and "interpretive key that will make his whole philosophy make sense at the cost of making it inaccessible and/or uninteresting to people like us." Neither seemed all fair as far as I was concerned, and I'm very glad to see Taylor honored because of rather than in spite of his attention to religious questions and to the relationship between philosophy and religion.
Tuesday, March 13, 2007
A swing and a miss...
or rather a Ms., from Ms. Mentor. (Sorry, that was weak, I know.) I've sometimes encouraged grad students to follow the advice of the Chronicle's Ms. Mentor, but not this time. A correspondent asks her "what counts as forthcoming?" and she responds with some wise and some less-wise words about the tenure process-- fine as far as they go. But this:
is just not on, as they say, and would be highly hazardous advice to follow. Those might be 'work in progress' or 'future projects.' "Forthcoming" means has been accepted by a publisher, press, or editor in its final form. There are many gradations of other status: accepted pending final revisions, under contract, under review, in submission, in revision for resubmission, etc., etc. But "forthcoming" means something much more specific, and using it in other ways risks serious trouble or at least reputational harms.
The correct use of "forthcoming" might not be the issue she wanted to talk about, but that doesn't mean "isn't really the issue."
As far as I'm concerned, "in progress" means "I can show you a draft of this if you ask," but some people use "in progress" for their motes in the mind. That's OK, I guess. "Under review" and "in submission" are factual claims, though, not to be misrepresented. And "forthcoming" is an even stronger factual claim. Use it judiciously and accurately.
On another grad student note, see this instantly-classic statement of a core graduate student ambivalence...
updateSee a similar view expressed here.
or rather a Ms., from Ms. Mentor. (Sorry, that was weak, I know.) I've sometimes encouraged grad students to follow the advice of the Chronicle's Ms. Mentor, but not this time. A correspondent asks her "what counts as forthcoming?" and she responds with some wise and some less-wise words about the tenure process-- fine as far as they go. But this:
And yet, Ms. Mentor knows that the issue isn't really whether a book is a zygote, or gestating, or incubating. "Forthcoming" can mean "at the idea stage" or "inchoate." It can be a mote in the mind, a song on the wind, a glimpse of the ineffable not yet reduced to the dry mundanity of words.
is just not on, as they say, and would be highly hazardous advice to follow. Those might be 'work in progress' or 'future projects.' "Forthcoming" means has been accepted by a publisher, press, or editor in its final form. There are many gradations of other status: accepted pending final revisions, under contract, under review, in submission, in revision for resubmission, etc., etc. But "forthcoming" means something much more specific, and using it in other ways risks serious trouble or at least reputational harms.
The correct use of "forthcoming" might not be the issue she wanted to talk about, but that doesn't mean "isn't really the issue."
As far as I'm concerned, "in progress" means "I can show you a draft of this if you ask," but some people use "in progress" for their motes in the mind. That's OK, I guess. "Under review" and "in submission" are factual claims, though, not to be misrepresented. And "forthcoming" is an even stronger factual claim. Use it judiciously and accurately.
On another grad student note, see this instantly-classic statement of a core graduate student ambivalence...
updateSee a similar view expressed here.
Monday, March 12, 2007
Recent book purchases
Walter F. Murphy, Constitutional Democracy: Creating and Maintaining a Just Political Order (The Johns Hopkins Series in Constitutional Thought)
Eric Posner and Adrian Vermeule, Terror in the Balance: Security, Liberty, and the Courts
Morten E.J. Nielsen, ed., Political Questions: 5 Questions on Political Philosophy
Paul M. Sniderman and Louk Hagendoorn, When Ways of Life Collide: Multiculturalism and Its Discontents in the Netherlands
Will Kymlicka and Keith Banting, eds., Multiculturalism and the Welfare State: Recognition and Redistribution in Contemporary Democracies
Next to purchase:
Leonidas Montes & Eric Schliesser, eds., New Voices on Adam Smith
Walter F. Murphy, Constitutional Democracy: Creating and Maintaining a Just Political Order (The Johns Hopkins Series in Constitutional Thought)
Eric Posner and Adrian Vermeule, Terror in the Balance: Security, Liberty, and the Courts
Morten E.J. Nielsen, ed., Political Questions: 5 Questions on Political Philosophy
Paul M. Sniderman and Louk Hagendoorn, When Ways of Life Collide: Multiculturalism and Its Discontents in the Netherlands
Will Kymlicka and Keith Banting, eds., Multiculturalism and the Welfare State: Recognition and Redistribution in Contemporary Democracies
Next to purchase:
Leonidas Montes & Eric Schliesser, eds., New Voices on Adam Smith
Hmm.
Brad De Long and I have an exchange over at his site. I'm not at all sure that I understand Brad's post, or what it has to do with my Wolfe-Berkowitz post at Open University which he takes as his point of departure.
Anyway, an extract form my side of our subsequent e-mail exchange, in case anyone cares:
Andrew Sullivan follows up.
Brad De Long and I have an exchange over at his site. I'm not at all sure that I understand Brad's post, or what it has to do with my Wolfe-Berkowitz post at Open University which he takes as his point of departure.
Anyway, an extract form my side of our subsequent e-mail exchange, in case anyone cares:
'What conservatism is,' is as complex as what liberalism is, or what socialism (not communism, which aspires to simplicity) is. It's a multistranded set of particular policy commitments, normative principles, decision rules and guides for action, and sociological theories about the way the modern world works.
Finally-- and borrowing from Walzer-- even a traditionalist has to do just as much work as anyone else at figuring out levels of abstraction. Just like a Kantian has to figure out what counts as a maxim, a traditionalist has to figure out what counts as a tradition (what we did yesterday, or last year? The particular thing we've always done, or the reason we thought we had for doing it, or the rule under which we did it but which to which we now notice it was an exception?) Common law judges do that kind of work-- the body of precedent builds up rules and principles, not just holdings, and sometimes a holding gets overturned in light of the rules or principles. Burke did that kind of work too, and you rough him up for it, saying "but he didn't affirm X holding!"
Andrew Sullivan follows up.
Two nations warring
We've taken some shots at the New York Review of Books over at Open University, and justifiably so. The NYRoB's law and politics offerings are predictable at best, dreary at worst.
But it does do pretty well with history, quite often.
New in the NYRoB: a delightful Julian Barnes review of a delightful-sounding book on the English-French rivalry-- an object of special interest to those of us who live in an Anglo-French (Franco-Saxon?) city, in a province and country that have been given their shape by that rivalry.
We've taken some shots at the New York Review of Books over at Open University, and justifiably so. The NYRoB's law and politics offerings are predictable at best, dreary at worst.
But it does do pretty well with history, quite often.
New in the NYRoB: a delightful Julian Barnes review of a delightful-sounding book on the English-French rivalry-- an object of special interest to those of us who live in an Anglo-French (Franco-Saxon?) city, in a province and country that have been given their shape by that rivalry.
Thursday, March 08, 2007
The challenge:
If you were blogging in March 2003, what were you wrong about then?
This is meant to be a war question, and on the big question I was wrong to support the war, but in fact I didn't blog about it very much that month, and more generally restricted my blogging about it to questions about Kurds and federalism
March 2003 posts seem to have included praising the new aesthetics of Virginia Postrel's blog and congratulating Matt Yglesias on his Prospect gig. It included stuff I have no memory of writing, including several posts, starting with this one, on a puzzle Chris Bertram set about commodification. It also, in a bit of foreshadowing, included my complaint that the U.S. had been shockingly undiplomatic to Canada, part of my ongoing concern with the inability of the Bush administration to be a civil and friendly ally even to the United States' closest allies. (I included the deportation of Maher Arar to Syria on the list of unfriendly acts committed by the U.S., so that's something I was wrong about; that was done with the knowledge and agreement of the Canadian government, as far as I can now tell.) My March 2003 TNR column was certainly pro-war, but its question wasn't about the justifiability of the war or about its prospects for success. It was about the puzzle of how countries had lined up on the war-- why Britain and especially Australia had signed on for the fight, Canada and New Zealand not, etc.
Two real war posts that I could find, this, on Iraqi military casualties and whether the coalition had a duty to try to minimize them, which is fine, and this, on oil, federalism, and democracy, which is not. In the latter, I seem to have thought that the Kurds would rush for the secessionist exit faster than they in fact have. I said "In the first place, it will be a long time before Iraq is both a 'safe, pluralistic, federalist democracy' and a guaranteed bet to stay that way," which is all too true. But I also, crucially, said that "the concentration of oil in the south isn't a particular problem, since any even-loosely democratic Iraq will see Shiites in control of the central government," and therefore there'd be no conflict from a Shia perspective among federliam, democracy, and control of oil wealth. Kind of true as far as it goes, but it didn't take the Sunni minority seriously as a veto player; "no problem from a Shia perspective" =/= "no problem."
If you were blogging in March 2003, what were you wrong about then?
This is meant to be a war question, and on the big question I was wrong to support the war, but in fact I didn't blog about it very much that month, and more generally restricted my blogging about it to questions about Kurds and federalism
March 2003 posts seem to have included praising the new aesthetics of Virginia Postrel's blog and congratulating Matt Yglesias on his Prospect gig. It included stuff I have no memory of writing, including several posts, starting with this one, on a puzzle Chris Bertram set about commodification. It also, in a bit of foreshadowing, included my complaint that the U.S. had been shockingly undiplomatic to Canada, part of my ongoing concern with the inability of the Bush administration to be a civil and friendly ally even to the United States' closest allies. (I included the deportation of Maher Arar to Syria on the list of unfriendly acts committed by the U.S., so that's something I was wrong about; that was done with the knowledge and agreement of the Canadian government, as far as I can now tell.) My March 2003 TNR column was certainly pro-war, but its question wasn't about the justifiability of the war or about its prospects for success. It was about the puzzle of how countries had lined up on the war-- why Britain and especially Australia had signed on for the fight, Canada and New Zealand not, etc.
Two real war posts that I could find, this, on Iraqi military casualties and whether the coalition had a duty to try to minimize them, which is fine, and this, on oil, federalism, and democracy, which is not. In the latter, I seem to have thought that the Kurds would rush for the secessionist exit faster than they in fact have. I said "In the first place, it will be a long time before Iraq is both a 'safe, pluralistic, federalist democracy' and a guaranteed bet to stay that way," which is all too true. But I also, crucially, said that "the concentration of oil in the south isn't a particular problem, since any even-loosely democratic Iraq will see Shiites in control of the central government," and therefore there'd be no conflict from a Shia perspective among federliam, democracy, and control of oil wealth. Kind of true as far as it goes, but it didn't take the Sunni minority seriously as a veto player; "no problem from a Shia perspective" =/= "no problem."
Tuesday, March 06, 2007
Adam Smith quote of the night
"Love is an agreeable; resentment, a disagreeable passion; and accordingly we are not half so anxious that our friends should adopt our friendships, as that they should enter into our resentments. We can forgive them though they seem to be little affected by the favours which we may have received, but lose all patience if they seem indifferent about the injuries which may have been done to us; nor are we half so angry with them for not entering into our gratitude, as for not sympathizing with our resentment."
TMS I.i.2.5
(My reading of Rousseau below has been inviting objections by e-mail; will try to respond tomorrow.)
"Love is an agreeable; resentment, a disagreeable passion; and accordingly we are not half so anxious that our friends should adopt our friendships, as that they should enter into our resentments. We can forgive them though they seem to be little affected by the favours which we may have received, but lose all patience if they seem indifferent about the injuries which may have been done to us; nor are we half so angry with them for not entering into our gratitude, as for not sympathizing with our resentment."
TMS I.i.2.5
(My reading of Rousseau below has been inviting objections by e-mail; will try to respond tomorrow.)
Wednesday, February 28, 2007
Noteworthy
From the Chronicle:
The snark would be easy here; but I think it should be skipped. It's good news for France, French higher education, and French intellectual life. That a new commitment to the study of economics also corresponds with a discovery that private institutions have advantages, French regulations can be burdensome, etc., feels like it ought to be ironic but it's really not. Cheers for the PSE, and best wishes for its success.
Update:
Here is The Paris School of Economics website. Right away one notices a difference from other French institutions: The Paris School of Economics actually shows up on the top of the page as one of the institution's names, along with l'Ecole d'économie de Paris. The institution plans to develop programs in public policy, development, quantitative sociology, economic history, economic demography, and law and economics (I strongly suspect that one will be the first such in France).
But not everything changes. The statement from Villepin's office said "L’Ecole d’économie de Paris contribuera à l’élaboration d’une doctrine économique à part entière, dont l’objectif sera de mieux analyser le fonctionnement de la vie économique. Une plus grande place devra être donnée aux modèles de développement qui intègrent la protection de l’environnement, la justice sociale et le respect des identités. La France pourra ainsi davantage peser dans les grands débats économiques internationaux."
[The Paris School of Economics will contribute to the elaboration of a full-fledged economic doctrine, of which the objective will be to better analyze the functionning of economic life. A larger place must be given to models of development which incorporate the protection of the environment, social justice, and respect for identities*. In that fashion, France will be able to carry more weight in the great international economic debates.]
*To my ear, c'est bizarre to hear Villepin talking about respectiong identities as a central goal, since I think that's the language of multiculturalism and accommodation for internal cultural minorities, whether religious or linguistic-- the kind of thing that republican France is dead set against by both official constitutional law and deep political norms. But that's presumably not what he means by them'; rather, he means national level identity, such that all of France is a beleaguered minority in the face of the onslaught of American capitalism.
I liked these bits from the Figaro article:
"If we do nothing, in five or ten years, the only researchers who will come to Paris will be those who have a girlfriend in France," warned Thomas Picketty.
Apparently no economists have French boyfriends.
Not everyone shares this enthusiasm. Michel Lussault, vice-president of the Conference of University Presidents, can't see "how one will be able transform research in economics" with the new institution. "To compare the EEP with LSE, one would have to be delusional. At best, one will reach the size of a very small Harvard department." Even in the university world, innovations disturb.
Even in the university world?
From the Chronicle:
French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin presided over the inauguration last week of the Paris School of Economics, a new institution that its founders hope will eventually rival economics powerhouses like the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the London School of Economics and Political Science.
The new institution was formed through the collaboration of six existing French universities and research institutions, including the prestigious École Normale Supérieure and the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, or National Center for Scientific Research. All six partner institutions are public, but the new institution will be run by a newly created private foundation.
The school's semiprivate status is such a rarity in France that a special government decree was required to create the foundation to run it. The status will give the new institution more flexibility in hiring and firing, admissions, and day-to-day operations. Almost all French universities are public and therefore subject to the same regulations that govern other public-sector institutions. That model "makes it very cumbersome and gives universities a very low margin of maneuver," said Claudia Senik, a professor of economics at the Sorbonne who also teaches at the new institution. "It's very difficult to hire people, and is not very efficient."
[...]The Paris School's semiprivate status will also free it from some restrictions that public institutions find burdensome.[...] In another departure for a French university, the new institution will prioritize fund-raising from the outset. The government has given $26-million to start an endowment, but that capital will remain untouched, Ms. Senik said. Private donors, including the European insurance giant AXA, have also given a total of $5.3-million, and the institution hopes to raise an additional $53-million by 2010. "The idea is to build an important endowment so as to be able to function with the interest and to be sure that we can make long-term offers to people," Ms. Senik said.
The snark would be easy here; but I think it should be skipped. It's good news for France, French higher education, and French intellectual life. That a new commitment to the study of economics also corresponds with a discovery that private institutions have advantages, French regulations can be burdensome, etc., feels like it ought to be ironic but it's really not. Cheers for the PSE, and best wishes for its success.
Update:
Here is The Paris School of Economics website. Right away one notices a difference from other French institutions: The Paris School of Economics actually shows up on the top of the page as one of the institution's names, along with l'Ecole d'économie de Paris. The institution plans to develop programs in public policy, development, quantitative sociology, economic history, economic demography, and law and economics (I strongly suspect that one will be the first such in France).
But not everything changes. The statement from Villepin's office said "L’Ecole d’économie de Paris contribuera à l’élaboration d’une doctrine économique à part entière, dont l’objectif sera de mieux analyser le fonctionnement de la vie économique. Une plus grande place devra être donnée aux modèles de développement qui intègrent la protection de l’environnement, la justice sociale et le respect des identités. La France pourra ainsi davantage peser dans les grands débats économiques internationaux."
[The Paris School of Economics will contribute to the elaboration of a full-fledged economic doctrine, of which the objective will be to better analyze the functionning of economic life. A larger place must be given to models of development which incorporate the protection of the environment, social justice, and respect for identities*. In that fashion, France will be able to carry more weight in the great international economic debates.]
*To my ear, c'est bizarre to hear Villepin talking about respectiong identities as a central goal, since I think that's the language of multiculturalism and accommodation for internal cultural minorities, whether religious or linguistic-- the kind of thing that republican France is dead set against by both official constitutional law and deep political norms. But that's presumably not what he means by them'; rather, he means national level identity, such that all of France is a beleaguered minority in the face of the onslaught of American capitalism.
I liked these bits from the Figaro article:
« Si on ne fait rien, dans cinq ou dix ans, les seuls chercheurs qui viendront à Paris sont ceux qui auront une petite copine en France », plaisante Thomas Piketty.
"If we do nothing, in five or ten years, the only researchers who will come to Paris will be those who have a girlfriend in France," warned Thomas Picketty.
Apparently no economists have French boyfriends.
Tout le monde ne partage pas cet enthousiasme. Michel Lussault, vice-président de la Conférence des présidents d'université, voit mal « comment on va pouvoir boulversifier la recherche en économie » avec cette école. « Comparer l'EEP avec LSE, on est en plein fantasme ! Au mieux, on atteindra la taille d'un tout petit département de Harvard. » Même dans le monde universitaire, la nouveauté dérange..
Not everyone shares this enthusiasm. Michel Lussault, vice-president of the Conference of University Presidents, can't see "how one will be able transform research in economics" with the new institution. "To compare the EEP with LSE, one would have to be delusional. At best, one will reach the size of a very small Harvard department." Even in the university world, innovations disturb.
Even in the university world?
Monday, February 26, 2007
Not quite Herouxville, but...
Muslim girl ejected from [soccer] tournament for wearing hijab
Ah. Well, that might be unfortunate but I guess I could see hwy there might be a safety issue there, and why a children's sports league would have to prioritize safety. There's a picture at the link, and, yes, I guess I could see the hijab she's wearing getting twisted around her neck.
Ah. Never mind.
Unless there's some perfect correlation of which I was previously unaware between "religious items" and "things that could accidentally strangle you," the safety rationale offered was pretextual. It's unrelated to the rule that was actually applied, which singles out religious items and particularly the "veil," which I doubt is being worn by any girls who are running around a soccer field exposing their limbs anyway. It's not a rule against items tied around the neck.
This will no doubt get spun as a "reasonable accommodations" dispute. As I've written before, issues of exemptions and reasonable accommodations arise when a generally neutral rule, such as a safety rule, incidentally impacts on cultural or religious activities. Then one has to figure out the importance of the rule, the importance of the activity, and so on. When the rule directly targets activities on the basis of their religious character, it's not a case calling for exemption; it's a case calling for repeal of an illiberal rule.
In a setting in which one may not wear any hat, or must wear prescribed headgear such as a helmet, the question of whether one may wear a hijab, turban, or yarmulke requires balancing and may but may not require an exemption. But if one is allowed to wear any hat except for a hijab, turba, or yarmulke, then what's at issue is simple discrimination against religion and violation of religious freedom.
Muslim girl ejected from [soccer] tournament for wearing hijab
Five young teams from across Canada walked out of a Quebec soccer tournament Sunday because a young Muslim girl was ejected for wearing a hijab.
Calling the rule banning the headscarf worn by Muslim women racist, four other teams followed Asmahan Mansour's team, the Nepean Selects from Ottawa, after she was thrown out for running afoul of a Quebec Soccer Association rule.
"The referee was staring and pointing. 'She can't play,'" said Asmahan, Asi to her friends. "I was like why? Why can't I play?"
Because of a safety rule, league spokesman Lyes Arfa said. He pointed out that the referee is Muslim himself, and that the ban on hijabs is to protect children from being accidentally strangled.
Ah. Well, that might be unfortunate but I guess I could see hwy there might be a safety issue there, and why a children's sports league would have to prioritize safety. There's a picture at the link, and, yes, I guess I could see the hijab she's wearing getting twisted around her neck.
And the league had told organizers about the rule — "The wearing of the Islamic veil or any other religious item is not permitted" — before the game.
Ah. Never mind.
Unless there's some perfect correlation of which I was previously unaware between "religious items" and "things that could accidentally strangle you," the safety rationale offered was pretextual. It's unrelated to the rule that was actually applied, which singles out religious items and particularly the "veil," which I doubt is being worn by any girls who are running around a soccer field exposing their limbs anyway. It's not a rule against items tied around the neck.
This will no doubt get spun as a "reasonable accommodations" dispute. As I've written before, issues of exemptions and reasonable accommodations arise when a generally neutral rule, such as a safety rule, incidentally impacts on cultural or religious activities. Then one has to figure out the importance of the rule, the importance of the activity, and so on. When the rule directly targets activities on the basis of their religious character, it's not a case calling for exemption; it's a case calling for repeal of an illiberal rule.
In a setting in which one may not wear any hat, or must wear prescribed headgear such as a helmet, the question of whether one may wear a hijab, turban, or yarmulke requires balancing and may but may not require an exemption. But if one is allowed to wear any hat except for a hijab, turba, or yarmulke, then what's at issue is simple discrimination against religion and violation of religious freedom.
Saturday, February 24, 2007
Wednesday, February 21, 2007
Now available...
in print, or online for those with the appropriate institutional subscriptions:
Federalism and the Old and New Liberalisms, in Social Philosophy and Policy.
Update:
If the direct link doesn't work, try this link to browse the journal contents; pdf links should work from that page.
in print, or online for those with the appropriate institutional subscriptions:
Federalism and the Old and New Liberalisms, in Social Philosophy and Policy.
Update:
If the direct link doesn't work, try this link to browse the journal contents; pdf links should work from that page.
Monday, February 19, 2007
The Herouxville Saga: Taylor Speaks...
to Le Devoir. I'll work on translating some passages for future blogging tomorrow morning.
Update:
Translated highlights follow.
It's of course very appropriate of Taylor to begin his commission's work with a strong effort to appear open-minded and fair. Still, this seems to me like rather a lot of generosity to Herouxville.
I do appreciate Taylor's openness about the degree to which this is a distinctively intra-Quebec dispute about the society's identity. He's a leading champion of one vision of Quebec's character-- a very montréalais vision. As often happens with urban-rural divides, I think it's been easy for Montrealers to believe that their vision was shared more widely in the rest of society than it actually is. (And the Herouxville debate has, among other things, made explicit some anti-Montreal animus in the north.)
The comparison with Europe may lower the heat, and that's welcome, though I'd also like to hear what he thinks about the cartoon controversy.
And the indictment of the charge of racism just in virtue of its tendency to shut down debate has affinities with the last week's anti-Semitism debate at Open University (see here for the most recent entry)). In both cases, that's an indictment if what one is after is a discussion, at any price, but it's not a direct critique of the charge's truth. The same holds true for charges in the other direction, e.g. "apartheid," "stoning women." Such charges are incivil, and uncondusive to conversation. But it's not clear to me that that makes them impermissible; it certainly doesn't make them false.
to Le Devoir. I'll work on translating some passages for future blogging tomorrow morning.
Update:
Translated highlights follow.
"Where is the key problem? Why is it that there are major divisions? It is that there are various visions of Québécois society, of what constitutes its identity, of the way in which this identity could be in danger: it is that which creates serious problems and deep uneasiness. And it is necessary to find a way to begin this debate and to discuss this."
There may also be some urgency in deescalating the debate. We can take comfort from some comparisons. Mr. Taylor has spent long periods in Europe in recent years and recalls that, as regards the management of diversity, "there are many worse situations than Quebec’s". It is enough to note the poisoned character of the debate in Germany and Denmark, for example, to remind ourselves of this. "I saw debates about social identity that were much more venomous than is ours in Quebec", he says, citing the examples like the “crisis” of the Danish cartoons and the suburban riots in France. But it is urgent, to avoid a descent into such a condition, for society to enter into to have a large-scale discussion: "One can slip towards a situation like the Danish one or, on the contrary, move some ways away from that outcome. And I said myself that, insofar as we have the any chance to influence the outcome, it is worth the effort to begin."
Diplomatically, Mr. Taylor suggests that there is enough blame to go around, and that all must try to take a step towards the others. Every side must resist the temptation "to remain in its corner while launching insults at the others". On the one hand, he suggests that Hérouxville’s position is dubious: "the lifestyle code conveyed absolutely dreadful stereotypes in connection with the Muslim situation. It was insulting. That is not how one begins a discussion", he says. On the other hand, there was something absurd about the reaction. "The charge of racism against the people of Hérouxville was excessive. I do not say that there is no racism in Quebec. But to use this term, it is also a way, in today’s world, to make it impossible to have a discussion, to completely delegitimize the adversary." Similarly, he finds excessive the identification of a politician like Mario Dumont as "the Québécois Jean-Marie Le Pen."
"That’s wrong. It should be known that Le Pen, he is about torture in Algeria, he is an anti-semite who specialized in the code words filled with sinister allusions, he is a man who wants to return the immigrants to their original countries." Thus, Charles Taylor, even if he says himself "not very impressed" by the reactions such as that of Hérouxville, believes that the effort should be made to understand that which lies beneath it. "We have the duty to understand where that comes from and not simply to attribute it to the most illegitimate motive, like those who charge racism do."
Still, for him, this is all something of a enigma. "I do not claim to understand this phenomenon myself. I am very montréalais, I always lived in Montreal, always lived with diversity within my family."
It's of course very appropriate of Taylor to begin his commission's work with a strong effort to appear open-minded and fair. Still, this seems to me like rather a lot of generosity to Herouxville.
I do appreciate Taylor's openness about the degree to which this is a distinctively intra-Quebec dispute about the society's identity. He's a leading champion of one vision of Quebec's character-- a very montréalais vision. As often happens with urban-rural divides, I think it's been easy for Montrealers to believe that their vision was shared more widely in the rest of society than it actually is. (And the Herouxville debate has, among other things, made explicit some anti-Montreal animus in the north.)
The comparison with Europe may lower the heat, and that's welcome, though I'd also like to hear what he thinks about the cartoon controversy.
And the indictment of the charge of racism just in virtue of its tendency to shut down debate has affinities with the last week's anti-Semitism debate at Open University (see here for the most recent entry)). In both cases, that's an indictment if what one is after is a discussion, at any price, but it's not a direct critique of the charge's truth. The same holds true for charges in the other direction, e.g. "apartheid," "stoning women." Such charges are incivil, and uncondusive to conversation. But it's not clear to me that that makes them impermissible; it certainly doesn't make them false.
Wednesday, February 14, 2007
C'est excellent.
The brilliant Bon Cop, Bad Cop has been named best Canadian movie of last year at last night's Genie Awards.
To my American friends who still think Strange Brew (or "Blame Canada," or worst of all Canadian Bacon) is the ultimate cinematic expression of Canadianness, I highy recommend that you put this onto your Netflix queues. It's the funniest movie about federalism you're likely to see; the best (and most violent) action movie about language and translation problems; and the most politically and socially engaged movie about hockey. It's a real gem that as far as I can tell no one in the U.S. has heard of at all.
The brilliant Bon Cop, Bad Cop has been named best Canadian movie of last year at last night's Genie Awards.
To my American friends who still think Strange Brew (or "Blame Canada," or worst of all Canadian Bacon) is the ultimate cinematic expression of Canadianness, I highy recommend that you put this onto your Netflix queues. It's the funniest movie about federalism you're likely to see; the best (and most violent) action movie about language and translation problems; and the most politically and socially engaged movie about hockey. It's a real gem that as far as I can tell no one in the U.S. has heard of at all.
Cheating
Nota bene.
Nota bene.
Yet a recent University of Guelph study has discovered that more than half the student body in Canada is cheating its way through school. And there is no recall. There is not even a great sense of urgency around the problem. The value of a degree is being debased, and there is mounting evidence that a lack of integrity in the university system will have a far-reaching effect on our economy in the years to come.
The numbers on academic misconduct at both Canadian and American post-secondary institutions are startling. The Guelph report puts the percentage of Canadian students engaging in serious cheating on written work at 53 per cent. In the U.S., according to some studies, 70 per cent of students admit to cheating in one form or another.
[...]
Of all Canadian universities, perhaps McGill's policies are the most stringent. It instituted mandatory assigned or scrambled seating and differing test versions for all their final exams in 1990, largely to curb cheating on multiple-choice questions. All final-year multiple-choice exams are subsequently run through McGill's Exam Security Program, which analyzes wrong answers for telltale similarities. "The more identical wrong answers two or more exams have, the more it becomes suspect," says David Harpp, a McGill chemistry professor who helped pioneer the program. "McGill is actually being quite conservative in its parameters. We could probably catch more cheats, but we are only catching the real idiots." Despite the success of Harpp's method, he knows of no other university in Canada that has adopted it.
McGill has used turnitin.com, a Web-based essay authentication database effective in identifying cases of plagiarism, since 2004. Though use of such databases is widespread at Canadian universities, only McGill has written it into its policy. If suspected of cheating, a student must either have the paper checked against the database or choose another means of authentication, as some student groups had copyright-related complaints about the database. Smaller class sizes, where students have been shown to cheat less, as well as boned-up exam monitoring, are McGill's priorities. "The point isn't to catch people," says Morton Mendelson, deputy provost at McGill. "The point is to convince them that they'll be caught if they cheat."
Tuesday, February 13, 2007
Herouxville update
CBC reports:
CBC reports:
The town council in Hérouxville amended its provocative immigrant code of conduct Monday night to remove certain rules.
Council adopted the changes, which include removing references to "no stoning of women in public" and "no female circumcision."
Councillors said the rules were open to misinterpretation by journalists who have flocked to the Mauricie town of 1,200 since it adopted the code of conduct in January.
Monday, February 12, 2007
The Herouxville saga, Part II
(See part I below.)
Part of what is offensive about the Herouxville norms is the way that they run together very different issues and blur distinctions-- as if there are some relevant (or even meaningful) similarities among burning widows (which, to the best of my knowledge, hasn't really been an endemic practice in Montreal), covering one's face on a day that's not Halloween, wishing to eat kosher or halal food, an questioning the prevalence of crosses and Christmas celebrations. It's offensive to imply that there are immigrants champing at the bit to burn widows; that's been the focus of a considerable amount of attention. But it's also offensive to take the ordinary stuff of cultural and religious practice (much of which doesn't require any formal 'reasonable accommodation' in law, just basic freedoms) and link them to widow-burning.
So to draw some distinctions, the Herouxville norms include:
1) some norms of fundamental nonviolence and the criminal law: no burning, no 'beating to death.' There are few of these, but they happen early and set the tone. They also allow a faux-naive "what could be wrong with what we said?" defense: "It's true that we have a norm against widow-burning, and we should, so what's the problem?"
Note that the English text refers to death by "beating" in public places and to burning, so it appears that the only specific practice being singled out is sati. But the French text, which is the more fundamental, refers to lapidation, that is, stoning, not "beating." "Stoning" calls up a much more culturally- and religiously-specific practice.
2) some highly contested issues of the accommodation of individual religious practice, including the wearing of kirpans and of headscarves or veils. These are settled by fiat, with no acknowledgement that "we" in Quebec (I don't include myself here, since I'm not a citizen) have disagreed about these questions, and that there is live democratic and legal debate about them. "We" don't wear real or symbolic weapons to school, "we" don't cover our faces except on Halloween.
3) some highly contested and difficult questions (also settled by fiat) about what we'll call, following Dworkin, external preferences: the preferences of some members of some religions governing the behavior of others, not necessarily of their religion. Men and women doctors, nursing home caregivers, and police officers may interact with you whether you're a man or a woman. Men and women, boys and girls, may be in the public swimming pool at the same time as you. People in commercial gyms may be dressed in ways that seem to you immodest, and on display in windows where you can see them. This last is a reference to a dispute that arose in Montreal this winter; some Orthodox Jewish men successfully petitioned a YMCA near their neighborhood to cover its windows so that they would not be subjected to the sight of women in exercise clothes.
This is where a great deal of the current lines of debate and dispute are. (Compare this post from Ingrid Robeyns at Crooked Timber last week: "This morning a neighbour asked me whether I wouldn’t be interested in enrolling my son for such a [Dutch municipal] pre-playgroup. But, she added, it’s only for mothers, fathers are not allowed. Apparently the justification is that otherwise mothers from certain ethnic minorities, where gender segregation is an important issue, would not attend with their children." These questions aren't unique to Canada or Quebec.) And I think that we multiculturalists (that 'we' does include me) haven't done enough to talk or think about these questions, or even to acknowledge them. There is a difference between toleration of internal or individual religious norms (headscarves, say) and allowing them to be exported via external preferences. Religions may ban heresy-- that is, they may forbid heretics from remaining members of the religion-- but they may not legitimately seek its criminalization, or otherwise seek to alter the surrounding society such that it would be impossible for them ever to encounter heresy or to know that it exists. They may not export their internal rules of religious belief.
And yet, there are hard questions both of manners and of prudence about how hard a line to take. It's polite to go at least a bit out of one's way to accommodate the preferences of others; it's impolite to go out of one's way to offend them. (It would be impolite for me to dart my head around trying to force my eyes into the field of vision of an Orthodox Jewish woman trying to avoid eye contact with me.) And manners are a category of morals. Prudence: as I've written about here before, a hard line about making no accommodation in medical care for preferences for same-sex interactions may well have the result that, say, women in the most conservative religious groups are prevented from seeking medical care altogether.
But of course gender nondiscrimination in professional settings is a deeply important value, and becomes very hard to sustain if the frequency of people expressing such preferences rises dramatically. We know the analogy about catering to the external preferences of racist-- and, while many people think the analogy is obviously conclusive or obviously fallacious, I'm much more torn about it. There's something obviously right and something obviously wrong about it-- the rights of women in the workplace are at stake, yet in medical settings in particular the preferences at stake are about oneself as much as they are about the behavior of others, and it doesn't seem obviously bgoted to me for women to prefer women medical providers. If that's right, then it is bigoted to say, "It's all well and good for secular women to prefer women medical providers, but religious women may not have, or express, such a preference." And so on. It's impossible to stay off the slope of preferences regarding interactions with others, and impossible to roll the whole way down the hill because, in a diverse society, our preferences will vary and aren't compatible or compossible.
As I said, this stuff is hard. And I think its importance has been underacknowledged except by full-on critics of multiculturalism such as Okin and Barry. Some opposition to multicultural accommodation comes from a concern about freedom and equality in the larger society, and from a concern about the export of the cultural group's norms to that society. This was Pim Fortuyn's cause, and it's not going away.
4) A lot of autoexemptions. "You may not have religion, but we will have crosses and Christmases and what have you and will call them part of our history and culture and patrimony, and so they're not religious and you may not question them." I do especially love the 'no face-covering except on Halloween,' which can't help but make you wonder just what kind of principle is supposed to be governing.
5) And a fair number of declarations about cultural practices that don't require any special accommodation from the majority, but which are nonetheless presented as governing norms to which members of minorities will be expected to conform. We eat all kinds of meat, and don't care how it's butchered, and freely mix it with other foodstuffs.
So the list mixes together public norms which are obviously right (but which no one is challenging, and which it's offensive to treat as if they are under threat); purely private cultural norms which it's actually wrong to demand minorities to adopt; fiat resolution of a number of legitimately-disputed questions of public norms; and some overt hypocrisy about the way Catholicism will be treated.
Multiculturalists need to recognize these distinctions, too. It's not racist or bigoted or illegitimate to raise and worry about the stuff in category (3). It's not racist or bigoted or illegitimate to take a strong no-accommodation stance on that category, though I think it's wrong. The problem with (1) isn't its content but its implication about what immigrants are like; the problem with (5) isn't the implication (it really is the case that Jews and Muslims have norms about food that aren't typical Quebecois norms) but its content.
Running throughout-- and here I want to tread delicately-- there is a problematic 'we.' Cultural and religious accommodation are treated as a gift that we post-Catholic francophone Quebecois might, but probably will not, offer to you religious and cultural immigrants-- as if there had not been native-born Jews and Muslims in Quebec for generations, or as if they were not full members of the society; as if the question of Catholicism's status hadn't been an object of massive democratic dispute within Quebec for generations; as if there were uniformity and consensus where there has always already been disagreement and debate. That said, the question of the 'we' of Quebec is a tricky one, and one that-- as an Anglophone non-Canadian Montrealais-- I don't want to focus on. There is something pretty bad about the first-person plural pronouns in the Herouxville Norms, but I don't at all think that multiculturalism is incompatible with a recognition of the distinct and enduring character of Quebec as a society.
(See part I below.)
Part of what is offensive about the Herouxville norms is the way that they run together very different issues and blur distinctions-- as if there are some relevant (or even meaningful) similarities among burning widows (which, to the best of my knowledge, hasn't really been an endemic practice in Montreal), covering one's face on a day that's not Halloween, wishing to eat kosher or halal food, an questioning the prevalence of crosses and Christmas celebrations. It's offensive to imply that there are immigrants champing at the bit to burn widows; that's been the focus of a considerable amount of attention. But it's also offensive to take the ordinary stuff of cultural and religious practice (much of which doesn't require any formal 'reasonable accommodation' in law, just basic freedoms) and link them to widow-burning.
So to draw some distinctions, the Herouxville norms include:
1) some norms of fundamental nonviolence and the criminal law: no burning, no 'beating to death.' There are few of these, but they happen early and set the tone. They also allow a faux-naive "what could be wrong with what we said?" defense: "It's true that we have a norm against widow-burning, and we should, so what's the problem?"
Note that the English text refers to death by "beating" in public places and to burning, so it appears that the only specific practice being singled out is sati. But the French text, which is the more fundamental, refers to lapidation, that is, stoning, not "beating." "Stoning" calls up a much more culturally- and religiously-specific practice.
2) some highly contested issues of the accommodation of individual religious practice, including the wearing of kirpans and of headscarves or veils. These are settled by fiat, with no acknowledgement that "we" in Quebec (I don't include myself here, since I'm not a citizen) have disagreed about these questions, and that there is live democratic and legal debate about them. "We" don't wear real or symbolic weapons to school, "we" don't cover our faces except on Halloween.
3) some highly contested and difficult questions (also settled by fiat) about what we'll call, following Dworkin, external preferences: the preferences of some members of some religions governing the behavior of others, not necessarily of their religion. Men and women doctors, nursing home caregivers, and police officers may interact with you whether you're a man or a woman. Men and women, boys and girls, may be in the public swimming pool at the same time as you. People in commercial gyms may be dressed in ways that seem to you immodest, and on display in windows where you can see them. This last is a reference to a dispute that arose in Montreal this winter; some Orthodox Jewish men successfully petitioned a YMCA near their neighborhood to cover its windows so that they would not be subjected to the sight of women in exercise clothes.
This is where a great deal of the current lines of debate and dispute are. (Compare this post from Ingrid Robeyns at Crooked Timber last week: "This morning a neighbour asked me whether I wouldn’t be interested in enrolling my son for such a [Dutch municipal] pre-playgroup. But, she added, it’s only for mothers, fathers are not allowed. Apparently the justification is that otherwise mothers from certain ethnic minorities, where gender segregation is an important issue, would not attend with their children." These questions aren't unique to Canada or Quebec.) And I think that we multiculturalists (that 'we' does include me) haven't done enough to talk or think about these questions, or even to acknowledge them. There is a difference between toleration of internal or individual religious norms (headscarves, say) and allowing them to be exported via external preferences. Religions may ban heresy-- that is, they may forbid heretics from remaining members of the religion-- but they may not legitimately seek its criminalization, or otherwise seek to alter the surrounding society such that it would be impossible for them ever to encounter heresy or to know that it exists. They may not export their internal rules of religious belief.
And yet, there are hard questions both of manners and of prudence about how hard a line to take. It's polite to go at least a bit out of one's way to accommodate the preferences of others; it's impolite to go out of one's way to offend them. (It would be impolite for me to dart my head around trying to force my eyes into the field of vision of an Orthodox Jewish woman trying to avoid eye contact with me.) And manners are a category of morals. Prudence: as I've written about here before, a hard line about making no accommodation in medical care for preferences for same-sex interactions may well have the result that, say, women in the most conservative religious groups are prevented from seeking medical care altogether.
But of course gender nondiscrimination in professional settings is a deeply important value, and becomes very hard to sustain if the frequency of people expressing such preferences rises dramatically. We know the analogy about catering to the external preferences of racist-- and, while many people think the analogy is obviously conclusive or obviously fallacious, I'm much more torn about it. There's something obviously right and something obviously wrong about it-- the rights of women in the workplace are at stake, yet in medical settings in particular the preferences at stake are about oneself as much as they are about the behavior of others, and it doesn't seem obviously bgoted to me for women to prefer women medical providers. If that's right, then it is bigoted to say, "It's all well and good for secular women to prefer women medical providers, but religious women may not have, or express, such a preference." And so on. It's impossible to stay off the slope of preferences regarding interactions with others, and impossible to roll the whole way down the hill because, in a diverse society, our preferences will vary and aren't compatible or compossible.
As I said, this stuff is hard. And I think its importance has been underacknowledged except by full-on critics of multiculturalism such as Okin and Barry. Some opposition to multicultural accommodation comes from a concern about freedom and equality in the larger society, and from a concern about the export of the cultural group's norms to that society. This was Pim Fortuyn's cause, and it's not going away.
4) A lot of autoexemptions. "You may not have religion, but we will have crosses and Christmases and what have you and will call them part of our history and culture and patrimony, and so they're not religious and you may not question them." I do especially love the 'no face-covering except on Halloween,' which can't help but make you wonder just what kind of principle is supposed to be governing.
5) And a fair number of declarations about cultural practices that don't require any special accommodation from the majority, but which are nonetheless presented as governing norms to which members of minorities will be expected to conform. We eat all kinds of meat, and don't care how it's butchered, and freely mix it with other foodstuffs.
So the list mixes together public norms which are obviously right (but which no one is challenging, and which it's offensive to treat as if they are under threat); purely private cultural norms which it's actually wrong to demand minorities to adopt; fiat resolution of a number of legitimately-disputed questions of public norms; and some overt hypocrisy about the way Catholicism will be treated.
Multiculturalists need to recognize these distinctions, too. It's not racist or bigoted or illegitimate to raise and worry about the stuff in category (3). It's not racist or bigoted or illegitimate to take a strong no-accommodation stance on that category, though I think it's wrong. The problem with (1) isn't its content but its implication about what immigrants are like; the problem with (5) isn't the implication (it really is the case that Jews and Muslims have norms about food that aren't typical Quebecois norms) but its content.
Running throughout-- and here I want to tread delicately-- there is a problematic 'we.' Cultural and religious accommodation are treated as a gift that we post-Catholic francophone Quebecois might, but probably will not, offer to you religious and cultural immigrants-- as if there had not been native-born Jews and Muslims in Quebec for generations, or as if they were not full members of the society; as if the question of Catholicism's status hadn't been an object of massive democratic dispute within Quebec for generations; as if there were uniformity and consensus where there has always already been disagreement and debate. That said, the question of the 'we' of Quebec is a tricky one, and one that-- as an Anglophone non-Canadian Montrealais-- I don't want to focus on. There is something pretty bad about the first-person plural pronouns in the Herouxville Norms, but I don't at all think that multiculturalism is incompatible with a recognition of the distinct and enduring character of Quebec as a society.
Saturday, February 10, 2007
The Herouxville saga
Quebec Liberal Premier Jean Charest has asked sociologist Gerard Bouchard and philosopher Charles Taylor to head a commission studying 'reasonable accommodation' of ethnic and religious minorities.
This is in response to the Herouxville norms, (see background here, and the raw nerves they've exposed.
I don't know much about Bouchard, but Taylor is clearly an inspired choice here-- not only one of the world's leading philosophers and a towering figure in Quebec intellectual life, but also simultaneously a partisan of Quebec identity and adefender of multicultural accommodation of minorities; and simultaneously a committed religious believer and a progressive. (He was also, of course, the dominant figure in the building of political theory in my department at McGill over the course of decades, though he's not here now and I've only met hi a couple of times.)
But Taylor's stature doesn't mean the commission will be able to finesse the gap that's been exposed between the expectations of some Quebecois and the expectations of some minority immigrants. I expect to blog about this a bit more soon, but carefully-- unlike Taylor, I'm very much a guest in Quebec. The desire to be a polite guest has prevented me from blogging about the story up until now, even though it got play in the worl dpress and lies squarely within my area of expertise. But I thought that the appointment of Taylor would be of interest to political theory and political philosophy blog-readers.
Quebec Liberal Premier Jean Charest has asked sociologist Gerard Bouchard and philosopher Charles Taylor to head a commission studying 'reasonable accommodation' of ethnic and religious minorities.
This is in response to the Herouxville norms, (see background here, and the raw nerves they've exposed.
I don't know much about Bouchard, but Taylor is clearly an inspired choice here-- not only one of the world's leading philosophers and a towering figure in Quebec intellectual life, but also simultaneously a partisan of Quebec identity and adefender of multicultural accommodation of minorities; and simultaneously a committed religious believer and a progressive. (He was also, of course, the dominant figure in the building of political theory in my department at McGill over the course of decades, though he's not here now and I've only met hi a couple of times.)
But Taylor's stature doesn't mean the commission will be able to finesse the gap that's been exposed between the expectations of some Quebecois and the expectations of some minority immigrants. I expect to blog about this a bit more soon, but carefully-- unlike Taylor, I'm very much a guest in Quebec. The desire to be a polite guest has prevented me from blogging about the story up until now, even though it got play in the worl dpress and lies squarely within my area of expertise. But I thought that the appointment of Taylor would be of interest to political theory and political philosophy blog-readers.
Monday, February 05, 2007
Come spend your sabbatical in beautfiul Montreal...
Call for applications: McGILL UNIVERSITY FULBRIGHT VISITING RESEARCH CHAIR IN THE THEORY AND PRACTICE OF FEDERALISM, 2008-09
Grant Activity: Conduct research, develop collaborations and deliver
occasional lectures to graduate and/or undergraduate students; take
part in the university's intellectual life in existing workshop
series; and share work in a more focused way with the McGill Political
Science faculty who study federalism from their various methodological
and regional perspectives.
Specialization(s): Empirical comparative studies of federalism;
analytical or formal modeling of federal systems; normative research
on the justifiability and justifiable shape of federalism; the study
of the intellectual foundations of federalism.
Additional Qualifications: Senior or emergent scholars are encouraged
to apply. Applicants must be American citizens or permanent residents
not employed in Canada and not also holding Canadian citizenship or
permanent residence.
Location: Department of Political Science, McGill University, Montreal, Quebec.
Length of Grant: 4 months or 9 months
Starting Date: September 2008 or January 2009 for one-semester grants;
September 2008 for academic year grants
Stipend: Research Chair awards provide a fixed sum of U.S.$25,000.
Confirmation is pending for the stipends for 2008-09.
Comments: The McGill University Department of Political Science
carries on a long and pioneering tradition in the study of politics in
North America. Founded in 1901, the Department's distinguished
faculty is actively involved in a wide variety of ongoing research
projects, and is committed to achieving a high level of academic
excellence in research, graduate, and undergraduate education. This
is an internationally recognized Ph.D. granting department with 31
faculty members with interests spanning Canadian Politics, Comparative
Politics, International Relations, and Political Theory. A letter of
invitation is not required but applicants are encouraged to contact
the institution to discuss research interests. For more information
please contact Francois Carrier, director, Office of International
Relations, at francois.carrier@mcgill.ca; tel. 514.398.4197. The Web
site for the Department of Political Science is
www.mcgill.ca/politicalscience; information on the Canada-U.S. Fulbright Visiting Research Chairs Program can be found at http://www.fulbright.ca/en/chairtext.asp.
Call for applications: McGILL UNIVERSITY FULBRIGHT VISITING RESEARCH CHAIR IN THE THEORY AND PRACTICE OF FEDERALISM, 2008-09
Grant Activity: Conduct research, develop collaborations and deliver
occasional lectures to graduate and/or undergraduate students; take
part in the university's intellectual life in existing workshop
series; and share work in a more focused way with the McGill Political
Science faculty who study federalism from their various methodological
and regional perspectives.
Specialization(s): Empirical comparative studies of federalism;
analytical or formal modeling of federal systems; normative research
on the justifiability and justifiable shape of federalism; the study
of the intellectual foundations of federalism.
Additional Qualifications: Senior or emergent scholars are encouraged
to apply. Applicants must be American citizens or permanent residents
not employed in Canada and not also holding Canadian citizenship or
permanent residence.
Location: Department of Political Science, McGill University, Montreal, Quebec.
Length of Grant: 4 months or 9 months
Starting Date: September 2008 or January 2009 for one-semester grants;
September 2008 for academic year grants
Stipend: Research Chair awards provide a fixed sum of U.S.$25,000.
Confirmation is pending for the stipends for 2008-09.
Comments: The McGill University Department of Political Science
carries on a long and pioneering tradition in the study of politics in
North America. Founded in 1901, the Department's distinguished
faculty is actively involved in a wide variety of ongoing research
projects, and is committed to achieving a high level of academic
excellence in research, graduate, and undergraduate education. This
is an internationally recognized Ph.D. granting department with 31
faculty members with interests spanning Canadian Politics, Comparative
Politics, International Relations, and Political Theory. A letter of
invitation is not required but applicants are encouraged to contact
the institution to discuss research interests. For more information
please contact Francois Carrier, director, Office of International
Relations, at francois.carrier@mcgill.ca; tel. 514.398.4197. The Web
site for the Department of Political Science is
www.mcgill.ca/politicalscience; information on the Canada-U.S. Fulbright Visiting Research Chairs Program can be found at http://www.fulbright.ca/en/chairtext.asp.
Saturday, February 03, 2007
Dark Days for The Kings of the Geeks
Peter Jackson off The Hobbit.
Kevin Smith hanging out with his buddy Jennifer Garner in what sounds like a truly pointless movie.
And now, Joss Whedon off Wonder Woman.
Peter Jackson off The Hobbit.
Kevin Smith hanging out with his buddy Jennifer Garner in what sounds like a truly pointless movie.
And now, Joss Whedon off Wonder Woman.
Tuesday, January 30, 2007
So, so, very...
beautiful..
(Warning: not safe for geek-free workplaces. HT: Henry.)
Here's my contribution:
6th level: Bigby's bureaucratic busywork
Caster may accurately complete any one set of forms, e.g. for grant applications. An administrator with Knowledge: nitpickery gets a saving throw against the spell to be able to identify errors; the DC is the caster level plus the caster's own ranks in Knowledge: nitpickery, if any.
Be sure to check out the comments on the thread, too. Samples:
The only problem, of course, is that some of us don't sleep often enough to regenerate used spells before we have to teach or grade again...
I'm holding out for the "Shield of Tenure" spell, which is permanent and effective against all academic monsters, and most political ones.
beautiful..
(Warning: not safe for geek-free workplaces. HT: Henry.)
Here's my contribution:
6th level: Bigby's bureaucratic busywork
Caster may accurately complete any one set of forms, e.g. for grant applications. An administrator with Knowledge: nitpickery gets a saving throw against the spell to be able to identify errors; the DC is the caster level plus the caster's own ranks in Knowledge: nitpickery, if any.
Be sure to check out the comments on the thread, too. Samples:
The only problem, of course, is that some of us don't sleep often enough to regenerate used spells before we have to teach or grade again...
I'm holding out for the "Shield of Tenure" spell, which is permanent and effective against all academic monsters, and most political ones.
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