Books newly bought

New additions to the library (though they're not actually there yet; they're paid for but I don't update librarything until the books are in my hands):

The Sovereignty of Parliament: History and Philosophy, by Jeffrey Goldsworthy

Paradoxes of Political Ethics: From Dirty Hands to the Invisible Hand, by John M. Parrish

Democratic Authority: A Philosophical Framework, by David M. Estlund

Justice, Democracy and Reasonable Agreement, by Colin Farrelly

Spectres that won't stop haunting

Daniel Davies writes:

I have a minor annual tradition (as in, I did it once) of beginning the year with a short list of arguments that I am no longer going to have. As I said when I produced the first such list, while not necessarily claiming to have the definitive truth on these subjects, my views

“Are no longer up for argument, pending absolutely spectacular new evidence. I’ve had a number of arguments on all of these points over the last year; I’ve heard all sides, and I’ve made up my mind. If anyone has an argument which they genuinely believe to be new, go ahead, but don’t expect much. Please note also that I am no longer interested in methodological debates over the merits of statistical studies which purport to prove the matter one way or another on any of these propositions.”

It’s basically a way of clearing the decks of old pointless arguments, leaving room for new pointless and bitter arguments (I hope to post next week a short list of things that I plan to argue about a heck of a lot more, being a list of tacit assumptions made by other people that I regard as highly questionable). If you want to have a last go on any of the short list below, now’s the time, but otherwise it is books closed, I’m afraid; I have made a reasonable donation to the Grice United Fund which ought to cover any genuinely deserving intellectual charity cases. So here’s the list – it’s actually shorter than previous years.

Communist iconography, such as posters and t-shirts of Che Guevara, the equivalent of Nazi insignia. Members and ex-members of Communist parties in Western Europe and the USA, the equivalent of war criminals. In general, the use of inflated rhetoric about Stalinist or Maoist massacres as a debating technique [DISAGREE].

I entirely disagree with Davies on the merits of this question (click through to read his defense of his view) but actually agree with him about the pointlessness of it as a debate, and have been thinking about that myself during the past year.

I have occasionally been struck, when reading about the French 19th century, by how long political actors remained stuck in symbolic fights about the French Revolution. With 1848 on the horizon, people's heads were still in 1789 or 1793. I think that some of the failure of the July Monarchy can be attributed to the fault line running through the liberal center over what were basically 1789 identity questions. The 1830s were four decades after the events that still had a stranglehold on their politics.

I don't know what the equivalent of 1848 is in this analogy. But I do know that (as Davies notes in a different context later in the post) we're four decades past the 60s. We're 6-7 decades past the Holocaust and the purges. We're a lifetime past Duranty and the New York Times and the Ukrainian famine. I get a little shudder of disgust at the Che t-shirts, but for that matter I still get a little shudder of sadness thinking about the failure of the July Monarchy. As much as possible I intend not to invest emotional energy debates about the iconographies of comparative evils.

Starting today

Annual Meeting of the American Society for Political and Legal Philosophy

December 28-29, 2007, Baltimore MD



Loyalty
Friday, December 28

GIV-2. American Society for Political and Legal Philosophy
Location: Falkland, Fourth Floor
2:45-5:45 p.m.
Topic: Loyalty

2:45-4:10 p.m.
Chair: Sanford Levinson (University of Texas)
Speaker: Daniel Markovits (Yale University)
"Lawyerly Fidelity"
Commentators: Lynn Mather, Martin Lederman

4:20-5:45 p.m.
Chair: Donald Horowirz (Duke Unversity)
Speaker: Nancy Sherman (Georgetown University)
"For the Sake of Comrades"
Commentators: Ryan Balot; Phillip Carter

6-8 pm: Reception: Kent A, Fourth Floor

Saturday Morning, December 29

Dover B, 3rd floor
8-8:50 am: Breakfast reception
8:50-9 am- Business Meeting. Note: not 8-8:50 am as indicated on some schedules
Group Session VII – 9:00-11:00 a.m.

GVII-1. American Society for Political and Legal Philosophy
9:00-11:00 a.m.
Topic: Loyalty
Chair: Nancy Rosenblum (Harvard University)
Speaker: Russell Muirhead (University of Texas–Austin)
"Partisan Loyalties"
Commentators: Richard Pildes; David Estlund
(Preceded in same room by ASPLP breakfast, 8:00-9:00 a.m.)

(I'll miss the first session because I'll be giving a paper at "IV-D. Symposium: Iris Marion Young.")

It's all true!

The reason why in recent years the British constitution has been altered beyond recognition-- abolishing the ancient and honorable hereditary lords, undoing the Union of 1707 that was the guarantee against Jacobite invasions from the north, and the carving up of the duties of the even more ancient and honorable office of Lord Chancellor-- is that there was a crypto-papist in 10 Downing Street!

Conspiracy theorists of the world, know your moment of triumph. We now have clear proof that, if you let your guard down for even a moment, 200 or so years later your prophecies will all come true.

Reforming graduate education

Via Fabio and Tyler, and Inside Higher Ed article about Harvard GSAS under Theda Skocpol initiating important reforms that rest on the premise that "graduate students need to get on to a life where they have their own careers or income before they are entering middle age" and that grad school simply should not take 9 or 10 or more years.

The reforms and results also make plain that the onus is on departments and advisors. When departments were provided with appropriate incentives, time to degree started to fall...

Heh.

Todd pointed this one out to me: the New York Times has a funny bit on recommended science fiction reading for the presidential candidates. Sample:

JOHN McCAIN
Senator from Arizona

Should tell reporters he’s read “Starship Troopers,” by Robert A. Heinlein: An impressionable young man is drafted into an intergalactic military campaign and finds that war solves all problems.

Might also consider reading “The Forever War,” by Joe Haldeman: An impressionable young man is drafted into an intergalactic military campaign and finds that war doesn’t solve anything.

Good for them.

As the hearings conclude,
the professors give a platform to the Muslim group that was absurdly attacked last year because a private commercial establishment wanted their business enough to serve them beans without pork.

Back in March, they were castigated in the populist media for insisting on praying at a Quebec maple-sugar shack and eating pork-free baked beans.

Yesterday, the same Muslims who organized that cultural field trip appeared before the Bouchard-Taylor commission and were gently asked to set the record straight.

Did they demand a change in the traditional menu of pork and beans, and did they force a small party in the next room to can its loud music so they could pray in peace? No, there were no unreasonable demands, just a mutual arrangement with the owner, said Akram Benalia, spokesperson for Astrolabe, the Muslim community association that organized the March 11 trip to the Érablière au Sous Bois, in Mont St. Grégoire.

"It was a commercial agreement that had nothing to do with reasonable accommodations," Benalia said.

"But it shows how people can use this kind of situation to denigrate Muslims and amplify Islamophobia, and that's what really sickened us." The owner of the sugar shack had agreed to make baked beans without pork for the 260 Muslims in the group, in order to meet their dietary restrictions, he said. And it was the owner who asked the party next door to turn off its music for a few minutes while some of the Muslims prayed.

The way it came out in the media, however, the Muslims were portrayed as unwilling to adapt to traditional Quebec customs, "imposing" their values on a Quebec archtype, the end-of-winter outing when families and friends go "sugaring off" in the woods.

Co-chairmen Charles Taylor and Gérard Bouchard sympathized with the group.

"It leaves us speechless - this was a myth which was invented and propagated and which caused a lot of harm," Taylor told the delegation, which included two women wearing hijabs.

"You realize, your generation has the thankless role to play these days," Bouchard told them. "There are some Quebecers who are learning the hard way about diversity - at your expense. And your role is to help us, all of us, to overcome the stereotypes and misunderstandings we have." "We'll do it for Quebec, for our Quebec, so that we can all live in harmony, and that our children can, too - it'll be our pleasure," Benalia replied.

A long way from American Political Thought 2004

Will Baude will be clerking for Chief Justice John Roberts. Congratulations!

I don't intend to make a habit of blogging links to YouTube...

but, via via Angus, this is bizarrely brilliant and highly entertaining for fogies of about my age.

New in the journals:

Michael Frazer, "John Rawls: Between Two Enlightenments," Political Theory December 2007. Persuasive, engaging, and exciting-- not a word that these days springs to mind about articles with "John Rawls" in the title. Highly recommended.

Hmm.

I don't think that the faculty- grad student interactions at our department Christmas party yesterday bore much resemblance to this. But then, I would think that, wouldn't I?

A pleasant surprise

The Quebec government's proposed amendment to the Quebec Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms, Bill 63, has finally been introduced. Considering that its political purpose was to subordinate religious liberty to gender equality, and that the people supporting it appeared to think that it meant no gender-differentiated religious practice could be protected by religious liberty, I'm more than a bit surprised by its text. It says:

Bill 63
AN ACT TO AMEND THE CHARTER OF HUMAN RIGHTS AND FREEDOMS

THE PARLIAMENT OF QUÉBEC ENACTS AS FOLLOWS:

1. The preamble of the Charter of human rights and freedoms (R.S.Q., chapter C-12) is amended by replacing the third paragraph by the following paragraph:

"Whereas respect for the dignity of human beings, equality of women and men, and recognition of their rights and freedoms constitute the foundation of justice, liberty and peace;".

2. The Charter is amended by inserting the following section after section 49.1:

"49.2. The rights and freedoms set forth in this Charter are guaranteed equally to women and men."

3. This Act comes into force on (insert the date of assent to this Act).

Section 49 lies in the section of the charter covering rules of interpretation and construction.

Bill 63 doesn't single out religious liberty, and it doesn't subordinate any other claimed right to gender equality. It states as an interpretive principle something that was surely always true of the Charter, the provisions of which guarantee rights to "every human being" or "every person." It does not say that the rights must be exercised in accordance with gender equality, which is what the initial discussions were all about. There's nothing to object to in it-- which surely means that it won't do what its supporters set out to do.

I wonder what cases anyone thinks this language would change the outcome of. Perhaps the Liberal government, having grabbed hold of this one idea in order to keep up with the anti-accommodationists of the PQ and the ADQ but actually knowing better, has deliberately introduced a minimalist amendment designed not to change anything. But I can't believe they'll get away with it, while Mario Dumont is leader of the opposition.

Plus ca change watch

John McCain:

I was in a town in Iowa, and twenty years ago there were no Hispanics in the town. Then a meatpacking facility was opened up. Now twenty per cent of their population is Hispanic. There were senior citizens there who were—‘concerned’ is not the word. They see this as an assault on their culture, what they view as an impact on what have been their traditions in Iowa, in the small towns in Iowa. So you get questions like ‘Why do I have to punch 1 for English?’ ‘Why can’t they speak English?’ It’s become larger than just the fact that we need to enforce our borders.

The language politics of Quebec last month:

MONTREAL–The English option on automated government telephone menus has become a hot-button issue for some French-language groups in Quebec.

Language activists are decrying the fact that callers to many Quebec government offices are told to "press nine" for English before instructions are delivered in French.

Two hardline language groups are teaming up to launch a campaign calling on the government to put the English selection at the end of the message.

"Asking for the English option to come at the end of a message is not something extremist," Mario Beaulieu, president of Mouvement Montréal français, said yesterday.

The Quebec government's language watchdog – the Office québécois de la langue française – recently issued a pamphlet reminding agencies it is official policy to include the English option only after the French message has been delivered in its entirety.

For what it's worth: of all the discourtesies and worse involved in automated telephone menus, I can't see getting agitated about any arrangement here. Allowing a language decision moment early on-- whether that's an opt-out-of-the-following as in the Quebec case, or a choose-which-branch-to-follow as in the Iowa case-- seems efficient to me, even though it means that local majoritarian sensibilities may be offended by the reminder that there are other languages in the system. One sign of a less-badly-designed automated menu is that callers spend a bit less time listening to irrelevant-to-them possibilities, and it's only inefficient to insist on a long spiel in one language before allowing opting out into the caller's language.

But if listening to 45 seconds of French at the beginning of the call is the worst thing that happens to me on one of these phone calls, I'll count myself lucky. (I do try to interact in French in person, but feel no urge to select French options on automated menus or websites.)

While I'm here, might as well note that the Taylor-Bouchard commission hearings are nearing their rousing conclusion.

Limits should be put on religious clothing and symbols in Quebec, but not if they're part of Quebec's heritage, Bloc Québécois leader Gilles Duceppe said yesterday.

"We should have restrictions for reasons of hygiene - in operating rooms, for example," Duceppe told reporters after presenting a brief at the Bouchard-Taylor commission on reasonable accommodations of religious minorities.

"Also for reasons of safety - on construction sites" where hard hats must be worn, he added.

"And in functions that represent the neutrality of the state - the police, for example, or judges."

But Catholic symbols that are part of Quebec history and heritage - the cross on Mount Royal, for example, or roadside crosses - should be exempt from such restrictions, the Bloc leader added.

"We shouldn't turn ourselves into the Taliban and demolish all the Buddhas of Quebec," he said.

"We're not going to stop listening to Mozart's Requiem because it was written for a mass. All that is part of the heritage of humanity of Quebec."

In other words, yet again: any visible sign of any non-Catholic religion is too much; no visible sign of Catholicism can be too much.

(I can convince myself not to mind the cross on Mont Royal. It's was built on church property, and only entered the city's ownership on a trust agreement to keep it intact. I wish the city hadn't taken ownership, but I don't think the city should break its agreement to keep it. But it's tacky, lit up year-round. It's no Requiem or Buddha of Bamiyan. Not every bit of local kitsch becomes "heritage" through sheer venerability.)

Who's new

The McGill Reporter has a feature on new faculty this week, including profiles of political philosopher Iwao Hirose and political theorist Victor Muñiz-Fraticelli.

Granite memories

Since, for the first time in my life, I'm spending the presidential primary season outside the U.S., I've been a bit too detached from it for my customary New Hampshire primary nostalgia. (Lived there until 18, and then summers until 20; stayed registered to vote there all through grad school.) But this Ana Marie Cox vlog about important New Hampshire facts for outsider politicos (e.g. "Dunkin Donuts. Get used to it" and "third-largest legislature in the [English-speaking] world") brought it all back for me.

The disproportionately high number of vets she mentions-- which was especially disproportionately high in my hometown of Portsmouth, which during the Cold War was home to a major air force base in addition to the major naval base it's hosted for 200+ years-- was a major feature of the social and political world in which I grew up. It's been one of the most striking changes between life in New Hampshire and life in academia (excepting, of course, my year at the Australian Defense Force Academy). Almost the only vets younger than 70 I know in the academy are Israeli.

The Manchester nickname "Manch Vegas", which postdates my New Hampshire years, is, as the yankees call it, "humah."

I've mentioned my skepticism

about this set of projections before, and there's added reason for skepticism when there's institutional self-interest and lobbying at stake. But noted for the record:

OTTAWA -- Universities need to increase their masters and doctoral students by 35 per cent in the next decade if Canada wants to avoid a crippling shortage in highly educated employees, including professors, warns a national post-secondary education group.

To that end, the Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada is lobbying the federal government for $319 million in new scholarship money annually, to be phased in over three years, to lure more masters and doctoral students from home and abroad.

Institutions are also increasing efforts to market Canada as an enticing destination for international students in hopes that if more come to study they will elect to stay in the country and join the high end of the labour force.

he association, representing 92 colleges and universities, recently made its pitch to the House of Commons finance committee as it hears submissions in preparation for the 2008-2009 federal budget.

"We're way, way, short. We need to produce more masters-trained and more PhD-trained students for the Canadian economy," Tom Traves, president of Dalhousie University and chairman of the association, said in an interview. "It's not a huge problem now, but it will be in 10 years."

Universities must turn out 500,000 new graduate students in the next decade -- 150,000 more than current projections -- if Canada is to keep pace internationally in the knowledge economy at a time when the country faces "a massive demographic problem" of an aging workforce, said Traves.

Not only are half the country's 40,000 professors on the retirement track and need to be replaced with other academics, the government and the private sector are also seeking more highly educated employees, said Traves.

Universities are pressing the government to create 2,500 scholarships for international students, which would cost $70-million annually when fully subscribed in three years.

On the domestic front, universities want Ottawa to pitch in another $105 million annually to entice students to pursue their masters and PhD's in Canada and another $144 million per year in scholarships for research.

On top of the scholarship funding, universities want another $50 million annually toward sponsoring new masters and doctoral graduates in work placements.

Online reading group

of interest to political theory and political philosophy folks: Public Reason is hosting a reading group on David Estlund's Democratic Authority over the next few months. Intellectually worthwhile, as well as a nice expansion of the boundaries of the scholar-blogospherically-possible. On the latter point, see also: the first book rolls of the presses of John Holbo's Glassbead Books.

In which I yet again show myself to be behind the geek pop-cultural times

He who sucked all the life and joy out of "Gilmore Girls" is really very good in "Heroes," isn't he? Goes to show how much a basically good actor can lose under a creator who treats him as a Gary Stu.

There's been...

about 16" of snow in Montreal in the last 72 hours. None of it has melted away.

Forecast for today: light snow.
Forecast for tonight: snow showers.
Forecast for tomorrow: snow showers.
Friday: snow.
Saturday: "few snow showers".
Sunday: "few snow showers".

So begins what's slated to be the toughest winter in 15 years.

Curse you, Al Gore. Curse you for delaying our precious global warming by even a day.

With at least four work trips in the next eight weeks, I'm starting to look at plane reservations, and wondering how much possible-weather-delay-time to build into my travel plans. Must I always plan to arrive the night before?

Also from the Chronicle...

A report on what might be the first truly worthwhile activities of the McGill student General Assembly.

Tetlock wins Grawemeyer

From the Chronicle:

Berkeley Professor Wins Grawemeyer Award for Ideas Improving World Order

Philip E. Tetlock, a professor of business administration and political science at the University of California at Berkeley, has won the 2008 Grawemeyer Award for “ideas improving world order,” the University of Louisville has announced. Mr. Tetlock will receive the $200,000 prize for his research on the accuracy of high-profile advisers on issues of public policy.

Predictions on political issues are frequently wrong, says Mr. Tetlock, which is unfortunate because lawmakers frequently rely on such analyses to shape policy. In a 20-year study of 27,000 predictions made by 284 “experts” cited in the news media, he found that, very often, the professionals were no more accurate in their crystal-ball gazing than ordinary people.

“In this age of academic hyperspecialization, there is no reason for supposing that contributors to top journals—distinguished political scientists, area-study specialists, economists, and so on—are any better than journalists or attentive readers of The New York Times in ‘reading’ emerging situations,” writes Mr. Tetlock in his 2005 book about the study, Expert Political Judgment: How Good Is It? How Can We Know? (Princeton).

Experts need to receive more training and be held publicly accountable for their advice, he argues in the book.

Dan Drezner blogged about Tetlock's findings here, here, and here. Tyler Cowen called Expert Political Judgment "one of the (few) must-read social science books of 2005." I worried about the propensity of public-intellectual academics to make pronouncements as if their expertise went far beyond its genuine boundaries my very first substantive post on this blog (scroll down, permalinks that old seem to have rusted away).

DeLong on Schumpeter

at the Chronicle.

Moi je reste calme

I have no idea how to embed youtube videos, but have a look at this (sent to me as a "cautionary tale"). The song is in French, but non-francophones will still get the idea pretty easily.

Update:
Full lyrics. I've always thought that rhyming seems unfairly easy in French...

"Pour bien commencer
Ma petite journée
Et me réveiller
Moi, j'ai pris un café
Un arabica
Noir et bien corsé
J'enfile ma parka
Ça y est je peux y aller

«Où est-ce que tu vas ?»
Me crie mon aimée
«Prenons un kawa
Je viens de me lever»
Étant en avance
Et un peu forcé
Je change de sens
Et reprends un café

A huit heures moins l'quart
Faut bien l'avouer
Les bureaux sont vides
On pourrait s'ennuyer
Mais je reste calme
Je sais m'adapter
Le temps qu'ils arrivent
J'ai l'temps pour un café

La journée s'emballe
Tout le monde peut bosser
Au moins jusqu'à l'heure
De la pause-café
Ma secrétaire entre :
«Fort comme vous l'aimez»
Ah mince, j'viens d'en prendre
Mais maintenant qu'il est fait...

Un repas d'affaire
Tout près du Sentier
Il fait un temps super
Mais je me sens stressé
Mes collègues se marrent :
«Détends-toi, René !
Prends un bon cigare
Et un p'tit café...»

Une fois fini
Mes collègues crevés
Appellent un taxi
Mais moi j'ai envie d'sauter
Je fais tout Paris
Puis je vois un troquet
J'commande un déca
Mais recaféiné

J'arrive au bureau
Ma secrétaire me fait :
«Vous êtes un peu en r'tard
Je me suis inquiétée»
Han ! - J'la jette par la f'nêtre
Elle l'avait bien cherché
T'façons faut qu'je rentre
Mais avant un café

Attendant l'métro
Je me fais agresser
Une p'tite vieille me dit :
«Vous avez l'heure s'il vous plaît ?»
Han - Je lui casse la tête
Et j'la pousse sur le quai
Je file à la maison
Et j'me sers un - devinez ?

«Papa, mon Papa,
En classe je suis premier»
Putain mais quoi ?
Tu vas arrêter de m'faire chier ?
Qu'il est con ce gosse !
En plus y s'met à chialer !
J'm'enferme dans la cuisine
Il reste un peu d'café

Ça fait quatorze jours
Que je suis enfermé
J'suis seul dans ma cuisine
Et je bois du café
Il faudrait bien qu'je dorme
Mais les flics vont m'choper
Alors je cloue les portes
Et j'reprends du café..."

Get smart

Fabio Rojas on the limits of "smarts" as a tool of academic evaluation. (I've seen at least one, er, very lively discussion at a hiring meeting about just this question.)

Bagels

Matt Yglesias follows up Megan McCardle's entirely justified complaint about the dearth of decent bagels in DC. The two New Yorkers commiserate about how New York has the only respectable bagels, though Matt rightly praises Bodo's in Charlottesville. (My wife is a UVA alumna, and pilgrimages to Bodo's are part of each return visit.)

But Matt, amusingly, illustrates his New Yorker's complaint with a picture that is undoubtedly of Montreal bagels coming out of a Montreal oven-- and that might well be from the St. Viateur six blocks from my house. If you're insisting on the evils of the huge puffy bread that passes for bagels in most of America, you want a picture of something visibly different-- something well-boiled with a hole that takes up half the total bagel-space. That means Montreal; New York bagels aren't so visually distinctive.