Good luck with that

Just got a "could you, or anyone you know, be on the radio" call-- for a French-speaking American Republican political commentator in Montreal.

I'm guessing that slot on the radio show will end up unfilled...

Marty on Wright

The Chronicle carries a striking tribute from one of the leading contemporary scholars of religion, Martin Marty.

Through the decades, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. has called me teacher, reminding me of the years when he earned a master's degree in theology and ministry at the University of Chicago — and friend. My wife and I and our guests have worshiped at Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, where he recently completed a 36-year ministry.

Images of Wright's strident sermons, and his anger at the treatment of black people in the United States, appear constantly on the Internet and cable television, part of the latest controversy in our political-campaign season. His critics call Wright anti-American. Critics of his critics charge that the clips we hear and see have been taken out of context. But it is not the context of particular sermons that the public needs, as that of Trinity church, and, above all, its pastor.
[...]
Now, for the hard business: the sermons, which have been mercilessly chipped into for wearying television clips. While Wright's sermons were pastoral — my wife and I have always been awed to hear the Christian Gospel parsed for our personal lives — they were also prophetic. At the university, we used to remark, half lightheartedly, that this Jeremiah was trying to live up to his namesake, the seventh-century B.C. prophet. Though Jeremiah of old did not "curse" his people of Israel, Wright, as a biblical scholar, could point out that the prophets Hosea and Micah did. But the Book of Jeremiah, written by numbers of authors, is so full of blasts and quasi curses — what biblical scholars call "imprecatory topoi" — that New England preachers invented a sermonic form called "the jeremiad," a style revived in some Wrightian shouts.

In the end, however, Jeremiah was the prophet of hope, and that note of hope is what attracts the multiclass membership at Trinity and significant television audiences. Both Jeremiahs gave the people work to do: to advance the missions of social justice and mercy that improve the lot of the suffering. For a sample, read Jeremiah 29, where the prophet's letter to the exiles in Babylon exhorts them to settle down and "seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile." Or listen to many a Jeremiah Wright sermon.

One may properly ask whether or how Jeremiah Wright — or anyone else — experiences a prophetic call. Back when American radicals wanted to be called prophets, I heard Saul Bellow say (and, I think, later saw it in writing): "Being a prophet is nice work if you can get it, but sooner or later you have to mention God." Wright mentioned God sooner. [...]

It would be unfair to Wright to gloss over his abrasive — to say the least — edges, so, in the "Nobody's Perfect" column, I'll register some criticisms. To me, Trinity's honoring of Minister Louis Farrakhan was abhorrent and indefensible, and Wright's fantasies about the U.S. government's role in spreading AIDS distracting and harmful. He, himself, is also aware of the now-standard charge by some African-American clergy who say he is a victim of cultural lag, overinfluenced by the terrible racial situation when he was formed.

Having said that, and reserving the right to offer more criticisms, I've been too impressed by the way Wright preaches the Christian Gospel to break with him. Those who were part of his ministry for years — school superintendents, nurses, legislators, teachers, laborers, the unemployed, the previously shunned and shamed, the anxious — are not going to turn their backs on their pastor and prophet.

Now available

Jason Ferrell, Political Science, McGill: "The Alleged Relativism of Isaiah Berlin," Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy Volume 11, Issue 1 March 2008, pages 41 - 56.

Added to the reading list

From the new issue of the European Journal of Political Theory:

"Modern Natural Law Meets the Market: The Case of Adam Smith"
Amit Ron

Philosophers of the 17th and 18th centuries who worked within the tradition of modern natural law became interested in political economy in part as they attempted to reconcile two conflicting images of economic activity. On the one hand, from the legal point of view economic activity was understood as a morally neutral and benign activity that could be regulated by simple and clear rules of justice. On the other hand, it was seen as a realm of political struggle, manipulation, deceit and the exercise of hidden forms of domination. This article examines the legal and moral contexts of Adam Smith's excursion into political economy by interpreting the roles played by these two images of the market in the theory of value articulated in book I of The Wealth of Nations.

"Commerce and Corruption: Rousseau's Diagnosis and Adam Smith's Cure"
Ryan Patrick Hanley

Modern commercial society has been criticized for attenuating virtue and inhibiting the ethical self-realization of its participants. But Adam Smith, a founding father of liberal commercial modernity, anticipated precisely this critique and took specific measures to circumvent it. This article presents these measures via an analysis of his response to the critique of liberal commercial modernity set forth by Rousseau. It principally argues that Smith's distinctions of the love of praise from the love of praiseworthiness, and the love of glory from the love of virtue, were elements of a normative moral education that sought to elevate civilized man's corrupted self-love, and thereby recover within modern commercial society a respect for ethical nobility.

"Locke, Waldron and the Moral Status of 'Crooks'"
Rebecca Kingston

This article provides an assessment of Jeremy Waldron's arguments (in God, Locke and Equality and his subsequent 'Response to Critics') that Locke provides us with a compelling version of liberal equality. A close examination of the case of the criminally convicted in The Second Treatise shows how Locke's commitment to the principle of equality is compromised. This is revealed in part through recourse to contextualist considerations. This leads to the suggestion that Waldron's principled rejection of contextualist approaches to the history of political ideas can lead to a distorted understanding. It also suggests a need for a more thorough consideration of how a substantive principle of moral equality should apply in the field of criminal justice and in liberal democracy more generally.

The Root

The fact that I linked to two different pieces on it yesterday, and the fact that I've found it consistently interesting reading about Obama in the past week, prompts me to say: Have you noticed The Root?

The Root is a daily online magazine that provides thought-provoking commentary on today's news from a variety of black perspectives. The site also hosts an interactive genealogical section to trace one's ancestry through AfricanDNA.com, a DNA testing site co-founded by Henry Louis Gates, Jr., who is also The Root's Editor-In-Chief. The Root aims to be an unprecedented departure from traditional American journalism, raising the profile of black voices in mainstream media and engaging anyone interested in black culture around the world.

Maybe you've read it without noticing it, because Slate links to Root stories transparently-- you might think you're clicking on a Slate story and find yourself transported over. It's a sister company to Slate, both being owned by the Washington Post. But it's pretty different from the New-Republic-cute-twist-derived voice that characterizes a lot of Slate (not that there's anything, or at least very much, wrong with that). It's strikingly intellectually serious for a general-interest website owned by a general-interest media concern-- and no, I don't only say that because of the prominence of my friend and former colleague Melissa Harris-Lacewell among the contributors. Have a look.

Neutrality conference schedule


Liberal Neutrality: A Re-evaluation
Montreal, May 1-3 2008
Thursday, May 1
Leacock 232, McGill University


9.00 - Opening
Commentator: Daniel Weinstock (University of Montreal)
9.15-9.55 Peter De Marneffe (Arizona State University) “The Possibility and Desirability of Neutrality”
9.55-10.35 Jacob Levy (McGill University) “Is Neutrality Sustainable?”

10.35-10.50* Break

10.50-11.30 Ruwen Ogien (CNRS-Paris) “A Minimalist Justification for State
Neutrality”

11.30-11.50 Comment
11.50-12.30 Discussion
* Lunch

Commentator : Joe Heath (University of Toronto)
1.45 - 2.25 Richard Arneson (University of California, San Diego) “Neutrality and Political Liberalism”
2.25-3.05 Alan Patten (Princeton University) “Religious Accommodations and Liberal Neutrality”

3.05- 3.20 *Break

3.20- 4.00 George Crowder (Flinders University) “Neutrality and Liberal Pluralism”

4.00- 4.20 Comment
4.20- 5.00 Discussion

Friday, May 2
Commentator: Arash Abizadeh

9.00-9.40 Christine Sypnowich (Queen’s University) “Human Flourishing : a New Approach to Equality”
9.40-10.20 George Sher (Rice University) “Perfectionism and Democracy”

10.20-10.35 * Break

10.35-11.15 Steven Wall (Bowling Green State University) “Pluralistic Perfectionism and Restricted Neutrality”

11.15-11.35 Comment
11.35-12.15 Discussion
* Lunch

Commentator : Colin Macleod
1.30-2.10 Stephen Macedo (Princeton University) “Neutrality and Public Reason”
2.10-2.40 Anthony Appiah (Princeton University) “Expressive and Instrumental Neutrality”

2.40- 2.55 *Break

2.55-3.35 Charles Larmore (Brown University) “Principles and Applications”

3.35- 3.55 Comment
3.55- 4.35 Discussion

Saturday, May 3d
Graduate Students and Young Scholars Workshop
Panel 1 : Characterizing Neutrality
Commentator : Geneviève Rousselière
9.00-9.20 Alexa Zellentin (Keble College, University of Oxford) “Neutrality as a Twofold Principle”
9.20-9.40 Marc Rüegger (Fribourg University) “Neutrality and Toleration as a Political Virtue”
9.40.10.00 Christopher Lowry (Queen’s University) “Beyond Equality of What: Sen and
Neutrality”
10.00-10.10 Comment
10.10-10.45 Discussion
10.45-11.00 * Break

Panel 2 : Neutrality and Perfectionism
Commentator : Colin Macleod
11.00-11.20 Oran Moked (Columbia University) “Perfectionism, Economic (Dis)incentives and Political Coercion”
11.20-11.40 Ben Colburn (University of Cambridge) “Neutrality, Anti-perfectionism and
Autonomy”
11.40-11.50 Comment
11.50-12.15 Discussion
12.15 * Lunch
Panel 3 : Should Neutrality Be Thought On Epistemological Grounds?
Commentator : Roberto Merrill
1.30-1.50 Mariano Garreta-Leclercq (University of Buenos Aires) “A New Epistemological Argument In Support of Liberal Neutrality”
1.50-2.10 Ian Carroll (Nuffield College, University of Oxford) “Neutrality and Moral Scepticism - A Contractarian Approach”
2.10-2.30 Chad Horne (University of Toronto) “Liberal Neutrality and the Asymmetry Argument”
2.30-2.40 Comment
2.40-3.15 Discussion
3.15-3.45 Break

Panel 4 : Neutrality Applied to Specific Policies
Commentator : Daniel Weinstock
3.45-4.05 Larry Sanger (Citizendium Project) “A Defense of Expository Neutrality”
4.05-4.25 Patrick Turmel (University of Toronto) “Liberal Neutrality and the Polycentric City”
4.25-4.45 Andrew Lister (Queen’s University) “Public Reason, Liberal Neutrality and (Same-Sex) Marriage”
4.45-4.55 Comment
4.55-5.30 Discussion
*5.30 End of the Workshop

Other views

Some interesting and provocative (and mutually incompatible) concerns and dissents about and comments about things left unsaid in Obama's big race speech. This seems to have been a major public philosophy moment; it's worth having a look at some of the responses to it that aren't just (even if they are also) celebrations. I'm especially interested in the range of reactions that engage with Jeremiah Wright as if he's not just an eccentric grandmother in the attic, but someone whose views matter for good or for ill. It happens that these are all from people I know and like and respect-- but one of the nice things about having people with a wide range of political views whom I know and like and respect is that I can be surprised by views to which I'm nonetheless inclined to give some benefit of the doubt.

My former colleague Michael Dawson:

But I'm worried it was it too little, too late.

It was too little in that while addressing race it equated white racial resentment (which scholars know is really just a more polite label for white racism) with the black anger and skepticism that comes out of past and current racial discrimination.

I suspect blacks will give Obama a break on this score, but those comments will not satisfy those large segments of white America that harbor racial resentment. It was too little when he argued that we can move forward toward racial justice for all without the "need to recite…the history of racial injustice."

It was too little because even though he strongly and correctly argued that today's racial disadvantage is based on the white supremacy of the past, we know that many, many whites do not connect the black situation today to either the injustices of the past or the present.

The history must be retold if a case is to be made to explain black disadvantage in this period. It was unfortunate when he implied that blacks were not willing to come together in multi-racial coalitions now or in the past. In the great populist and labor multi-racial coalitions of the late 19th century and early 20th century, during the Civil Rights era, and in modern times it was whites liberals and progressives that walked away from those coalitions with the predictable result of sparking much greater support for black nationalist movements such as those of Marcus Garvey, the Black Power movement, and Min. Louis Farrakhan.

Another former colleague, Melissa Harris-Lacewell [NB: This piece was written before the speech, but it differs from the approach of the speech pretty fundamentally.]

[Frederick] Douglass, like Wright, was speaking as a patriot and as a Christian. Douglass, like Wright, was speaking out of an honored tradition in black church life. Douglass, like Wright, was speaking in the tradition of biblical prophets.

In his 1993 text, Black Messiahs and Uncle Toms: Social and Literary Manipulations of a Religious Myth, historian Wilson Moses labeled this tradition the black jeremiad. Like Rev. Wright himself, it is named for the Old Testament prophet Jeremiah.

Jeremiah was among the biblical truth tellers who regularly warned the government that divine destruction was imminent if the nation continued to oppress the powerless. Frederick Douglass was a master of the jeremiad.

He called slavery a curse to the nation and argued that, "we shall not go unpunished." He said it was the patriotic duty of blacks "to warn our fellow countrymen" of the impending doom they courted and to dissuade America from "rushing on in her wicked career" along a path "ditched with human blood, and paved with human skulls."

Jeremiah Wright is a modern Douglass. Both men are like the Old Testament prophets who condemn the injustice and corruption of the rulers of their government.

This week Barack Obama was pressured to denounce Jeremiah Wright. But in the hundred years following the end of the Civil War more than five thousand African Americans were lynched and not a single president denounced the atrocities. Because of this history, black patriotism is complicated.

Black patriots love our country, even though it has often hated us. We love our country, even while we hold it accountable for its faults.

I understand why the Obama campaign felt they had to distance themselves from Wright's post 9-11 comments. But I am worried that Obama has missed a chance to talk about the rich and complex tapestry of black religious life. Not all black people are Christian. Not all belong to large, urban churches. Even fewer worship with such an outspoken, unapologetically political minister. But Trinity UCC does represent an important segment of black religious tradition. It is not scary, racist or un-American. Quite the opposite, Rev. Wright is integral to the broad prophetic tradition that informs many black churches.

Prophetic Christianity allowed African Americans to retain a sense of humanity in the face of our country's racism. Like many people of faith, black Americans have to grapple with how an all-loving and all-powerful God can coexist with evil.[...]

I attended Trinity United Church of Christ during the seven years I lived in Chicago. Although I do not know him personally, I heard Rev. Wright preach on dozens of Sundays. His sermons soothed my broken heart while I divorced, they eased my mental anguish when my sister was ill, and they helped give me strength as I watched the destructive power of racism, sexism and homophobia within my Chicago community. In short, his words did what a pastor's words are supposed to do. I am grateful for Jeremiah Wright and for his prophetic witness.

Political theorist William Galston:

Senator Obama's speech moved me, as I suspect it did most listeners. As a onetime speechwriter, I admire its artful construction, rhetorical brilliance, and historical reach. But it left a basic question unanswered: What, if anything, did Obama do in response to what he now acknowledges he heard Reverend Wright say? Did he raise his concerns with other members of the congregation? With Reverend Wright himself? Was he seriously enough disturbed to consider leaving Trinity for another church? By embedding his own life in the larger narrative of race in America, Obama is implicitly saying that these questions don't matter. But they do, because they present a window on his character and help us judge what kind of president he would be.

Like Walt Whitman, Obama presents himself as someone who contains multitudes, someone whose ancestry and life-history embodies the American experience as a whole. There is some truth to this. But it is a suspiciously convenient stance, because it enables him to evade contradictions and avoid hard choices. Successful leaders must know when to draw lines and say no. They must accept that as they do so, they will leave some people out and make some enemies. Many Americans will wonder whether Senator Obama's sincere, burning desire to forge unity out of division leaves him unable or unwilling to acknowledge lines that must not be crossed. And they will wonder how a campaign built on the political centrality of unifying rhetoric can argue that good deeds somehow counterbalance divisive hate speech from a minister in a position to influence the views of thousands of parishioners? Is this really the moral equivalent of the senator's grandmother?

Obama cannot disown Rev. Wright because, he says, "he has been like family to me." Like family, perhaps; but in the last analysis, not family. We do not choose our parents; we do choose our mentors and spiritual advisors. I do not believe Senator Obama yet understands how questionable his choice appears to many Americans of good will, including those who intend--as I do--to vote for him if he becomes the presidential nominee of the Democratic Party.

Will Wilkinson:

Obama says the real problem is not that an American of a different ethnic background might take your job (that was the context), but that a non-American might. But let’s not dwell on that Mexican, Canadian, or Chinese guy who gets that job. Who cares about them? Well, if you think it for a second, you might care. So let’s try to remove from our thoughts the very real, yet non-American people who often gain immensely from outsourcing and pin it on all corporations. Well, Obama can’t have it both ways. It matters not to the individual American whether she has lost her job to someone in South Dakota, where it is cheaper to do business, or to someone in a whole different country. It matters not to the individual American whether he has lost his job to father of four in India or a new robot arm in North Carolina. In attacking offshore outsourcing Obama encourages in one breathe the zero-sum mentality he condemns in another. It may be possible to induce a spell of internal cooperation by framing it as part an external conflict, but it can’t last. By threatening growth, protectionism encourages internal conflict over the division of a smaller pie. As Obama evidently knows, that’s when racial lines are the most salient, when divisive zero-sum thinking prevails.

I’m convinced that Obama holds himself to a higher moral standard than the typical politician, and think that this speech was proof of that. But he guts his own aspirations when he stops short and preaches conflict at the point where preaching unity is no longer expedient.

Russell Arben Fox (who celebrated his 5-year blogiversary this week):

I'm familiar with some of Reverend Wright's sermons, having listened to more than a few of them from various sources over the years; two of my colleagues here at Friends U., in fact, have attended and taken student groups to TUCC when they've visited Chicago on several occasions. And let me just say this: leave aside all the arguably justifiable anger and the class-based suspicions for the moment, if you can; if you're a serious and conservative Christian, give the full range of TUCC's message a try. To be sure, it is a heavily race-conscious church...but then, so were Martin Luther King's revival meetings. If you can accept and get past that, you'll find that it is far more doctrinal, evangelical and Biblically-grounded than you might expect. Obama may be a member of the elite, but frankly, anyone who has been willing to listen to those messages of repentance and salvation for 20 years, and whose been willing to build his marriage and fatherhood through such a church, deserves a lot more credit from the religious among us than he's gotten so far.

Hadn't noticed this.

I posted before on the Times Higher Education Supplement world university rankings-- McGill was 12th, methodology here. But somehow I didn't notice the sublists: McGill was also listed as 12th in the world in the social sciences.

There's been a lot of talk...

about how unimaginably long the Democratic primary season is lasting this year, and what damage it could do to the party or the eventual nominee, etc.

The truth is, a lot of states get to have primaries and caucuses that at least kind of matter this year, and that's a bit new. As a native New Hampshirite I suppose I should favor a one-primary season (Iowa votes for some populist nutball, NH votes for someone respectable, that person becomes the front-runner and just has to walk through to a coronation), but there's really not that much to be said for the idea. Allowing more states to have their say seems to me at least a tolerable idea.

But as for the thought that the season is just lasting so long that the nominee won't have enough time to prepare for the general election campaign, or that there won't be enough time before the convention to heal differences, or anything like that, I think people are forgetting just how early and compressed the primary season has been this year.

In 1992, Clinton didn't tie up the nomination until April, and in mid-March Jerry Brown was still effectively and plausibly challenging him..

In 1988, Super Tuesday had barely happened by this time, and Jackson, Gore, and Dukakis were all still in the race; it wasn't de facto over until late April. New York and, yes, Pennsylvania cemented Dukakis' win and knocked Gor out.

In 1984, Hart won California in June, and closed to within 40 delegates of Mondale, who lacked a majority at that time.

Things are different in races that are really only two candidates from the outset (in 2000 Bradley dropped out in early March), but initially multicandidate fields yield late Democratic seasons. Under a system of proportional representation and superdelegates, it would be difficult for it to be otherwise, no? Anyway, this year's nominee won't face any unusually short prep time before the convention.

Cosmopolitan Duties and Domestic Consequences : The Case of Immigration

Montreal Political Theory Workshop – April 18th, 2008

Contemporary immigration regimes are increasingly scrutinized from a perspective of global justice. Do these regimes contribute to global injustice? Should we change immigration regimes in order to redistribute access to individual opportunities more fairly? Should we open our borders to the global poor? What would the consequences be for host societies? These are some of the important and timely questions the speakers at this year’s MPTW conference will address.

Speakers:

Joe Carens (University of Toronto) : «Open Borders Revisited»

Patti T. Lenard (Harvard) : «Do Theories of Historical Redress Apply to Immigrants?»

Christine Straehle (UQAM) : «Immigration, Trust and the Welfare State»

Shelley Wilcox (San Francisco State University) : «Immigrants Admissions in the Non-Ideal World»

McGill Faculty Club, 3450 McTavish Street
10am-6pm
RSVP emmanuelle.richez@mail.mcgill.ca

There is great wisdom to be had...

in the lead essay in this month's Cato Unbound, "On Patriotism," by George Kateb; and also in the reply to it by Chandran Kukathas. I've been lucky enough to study under each at one time or another. Readin gthe two of them side by side, I realize that it's a wonder my views aren't even more disreputable and shocking to polite society than they already are...

Around and about

Assorted public events I'll be attending, here and away:

Next weekend: In Search of a Common Liberalism, UCLA.

David Schmidtz, Aurelian Craiutu, Stephen Macedo, Chandran Kukathas, Gerald Gaus, Richard Flathman, Leif Wenar, Shannon Stimson, Jacob Levy, Andrew Sabl

March 28: Rebecca Kingston at the Montreal Political Theory Workshop

April 18: Conference on immigration, Montreal Political Theory Workshop, at McGill

April 24: Political philosophy workshop, Brown University

April 25-26, New England Political Science Association, Providence

May 1-3: "Liberal Neturality: A Re-evaluation," at McGill:

Anthony Appiah, Richard Arneson, Arash Abizadeh, George Crowder, Charles Larmore, Jacob Levy, Stephen Macedo, Peter de Marneffe, Ruwen Ogien, Alan Patten, João Rosas, George Sher, Christine Sypnowich, Steven Wall, Daniel Weinstock

McGill University, Leacock Building, Room 232

May 29-June 1: Law and Society Association, in Montreal

Reading List
Newly released:

Bringing the Passions Back In: The Emotions in Political Philosophy. Professor Kingston will be our next guest at the Montreal Political Theory Workshop on March 28. Two chapters here from my colleagues Christina Tarnopolsky and Arash Abizadeh, both of whom do important work on the passions in political theory. I've read a couple of the chapters in this book; it'll be a worthwhile buy.

Contents

Foreword: Politics and Passion
Charles Taylor

Introduction: The Emotions and the History of Political Thought
Leonard Ferry and Rebecca Kingston

1 Explaining Emotions
Amélie Oksenberg Rorty

2 Plato on Shame and Frank Speech in Democratic Athens
Christina Tarnopolsky

3 The Passions of the Wise: Phronesis, Rhetoric, and Aristotle’s Passionate Practical Deliberation
Arash Abizadeh

4 Troubling Business: The Emotions in Aquinas’ Philosophical Psychology
Leonard Ferry

5 The Political Relevance of the Emotions from Descartes to Smith
Rebecca Kingston

6 Passion, Power, and Impartiality in Hume
Sharon Krause

7 Pity, Pride, and Prejudice: Rousseau on the Passions
Ingrid Makus

8 Feelings in the Political Philosophy of J.S. Mill
Marlene K. Sokolon

9 Emotions, Reasons, and Judgments
Leah Bradshaw

10 The Politics of Emotion
Robert C. Solomon

International Journal of Transitional Justice Fellows Programme Application

The International Journal of Transitional Justice (IJTJ) is pleased to announce the introduction of a Journal Fellows Programme aimed at increasing the publication and dissemination of pieces from south-based transitional justice practitioners and scholars. The Programme will provide the opportunity for five applicants to develop their writing, analytical and comparative content skills through a short training workshop followed by a one year e-mentorship by leading scholars and practitioners in the field globally as well as the IJTJ Editorial team.

Fellows will be invited to attend the first IJTJ Board Conference, to be held from May 28 – 30, 2008 in South Africa. During the conference, Fellows will be involved in all discussions and debates on the development of the field and strategic direction of the Journal, and will be provided a unique opportunity to network with key figures in the field of transitional justice. Fellows will then remain on for a further 2 day training workshop on writing, content and analysis.

Prior to the workshop, Fellows will be paired with a mentor from the IJTJ Board who will remain in contact with them over the course of the year and serve as a source of information, critical feedback and support as Fellows develop a minimum of one piece of sufficient quality to be considered for publication in the journal.

It is hoped that the programme will contribute to growing the existing pool of South-based voices in the field of transitional justice. We are therefore looking for academics, activists and practitioners from the global South who fulfil the following criteria:
• Have a background in either transitional justice practice or scholarship;
• Have direct experience of conflict or repression in their home context;
• Are interested in making a contribution to the field of transitional justice;
• Are fluent in English;
• Have prior writing experience;
• Are currently in, or will be returning to, a position in an institution in the field of transitional justice, human rights or related areas;
• Are prepared to commit themselves to the production of a minimum of one article over the course of the year.

Interested applicants should fill out the application form (available by request from ijtj@csvr.org.za) and submit it along with a covering letter, and a sample of writing to ijtj@csvr.org.za no later than March 15, 2008.

Please mark all correspondence with the line ‘IJTJ Fellowship Programme application’ in the subject line.

Applicants who are short listed will be asked to provide two letters of recommendation as well as a brief essay on a transitional justice-related topic.

Only shortlisted applicants will be contacted.

Race, privilege, and humor

On the one hand, there's something kind of precious (in the bad way) about the self-conscious, self-congratulatory way that members of a privileged group can enjoy humor at their own expense: think Eddie Murphy's "White Like Me," or Martin Mull's book- and video-series "A History of White People in America Today, or the newcomer to the genre, the "Stuff White People Like" blog. Being able to chuckle at that kind of thing seems to show some self-awareness about one's privileged position ("it sure is telling how much comedy value there is in racializing whiteness!") but it also confirms it.

On the other hand, well, all three of those examples are pretty funny; and it's probably better to have that bit of self-consciousness about privilege than not to have it, right? And, after all, the #1 thing the blog says white people like is hardly something I can argue about.

(It's not quite clear to me whether "Stuff White People Like" was ever really being written primarily for an Asian audience's amusement, but by now, I think it's pretty clearly being written to prompt self-bemusement from a white audience.)

Compare also: any humor for a mostly-straight audience about straight men's poor fashion sense and inability to dance (Queer Eye undoubtedly counts), or for that matter any humor for a mostly-white audience about white people's inability to dance. For that matter, I kind of think that the classic sitcom bumbling paterfamilias is an example. Of course, the genre is old-- the class-inversion humor of the servant who's more clever than the master was a staple of the commedia dell'arte tradition as well as Shakespeare, and was meant in large part to amuse the masters who could afford to laugh at themselves.

Update: Ah. Not sure where I'd gotten the impression that SWPL's author was Asian-American, but he's not-- he's white. The site is self-conscious self-mockery a la Martin Mull.

Conservative political thought

Tyler Cowen asks, "Which 20th century classic of American conservative political thought has held up best?" He makes the insightful point that "none have held up particularly well, mostly because they underestimated the robustness of the modern world and regarded depravity as more of a problem than it has turned out to be." NB the qualifiers in the original post: American, not European; conservative, not libertarian; political thought, not economics.

It's a real problem-- one I've often talked with people about in a teaching context, because there's no modern work to teach alongside Theory of Justice and Anarchy, State, and Utopia that really gets at what's interesting about Burkean or social conservatism. Oakeshott's the best 20th c. conservative, but he fails Tyler's "American" test-- and he's at his most teachably conservative in essays, not books. A major underlying theme of the Nomos conference last year on "American conservative thought and politics" was "why the disconnect between political philosophy and conservatism, especially American conservatism?"

The problem isn't just, as conservatives would have it, that the conservative temperament isn't easily reduced to programmatic philosophical works-- that part of its point is not to be so reducible. One of the problems is that history keeps right on going-- and so any book plucked from the past that was concerned with yelling "stop!" tends to date badly to any modern reader who does not think he's already living in hell-in-a-handbasket. This is a particular problem because of race in America-- no mid-20th c work is going to endure as a real, read-not-just-namechecked, classic of political thought that talks about how everything will go to hell if the South isn't allowed to remain the South. Someone like Strauss who didn't care about the American south and didn't write much about the news of his day in any event thus holds up relatively better than someone like Kirk. This is a special case of Tyler's depravity point-- but in the context of 20th c American conservatism, an important special case. And note that Oakeshott has his own version of these problems; doesn't "Rationalism in Politics" end up feeling faintly ridiculous by the time he's talking about women's suffrage?

Count me on both sides of the Road to Serfdom squabble that appears in Tyler's comment thread. Its core historical-necessity thesis has been undermined-- but the relevant country isn't Sweden. Scandinavia and the Low Countries are welfare states but not planned economies. The relevant countries are the Rhine Model countries of France and Germany, plus postwar Japan and South Korea.

I don't see any great answers in the comment thread yet. I guess I might say Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy, and Kristol, Two Cheers for Capitalism, but the former isn't really distinctively conservative enough and I'm not sure the latter is a classic.

Update: Brad deLong says "cut the Gordian knot. THERE ARE NO ATTRACTIVE MODERN CONSERVATIVES BECAUSE CONSERVATISM SIMPLY IS NOT ATTRACTIVE. DEAL WITH IT!!" Lizardbreath at Unfogged calls this the "natural conclusion."

To this I say: feh. Scoring points is fun and all, but the point being scored here is entirely beside the, well, point. Brad has no difficulty finding classic teaching texts for views he considers unattarctive-- say, Marxism.

Take something like the standard syllabus of a post-1971 Justice course. theory of Justice; Anarchy, State, and Utopia; Liberalism and the Limits of Justice; Spheres of Justice; After Virtue; Justice, Gender, and the Family; Justice and the Politics of Difference; Liberalism, Community, and Culture; Political Liberalism. Does anyone find the political visions of all of those books attractive? Me, neither. I'm not sure how one could do so. But they're all teachable versions of major, intellectually serious arguments.

John Finnis' Natural Law and Natural Rights and Robert George's Making Men Moral are major, intellectually serious statements of a social conservatism I find deeply unattractive. But for current purposes my problem is not that they're unattractive, it's that they're unteachable-- pitched at too high a level, too drenched in literatures undergraduates in political theory courses won't have read, too Raz-ishly dense (and Raz is hardly teachable to undergraduatess in the first place).

Schmitt's Concept of the Political and Crisis of Parliamentary Democracy provide teachable, cogent, serious statements for a position I trust Brad finds "unattractive." So does Maistre. Why is it easier to find enduring reactionary texts than enduring texts that state the basic position of conservatives in liberal democracies? That's the puzzle.

Another update: Last word to Brad. I'm supposed to do some more-sustained thinking and writing on this question sometime soon. I'll report back with new contributions then.

One more update: My colleague Will Roberts may have it just right.

I think Jacob has answered his own question, actually. Fundamentally, conservatives (in the relevant Burke-to-Buckley-to-Sullivan sense) are liberals (in the classical sense) who worry about cultural decay. That is, they agree with liberals that subjective freedom is the end of the political community, but think that market freedom needs a basis in certain cultural institutions in order to be stable and lasting. Those institutions are always being whittled away by the drip-drip-drip of market freedoms, so conservatives self-avowedly find themselves repeatedly "standing athwart history yelling Stop!" The trouble is, as Jacob says, "history keeps right on going." The drip-drip-drip keeps eroding the cultural institutions, and conservatives have to take some new stand.

To be a teachable classic, a work has to touch something enduring, and conservative texts tend to be caught up in the present crisis.

Statements by economists about other social sciences, an occasional series

“Part of what’s interesting is that it could help,” said [Robin] Hanson, clearly not enthused by public service per se. “Economics as a discipline is really the only social science where normative claims, about what should happen, are part of the standard literature.".

Is this true?

If Kosovo declares its independence today, I think it will bring into existence the first majority-Muslim European* state since the end of the Spanish Reconquest in the 15th century. Bosnia is plurality but not majority Muslim; in Albania proper, a majority are avowed atheists.

I know that the late 19th-century Balkans saw a number of new independent states as Ottoman power gradually crumbled, but I don't think any of these were ever majority-Muslim.

If true, this seems to me noteworthy-- a sign of European and human progress. The Battle of Vienna wasn't so terribly long ago. The idea that some European states would fight for the freedom of a Muslim people on European soil would have been unthinkable for centuries; one of the defining facts about "Europe" as a cultural and political space was that it wasn't Islamic.

NB: This does not mean that I think anyone should proceed with anything other than the greatest caution right now. Kosovo should be independent, but then so should Taiwan; and sometimes there may be a legitimate place for deference to the views of a local great power, even if those views themselves are illegitimate. Even if the western states all recognize Kosovo immediately, they should view that as the beginning of ongoing negotiations with Serbia and Russia, not the end of them.

*Yes, for these purposes I exclude Turkey or the Ottoman Empire from being a European state.

Come visit Montreal

Visiting faculty and postdoc fellowships at CREUM.

CREUM - 2008-2009 Senior fellowship programme

The University of Montreal’s Centre de recherche en éthique (CREUM) is inviting applications of professor-researchers in ethics, for residential fellowships which can vary in length according to individual circumstances. Applicants are expected to have at least a working knowledge of French.

The CREUM will offer to its fellows: a research grant up to 40,000$ CAN, an individual office, access to the services of the University of Montreal (libraries, sports center, etc.), and assistance for material organization of the stay. In return, the fellows are expected to pursue the research project submitted in their application, to participate in the Center's activities (conferences, seminars, lectures), and to present their work in progress in the context of Center's seminars and workshops. Application deadline: April 30th, 2008. For more information, please visit www.creum.umontreal.ca

CREUM - 2008-2009 Postdoctoral fellowship program

The University of Montreal’s Centre de recherche en éthique (CREUM) is inviting applications of postdoctoral researchers in ethics, for residential fellowships which can vary in length according to individual circumstances (maximum 27,000 $ CAN). Applicants are expected to have at least a working knowledge of French.

The CREUM will offer to its fellows: a postdoctoral grant of 3,000$ per month, an individual workstation, access to the services of the University of Montreal (libraries, sports center, etc.), and assistance for material organisation of the stay. In return, the fellows are expected to pursue the research project submitted in their application, to participate in the Center's activities (conferences, seminars, lectures), and to present their work in progress in the context of Center's seminars and workshops. Application deadline: April 30th, 2008. For more information, please visit www.creum.umontreal.ca.

Good news, bad news

The good news is that someone thought to do this.

The bad news is how desperately McGill needs it-- and how unlikely I fear it is that any reforms will actually happen as a consequence.

Cut the red tape contest

Can you identify a policy or process at McGill that has, or appears to have, no sound academic or administrative justification and that impairs service to current or prospective students?

Do you have an idea that we can implement to resolve the issue you have identified? What would work best for you? How would you like to see it resolved?

Send us your suggestions by February 22, 2008. The 10 best entries, judged on impact, cost/benefit, and innovation, received by that date will win $100 each.

While we may not be able to do away with all of the red tape on campus, we will bring the issues you submit to the attention of the responsible unit and report back to contestants about what progress we can make.

"No sound academic or administrative justification" is a demanding standard. It's the equivalent of asking for laws that would fail rational basis review in a U.S. court.

I expect there to be at least dozens of viable entries.

New discoveries of old political science truths

Chris Bowers on superdelegates:

If the institution that exists to resolve disputes within the American center-left does not operate according to democratic principles, then I see no reason to continue participating within that institution. If that institution fails to respect democratic principles in its most important internal contest of all--nominating an individual for President of the United States--then I will quit the Democratic Party. And yes, I am perfectly serious about this. If someone is nominated for POTUS from the Democratic Party despite another candidate receiving more poplar support from Democratic primary voters and caucus goers, I will resign as local precinct captain, resign my seat on the Pennsylvania Democratic State Committee, immediately cease all fundraising for all Democrats, refuse to endorse the Democratic "nominee" for any office, and otherwise disengage from the Democratic Party through all available means of doing so.

Robert Michel's "Iron Law of Oligarchy," formulated in 1911 in reponse to his dismayed discovery that socialist parties including the German Social Democratic Party were not much different in their internal organizations and power structures from other parties:

"Who says organization, says oligarchy."

Scattered Friday thoughts

The talk yesterday was great fun. I haven't been in a serious exegesis-and-interpretation-of-Walzer conversation in many years, and there's a lot there worth talking about.

In the course of preparing the talk, I really had cause to think about the shape of Walzer's corpus. While he wrote excellent material both before and after this time, it seems to me that there's a 13-year stretch-- 1977-1990-- that's just stunning for breadth and scale of achievement. His published work from that era that I think are all major and enduring contributions, including four really quite distinct enduring books:

Just and Unjust Wars
"The Moral Standing of States"
"Philosophy and Democracy"
Spheres of Justice
"Liberalism and the Art of Separation"
"What Does It Mean to be an 'American'?"
"The Communitarian Critique of Liberalism"
Interpretation and Social Criticism
The Company of Critics

I've never read Radical Principles or Exodus and Revolution, but they were published in that timeframe too (as well as a steady stream of other articles not mentioned here). And to close it out, his second set of Tanner Lectures, "Nation and Universe," that provides the most sophisticated statement of his views of cultures as boundaries of moral and epistemic meaning, was published (only in the Tanner volumes, not as a freestanding publication) in 1990. I'm pleased to see that "Nation and Universe" has finally been republished in an accessible format-- in the new David Miller edited collection of Walzer's papers, Thinking Politically, Yale UP. It's been hard to come by, and it's an important piece of the puzzle for thinking about Spheres of Justice. (So, by the way, is "The Moral Standing of States," something that gets overlooked because the latter gets lumped with Just and Unjust Wars and segmented off as part of the sub-subfield international or global justice.)

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You know you live far north when you drive past a Winter Olympics venue, northbound, and think, "oh, that's good, almost halfway there..."

Seeing the tourist-friendly French language signs in northern upstate New York made me feel like home was on the horizon.

I've heard (and said) the Montreal greeting "bonjour-hi" so often that I don't quite notice it any more-- but I noticed and was charmed by the very Anglo-Canadian border guard who took my passport with a friendly "bonjour, eh?" Can't say that I've ever heard that before.

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I hardly ever just post links without comment to vastly-higher-traffic blogs. If you're the kind of person who's likely to enjoy Crooked Timber, you're a lot more likely to read it yourself than to follow my links to it. But just in case, two good ones from the last few days: Henry Farrell, "Seeing Like Seeing Like A State" and John Holbo, "Rawls and Liberalism".

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Finally, speaking of Rawls, I've occasionally referred to portions of Political Liberalism as auto-talmudic or auto-talmudism for their curious approach to commenting on Theory of Justice. (All of Rawls' best friends had taken a turn at interpreting TJ, and they seemed to enjoy it, so one can imagine him deciding to make an attempt at the same activity.) On a whim, it occurred to me to check google to see whether those logisms had been neo'd before. No hits for "auto-talmudic." But a few hits for "auto-talmudism"-- all as part of gobbldy car insurance spam sites. Not sure why, but that amused me.

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One more pair of links to a vastly-higher-traffic blog: Eugene Volokh on sharia arbitration and again.

On the road

Today: "Michael Walzer on Political, Moral, and Cultural Pluralism," at Siena College's yearlong symposium on Walzer's thought. The sign says that the lecture is open to the public, so if blogreaders happen to be in Loudonville, NY...

Better late...

Australia will issue its first formal apology for past mistreatment to the country's indigenous people Feb. 13, a senior minister said Wednesday.

Indigenous Affairs Minister Jenny Macklin said the apology to Australia's so-called "stolen generation" of Aborigines would be the first item of business for the new Labour-dominated Parliament.

"The apology will be made on behalf of the Australian government and does not attribute guilt to the current generation of Australian people," Macklin said in a statement.[...]

An apology would mark a significant milestone in a decade-long debate about how best to acknowledge Aborigines who were affected by a string of 20th century policies that separated mixed-blood Aboriginal children from their families - frequently referred to as Australia's stolen generation.

From 1910 until the 1970s, around 100,000 mostly mixed-blood Aboriginal children were taken from their parents under state and federal laws based on a premise that Aborigines were a doomed race and saving the children was a humane alternative.

A national inquiry into stolen generation held in 1997 found many children taken from their families suffered long-term psychological effects stemming from the loss of family and culture.

The inquiry recommended state and federal authorities apologize and pay compensation to those who were removed from their families. But former prime minister John Howard steadfastly refused to do either.

I discussed Howard's refusal in chapter 8 of The Multiculturalism of Fear

A state that can act in its own name, a state that has a corporate existence, can commit wrongs in its own name—and can legitimately apologize in its own name. This is not even only true of states. The Catholic Church—which both legally and as a matter of its own self-understanding has a corporate, institutional existence and is not merely the sum of its faithful at any moment—has apologized for some of its failures during the Holocaust. That this means some persons who hold church offices today, and who were not yet born at the time of the Holocaust, have apologized for the actions of others long dead, is neither a conceptual nor a moral problem. There would have been a problem had Catholic prelates apologized in their capacities as natural persons for the actions of other natural persons; but this is not what they did. And it is not what state officials do when they properly apologize for past actions of the state, either. Australian Prime Minister Howard thus got matters precisely backward when he resisted an official apology to the ‘stolen generation’ of Aboriginal children but issued a personal statement of regret. That personal statement could be no more than the expression of sorrow of an onlooker to a tragedy; Howard had no hand in the policy. It was the Australian state, not the person of the head of government, that owed (and still owes) an apology.

I'm pleased not only by the fact that an apology is forthcoming but by the symbolism of its being the first act of the new Labor-majority Parliament. Good on them, as one might say.

Hither and yon

Tomorrow I'll be discussing "Federalism and the Old and New Liberalisms" at AEI's Federalism Project.

The next day, back at McGill for "Rethinking the Public Sphere, Rethinking the Making of Publics," a mini-conference on Steven Pincus and Peter Lake’s article, “Rethinking the public sphere in early modern England.”

Next Thursday, Siena College, "Michael Walzer on Political, Moral, and Cultural Pluralism," as part of a year-long symposium on Walzer's thought.

March 14-15, "Toward a Common Liberalism" conference, UCLA.