There's a limit to how much I care...

about Obama's Vice-Presidential pick; this year he could have picked even someone I really despise like Dick Gephardt or John Edwards and I'd probably have voted for him anyways. (I haven't entirely ruled out voting for Bob Barr, but it's not likely.)

That said, my short answer whenever anyone asks my thoughts on Biden: A professor can't love the choice of a plagiarist.

Interesting Montreal discovery of the week

The sound of residential streets people are used to driving down at, say, 30 MPH, when speed bumps have been newly installed on every block but (as yet, anyway) left completely unmarked, whether by signs or by paint on the road.

It's not a happy sound-- not for the cars concerned, anyway.

Workshop on tax competition

Tax competition: How to meet the normative and political challenge?
Université de Montréal, 28-29 August 2008
Organised in collaboration with the CREUM (Centre de recherche en
éthique de l'Université de Montréal)

On the back of technological change and the end of exchange controls, capital mobility has over the last 30 or so years led to increasing tax competition. By lowering tax rates on individual savings as well as on corporate income, governments hope to attract portfolio investment and productive capital to their constituencies. Empirical research has shown that individual countries do not always benefit from tax competition, but might gain from cooperation. In determining what form this cooperation should take, two questions are of central importance :

1. What are the normative principles that should underlie such international cooperation on fiscal policy ? Simultaneously, what other, conflicting normative principles does such international cooperation have to respect ?
2. Which policies stand the best chance of implementing the selected normative principles in practice ?

The aim of the workshop is to critically assess existing answers to these questions and potentially to come up with new solutions. In bringing together researchers from economics, law, and philosophy, the workshop hopes to build on synergies between the different perspectives of these disciplines that have not been previously seized upon.

Pavillon Maximilien-Caron
3101, chemin de la Tour
Salle A-3464

Thursday, 28 August 2008
8.30
Coffee

8.45
Introduction

8.55-10.25
Reuven Avi-Yonah (Law School, University of Michigan)
"The OECD harmful tax competition report: a 10th anniversary retrospective"

10.30-12.00
Arthur Cockfield (Faculty of Law, Queen's University)
"Protecting Taxpayer Privacy Rights under Enhanced Cross-border Tax
Information Exchanges: Toward a Multilateral Taxpayer Bill of Rights"
&
Kimberley Brooks (Faculty of Law, McGill University)
"What is inter-nation equity?"

12.00-13.30
Lunch

13.30-15.00
Diane Ring (Law School, Boston College)
"Tax Sovereignty as a Window onto the Limits and Possibilities of Tax
Cooperation"
&
Peter Dietsch (Philosophy, Université de Montréal)
"Tax Competition and Sovereignty"

15.05-16.35
Navot Bar (Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP)
"Sharing the first bite – a new approach to tax treaties"
&
Thomas Rixen (Social Science Research Centre Berlin, WZB)
"Tax competition and inequality"

16.50-18.20
Philipp Genschel (Political Science, Jacobs University Bremen)
"Tax competition and democracy in the EU"


Friday, 29 August 2008

8.30-10.00
Richard Murphy (Tax Justice Network, UK)
"Finding the offshore world"

10.05-11.35
Ilan Benshalom (School of Law, Northwestern University)
"The poor at our gates: international taxation and global distributive justice"
&
Jean-Pierre Vidal (HEC Montréal)
"Does tax competition promote aggressive fiscal policies internationally?"

11.35-13.30
Lunch

13.30-15.00
Clément Carbonnier (Economics, Université de Cergy-Pontoise)
"Fiscal competition between decentralized jurisdictions – theoretical
and empirical evidence"
&
Ulrich van Suntum & Andreas Westermeier (Economics, University of Münster)
"Minimizing the Deadweight Loss: Income Tax vs. Death Tax"

15.05-16.35
François Claveau (graduate student, Universiteit van Rotterdam)
"Choosing our Story of Fiscal Interdependence"
&
Igor Paunovic (Comision Economica para América Latina y el Caribe)
"Tax competition versus tax differentiation – the case of Central
American countries"

16.50-18.20
Michael Webb (Political Science, University of Victoria)
"Understanding and Overcoming the neglect of distributional questions
in the OECD's response to international tax competition"

For a variety of reasons...

I'm not going to do too much blogging about the controversy surrounding the creation of the Milton Friedman Institute at the University of Chicago; this is all I've said so far, and I don't think I'll write any other long posts. I think the MFI is a very good idea, far more likely to do the university proud than otherwise; it's pretty clearly going to come into existence; so what's the point in further blogging about the opposition to it? And the relationship of libertarian-leaning academics to the Chicago departments whose members are well-represented among MFI opponents is a messy thing to talk about.

But it's noteworthy that, in a couple of days, Marshall Sahlins and Thomas Frank have... really not done any favors for the MFI opponents. I continue to disagree with iLYA Somin's view that opposition to the MFI is really, simply, an instance of academic ideological intolerance. But Frank and (especially) Sahlins sure put pressure on my view, and make Ilya's look that much more plausible.

See also: Brad De Long.

I'll be deep in the cold, cold ground before I recognize Missoura!

The annual "Hey, professors, you're really really old now, so don't think you can pretend to be "cool" and "groovy" with the "young people" Beloit College "mindset list" has come out. Time to count the grey whiskers in your beard!

Some selections:

To members of the class of 2012 (the new frosh arriving on campus next week:

Sammy Davis Jr., Jim Henson, Ryan White, Stevie Ray Vaughan, and Freddy Krueger have always been dead.

Electronic filing of tax returns has always been an option.

Martha Stewart Living has always been setting the style.

The Warsaw Pact is as hazy for them as the League of Nations was for their parents.

Students have always been "Rocking the Vote."

Clarence Thomas has always sat on the Supreme Court.

We have always known that "All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten."

There have always been gay rabbis.

Wayne Newton has never had a mustache.

College grads have always been able to Teach for America.

IBM has never made typewriters.

There has always been Pearl Jam.

The Tonight Show has always had Jay Leno as its host and started at 11:35 p.m. Eastern time.

Lenin's name has never been on a major city in Russia.

There have always been charter schools.

Worthy collegiate-presidential initiative

Via Katherine Mangu-Ward: Over 100 college and university presidents have signed a statement saying:

It’s time to rethink the drinking age

In 1984 Congress passed the National Minimum Drinking Age Act, which imposed a penalty of 10% of a state's federal highway appropriation on any state setting its drinking age lower than 21.

Twenty-four years later, our experience as college and university presidents convinces us that…
Twenty-one is not working

A culture of dangerous, clandestine “binge-drinking”—often conducted off-campus—has developed.

Alcohol education that mandates abstinence as the only legal option has not resulted in significant constructive behavioral change among our students.

Adults under 21 are deemed capable of voting, signing contracts, serving on juries and enlisting in the military, but are told they are not mature enough to have a beer.

By choosing to use fake IDs, students make ethical compromises that erode respect for the law.
How many times must we relearn the lessons of prohibition?

We call upon our elected officials:

To support an informed and dispassionate public debate over the effects of the 21 year-old drinking age.

To consider whether the 10% highway fund “incentive” encourages or inhibits that debate.

To invite new ideas about the best ways to prepare young adults to make responsible decisions about alcohol.

We pledge ourselves and our institutions to playing a vigorous, constructive role as these critical discussions unfold.

Right on the merits, right on the attention paid to the public finance structure of the policy change, and brave to stand up to MADD. Hear, hear.

Free Inquiry at Risk: Universities in Dangerous Times

A Social Research Conference at The New School: Free Inquiry at Risk: Universities in Dangerous Times

Wednesday-Friday, October 29-31, 2008


Rapid globalization, international collaborations, massification, corporate partnerships, increasing number of franchises, regime change, and other conditions of duress are reshaping universities around the world. What are the benefits and what are the risks to academic freedom and free inquiry as universities navigate these trends? This conference will look backward at the role of academic freedom and free inquiry in research universities and forward to what the future may have in store.

This conference will be part of our commemoration of the 75th anniversary of the University in Exile, which was created by Alvin Johnson, the first president of The New School, as a haven for the scholars he rescued from the horrors of Hitler. The University in Exile became the Graduate Faculty of The New School for Social Research and gave birth to our journal, Social Research.

This conference is made possible with generous support from the Ford Foundation, Carnegie Corporation of New York, and Eugene Lang College, The New School for Liberal Arts.

Conference Program

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 29th, 2008

6:00 pm - 7:00 pm
Session I - Founding of The New School and the University in Exile

Academic Freedom, Security Issues and The New School’s Founding Moments (1919 and 1933)
Ira Katznelson, Ruggles Professor of Political Science and History, Columbia University; Former Dean, The New School for Social Research
with remarks: Bob Kerrey, President, The New School

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 30th, 2008

10:00 am - 12:45 pm
Session II - Academic Freedom and the Origins and Role of the Research University

Free Inquiry and the Evolution of the Research University
Akeel Bilgrami, Johnsonian Professor of Philosophy, Director, Heyman Center for the Humanities, Columbia University

How and Why Academic Freedom Became a Canonical Value
Robert M. O'Neil, Director, Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection of Free Expression, University of Virginia School of Law; Professor of Law Emeritus, University Professor Emeritus

Who Has Academic Freedom, Who Protects It and Why?
Joan Wallach Scott, Professor in the School of Social Science, Institute for Advanced Studies

Academic Freedom and Emerging Research Universities in the Present
Ahmed Bawa, Distinguished Lecturer in Physics and Astronomy, Hunter College, City University of New York; former Deputy Vice-Chancellor of Research, University of KwaZulu-Natal

Discussion Between Speakers, then Discussion with Audience

Session Moderator: Jonathan Veitch, Associate Professor of Literature and History, Former Dean, Eugene Lang College, The New School for Liberal Arts

12:45 pm - 2:00 pm BREAK

2:00 pm - 4:45 pm
Session III - Free Inquiry under Conditions of Duress

McCarthyism and Academic Freedom: A Past Threat to the Core Values of the
University
Ellen W. Schrecker, Professor of History, Yeshiva University

Academic Freedom under Political Duress: Israel and Palestine
Itzhak Galnoor, Herbert Samuel Professor of Political Science, Hebrew University of Jerusalem; Deputy Chair, Israel’s Council on Higher Education; Associate, The Van Leer Jerusalem Institute
Khalil Shikaki, Director, Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research; Associate Professor of Political Science, Bir Zeit University

Structural Transformation of the Research University: Finance, Context, and Demography
Craig Calhoun, President, Social Science Research Council; University Professor of the Social Sciences, New York University

The Offshore American University: Risk and Uncertainty in The Overseas Market
Arjun Appadurai, John Dewey Distinguished Professor in the Social Sciences, Senior Advisor for Global Initiatives, The New School

Discussion Between Speakers, then Discussion with Audience

Session Moderator: James E. Miller, Chair, Liberal Studies Program, and Professor of Political Science, The New School for Social Research

4:45 pm - 6:00 pm BREAK

6:00 pm - 7:00 pm
Session IV - Special Event: Conversation with Endangered Scholars from Ethiopia, Zimbabwe, Belarus, and China

This panel is designed to provide concrete illustrations of the denial of the right to free inquiry and academic freedom. Four scholars who themselves have been subject to various kinds of persecution and have been prevented from remaining in their academic posts or doing their research will relate their experiences.

Moderator: Aryeh Neier, President, Open Society Institute

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 31st, 2008

10:00 am - 12:45 pm
Session V - Institutionalizing Free Inquiry in Universities during Regime Transitions

South Africa
Andre du Toit, Emeritus Professor of Political Studies, University of Cape Town

India
Deepak Nayyar, Professor of Economics, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi

China
Merle Goldman, Professor Emerita of History, Boston University

Post-Soviet States
Alfred Stepan, Wallace S. Sayre Professor of Government, Director, Center for the Study of Democracy, Toleration and Religion, Columbia University; Former Rector, Central European University

Russia
Sergei Guriev, Associate Professor, Rector of New Economic School, Russia

Discussion Between Speakers, then Discussion with Audience

Session Moderator: Ronald Kassimir, Associate Provost for Curriculum and Research, The New School

12:45 pm - 2:00 pm BREAK

2:00 pm - 4:00 pm
Session VI - Free Inquiry and Academic Freedom
A Panel Discussion among Academic Leaders

Robert M. Berdahl, President, Association of American Universities; Former Chancellor, University of California, Berkeley; Former President, University of Texas, Austin

Hanna Holborn Gray, Harry Pratt Judson Distinguished Service Professor Emerita, Former President, University of Chicago

Anthony W. Marx, President, Amherst College

Charles M. Vest, President Emeritus and Professor of Mechanical Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Joseph W. Westphal, Provost, The New School; Former Chancellor, Professor of Political Science Emeritus, University of Maine; Former Head, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers

Discussion Between Speakers, then Discussion with Audience

Session Moderator: Bob Kerrey, President, The New School

Tickets may be purchased here.

ASPLP Annual Meeting: Evolution and Morality

Meeting room assignments now available.

Fall 2008, POLI 232: Modern Political Thought

This is nearly final. NB: The wait-list for the course is growing rapidly, but experience teaches me that a significant number of enrolled students will drop the course as a result of the reading load. If you're seeking admission to the course, assume you'll get it. If you're enrolled and are going to be frightened off by the reading load, it would be courteous to un-enroll sooner rather than later.

------------------------------------------

This course provides an introduction to some of the key questions in modern (since 1500, i.e. not ancient or medieval) political thought, with occasional reference to older works when they are helpful for discussing modern questions. Attention will center on the ethics of political life:

1) Whether, when, and why a person should obey the law

2) What means may be used by rulers; whether, when, and why rulers are ethically entitled to use violence, coercion, manipulation, and deception

3) How states can gain the knowledge that is necessary to rule their societies, and what the limits of their knowledge are.

In short, the course will be about political ethics, and about the relationship between morality and politics. It will not be about questions of who decides in politics (e.g. democratic theory and its challenges) or about questions of what ought to be done in politics (whether governments should pursue liberal, conservative, socialist, etc. policies), though some of the texts we read also have important things to say on those questions and we will touch on them as they arise. These topics are addressed in other political theory courses for which this course will provide preparation. Special attention will be given to two of the major kinds of distinctively modern theories about ethics and politics (and objections to them): social contract theories and utilitarianism.

1.September 3: Introduction

Part I. The ethics of obeying and ruling

2. September 5:
Aristotle, The Politics, Everson ed., Cambridge University Press, pp. 65-8 and 170-1
Thoreau, “Resistance to Civil Government” [appearing under the modern title “Civil Disobedience”]
Martin Luther King Jr., “Letter From a Birmingham Jail,” excerpt

3. September 8:
Max Weber, “Politics as a Vocation,” in Gerth and Mills, eds., From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology, Oxford University Press, 1958 [1919] pp. 77-128

A. Obedience

4. September 10:
Sophocles, Antigone, excerpts TBA

5. September 12:
Plato, “The Apology” and “Crito,” from The Trial and Death of Socrates

6. September 15:
Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, Hackett Publishing, chs. 13, 17-18, 26; pp. 74-8, pp. 106-118, 172-89

7. September 17-19:
John Locke, Second Treatise of Government, Cambridge University Press, chs. 2-3, 7, pp. 269-82, 318-53

8. September 22
Locke, Second Treatise, chs. 18-19, pp. 398-428
Declaration of American Independence

9. September 24-26
David Hume, “Of the Original Contract,” in Essays Moral, Political, and Literary, Liberty Fund, pp. 465-88
Hume, Political Writings, Hackett, pp. 51-73 [Treatise of Human Nature III.8-10]

10. September 29
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract, in Gourevitch,ed., The Social Contract and Other Later Political Writings, Cambridge University Press, pp. 49-54, 59-64, 121-2 (I.6-8, II.3-4, IV.1)
Rousseau, Discourse Concerning the Origins of Inequality, in Gourevitch, ed., The Discourses and Other Early Political Writings, pp. 161-88

11. October 1-3
Robert Nozick, “The Tale of the Slave,” from Anarchy, State, and Utopia, pp. 290-2.
Robert Paul Wolff, In Defense of Anarchism, University of California Press, 1970, pp. 3-19

B. Ruling

12. October 6
Machiavelli, The Prince, ch. 8-10, 15-19

13. October 8-10
The Prince, complete


14. October 15-17
Michael Walzer, “Political Action: The Problem of Dirty Hands” Philosophy and Public Affairs, Vol. 2, No. 2. (Winter, 1973), pp. 160-180.

15. October 20
Jeremy Bentham, An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation, chs. 1-2, 4, pp. 1-24, 29-32

16. October 22-24
John Stuart Mill, “Utilitarianism,” Williams ed., London: J.M. Dent/ Everyman, chs 2, 5, pp.6-27, 43-67

17. October 27
Bernard Williams, “A Critique of Utilitarianism,” in Smart & Williams, Utilitarianism, for and against, Cambridge University Press, pp. 93-118.
Robert Goodin, Utilitarianism as a Public Philosophy, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995, pp. 4-12, 28-41

18. October 29-31
Thomas Nagel, “Ruthlessness in Public Life,” in Stuart Hampshire, ed., Public and Private Morality, Cambridge University Press, pp. 75-91
Williams, “Politics and Moral Character,” in Stuart Hampshire, ed., Public and Private Morality, Cambridge University Press, pp. 56-73

19. November 3:
Sissela Bok, Lying: Moral Choice in Public and Private Life, New York: Vintage, 1989, pp. 18-56


20. November 5-7:
Isaiah Berlin, “The Pursuit of the Ideal,” in The Crooked Timber of Humanity, Vintage, pp. 1-19
John Rawls, A Theory of Justice, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1971, pp. 22-33

21. November 10:
Michael Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars, New York: Basic Books, 1977, pp. 127-59, 225-32, 255-68

22. November 12:
In-class exam

Part III. Knowledge and governance

23. November 17:
F. A. Hayek, “The Use of Knowledge in Society,” The American Economic Review, Vol. 35, No. 4. (Sep., 1945), pp. 519-530.
John Dewey, The Political Writings, Hackett, pp. 158-60, 169-72


24. November 19-21:
Michael Oakeshott, “Rationalism in Politics,” in Rationalism in Politics and Other Essays, Liberty Fund, pp. 5-43
Jeremy Bentham, Bentham’s Handbook of Anarchical Fallacies, pp. 43-51, 131-5, 193-205

25. November 24:
Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish, Sheridan trans., New York: Pantheon Books, 1977, pp. 135-39, 149-153, 168-69, 177-92

26. November 26-28
Foucault, 195-228

27. November 26-28.
James C. Scott, Seeing Like A State, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998, pp. 11-15, 18-24, 33-73,

29. December 1:
Scott, pp. 76-83, 87-102

30. December 2:
Conclusion

In the news

I'm quoted in today's Journal de Montreal as one of several experts approving of the Montreal YMCA's decision to allow a Muslim lifeguard to wear a "burkini," a swimsuit that leaves only her face, hands, and feet exposed.

Interestingly and importantly, the woman is a native-born Quebecoise who converted to Islam, not an immigrant or from an immigrant family. It's worthwhile to emphasize that "reasonable accommodations" help protect the religious liberty of everyone in a jurisdiction, not only immigrants. Because of the possibility of conversion, there's no neat way to divide up religious freedom between Them and Us.

Now online

The special issue of Hypatia "In Honor of Iris Marion Young: Theorist and Practitioner of Justice."

Incipient immortality, part of a continuing series

Via faithful reader and sometime co-consumer Professor J, the New York Times provides this round-up of all the most important recent health news. It's Science, so it must be true.

Available for pre-order...

in time for fall semester courses.

The Broadview Anthology of Social and Political Thought: The Twentieth Century and Beyond , eds. Andrew Bailey, Samantha Brennan, Will Kymlicka, Jacob Levy, Alex Sager, Clark Wolf.

Description:

The second volume of this comprehensive anthology covers the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. The anthology is broad ranging both in its selection of material by figures traditionally acknowledged as being of central importance, and in the material it presents by a range of other figures. The material in this volume is presented in three sections. The first, "Power and the State," includes selections by such figures as Goldman, Lenin, Weber, Schmitt, and Hayek. Among those included in the "Race, Gender, and Colonialism" section are de Beauvoir, Gandhi, Fanon, and Young. The third and by far the longest section, "Rights-Based Liberalism and its Critics," focuses on the many interrelated directions that social and political philosophy has taken since the publication of John Rawls's ground-breaking A Theory of Justice in 1971.

See the table of contents.

Already available: volume 1: From Plato to Nietzsche.

Onto the reading list

Malcolm M. Feeley and Edward Rubin, Federalism: Political Identity and Tragic Compromise

Federalism refers to a system in which a centralized national government shares power with member states. Beyond this most basic definition, however, scholars debate the applications and implications of the term. Joining the concept of identity from political science with legal principle, Malcolm M. Feeley and Edward Rubin propose a theory of federalism and test the relevance of federalism for the United States today.

Essentially, federalism represents a compromise among groups who refuse to yield autonomy yet acknowledge the benefits of forming a nation. As in the African and Asian nations forged from former colonies, federalism allows the member states---often dominated by ethnic minorities---to remain largely self-governing. In this way, a young nation can avoid secession and civil war while the people within its borders gradually abandon their local identities and come to view themselves as citizens of the nation.

The United States, Feeley and Rubin remind us, faced a similar situation in the eighteenth century as thirteen regionally distinct, ethnically diverse, and highly independent British colonies came together to found a nation. Despite the Civil War and the upheaval of the Civil Rights Movement, the federalist strategy ultimately succeeded. For the United States in the early twenty-first century, thanks to the rise of a strong national identity and a ubiquitous bureaucracy, federalism has become obsolete. This bold argument is certain to provoke controversy.

I'm worried by the apparent nationalist teleology. A multiethnic state may not be a nation in potentia that just happens not to have yet been realized, and it's dangerous to view it that way. There is no law of nature or moral demand that "the people within its borders gradually abandon their local identities and come to view themselves as citizens of the nation." But still, I think Feeley and Rubin are approaching federalism with the right questions in mind, and I've expressed my own related worries about federalism's obsolescence in the U.S. for related reasons.

I read 40 pages or so of this book in proofs form standing in the book room at Law and Society, and recommend it very highly. It's a major and important work.

You do read...

Piled Higher and Deeper, don't you?

Has anyone...

ever written on the recurrent phrasing of "the pure theory of" in social science and social thought?

It's often used to indicate that a theory is being built up neoclassical economic premises in an ostensibly purely-deductive fashion; but the earliest prominent use of it, Kelsen's "pure theory of law," has no particular relationship to the purity of economics.

Since I would imagine that anyone writing a general account would be unable to resist the title "the pure theory of pure theories," but that phrase generates no hits on google, I'm going to guess that no one's done it. I hereby offer that title up gratis (though an acknowledgment would be nice!) to anyone who can do something clever with it.

Liberal Beginnings

Onto the purchase list and then onto the reading list with this one:

Liberal Beginnings: Making a Republic For the Moderns. by Ira Katznelson and Andreas Kalyvas; 2008, Cambridge University Press.

The book examines the origins and development of the modern liberal tradition and explores the relationship between republicanism and liberalism between 1750 and 1830. The authors consider the diverse settings of Scotland, the American colonies, the new United States, and France and examine the writings of six leading thinkers of this period: Adam Smith, Adam Ferguson, James Madison, Thomas Paine, Germaine de Staël, and Benjamin Constant. The book traces the process by which these thinkers transformed and advanced the republican project, both from within and by introducing new elements from without. Without compromising civic principles or abandoning republican language, they came to see that unrevised, the republican tradition could not grapple successfully with the political problems of their time. By investing new meanings, arguments, and justifications into existing republican ideas and political forms, these innovators fashioned a doctrine for a modern republic, the core of which was surprisingly liberal.

Congratulations...

to Leigh Jenco, whose (absolutely first-rate) dissertation "Individuals, Institutions, and Political Change: The Political Theory of Zhang Shizhao" has been awarded APSA's 2008 Leo Strauss prize for the best dissertation in political theory. Jenco has recently taken up a post as Assistant Professor of Political Science at the National University of Singapore.

San Diego Comic Con

My old friend Ali Kokmen, in San Diego for Comic Con, offered up this rousing rally to soldier on through the end of the convention. Go check it out-- really.

Professor Obama

There's been some understandable surprise in the blogosphere at the account in today's NYT of Barack Obama's career at the University of Chicago Law School, which reports that after his loss to Bobby Rush in the 2000 Congressional primary, the Law School was prepared to offer him a tenured professorship despite his lack of scholarly publications. Assuming that the Times has this right, it's at least quite startling. (The position Obama ended up accepting, Senior Lecturer, was one shared by full-time federal judges Richard Posner and Frank Easterbrook who also teach and research at the Law School; it's a different kind of position, and one that's appropriate to offer to a practitioner interested in teaching.)

One thing to note, though, is that earlier, as Jason Zengerle reported,

[Then-Appointments Chair Douglas] Baird approached Obama about a teaching job at Chicago during his third and final year as a student at Harvard. "You look at his background--Harvard Law Review president, magna cum laude, and he's African American," Baird says. "This is a no-brainer hiring decision at the entry level of any law school in the country." But Obama wasn't interested. Obama did, however, mention that he was writing a book on voting rights, so Baird arranged for him to become a Law and Government Fellow at the school--a position that provided Obama with an office and a modest stipend he could use in the course of his writing. When Obama came to Baird in the middle of his fellowship to report that his book on voting rights had morphed into the memoir that would become Dreams From My Father, Baird told him not to worry.

In other words, the Law School had in some sense already endorsed Dreams of My Father as a substitute for a scholarly book on voting rights. It may be that that assessment carried over to the willingness to consider a tenured position later on. It was a book the school had supported the writing of in the first place, which would make it odd for the school to later take the position that Obama had no publications.

This is probably a bit beside the point; the underlying rationale was surely something more like "you do whatever it takes to get this brilliant charismatic clearly-destined-for-greatness guy on your faculty for the rest of his life." But I do think that the institutional endorsement of the book is relevant.

[Disclaimer: Despite my own time at the Law School and the fact that I know lots of the people quoted, I have no inside knowledge about any of this.]

Update: Not terribly surprisingly, it appears that the NYT got this wrong.

Farewell...

to Open University, now defunct and removed from the TNR homepage. A noble effort...

Onto the reading list

Social Philosophy and Policy special issue on freedom of association, including:

THE PRIVATE SOCIETY AND THE LIBERAL PUBLIC GOOD IN JOHN LOCKE'S THOUGHT
Eric R. Claeys
Social Philosophy and Policy, Volume 25, Issue 02, July 2008, pp 201-234

THE MADISONIAN PARADOX OF FREEDOM OF ASSOCIATION
Richard Boyd
Social Philosophy and Policy, Volume 25, Issue 02, July 2008, pp 235-262

FROM THE SOCIAL CONTRACT TO THE ART OF ASSOCIATION: A TOCQUEVILLIAN PERSPECTIVE
Aurelian Craiutu
Social Philosophy and Policy, Volume 25, Issue 02, July 2008, pp 263-287

and a good deal else besides...

Sylabussing

I've never before taught the same class in the spring of one academic year and in the fall of the immediately following year. Add in the fact that I was doing strike-disrupted grading until June, and it feels much too soon to be thinking about this course again. But September 3 isn't so terribly far away.

Hm. What to cut, and how to reconfigure?

"Why to obey" and "how to rule" should be disentangled in Part I of the syllabus. Social contract theory should be moved out of the liberalism-conservatism-socialism part of the course and back to the "why to obey" section.

On the one hand, maybe all the ancient material should be dropped; it's an intro to "modern political thought," after all. On the other hand, maybe what should be dropped is most of Parts II and III, with Part I plus social contract theory plus some case studies, stretched out over the semester.

Possibly add some Foucault, Discipline, alongside Hayek and Dewey on governance and knowledge.

More Bentham. But possibly drop Mill altogether? That would be strange, but it may be the right answer.

-------------

The idea that books need to be ordered soon is most distressing.

-------------

Political Science 232: Modern Political Thought, Fall 2008, PRELIMINARY DRAFT syllabus.



1.September 3: Introduction

Part I. Ethics and Politics

2. September 5:
Thoreau, “Resistance to Civil Government” [appearing under the modern title “Civil Disobedience”]
Excerpt from Martin Luther King, “Letter from a Birmingham Jail”

3. September 8:
CP: Max Weber, “Politics as a Vocation,” in Gerth and Mills, eds., From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology, Oxford University Press, 1958 [1919] pp. 77-128

4. September 10:
Sophocles, Antigone, entire

5. September 12:
Plato, “Crito” and “The Apology”

6. September 15-17
Machiavelli, The Prince, ch. 8-26

September 17-19: Conferences begin

7. September 22:
CP: Michael Walzer, “Political Action: The Problem of Dirty Hands” Philosophy and Public Affairs, Vol. 2, No. 2. (Winter, 1973), pp. 160-180.
Stable URL: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0048-3915%28197324%292%3A2%3C160%3APATPOD%3E2.0.CO%3B2-7

8. September 24-26:
CP: Bernard Williams, “A Critique of Utilitarianism,” in Smart & Williams, Utilitarianism, for and against, Cambridge University Press, pp. 93-118.
Williams, “Politics and Moral Character,” and Thomas Nagel, “Ruthlessness in Public Life,” in Stuart Hampshire, ed., Public and Private Morality, Cambridge University Press, pp. 56-73 and 75-91

9. September 29:
CP: Carl Schmitt, The Concept of the Political, University of Chicago Press, 1996, pp. 19-38
Thucydides, “The Melian Dialogue,” from History of the Peloponnesian War

10. October 1-3:
CP: Robert Nozick, “The Tale of the Slave,” from Anarchy, State, and Utopia, pp. 290-2.
Robert Paul Wolff, In Defense of Anarchism, University of California Press, 1970, pp. 3-19


Aristotle, The Politics, Everson ed., Cambridge University Press, pp. 65-8 and 170-1

11. October 6:
CP: F. A. Hayek, “The Use of Knowledge in Society,” The American Economic Review, Vol. 35, No. 4. (Sep., 1945), pp. 519-530.
Stable URL: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0002-8282%28194509%2935%3A4%3C519%3ATUOKIS%3E2.0.CO%3B2-1
John Dewey, The Political Writings, Hackett, pp. 158-60, 169-72


12. October 8-10:
CP: Michael Oakeshott, “Rationalism in Politics,” in Rationalism in Politics and Other Essays, Liberty Fund, pp. 5-43
Jeremy Bentham, Bentham’s Handbook of Anarchical Fallacies, pp. 43-51, 131-5, 193-205

Part II. Liberty

October 13: NO CLASS

13. October 15-17.
CP: Plato, The Republic, Allan Bloom trans., pp. 235-242 (557a-564a), 251-60 (571a-579e)

14. October 20.
CP: Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract, in Gourevitch,ed., The Social Contract and Other Later Political Writings, Cambridge University Press, pp. 49-54, 59-64, 121-2 (I.6-8, II.3-4, IV.1)
Benjamin Constant, “The Liberty of the Ancients Compared with That of the Moderns,” in Biancamaria Fontana, ed., Constant: Political Writings, Cambridge University Press, pp. 309-28

15. October 22-24.
CP: Isaiah Berlin, “Two Concepts of Liberty,” in Four Essays on Liberty, Oxford University Press, pp. 119-54

16. October 27.
CP: Berlin, “Two Concepts,” pp. 154-72.
Charles Taylor, “What’s Wrong With Negative Liberty,” in Philosophical Papers vol 2: Philosophy and the Human Sciences, pp. 211-29


Part III. Ideas, ideals, and ideologies: what shall we do?

19. October 29-31:
CP: John Locke, Second Treatise of Civil Government, Cambridge University Press, pp. 269-78, 330-63, ch. 2, 8-11
Declaration of American Independence

MARCH 4: SECOND PAPER DUE

21. November 3:
CP: David Hume, “Of the Original Contract,” in Essays Moral, Political, and Literary, Liberty Fund, pp. 465-88
Hume, Political Writings, Hackett, pp. 51-73 [Treatise of Human Nature III.8-10]
Ralph Waldo Emerson, “The Conservative,” in Essays & Lectures, Library of America, pp. 173-89

22. November 5-7:
CP: Oakeshott, “On Being Conservative,” in Rationalism in Politics, pp. 407-37

23. November 10:
John Stuart Mill, On Liberty, ch. 1-2

24. November 12-14:
John Stuart Mill, On Liberty, ch. 3-5

25. November 17:
CP: John Rawls, A Theory of Justice, Harvard University Press, 1971, pp. 3-33 and 54-65

26. November 19:
IN-CLASS EXAM

No conferences the week of November 17.

27. November 26.
CP: Karl Marx, “On the Jewish Question,” in Tucker, ed., The Marx-Engels Reader, pp. 26-52
“The Communist Manifesto,” sections 1 and 2, pp. 469-91

28. November 28-30.
CP: Publius, The Federalist Papers, Rossiter ed., Signet, pp. 66-79, 297-322 (#s 9-10, 47-51
And review: Rousseau reading from February 14-16
Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen

29. December 1:
John Stuart Mill, Considerations on Representative Government, ch. 16, “Of Nationality.”

30. December 2:
CP: Isaiah Berlin, “The Pursuit of the Ideal,” in The Crooked Timber of Humanity, Vintage, pp. 1-19
George Orwell, “Politics and the English Language,” in The Orwell Reader, Harvest, pp. 355-66

Best line of the day

re the X-Files:

Either way, with six years' distance, the whole syndicate concept seems hopelessly naive. The old white guys in the military-industrial complex can't handle state-building in Afghanistan—we're supposed to believe they can coordinate an alien invasion?

Now online

The final, published, version of Three Perversities of Indian Law, 12(2) Texas Review of Law and Politics 329-68 (2008).