What I’ve been up to, 2017

Copying this over from here.

Updates, December 2016-December 2017

Academic:

"There Is No Such Thing As Ideal Theory", 33(1-2) Social Philosophy & Policy 312-333 (2016), was published in a special issue of Social Philosophy and Policy on realism and idealism in political theory.

“Contra Politanism” has been published online-first at The European Journal of Political Theory.

“Corps Intermédiaires, Civil Society, and the Art of Association” In Naomi Lamoreaux and John Wallis, eds., Organizations, Civil Society, and the Roots of Development. University of Chicago Press/ National Bureau of Economic Research, 2017

“Against Fraternity: Democracy Without Solidarity.” In Keith Banting and Will Kymlicka, eds., The Strains of Commitment: Solidarity in Diverse Societies. Oxford University Press, 2017

“Toward a Non-Lockean Libertarianism,” in Bas van der Vossen, Jason Brennan, and David Schmidtz, eds., The Routledge Handbook of Libertarianism, London: Routledge, 2017.

Review of Jeremy Waldron, Political Political Theory, in The Review of Politics.

A slightly revised paperback edition of Rationalism, Pluralism, and Freedom was published by Oxford University Press.

In August 2017 I was the Dan and Gwen Taylor Fellow visiting in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Otago (New Zealand).

Entries continue to be published online-first as they are ready at The Oxford Handbook of Classics in Contemporary Political Theory. Thirty-five have been published so far.



Public commentary, primarily but not exclusively in my new capacity as of 2017 as a Senior Fellow of the Niskanen Center:

"Statist just-so stories," Reason, December 2017 (review of James C. Scott, Against the Grain) 

"The Limits of legalism," Niskanen, November 27 2017

"Black liberty matters," Niskanen, September 20, 2017

"All good things," Boston Review, September 2017

"The sovereign myth," Niskanen, June 15 2017

"Why walking out is better than shouting down," The Chronicle of Higher Education, May 25 2017

"The shortcut to serfdom," Niskanen, May 16 2017

"A government of laws, not son-in-laws," Niskanen, April 20, 2017

Federalism, jurisdiction, and resistance," Niskanen, February 22, 2017

"Hypocrisy isn't the problem. Nihilism is." Los Angeles Times, February 8, 2017. Reprinted in The Chicago Tribune. 

"The free society is an open society." Niskanen, January 31, 2017. "Les murs ne bloquent pas seulement les gens à l'extérieur, mais aussi à l'intérieur,"  Slate.fr, February 6, 2017.

"The party declines." Niskanen, January 18, 2017

"The defense of liberty can't do without identity politics." Niskanen, December 13, 2016



  Upcoming: I will spend the winter/spring semester of 2018 on sabbatical at Stanford in the Department of Political Science and the McCoy Family Center for Ethics in Society. The 2018 Annual Lecture of the Yan P. Lin Centre for the Study of Freedom and Global Orders in the Ancient and Modern Worlds will be given March 29 by Timur Kuran. The 2016 Lecture was given by Orlando Patterson and can be seen here. The 2017 Lecture was given by Saskia Sassen and can be seen here. In May 2018 I will co-chair, with Josiah Ober and Melissa Schwartzberg, a conference on “Political Theory In/ And/ As Political Science.” In January 2019 I will begin a term as Political Theory Field Editor for The Journal of Politics.