Taylor-blogging that doesn't involve the commission

hat-tip Henry: SSRC has created a new scholar-blog: "The immanent frame: secularism, religion, and the public sphere," and it currently features Professor Taylor among others blogging about A Secular Age.

Professional news

I don't do a lot of these kind of posts, but a blogosphere-jurisprudence-Chicago Law combination means this one's too noteworthy to pass up: Brian Leiter from Texas to Chicago.

But other than that, Mrs. Lincoln...

From time to time we run into the old discussion about academic book reviews: too many puff pieces, too little incentive to be critical when a book calls for it, vs. too high of stakes if (especially) a junior author gets a bad review in a major journal.
Brian Leiter excerpts from a review whose author is... not afraid to say what he thinks.

Today in the Chronicle

One of the better pieces that's been written surveying the controversy around and aftermath of Walt and Mearsheimer's "Israel Lobby" work: "'Waltheimer' on the Hot Seat" by Evan Goldstein.

It includes the following.

That explanation has not satisfied Walt and Mearsheimer's critics, who insist there must be a more-compelling explanation for why two scholars with deeply entrenched intellectual inclinations would push such an argument at this juncture in their careers. And so a parlor game of sorts is under way within the discipline to explain what many find so inexplicable. The theory enjoying the most credence holds that their crusading zeal against the Israel lobby is fueled by lingering resentment from the period leading up to the invasion of Iraq, when Mearsheimer and Walt were high-profile critics of the Bush administration's policy of militarized regime change.

In addition to writing a major article in Foreign Policy decrying the 2003 invasion of Iraq as an "unnecessary war," they published a flurry of op-eds and led the effort to place an open letter in The New York Times with the headline "War With Iraq Is Not in America's National Interest." Yet by all accounts, those efforts barely made a ripple in the broader public conversation. "I think this flummoxed the living hell out of them," says Daniel W. Drezner, an associate professor of international politics at Tufts University. "I think it was inconceivable to them that no one listened."

When asked about that analysis, Mearsheimer concedes that the debate over Iraq policy was "very frustrating." As he rehashes that period, it is evident that he continues to be irritated by the uncivilized terms on which he feels the debate was conducted. "Critics of the war were called all sorts of names — you were called soft on terrorism, you were called an appeaser, you were accused of not being very smart," he says. But both he and Walt emphatically reject the suggestion that Iraq is at the root of their recent work on the Israel lobby.

And Iraq does seem to be only part of the story. Spend some time talking with Mearsheimer and Walt, and it immediately becomes apparent that they are animated by a rather exalted belief in the critical role scholars should play in a democratic society. They use phrases like "speak truth to power" without a hint of irony or self-consciousness. "The reason we have great universities and tenured professors at those universities is to allow those individuals to enter into the marketplace of ideas and engage powerful policy makers," says Mearsheimer. A few weeks later, he adds, "At the high end of the academic enterprise, you should be asking important questions and providing answers to those questions that challenge the conventional wisdom."

It's not at all clear to me that the last paragraph contradicts the Iraq thesis (a thesis I've discussed before). Indeed, I think it emphasizes that thesis. The exalted view of the role (apparently only tenured) professors at great universities should play in a democratic society would only aggravate the sense of frustration that policymakers and the public didn't listen to them in 2002-03. The more sure you are that you're an authority and ought to be listened to, the more baffling and irritating you'll find it when you're not-- and, sometimes, the more you'll go looking for some extraordinary explanation for the anomalous situation that your wisdom wasn't listened to.

Now Walt and Mearsheimer were right to think they were right about the war. But they also seem to be struck with a certain sense of entitlement-- that when they speak truth to power, power will sit up and listen, because they are who they are, and they're right. The failure of power to do so seems to them inexplicable in normal terms. They spoke, loudly, in the run-up to the war; they perceive themselves to have been silenced, because their authority wasn't heeded. And so they went looking for a silencer, and convinced themselves they had found one. And their view that they're still being silenced seems impervious to money, fame, or the prominence of their national and international platform from which to speak.

A couple of other things struck me.

This month, Mearsheimer and Walt depart for Europe, where they will address audiences in Berlin, Paris, Amsterdam, Vienna, and Britain. In London alone, they have events scheduled at the London School of Economics and Political Science, the University of London, and the House of Lords.

I am for some reason terribly amused at the thought of the bien-pensants of Europe turning out to cheer authors whose stated concern is that the United States should pursue its own national security interest more effectively. In any other context, would an American IR realist receive the reception they may well receive? And I wonder whether either the authors or the audiences will notice that oddity if it arises, and what they will tell themselves about it.

Also: on Colbert, Mearsheimer spun the project as one of just looking at a lobbying group among other lobbying groups, as ordinary as the NRA or the AARP. We already know this isn't right; one would study the NRA by studying the NRA, but they study The Israel Lobby by studying AIPAC, and American Jews in the media, and neoconservatives in government, and Jews in think tanks, and Jews in academia... and the fundamentalst Christians who believe odd things about Israel's destiny. But the gap between "just another lobbying group" and the work is exposed here:

Mearsheimer and Walt are quick to acknowledge that realist theory fails to explain the outsize influence of the Israel lobby. "All theories face anomalies," Mearsheimer reasons. "There are always going to be cases that contradict a particular theory; this is true of all social-science theories." With a mixture of defensiveness and reassurance, he adds, "And this case is an anomaly."

He's right that there are always outliers, of course. And funny things sometimes happen when people turn to the study of outliers. If one's own theory doesn't explain the outlier, then one might want to learn some new theories if the outlier is particularly important, rather than engaging in a standardless, disciplineless, methodless inquiry about what makes this Lobby different from all other lobbies. (As I've noted before, there are political scientists who study the effects of domestic lobbying on US foreign policy-making, some of whom have found that AIPAC is decisively important and others of whom have not, and none of whom have been called anti-Semitic for their troubles. But qua realists, M&W aren't in that intellectual business.) But, even if one doesn't, there's something especially odd about then going in front of a general audience, putting on a "who, me?" face, and denying that you're treating the Israel Lobby as anything out of the ordinary.

News of the day

Canadian dollar tops $US 1.05, highest level since 1960, up 22% since January.

CFP: Political Hebraism

CALL FOR PAPERS
Political Hebraism: Jewish Sources in the History of Political Thought
Conference at Princeton University
September 7-9, 2008

Jewish, Christian, and Islamic thinkers -- philosophers, scholars, statesmen, theologians, and rabbis -- have historically drawn ideas with political import from the Hebrew Bible and from talmudic and later rabbinic writings. The derivation of political thought from the Hebrew Bible and later Hebrew sources coexisted and continues to coexist with better-known Greek, Roman, European, and Anglo-American traditions. As such, the Hebraic political tradition, broadly defined, constitutes an integral if understudied component of the history and legacy of Western political thought. The 2008 conference on political Hebraism invites proposals that examine various aspects of this Hebraic political tradition, including analyses and appropriations of elements of the Hebrew Bible and Jewish textual tradition in the history of political thought as well as constructive evaluations of some of their central ideas

While other submissions will be considered, we especially invite proposals that address the following topics:

1.
Origins and Ends of Political Society
Thinkers with widely ranging understandings of the origins and ends of the political order have drawn on Hebraic sources: Some have looked to contractual agreements, and others believed the political order was divinely ordained. Whether the ultimate goal of politics was conceived as concord or salvation, these understandings could be grounded in Hebraic sources.

Papers in this section will examine such questions within the Jewish tradition as: To what extent is politics a response to human nature? Does the polity have a divine or messianic end, or does it serve the ends of its members or human society? To what extent is political virtue valued, and of what does it consist? Papers should also consider whether questions such as these arise within the Jewish tradition or outside it. These questions may be addressed with direct reference to Jewish texts, or it may explore how the tradition has been pressed into service to deal with them.

2.
Monarchy and Republicanism
Questions surrounding political regimes -- which is preferable? how do they evolve? what are the roles of the key players? -- are issues central to Greek political philosophy; similarly, the question of which regime is preferable is often addressed within the Jewish tradition. To what extent is monarchy Judaism's preferred regime? Is there an essential nature to biblical monarchy as it was discussed and established? Is the Jewish tradition concerned with actual regimes and the mechanics of politics, or do these discussions tend to be symbolic? What is the role of the scholar-king within the Judaic tradition? Is there a relationship between philosophy and government within this tradition?

Papers in this section may represent the authors' own understandings and interpretations of the political thought of Hebrew sources as these address political regimes. Alternatively, papers may examine reliance on Hebrew sources by political thinkers throughout history.

3.
Nationhood
Since the modern nation-state began dominating European politics in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, appeals to the Hebraic tradition and allusions to the people of Israel have become increasingly commonplace in political thought. Questions of nations and nationhood have recently regained prominence in political discourse, and there is now frequent talk of a "post-national world." Can Hebraic sources contribute to this debate? If so, is their contribution comparable to their place in the early-modern analyses and defense of the emergent modern state and new conceptions of the nation?

Papers may address the nation in Jewish thought or the Hebrew nation as it was taken to be a model for other nations in history; they may also develop or propose theories of the nation rooted in Hebraic sources

4.
Law and Constitutionalism
It has been widely asserted -- at least since the New Testament missionary writings of St. Paul -- that the Jewish tradition is distinctly identifiable by its focus on the law. Those who valued as well as those who derogated the Jewish tradition often characterized it in this manner. To what extent is Jewish law political law? How within this tradition do the laws of the political system relate to religious laws? Is consent a necessary attribute of Judaic constitutionalism? Is there a relationship between contemporary jurisprudence and Hebraic -- biblical as well as rabbinic -- understandings of the "rule of law"? Does the Judaic legal tradition permit or even invite an interplay between positive and divine law? To what extent do theorists and jurisprudential scholars -- ranging from Grotius, Selden, and the authors of The Federalist to Robert Cover and perhaps even H.L.A. Hart and Ronald Dworkin -- who have incorporated Hebraic legal notions into their analyses of ! We! ! stern legal systems, succeed in transplanting Hebraic conceptions into new contexts? Where might Jewish conceptions of law provide alternative perspectives in discussions of legal issues today?

5.
Theories of Justice
Greek political thought arguably begins with a search for justice rather than with the concern for order that may be said to characterize Hebraic political thought in the biblical period. How and how much is the Jewish political tradition concerned with justice? Is there a recapturable conception of justice that is peculiar to political Hebraism? In periods when Jewish rather than Greek and Roman texts served as sources for political thought, what if any alternatives to the classical notions of justice were found in the Jewish tradition?

Papers may address biblical ideas or ideals of justice broadly conceived, the idea of justice propounded by any rabbi or group of rabbis, or theories of justice that purport to draw from the Jewish textual tradition. Alternatively, papers may propose distinctively Hebraic theories of justice or compare Jewish and Greek and/or Roman, Christian, Muslim, Eastern, and Western thought on these and related matters

6.
The Individual and the Collective
The relationship between the individual and the collective is among the most evident concerns that distinguish modern political regimes and ideologies from one another and from pre-modern forms of governance. How does the Hebraic tradition conceive of this relationship? Is there a single, unifying understanding of the individual-collective relationship in the various forms of Jewish political organization -- kahal, kehilla, and goy, for instance?

7.
Methodology
The Jewish textual tradition can be studied as a body of texts, coherent or not, just as the Bible may be conceived as a single book, but none of this can be taken as self-evident. By the same token, neither can readings of the Bible and of the Jewish textual tradition be offered as parts of the same field without encountering and contravening disciplinary conventions.

Papers in this section will pose and address methodological obstacles to the study of political Hebraism, proposing solutions and ideas that will assist scholars in the field.

Proposals, each including a 300-500-word abstract and a short letter of introduction, should be sent by e-mail to meiravj@shalem.org.il no later than December 15, 2007. It is presumed that all papers presented at the conference will also be submitted for publication in Hebraic Political Studies, subject to double-blind review. Authors should state their intentions with regard to publication in their initial proposals. Authors of papers accepted for presentation will be notified by February 1, 2008. Complete drafts of these papers should be submitted for distribution to conference participants by May 15, 2008.

Scholars and students whose papers are accepted for presentation, or who are invited to participate in the conference as discussants or panel chairs, will be offered financial support that will allow their participation. Acceptance of this support will entail a commitment to participate in the entire conference.

For more information, contact:
Meirav Jones
Associate Editor, Hebraic Political Studies
Managing Director, Institute for Philosophy, Politics and Religion
The Shalem Center
meiravj@shalem.org.il
972-2-560-5589
www.hpstudies.org

Perestroika and the Israel Lobby

This article [via] about political scientist Bruce Bueno de Mesquita includes a brief overview of the Perestroika movement in APSA, and reminds me how prominent among the Petestroikans were... Steven Walt and John Mearsheimer. At this point I find it a little odd to see both (or either!) of them mentioned in an article that's not at all about The Lobby-- which is of course unfortunate.

I wonder what there is to say about the path from Perestroika to The Israel Lobby. I think that there's something; I don't think this is mere coincidence. But I'm not sure what that something should be. There are cheap things that could be said about rigor, but I don't think they're the right things to say-- and, after all, while I'm no Perestroikan, I'm certainly not a rigorous scientist by BBdM's lights either. (I also don't think that the connection is to be found in M&W's ostensible martyrdom for free speech and intellectual openness about the Lobby, likened to the Perestroikan struggle for openness back then, though perhaps they think so.)

Something to puzzle over. Readers who can squint just right and see what the relationship is between M&W 2001 and M&W 2007 are encouraged to let me know.

Elsewhere...

Two very smart reviews of very important books.

Brad DeLong, Review of James Scott, Seeing Like A State. See also follow-up discussion at orgtheory .

David Bell, review of Pierre Rosanvallon, The Demands of Liberty: Civil Society in France Since the Revolution

And see also: Roderick Long on Kramnick on Burke's Vindication; and Brian Leiter on Randy Barnett's originalism; and Barnett's reply.

On the one hand...

the Taylor-Bouchard commission hearings have been a train wreck-- a juicy opportunity for the most bigoted elements in Quebec society to get a live televised audience for their views. And the sense that they've been a train wreck is only compounded when Professors Bouchard and Taylor step out of information-gathering mode and into exasperated argument with the citizens they're supposed to be listening to.

On the other hand... they're right, and for that matter they're right to be exasperated, and it's cheering to have them express it.

Bouchard was talking to local retiree Henri Pepin, who had come to tell the commissioners publicly what he and many other Quebecers: that rising numbers of Muslims and other immigrants are swamping Quebec.

"In 100 years, I don't think there will be many Quebecois left," Pépin said.

"That, sir, is just a fairy tale," Bouchard retorted. "You're raising these fears for nothing."

"Yeah, yeah, yeah, you say we're raising these fears for nothing," Pepin replied "But just wait until what's happening in France happens here."

Bouchard had heard enough, and spelled out how Quebec can avoid the strife that France - an officially secular state - has gone through with its millions of Muslim immigrants from the former colonies in the Maghreb.

In Quebec, "we have a duty to make sure that all immigrants become as integrated as possible in our society, that they share our fundamental values," Bouchard said.

"And the way to do that, sometimes, is to perhaps grant them an accommodation, to make their life easier, so that they stay in our milieu, in our 'bouillon de culture', that they submit to the lifestyle that is our own, and that they can more easily assimilate our fundamental values."

Assimilate - it was the first time either co-chairman had mentioned the term as something they wish for immigrants and minorities. "If you give them the means to go into the margins, they'll never have the opportunity to assimilate our fundamental values," Bouchard continued.

"It's a fact that you should keep in mind," he told Pepin, one of 11 people to address the commission today. "It's more complicated than you say."

Bouchard also chastised another speaker, a young engineer named Luc Lafreniere, who said Quebec should force new immigrants - especially those with special religious demands like devout Muslims - to settle in the regions rather than allow them to "take possession" of some Montreal neighbourhoods.

"That's a way to target Muslims," Bouchard replied. "All the time - it's Muslims, Muslims, Muslims."

To another speaker, a man who described himself as a "psycho-educator" and talked disdainfully of "multiculturalism a la Canadian" (pronounced in English), Taylor was dismissive.

"I don't think you've ever read the original texts of Canadian multiculturalism policy," he told Jacques Lamothe. "Never was it written that people who come here can apply their customs without making any changes to them."

Near the start of today's hearing, Bouchard made what he called "a kind of declaration" : He and Taylor has spent all last night in a private focus group with local residents - something they've been doing quietly in every city on their tour.

The focus groups are a "third way" - after the open-mike nights and daytime presentation of briefs - for the commissioners to hear how the "silent majority," people who don't attend hearings, really feel abut the issues, spokesman Sylvain Leclerc later explained.

But last night's meeting - with about 20 immigrants and refugees, mostly Colombians and others Latinos - impressed Taylor and Bouchard no end. It was a welcome antidote to two days of hearings dominated by the question of Herouxville, the Mauricie village whose controversial "code of life" aimed at religious immigrants grabbed headlines.

The people in the focus group sent the commissioners a different message entirely.

"We were extremely impressed by this spectacle of people who left everything behind, who arrived here completely destitute with the families and children, who didn't even speak French, who couldn't find work in their profession, who experienced xenophobia first-hand, and who showed extraordinary courage in rebuilding their lives," Bouchard said.

"In sum, theirs is a reality all Quebecers should know about, but which unfortunately is quite misunderstood."

If that reality was better known, "it would put an end to a lot of stereotypes," he added.

"It's a great misery that that reality is not better known."

Taylor agreed. The focus group, he said, "opened our eyes to aspects of life here that are being ignored by the population at large."

And, as if stabbing right at the heart of Herouxville, the commissioners concluded with an observation: that the immigrants they met didn't succeed here in a vacuum - they were helped by many local families and volunteers, every step of the way.

"It's true," Bouchard said, "there's a lot of compassion in Quebec - very true."

CFP: NEPSA

Of interest to several categories of blogreaders, because New England PSA is a very grad-student-friendly conference, is the regional PSA friendliest to jurisprudence and, along with Western, to political theory; and is, I think, the only American political science meeting to have a dedicated Canadian Politics section. Plus: this year, just down the hill from ye olde alma mater.

Call for Papers, New England Political Science Association, Providence, RI, April 25-26 2008

Program Chairs

Paul Christopher Manuel, New Hampshire Institute of Politics at
Saint Anselm College pmanuel@anselm.edu

Anne Marie Cammisa, Saint Anselm College acammisa@anselm.edu

The New England Political Science Association invites proposals for papers and panels to be presented at its 2008 annual meeting at the Providence Marriott Downtown. Proposals should be submitted by email, with the proposal in the message text (do not send attachments), to the relevant section head. Those unsure on appropriate section may submit to more than one and should inform the relevant section heads of parallel submissions. The deadline for receipt of submissions is December 20th 2007.

Please include the following information in your submission:

For individual papers:
Name(s)
Institution(s)
Year Ph.D. received or expected
Title of paper
Abstract

For panels*:
Name of organizer
Institution
Year Ph.D. received or expected
Title of panel
Summary of panel theme
Information on panel papers or contributors
* Panel proposals must include panelists from at least three universities or colleges.


American Politics: James Carlson, jcarlson@providence.edu

Comparative Politics: Mary Fran T. Malone, Mary.Malone@unh.edu

International Relations: Christine Kearney, ckearney@anselm.edu

Political Theory: Steven Michels, MichelsS@sacredheart.edu

Public Law: Peter Ubertaccio, pubertaccio@stonehill.edu

Public Policy: Robert Hackey, rhackey@providence.edu

Politics and History: Michael C. Connolly, michael.connolly@maine.edu

Canadian Politics: James T. McHugh, jmchugh@roosevelt.edu
__________________________________________________________________________
2008 NEPSA President--Christopher Bosso, Northeastern University c.bosso@neu.edu
Visit us at http://www.neu.edu/nepsa/

Vox pop

From The Gazette:

Hearings a Pandora's box of bigotry, groups say
Jeff Heinrich, The Gazette

Before they had even begun, Charles Taylor and Gerard Bouchard worried that the cross-Quebec series of open-mike hearings they were about to embark on would become a Pandora's box of bigotry, to be pried open live and unfiltered on national TV.

Now - six weeks after the 17-city "reasonable accommodation" road show got under way and derogatory remarks against Jews, Muslims, Sikhs and other religious minorities started flying - it seems that Quebecers think the chairmen were right to worry.

In a new poll, 62 per cent - rising to 74 per cent in central Quebec, scene of the Herouxville controversy - said the commission should have done something from the outset to prevent racist and anti-Semitic statements from being expressed.

And 40 per cent of non-francophones polled said those views are so objectionable that the hearings should no longer be carried live on Radio-Canada.

The concern echoes that of Quebec's Jewish community leaders, who told a national Jewish newspaper last week they fear the commission has become a forum for intolerance.

"A soapbox for venting racism and a beat-the-immigrant festival" - that's how Steven Slimovitch, national legal counsel for B'nai Brith Canada, described the proceedings to the Canadian Jewish News.

The proof was nowhere more evident than Sept. 24 in St. Jerome, north of Montreal, when speaker after speaker took the open mike to vent their frustration with Jews: their money, their kosher labels on foods, their cottages in the Laurentians.

The vitriol was "very painful," Rabbi Reuben Poupko of Congregation Beth Israel Beth Aaron told the Canadian Jewish News. The hearings, he said, had become "a magnet for some of the most extreme and dangerous voices in Quebec."

Bouchard and Taylor - who only once have cut a speaker off for making xenophobic remarks, and often engage in open debate with people who say they don't like Muslims or other "fanatics" - should intervene more when comments "go beyond the pale," Poupko said.

Do other Quebecers agree? Not quite.

The Leger Marketing poll, carried out for the Montreal-based Association for Canadian Studies, suggests that Quebecers are split on how well the chairmen are handling the proceedings.

Fifty-four per cent said Taylor and Bouchard have moderated the forums "in an efficient way" - an approval rating that, paradoxically, rises to 57 per cent for non-francophones. Only 16 per cent thought they were doing an excellent job.

Overall, 69 per cent said the hearings are worthwhile despite the racism and anti-Semitism that has shown through. Only one-third of Quebecers think the hearings are "a mistake."

Two-thirds of Quebecers think the hearings are a good way to "send an important message about the limits" of accommodations of immigrants and religious minorities - not the freedom they provide.

A large majority - 71 per cent - also say the hearings show how much Quebecers "value cultural diversity" - just not religious diversity.

Sixty per cent feel the hearings "will generate an important critique of the place of immigrants in Quebec" and will "help to better define what Quebec's identity is."

However, many people think the commission is blind to some of the province's oldest and long-established minorities: anglophones and aboriginals.

Two-thirds said they want to hear more anglos and First Nations people come forth and address the commission - and an even higher proportion of non-anglophones agreed.

Overall, 70 per cent said the hearings are a "healthy" way for opinions to be aired in public, although only half think those opinions reflect what most Quebecers believe.

"Clearly, most Quebecers hold a positive view of the hearings," said Jack Jedwab, executive director of the Association for Canadian Studies.

"The commission has not lost credibility. People are concerned about the anti-Semitism and racist remarks, but they feel the deliberations are sufficiently important that we should look beyond them."

CFP: ALSP

via public reason:

ALSP: 27-29 March 2008 | CFP: 30 November 2007

The Association of Legal and Social Philosophy 2008 Conference will be held at the University of Nottingham from 27 to 29 March 2008. The conference theme is Global Justice. The deadline for abstracts and panel proposals is 30 November 2007. The deadline for complete paper submission is 1 March 2008. The plenary speakers are Margaret Moore, Queens University, Ontario; Stephen Gardiner, University of Washington; and Kok-Chor Tan, University of Pennsylvania. Call for papers.

CFP: British Society for Ethical Theory

Via Professor Solum, a call for papers for the British Society for Ethical Theory.

Call for Papers
THE BRITISH SOCIETY FOR ETHICAL THEORY
2008 CONFERENCE
University of Edinburgh, UK
14-16th July 2008

Invited Speakers: Barbara Herman (UCLA), Wlodek Rabinowicz (Lund)

Papers are invited for the annual conference of the British Society for Ethical
Theory, to be held at the University of Edinburgh. The subject area is open
within metaethics and normative ethics. Papers on topics in applied ethics or
the history of ethics may also be considered provided they are also of wider
theoretical interest.

Papers, which should be unpublished at the time of submission, should be in
English, no longer than 6500 words, readable in at most 45 minutes and in a
form suitable for blind review. Please send your submission electronically, and
include an abstract, as well as your full name, address and academic
affiliation. Those who submitted papers for our previous conferences
-successfully or otherwise - are welcome to submit again (though not of course
the same papers!).

Please tell us if you are a postgraduate student: submissions from postgraduates
are encouraged as our aim is that some such should be represented at the
conference. Selected conference papers will be published in the journal Ethical
Theory and Moral Practice. Please make clear in any covering letter whether you
wish your paper to be considered for publication here as well as for the
conference programme.

The deadline for submissions is 7th December, 2007.

Papers and accompanying particulars should be emailed to Dr. Elinor Mason:
Elinor.Mason@ed.ac.uk

Note that ONLY electronic submissions will be accepted.

The BSET conference is a major ethics conference held annually in or near the
UK. Our programme normally comprises around 11 papers, 2 invited, the rest
submitted. Submitted papers are blind refereed. All those we select for the
programme are assigned a generous time allocation (around 75 minutes, 45
minutes reading time, 30 for discussion) and all papers are given to plenary
sessions. We are a "British" society only as regards the geography of where we
hold our meetings and such trivia as the way we spell "programme"; we seek to
attract submissions from an international field. Submitted papers read to
previous conferences have included work by Robert Audi, Margaret Gilbert, Dan
Jacobson, Maggie Little, Rahul Kumar, Mathias Risse, Henry Richardson, Michelle
Mason, David Sobel, Valerie Tiberius, Jeanette Kennett, David Owens, Melissa
Barry and Garrett Cullity among many others.

Supreme downsizing

Adrian Vermeule is profiled and his work discussed in this article, from the Boston Globe's terrific Ideas section.

David Currie, 1936-2007

I only met Professor Currie on a few occasions, but I am a great admirer and beneficiary of his books in constitutional history (and learned conflicts of laws from his casebook). He was a major and multifaceted scholar, and an institution-builder at Chicago Law and of the Green Bag journal.

Chicago Law has a full obituary.

Final ASPLP Schedule

The schedule for the Annual Meeting of the American Society for Political and Legal Philosophy, held in conjunction with the APA East, is now final.

American Society for Political and Legal Philosophy: Loyalty
Baltimore Marriott Waterfront

Friday, December 28, 2007

2:45 - 4:10pm: "Lawyerly Fidelity"
Location: Falkland (Fourth Floor)
Paper: Daniel Markovits
Commentators: Lynn M. Mather; Martin S. Lederman
Chair: Sanford V. Levinson

4:20-5:45pm: " For the Sake of Comrades"
Location: Falkland (Fourth Floor)
Paper: Nancy Sherman
Commentators: Ryan K. Balot; Phillip Carter
Chair: Jacob T. Levy

6-8pm: ASPLP Reception
Location: Kent A (Fourth Floor)


Saturday, December 29, 2007

8-9am: ASPLP Breakfast
Location: Dover B (Third Floor)

9-11am: "Partisan Loyalties"
Location: Dover B (Third Floor)
Paper: Russell Muirhead
Commentators: Richard H. Pildes; David Estlund
Chair: Nancy L. Rosenblum

Welcome to the blogosphere...

to Public Reason, a group blog on political theory and political philosophy with quite a list of potential contributors. The mission statement:

Public Reason is a new group blog for political philosophers and theorists. The purpose of the blog is to create an informal but professional online venue where members of the academic political philosophy and theory community can discuss their work. Academic blogging has undergone a remarkable growth lately. A number of group blogs have been created by philosophers and political scientists, but none is specifically dedicated to political philosophy or theory. Public Reason aims to remedy that deficit. Contributors to the blog will have the ability to post a number of items:

* Literature discussions. If you have something to say about a recent article in journals such as Ethics or the Journal of Political Philosophy, you can link to the article and post a discussion of it on the blog.
* Reading groups. Work through a book chapter by chapter with colleagues.
* Working papers. Upload or link to working papers you would like to receive feedback on.
* Conference announcements. Post information about forthcoming conferences or calls for papers.
* Teaching discussions. Unsure about how to best explain sovereign authority in Hobbes’s Leviathan or the constraints of deliberative democracy to students? Post ideas about conveying theoretical concepts in the classroom.
* Podcasts. If you are giving a talk or just want to read a paper for colleagues to listen to on their iPods over lunch, record an mp3 file, upload it here, and subscribe to Public Reason podcasts via iTunes.
* General issues. Raise an issue of academic interest not sufficiently addressed in any literature you can find.

Why should an academic blog? For the same reason you attend conferences, give talks, ask questions, chat with colleagues, read books, and publish papers. An academic group blog is merely an online tool used to continue the conversations begun on the journal pages and in the conference halls. In that respect, Public Reason is not intended as a vehicle for purely personal reflections, social observations, or “Friday night cat blogging.”

Whuh-huh-yeahbuhwha?

Via Brad DeLong, Bruce Bartlett said:

Under the best of circumstances, getting a tenured position at an elite university is very hard. Because you can't get rid of someone with tenure and may be stuck with them as a colleague for decades, it stands to reason that the process of choosing someone for such a position is going to be very intense. For the same reason, the choice is not entirely meritocratic--elite universities don't choose the best scholars as professors any more than they choose the best applicants as students. There are a lot of factors that go into a hiring decision that don't favor conservatives and go beyond simple ideology.

Just to mention one area, conservatives have a tendency to choose sub-disciplines within academic fields that are not very fashionable. For example, in political science, conservatives tend to gravitate toward political theory--a field that has been out of fashion since at least the 1960s. In history, conservatives often excel at military and diplomatic history--again, fields that have been out of fashion for decades.

One of the basic elements of liberalism is a greater affinity for things that are new and trendy. For conservatives, it is the opposite--an affinity for the familiar, the tried and true. This means that conservatives are always going to be behind the curve in any field where changing fashion is a key to advancement.

err...

even setting aside the "out of fashion" part:

While there has been a steady flow of people who are in some sense conservative into political theory thanks to the existence of Straussianism, the subfield is no great magnet for conservatives. Impressionistically I'd say that, of the small number of (even-loosely-described) conservatives who enter political science, a large proportion end up in international relations, a somewhat smaller proportion in formal modelling/ institutions/ American politics.

Indeed, it's an often-discussed pedagogical problem that we have so little conservative political theory to match with liberal, libertarian, socialist, democratic, feminist, and multiculturalist theory on syllabi. One of the big themes of the ASPLP conference on "American Conservative Thought and Politics" in January was, "Why so little explicitly conservative political theory?"

Nor is it remotely the case that political theory, for all its affinity with great books programs, is immune to faddishness, fashion, or trendiness!

I can't imagine what Bartlett means by this.

Weekend reading

Off at the Association for Political Theory conference having a grand time. Your assigned reading while I'm away:

chez Solum, Jensen on Attire & a Comment on the "goes with" Relationship. (Trust me.)

Chez Yglesias, Why So Few Utilitarians?,which expresses a crucially important and underappreciated truth of academic life that's much more general than the case discussed.

Image of the day

Me: I'm in one home stretch... and can see the guy holding the starting pistol for the next race just past the finish line.

Wayne Norman: This sounds like an allegory of my life; all our lives. Except that that guy with the starting pistol usually positions himself long before the finish line of the preceding race.

Me: well, yeah. But I'm not going to acknowledge he's there until I'm past the preceding finish line.

Wayne: yeah, otherwise it's just too scary. It's like when police states get to host the olympics and there are guys with guns ringing the track.

The future is another country

Candidates for the Nobel Prize in literature as identified by betting markets and "in Stockholm literary circles," according to an article that went online an hour ago at this writing: Phillip Roth, Haruki Murakami, Amos Oz, Yves Bonnefoy, Mario Vargas Llosa, Carlos Fuentes, Joyce Carol Oates, Ko Un, Antonio Tabucchi, Claudio Magris, Thomas Pynchon, Assia Djebar, Peter Nadas, Maryse Conde.

The prize was awarded 40 minutes ago to... Doris Lessing.

One-way

I haven't had time to blog about the extraordinarily depressing results of the La Presse poll on the accommodation of religious minorities (linked story and poll results are both in French). Still don't, but I will at some point. It's not good. Every accommodation of or basic freedom for a non-Christian religion-- prayer spaces, individuals wearing hijabs or turbans or kirpans in public schools or public employment, cafeterias serving kosher or halaal food-- is opposed by a Quebecois majority, and typically by 65-90%. Meanwhile, 68% want to leave the Catholic crucifix in the National Assembly (NB to non-locals: Quebec's provincial parliament).

The perils of generational commentary

I'm currently reading a book by a very distinguished academic-- with 'distinguished' used in both the sincere and the euphemistic sense. And I've been struck by the author's repeated disgruntlement with "recent" developments in this or that academic literature-- where "recent" typically means the mid-to-late 80s and never means anything later than the mid-90s.

I thought of that again in light of this David Brooks column (hat tip Phoebe Maltz). In discussing the recent development of the unattached decade or so between college and marriage, referred to as the "odyssey" years, he observes:

And as the new generational structure solidifies, social and economic entrepreneurs will create new rites and institutions. Someday people will look back and wonder at the vast social changes wrought by the emerging social group that saw their situations first captured by “Friends” and later by “Knocked Up.”

NB: "Friends" debuted in 1994. At its outset, Ross had a Ph.D. and an ex-wife of several years, making him, at bare minimum, 26 or 27 years old. It has been off the air for more than three years, and by the time it ended almost every lead character was married, had children, or both. Ross would be 40 by now.

A current 25-year old was 12 when Friends debuted. Even a current 30-year old was 17. They did not see their situations captured by Friends then. They were 22 or 27 when it went off the air, and also didn't see their situations captured by the old folks struggling with biological clocks and the legacies of three divorces.

By contrast, "Knocked Up" was released in 2007. Old people my age who might have been twenty-something slackers in the mid-90s are not now 23-year olds, and do not see our situations reflected in the experience of people accidentally cutting their "odyssey years" short. Indeed, people who identified with "Friends" when it was on are more likely to be entering fertility-treatment time than accidental-pregnancy-in-post-college-hookup time.

In short: No one can meet Brooks' description. Much as I might like to believe that there's no great difference between a current 40-year old and a current 23-year old, my wishing it doesn't make it so. It's an occupational hazard of talking about generations younger than oneself to run them all together, and boomers are especially prone to it, but that means you probably don't want to use conspicuously dated and dateable markers for your discussion, even if you think it makes you seem contemorary and with-it.

Politics in the academy, part MLCCCXVII of a continuing series

From the Chronicle.

Conservatives are a small minority within the American professoriate, according to a major study whose results were released on Saturday. The study -- which is arguably the best-designed survey of American faculty beliefs since the early 1970s -- found that only 9.2 percent of college instructors are conservatives, and that only 20.4 percent voted for George W. Bush in 2004.

But at a symposium on Saturday at Harvard University, the study's authors cast doubt on certain claims made by conservative critics of academe. They emphasized that American faculty members are not uniformly left-wing. On most issues, they said, college instructors' views are better characterized as "centrist" or "center-left." And there is evidence of a convergence toward moderation: Faculty members who are 35 or younger are less likely than their elders to be left-wing (and also less likely to be conservative).

"The claim of extreme leftism is not well supported," said Solon J. Simmons, an assistant professor of sociology at George Mason University's Institute for Conflict Analysis and Resolution. "But the number of conservatives -- 9.2 percent -- is lower than what one might have found in the past. If there is any change in the data over time, conservatives seem to be falling away from the academy and being replaced by, perhaps, moderates." Mr. Simmons conducted the study with Neil Gross, an assistant professor of sociology at Harvard.
[...]

Among the study's findings:

* Faculty members lean sharply to the left on issues of gender, sexuality, and foreign policy. [...]
* On issues of race and economic policy, the leftward tilt is much less pronounced. [...]

* Liberal-arts colleges have the highest concentrations of left-of-center faculty members. Only 3.9 percent of instructors at liberal-arts colleges are conservatives. Community colleges have the smallest proportion of liberals (37.1 percent) and the highest proportion of conservatives (19 percent). "Elite, Ph.D.-granting institutions" fall in the middle, with 10.2 percent of faculty members identifying themselves as conservative. That pattern contrasts with the well-known studies conducted in the early 1970s by Everett Carll Ladd Jr. and Seymour Martin Lipset, who found that conservatives were rarest at the most elite institutions.

Conservatives are rarest in the humanities (3.6 percent) and social sciences (4.9 percent), and most common in the health sciences (20.5 percent) and business (24.5 percent). Only 7.8 percent of instructors in the physical and biological sciences are conservatives, which is a sharp decline from the level found by Mr. Ladd and Mr. Lipset in the 1970s.

* Faculty members broadly support the idea of political openness on campus. When asked whether "the goal of diversity should include fostering diversity of political views among faculty members," 68.8 percent agreed. (That figure struck one participant in the symposium as disturbingly low. "Where are the other 31 percent?" asked Jonathan L. Zimmerman, a professor of the history of education at New York University. "What are they thinking?") When asked whether "professors are as curious and open-minded today as they have ever been," 79.9 percent of the total sample said yes -- but 46.3 percent of the conservative respondents disagreed.

The scholars at Saturday's meeting offered a wide variety of arguments about what those numbers might mean, and whether they are a problem for academe. Harvard's former president, Lawrence H. Summers, praised the sophistication of Mr. Gross and Mr. Simmons's study but said that he views the results more pessimistically than they do.

"The data in this paper surprised me in the opposite direction that it surprised the authors," said Mr. Summers, who is now a university professor at Harvard. "It made me think that there is even less ideological diversity in the American university than I had imagined."

In his remarks, Mr. Summers concentrated on a subset of the data concerning elite, Ph.D.-granting universities. In humanities and social-science departments at those institutions, Mr. Summers pointed out, not a single instructor reported voting for President Bush in 2004.

Regardless of the salience of that last metric, I think Summers is right that the headline numbers mask some very important variation. If that whopping 9.2% conservative figure is that high because of community colleges and business departments; if those figures of 3.6% humanities and 4.9% social sciences are right, then in the areas where the charge of political bias in the academy are most prevalent and most important, things are more uniform than I would have thought.

I've been reading stories about this kind of thing for years, and I was still startled by those figures.

Inside Higher Ed has a non-gated story along with a more detailed breakdown of figures.

You know...

It would have been nice if the Red Sox had been playing like this for the past two months. But all things considered, I'll take the current arrangement and not complain; better a great postseason than a great end to the season.

Update: And, of course, if those were the last three innings of Roger Clemens' career, that's just icing on the cake. I can't really say that I'm rooting for Joe Torre to lose his job, but my admiration for Torre doesn't extend to the Rocket.