2012 Journal Citation Reports

... for however little such things are worth (see here for the latest on how poor a measure IF is), but for various bureaucratic purposes it's sometimes useful to be able to check them quickly.  An assortment of theory-friendly journals:

American Political Science Review, Impact Factor 3.933, #1 in Political Science
Perspectives on Politics, 1.963, #10 in Political Science
Philosophy and Public Affairs, Impact Factor 1.958, #3 in Ethics
Journal of Political Philosophy, 1.609, #5 in Ethics, #19 in Political Science
Journal of Politics, 1.577, #22 in Political Science
Ethics, 1.372, #11 in Ethics
Political Studies, .917, #54 in Political Science
Political Theory, .703, #77 in Political Science
Social Philosophy and Policy, .630, #27 in Ethics
Polity, .422, #104 in Political Science
Journal of Applied Philosophy, .373, #35 in Ethics
Politics,  Philosophy, and Economics, .351, #36 in Ethics
Contemporary Political Theory, .237, #137 in Political Science
Journal of Moral Philosophy, .235, #41 in Ethics

Still not included in the JCR: Review of Politics, History of Political Thought, Journal of the History of Ideas, European Journal of Political Theory.

PT's Impact Factor has rebounded a long way after spending a number of years in the low .400s.  But JPP has continued to climb in impact-- I think this is its first year in the Poli Sci top 20, and its highest IF ever.  I think it's been more than ten years since PT outranked JPP on these measures.

[NB: I have published in PT and not in JPP.  I'm noting, not celebrating.]

Visiting Fulbright Chair, 2014-15

Visiting Fulbright Chair in the Theory and Practice of Constitutionalism and Federalism at McGill University, 2014-15. 

The Fulbright Visiting Research Chair in the Theory and Practice of Constitutionalism and Federalism at McGill University in the Department of Political Science and the Research Group on Constitutional Studies is open to established or emerging scholars in political theory and political science, and open with respect to methodology. The Chair will pursue research in constitutionalism broadly construed; an interest in federalism in particular is desirable but not necessary. The ability to engage with scholars and students across methodologies—normative, empirical, intellectual-historical, jurisprudential, and formal, for example— is more important that particular areas of emphasis. The Visiting Fulbright Chair takes an active part in the intellectual life of RGCS and normally delivers one public lecture as well as one research paper to a works-in-progress workshop.

The stipend is $US 25,000 for a one-semester or one-year stay in 2014-15. Open to US citizens who do not reside in Canada. Application deadline is August 1, 2013; application information is here: http://www.fulbright.ca/programs/american-scholars/visiting-chairs-program.html Those interested in applying are welcome to contact Jacob Levy jtlevy@gmail.com and Caitlin McNamara CMcNamara@iie.org .

APT Book Manuscript Workshop

Association for Political Theory First Book Manuscript workshop: Call for Applicants

The Governance Committee is soliciting applicants for a First Book Manuscript Workshop. The workshop will take place at the 2013 APT conference on the afternoon of Thursday, Oct. 10. The aim of the workshop is to provide critical feedback on a penultimate draft of a book manuscript; the chosen author will work with the Governance Committee to identify senior scholars to comment on the work. Please note that the commentators for the workshop would need to receive the manuscript no later than September 15. The workshop will be open, by prior registration, to APT conference attendees; only those who have registered for the workshop would receive the draft of the manuscript.

Because we would like to ensure that applicants have revised manuscripts based on dissertation work prior to the workshop, applicants should have received their Ph.D. no later than 2011, with a preference for those who received their Ph.D. after 2006. Though we welcome applicants from all institutions (and from independent scholars), we are especially interested in manuscripts from scholars at institutions outside of the "RU/VH" category, and at less-selective colleges and universities more generally.

If you wish to apply, please submit a CV, a dissertation abstract (no more than one page), a paragraph describing the current state of the manuscript, and a paragraph providing other pertinent professional information (e.g., a tenure timeline) to Mark Rigstad, chair of the Governance Committee, at rigstad@oakland.edu, with First Manuscript Workshop in the subject line.

Applications are due by June 15. A committee of Governance Committee members will identify a short list and the co-presidents of APT, Andy Murphy and Melissa Schwartzberg, will make the final selection. Applicants will be notified no later than July 15.

If you have any questions, please contact Melissa Schwartzberg at maschwar@gmail.com.

Going to live forever, for real.

People who live on the Greek island of Ikaria are known to have remarkably high life expectancies, and researchers have been studying them carefully to learn why. Now a new report suggests that one reason may be the coffee they drink.

Add it to your calendar: IPSA, Montreal, 19-24 July 2014

No CFP yet, but information is here.

Call for abstracts: Workshop for Oxford Studies in Political Philosophy

This is the final call for abstracts for the first annual Workshop for Oxford Studies in Political Philosophy to be held Oct. 17-19, 2013 in Tucson, AZ at the Westward Look Hotel and Resort. Abstracts in all areas of Political Philosophy are welcome.

The web page for the workshop is here: http://oxfordstudies.arizona.edu/

To submit an abstract, you must first go to the above web page and register. Once your registration is accepted, you will be able to login at that page and upload an abstract. Abstracts should not be e-mailed to the editors. Abstracts of between 250-500 words are due no later than April 15th . Submission of an abstract will be taken to imply that the paper is not under submission for publication elsewhere as well as implying an agreement to include the paper in the resulting volume of Oxford Studies in Political Philosophy, if accepted. There is a limit of one submission per person. We expect to be able to inform those whose papers have been accepted no later than May 15th, 2013.

The authors of all accepted abstracts will be expected to provide drafts of their essays for distribution to the workshop’s attendees three weeks prior to the workshop, present their ideas at the workshop, and submit the paper for possible inclusion into the inaugural volume of Oxford Studies in Political Philosophyby January 15th, 2014. It is important to note, however, that acceptance of an abstract for the workshop in no way guarantees that the paper will be accepted for publication.

The workshop is free and open to the public. We regret that we are unable to provide any financial support for those whose abstracts are accepted.

The keynote speakers for the 2013 Workshop are:

Charles Larmore, Brown University

Philip Pettit, Princeton University

A. John Simmons, University of Virginia

Hope to see you in Tucson,

David Sobel, Peter Vallentyne, and Steve Wall (editors)

RIP Allan Calhamer

RIP Allan Calhamer, inventor of the greatest of polisci-gamer games, Diplomacy. http://www.suntimes.com/news/obituaries/18566253-418/lagrange-park-mailman-who-invented-board-game-diplomacy-is-dead-at-81.html …

CFA for editorship of JOP

Southern Political Science Association Invites Nominations and Applications for Editor of the Journal of Politics

Larry Dodd, President of the Southern Political Science Association, has appointed a Search Committee to select a new Editor for the Journal of Politics.  The incoming Editor will succeed Jan Leighley and Bill Mishler, whose editorial term will end on December 31, 2014. The new Editor will serve an initial four-year term, from January 1, 2015 through December 31, 2018.

The members of the Search Committee are: Carol S. Weissert, Florida State University (chair); Jon Bond, Texas A&M University; Josh Clinton, Vanderbilt University; John Geer, Vanderbilt University; Bill Jacoby, Michigan State University; Jan Leighley, American University; Cherie Maestas, Florida State University; Jim Johnson, University of Rochester; Adam Sheingate, Johns Hopkins University, and Lee Walker, University of South Carolina.

The Search Committee seeks nominations and applications for the Editorship. Both individual and group candidates are equally welcome for consideration. Nominations and applications for the Editorship of the Journal of Politics should be sent to Carol S. Weissert, cweissert@fsu.edu.

Going to live forever...

Haven't posted one of these in a while.

The National Institutes of Health study, published recently in the New England Journal of Medicine, indicated that caffeinated and decaf coffee drinkers were less likely to die from heart disease, respiratory disease, stroke, injuries and accidents, diabetes, and infections.

In an interview published this week in the Journal of Caffeine Research, Neal Freedman — with the Division of Cancer Epidemiology and Genetics at the NIH National Cancer Institute — said his study is among the most comprehensive to date of the health benefits of coffee and has significant implications for java junkies. Researchers tracked 500,000 U.S. men and women — ages 50 to 71, all members of the American Association of Retired Persons — for about 12 years. 

Not only did the results show a clear association between coffee and longevity, Freedman said, but they also indicated people who drank the most coffee tended to have greatest health benefits. 

Freedom of complex associations

The Tennessee legislature is renewing its attempt to override Vanderbilt's freedom of association in the name of the freedom of association of religious student clubs.  Disappointingly, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education seems to have forgotten its traditional commitment to universities' own freedom of association, and seems to endorse the selective withholding of state benefits (so selective as to creep into bill of attainder territory!) in order to force Vanderbilt to change its policy... a policy of withholding benefits from student clubs that don't admit all comers, in order to get them to change their policies.

Postapocalyptic hellscape

[I think that this hasn't previously found any home on the google-able internet, though I've shared most of it on fb at one time or another.  I wrote most of it up last year (oddly) in a reply to a BBC reporter who was thinking about a decades-debate, but that fell through.]

I no longer worry about cultural decline.  It is my considered judgment that the world already ended, right around mid-2000.  We live in a postapocalyptic hellscape now.  There's nothing that, say, reality TV or Glee can throw at us to make me say "the world is going to hell in a handbasket."  It already went.  I find this tremendously liberating.  Any day at the end of which I can say "the zombies didn't eat my brain today" counts as a win, even if that day also saw the release of Transformers vs. the Human Centipede.

As Todd Seavey has long noted, the matrix inside 1999's The Matrix seemed to be set in the then-current day.  In other words, when Agent Smith told Morpheus that the matrix was set in "the peak of [human] civilization" it seemed to be 1999 that he was talking about. And then it all went so terribly wrong...

Why mid-2000?

On the non-cultural side, by the end of the 90s the internet bubble combined with some longer-term social trends to really make American society feel brighter than it ever had before.  Unemployment was at a generation-long low; US median income was, IIRC, the highest it has ever been in any large country.  (That is, in inflation-adjusted terms that peak still hasn't been matched in the US, though places like Singapore have surpassed it.)  Crime had been falling for the whole decade and people were coming to realize that American big cities had generally become very safe; and population was flowing back into them.  Teen pregnancy down, welfare down, massive unexpected budget surpluses creating competing fantasies of what to be done with it all, productivity growth up, etc.  The bubble popped in the first quarter of 2000, but it took a while for the consequences to fully reverberate through the whole economy.  The contrast in mood from, say, December 1999 to mid-2001 even before 9/11, was, as I remember it, just huge-- and then 9/11 began a chain of dominoes for a much darker decade-- two wars, Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo, and then the financial collapse. In Europe, the end of the Kosovo war brought the violence of the long breakup of Yugoslavia to a close, Russia wasn't yet resurgent, and I think there were as good of grounds for optimism as there had ever been: a peaceful and united Europe looked to be at hand.  So, as with memories of the 1890s and 1920s, memories of the culture of the 1990s are partly also memories of the decade in a broader social, political, and economic way.  The popping of the bubble and the election of George W. Bush do seem like a good way to date the end of an Era of Good Feelings.

That said, my view of television is that the 2000s saw possibly the best scripted television ever-- with tiny niche audiences that were generally sustainable on pay cable, mostly not on the networks.  The Wire and The Sopranos did fine on pay cable.  Arrested Development and Firefly did not, on networks.  But the tidal wave of reality TV awfulness that hit starting in mid-2000 lowered the quality of what the average watcher was watching at any given time precipitously-- I'm willing to say to its lowest point ever, lower than in the Three's Company era or the Beverly Hillbillies era of dumb sitcoms.  

And that's the kind of consideration I have in mind overall.  It's not that there aren't gems after 2000.  Human creativity and genius don't disappear.  In the most barbaric times of the Middle Ages the monks were still producing some beautiful manuscripts for an audience that might total dozens over the following centuries. In the 2000s we haven't had the same combination of quality and creativity with broad markets and general cultural impact that we had in the late 90s. Instead, we've had Fear Factor (launched 2001) to set new lows, and American Idol (2002) to celebrate the aspiration to do cover songs of middlebrow hits of bygone days, and eventually Glee to turn American Idol into a middlebrow scripted show.

Plus: Mid-2000 saw Dawn introduced on Buffy the Vampire Slayer; and once we got to the season that started in 2001, that once-great show went far, far off the deep end.  Mid-2000 saw Mulder leave the X-Files, and that once-great show went off the deep end.  Hell in a handbasket, I tell ya.

In movies, the indie explosion of the 90s was absolutely wonderful for creativity.  In 1999, we had The Sixth Sense, Blair Witch, Being John Malkovich, and the first Matrix (in which Agent Smith showed video of what seemed to be real-world 1999 and referred to it as "the peak of your civilization" while interrogating Morpheus).  I think those four added up to as robust a sense that anything-is-possible in a commercial artform as I've ever seen-- maybe something like it was true in the early post-studio days of New Hollywood in the 1970s, but I'm too young for that.  There was plenty of dreck, of course, with Phantom Menace at the top of the list.  But: The Iron Giant, Girl Interrupted, All About My Mother, Run Lola Run, Office Space, Fight Club, The Straight Story, ExistenZ, and even the South Park movie-- it was an absolutely extraordinary last year to the decade that Kevin Smith, Quentin Tarantino, and Harvey Weinstein helped usher into being.  Now, it's Michael Bay's world; we just live in it, if you can call that living.

The 2000s have been the golden age of fantasy and comic book movies.  That's not a complaint from me; loved the Lord of the Rings, loved the new peaks of the superhero genre from X-Men 2 and Spider-Man 2 through Dark Knight and Avengers.  But, along with other franchises good (Harry Potter) and bad (Transformers),  they've sucked a lot of the oxygen out of the rest of the movie business. "Anything is possible" now means "what we can make with CGI," not "what kinds of movies we can make."

The Oscars are  a separate problem from movies in general-- but if the Best Picture win for A Beautiful Mind in 2001 wasn't a sign of the end of the world, I don't know what would be-- except for the 2005 win for Crash.  After those two, I wouldn't even have blinked had the loathesome Avatar won (though of course, like all good people, I'm glad that it didn't.)

I think that by '99 music mass-market was a couple of years past its peak-- the era of Britney, Christina, Backstreet Boys, and N'Sync was upon us.  And year-for-year I prefer the music of the 80s.  But there was something special in the early/mid 90s, when alternative went mainstream (or the mainstream went alternative), when the barriers between hip-hop and rock started to weaken and grunge provided a new infusion of energy, and the huge commercial rock bands were REM and U2.  

Impressionistically-- I'm less confident here-- I think English-language literary fiction has lost a lot of its cultural reach, too.  Here the peak is a little bit later: 2001 was when both The Corrections and Atonement came out, and they had really significant cultural reach between them.  The rest of the 2000s had gems (Kavalier and Klay, Fortress of Solitude, Oscar Wao, On Beauty, Middlesex, Never Let Me Go, Oryx and Crake) but I'm not sure they ever added up to that 2001 level of impact.  Just today [NB: this was written in April 2012] the Pulitzer committee declined to award a prize in fiction for last year; and I'll bet that this is not received as a scandal. 

1999's Booker was won by Coetzee's Disgrace-- the most recent great novel by the most recent person to win the Nobel Prize in literature for work in English that was done in recent memory.  (Lessing and Pinter were recognized for much older work.)  Maybe that's as good a measure as any.  Of the other Anglophones at all likely to win it, DeLillo, Rushdie, and Updike did their best work decades ago; only Cormac McCarthy still seems to be producing major work.  

Upshot: The late 1990s into very early 2000 were at least a local peak... and then things went to hell.  Once one accepts that things went to hell, all surprises are pleasant ones, and one doesn't have to worry that Honey Boo Boo is a harbinger of things getting any worse.

Philip Pettit, On the People's Terms

Now available:

Philip Pettit, On the People's Terms: A Republican Theory and Model of Democracy, Cambridge University Press 2013, The Seeley Lectures

This looks like a full companion to and completion of Pettit's Republicanism, and an attempt to seriously engage with an important line of criticism of that book.  Looking forward to reading it.

CSPT: "Political Thought and Historical Imagination"

Political Thought and Historical Imagination 

CSPT Annual Conference
March 1-2, 2013
Luce Auditorium, Yale University

The historical imagination – how we understand history and place ourselves in relation to it – cannot help but shape and be shaped by the theoretical imagination – how we understand politics and its problems. This conference explores the ways in which our imagination of history influences the theoretical questions we ask, and the ways in which our political theories lead us to retell stories about the past.

Panels:

Roman History and 18^th Century Political Thought, Interpreting the French Revolution, Haiti: Theoretical Implications of Slavery and Emancipation, Historiography as Political Theory: Foundings, Inheritance and Critique, Narrative and Genre in Political Theory, Beyond World History: Political Trajectories Outside the West

Participants:

Danielle Allen, Keith Baker, Robin Blackburn, Richard Bourke, James Ceaser, John Dunn, Sibylle Fischer, Jason Frank, Patrice Gueniffey, Wang Hui, Kirstie McClure, Iain McDaniel, Pratap Bhanu Mehta, Michael Mosher, J. G. A. Pocock, Andrew Sabl, Rogers Smith, Steven Smith, Brandon Terry, Shatema Threadcraft, Richard Tuck, and Elizabeth Wingrove.

Organizers:

Bryan Garsten and Karuna Mantena, Yale University

Registration

[NB: see too this introductory note from, I take it, Garsten and Mantena on the occasion of their succeeding to the CSPT leadership.  Congratulations both to them and to the society on the transition.  CSPT has been an important organization in our field, and I'm happy to see it in such good hands.  JTL]

Hither and Yon: Toronto

Today: "Freedom of Complex Associations," University of Toronto Ethics Centre.

Recommended reading: Carole Pateman's Skytte Lecture

Questions, Evidence and Political Theory   

CFP: Open Borders, Lost Ideal (panel for Ideals and Reality in Social Ethics Conference, Newport, March 2013)

Ideals and Reality in Social Ethics, University of Wales, Newport 19-21 March 2013

Call for papers

Panel: Open Borders: past reality, lost Ideals

Conveners: Speranta Dumitru (University Paris Descartes) and Chris Bertram (University of Bristol)

The topic of “open borders” looks like an awkward one for research in social ethics. Unlike many other ideals which face costs and feasibility constraints as a real challenge, the case for open borders, a reality until the 20th century, is rarely considered in social ethics and remains under-theorized even as a costly and remote ideal.

This is all the more surprising as some rather powerful arguments exist in other research fields or from institutionalized practices. These arguments are both consequentialist and deontological. From a consequentialist point of view, controlling borders imposes huge costs on national governments, on economies and on individual lives, while re-opening borders could produce important gains in terms of global development. According to some economists’ estimates, removing barriers in labor mobility would double the world GDP (Clemens, 2011), while even a 3% increase would be worth more than aid, trade and debt relief combined (Pritchett, 2006). From a deontological perspective, freedom of movement is sometimes argued for within societies as a primary good (Rawls, 1993), a basic right (Shue, 1980) or central human capability (Nussbaum, 2000; Robeyns, 2003; Kronlid, 2008), but remains under-theorized at a global level. And while the right to leave any country has been institutionally recognized as a fundamental human right (UDHR, 1949), social ethicists have hitherto been mostly concerned by its negative effects on sending and receiving countries.

What do such theoretical predilections say about current research programmes in social ethics? Does a status quo bias influence normative research? Is freedom of movement an under-theorized concept beyond the field of migration? If open borders were to be defended as an ideal, what would be the means to achieve it?

To participate, please send abstracts of 300 words by 4th February to both conveners at Speranta.dumitru@parisdescartes.fr and C.Bertram@bristol.ac.uk

CFP: Sciences Po graduate political theory conference

The first Sciences Po Graduate Political Theory Conference is going to take place at Sciences Po, Paris, from June 20 to June 21st 2013.

We welcome contributions from young political theorists across the board, including the disciplines of political theory proper, the history of political thought, the epistemology of political science, etc. We are equally interested in accommodating a variety of theoretical approaches (analytical, normative, conceptual, historical) and intend to encourage a dialogue between these different methodologies. Also, we aim at geographic diversity, in that we shall try to promote a substantive academic exchange between young political theorists from Europe and their peers across the world.

The Sciences Po Graduate Political Theory Committee is happy to announce that Joseph Raz, famous legal, political and moral philosopher, will deliver the keynote address. The work of Joseph Raz covers a wide spectrum of topics, ranging from the relationship between law and politics, authority and reason, coercion and autonomy, moral neutrality and liberalism, to the normative intricacies of practical deliberation. Contributions that touch upon any of these subject-matters are warmly encouraged.

The Sciences Po Graduate Political Theory Conference will give doctoral students the opportunity of presenting their current work in front of their peers and other senior political theorists.

Each (2 to 2 and ½ hours-long) session of the conference will concentrate on two to three papers and will be led by a discussant from Sciences Po. Presentations will be followed by a Q&A period open to the public (professors and graduate students alike).

Submission Information

Submission deadline: February 15, 2013

Submission/selection procedure: A detailed abstract (500 to 1,000 words) of the proposal should be sent to sciencespotheorygrad@gmail.com in PDF format. Any personal or institutional identification element should be expunged from the document (any information about the author that is included in the paper in one way or another will automatically lead to a rejection of the paper). Political theory students from the Ecole Doctorale of Sciences Po, Paris, will select approximately 15 proposals on a blind basis. The proposals and final papers should be written in English, which is also the working language of the Graduate Conference. The selected participants will be notified of their acceptance by March 15, 2013. All the other proposals will be acknowledged.

Selection committee: Aurélia Bardon (Sciences Po/CEVIPOF), Benjamin Boudou (Sciences Po/CEVIPOF), Elisabeth Chertok (Sciences Po/CEVIPOF), Alicia-Dorothy Mornington (Sciences Po/CEVIPOF), Giulia Oskian (Sciences Po/CEVIPOF), Andrei Poama (Sciences Po/CERI), Denis Ramond (Sciences Po/CEVIPOF), Elise Rouméas (Sciences Po/CEVIPOF)

For any further questions or comments, please do not hesitate to contact us at:sciencespotheorygrad@gmail.com

A Non-Ideal Theory of Law

The Green Bag/ Journal of Law symposium on Orin Kerr's "A Theory of Law is now online.  It includes a contribution from me, "A Non-Ideal Theory of Law."  Crooked Timber's Kieran Healey has one of the best entries, but I think the most important piece is by Jeffrey Lipshaw; I will be citing that one in the future.

Princeton Graduate Conference in Political Theory

Graduate Conference in Political Theory

Princeton University

April 5-6, 2013

Call for Papers (deadline January 11, 2013)

The Graduate Conference in Political Theory at Princeton University will be held from April 5-6, 2013.

The Committee for the Graduate Conference in Political Theory at Princeton University welcomes papers addressing any topic in political theory, political philosophy, or the history of political thought. Papers should be submitted via the conference website by January 11, 2013. Approximately six papers will be selected.

The conference offers graduate students from across institutions a unique opportunity to present and critique new work. Each session, led by a discussant from Princeton, focuses exclusively on one paper and features an extensive question and answer period with Princeton faculty and graduate students. Papers are pre-circulated among conference participants.

This year, the Committee proudly announces that Professor Jill Frank, University of South Carolina, will deliver the keynote address.

Submission Information:

• Due date: January 11, 2013
• How to submit: Submissions must be uploaded in PDF format to the conference website: http://politicaltheory.princeton.edu
• Length: Papers should be approximately 7500 words. Papers exceeding 9000 words will not be considered.
• Format: Papers should be formatted for blind review by removing any identifying information from the document.

Papers will be refereed on a blind basis by political theory graduate students in the Department of Politics at Princeton. Acceptance notices will be sent in February. The authors of accepted papers will be expected to attend the duration of the two-day conference and participate in each session.

Assistance for invited participants' transportation, lodging and meal expenses is available from the Committee, which acknowledges the generous support ofUniversity Center for Human Values, the Department of Politics, and the Graduate School at Princeton University.

Questions and comments can be directed to: polthry@princeton.edu.

For more information, please visit the conference website at http://politicaltheory.princeton.edu

Thoughts on a second viewing of The Hobbit

1) The 2D, 24 FPS is much, much, much better than the 3D, 48 FPS.  This time I was visually taken in; the first time, I wasn't.

2) Glamdring and Orcrist only occasionally remember to glow.

3) Which is OK, since "glows brightly when orcs are around" isn't actually Tolkien's best idea; it makes the bearer awfully visible at inconvenient times.

4) Dwarves have 10,000 HP each, or else the Misty Mountains are made of cotton airbags.

5) If I ever build my whole civilization over bottomless chasms, I'll build sturdy bridges with real handrails that are supported by redundant ropes and knots.

6) Christopher Lee has gotten really, really old.  It's tough to pretend that he's 60 years younger.

7) I've decided that it's lichen on the side of Jar Jar's Radagast's face.  That makes me much happier than what I thought it was the first time I saw the movie.  If I'm wrong, don't tell me.

8) The Battle of Five Armies is going to feel kind of anticlimactic after we've seen Thorigorn and his adventuring party kill orcs and goblins by the hundreds time after time.

9) How does the Great Goblin recognize Orcrist and Glamdring?  Even Gandalf didn't know which particular Elvish swords they were.  Orcs don't live for thousands of years...

10) Trailers: Man of Steel looks terrible.  Whose idea was Kevin Costner?  Even Amy Adams, whom I really like, looks hopelessly out of place.  Jurassic Park 3D: we've now moved beyond sequels and remakes; we're just getting the same movies rereleased with the latest whizbangs.  Pop culture devours its tail.

11) I actually liked Cate Blanchett's Galadriel better in the invented White Council scene here than in LOTR.

12) I of course like that Gandalf is never a 20th-level D&D wizard throwing fireballs and meteor swarms all over the place, nor a even a flashy Dumbledore.  A flare in Goblintown is as showy as his magic gets in The Hobbit; his offensive magic is largely limited to setting pine cones on fire.  I even like that, in the movie, there's some teasing about this: "How many dragons have you killed?"  "Is he a great wizard, or is he more like, well, you?"  But this all sits strangely with the Aragorning of Thorin and the Indiana Jonesing of all the dwarves.  If everyone else gets turned into a 10,000 HP action hero while Gandalf stays the same, he starts to look pretty unimpressive.

13) Overall: not remotely as good as FOTR or Two Towers, and overall I'd still rather have the smaller Bilbo's-eye story.  But I did like it better the second time around.

2013 Montreal Political Theory Manuscript Award / Prix de l'atelier de manuscrit de philosophie politique de Montréal

THE ANNUAL MONTREAL POLITICAL THEORY MANUSCRIPT WORKSHOP AWARD
Call for applications: The Groupe de recherche interuniversitaire en philosophie politique de Montréal (GRIPP), spanning the departments of political science and philosophy at McGill University, l'Université de Montréal, Concordia University, and l'Université du Québec à Montréal, invites applications for its 2013 manuscript workshop award. The recipient of the award will be invited to Montreal  for a day-long workshop in April/May 2013 dedicated to his or her book manuscript. This "author meets critics" workshop will comprise four to five sessions dedicated to critical discussion of the manuscript; each session will begin with a critical commentary on a section of the manuscript by a political theorist or philosopher who is part of Montreal's GRIPP community. The format is designed to maximize feedback for a book-in-progress. The award covers the costs of travel, accommodation, and meals.

Eligibility:

A. Topic: The manuscript topic is open within political theory and political philosophy, but we are especially interested in manuscripts related to at least one of these GRIPP research themes: 1) the history of liberal and democratic thought, especially early modern thought; 2) moral psychology and political agency, or politics and affect or emotions or rhetoric; 3) democracy, diversity, and pluralism. 4) democracy, justice, and transnational institutions.

B. Manuscript: Book manuscripts in English or French, not yet in a version accepted for publication, by applicants with PhD in hand by 1 August 2012, are eligible. Applicants must have a complete or nearly complete draft (at least 4/5 of final draft) ready to present at the workshop. In the case of co-authored manuscripts, only one of the co-authors is eligible to apply. (Only works in progress by the workshop date are eligible; authors with a preliminary book contract are eligible only if no version has been already accepted for publication).

C. Application: Please submit the following materials electronically, compiled as a single PDF file: 1) a curriculum vitae; 2) a table of contents; 3) a short abstract of the book project, up to 200 words; 4) a longer book abstract up to 2500 words; and, in the case of applicants with previous book publication(s), (5) three reviews, from established journals in the field, of the applicant's most recently published monograph. Candidates are not required to, but may if they wish, submit two letters of recommendation speaking to the merits of the book project. Please do not send writing samples. Send materials by email, with the subject heading “2013 GRIPP Manuscript Workshop Award” to Arash Abizadeh mcgill.ca

>. Review of applications begins 10 January 2013. Contact Arash Abizadeh mcgill.ca> with questions.

Evaluation Process: The final decision for choosing the winner of the GRIPP manuscript award lies with the GRIPP Jury. The Jury will seek to meet within the first two weeks of the rolling deadline for submissions. All bilingual regular faculty members of GRIPP have the right to participate as members of the Jury. Each regular faculty member of GRIPP has the right to suggest a short-list of up to five proposals for consideration by the Jury, but the final decision rests with the Jury itself. All elements of the Jury's deliberations are confidential; unfortunately it is not possible for the Jury or its members to provide any feedback to applicants concerning the merits of their proposal. A full list of the regular GRIPP faculty membership is available at <http://www.mcgill.ca/rgcs/gripp/faculty>

Previous GRIPP Manuscript Workshops:
May 2012: Daniel Viehoff (Sheffield), The Authority of DemocracyMay 2011: James Ingram (McMaster), Radical Cosmopolitics: The Ethics and Politics of Democratic UniversalismApril 2010: Hélène Landemore (Yale), Democratic Reason: Politics, Collective Intelligence, and the Rule of the ManyApril 2009: Alan Patten (Princeton), Equal Recognition: The Moral Foundations of Minority Cultural RightsMarch 2009: Kinch Hoekstra (UC Berkeley), Thomas Hobbes and the Creation of Order
<http://www.mcgill.ca/rgcs/gripp/fellowships>
------------------------------------------------
LE PRIX ANNUEL DE L’ATELIER DE MANUSCRIT DE PHILOSOPHIE POLITIQUE DE MONTRÉAL
Appel à candidature: Le groupe de recherche interuniversitaire en philosophie politique de Montréal (GRIPP), qui réunit des chercheurs des départements de science politique et de philosophie de l’Université McGill, de l’Université de Montréal, de l’Université Concordia et de l’Université du Québec à Montréal, fait un appel à candidature pour son prix 2013 de l’atelier de manuscrit. Le lauréat sera invité à Montréal en avril ou mai 2013 pour un atelier d’une journée complète consacré au manuscrit de son livre. Cet atelier du type « l’auteur rencontre ses critiques » comprendra quatre ou cinq séances de discussions critiques sur le manuscrit ; pour chacune d’entre elles, un spécialiste de théorie politique ou un philosophe membre de la communauté montréalaise du GRIPP lancera la discussion par un commentaire critique d’une des sections du manuscrit.  Ceci a pour but de faciliter les échanges sur un livre en chantier. Le prix couvre les dépenses de voyage, d’hébergement et de repas.

Éligibilité :
A- Sujet : De façon générale, le manuscrit doit traiter de théorie politique ou de philosophie politique, mais nous sommes tout particulièrement intéressés aux manuscrits qui correspondent à l’une des thématiques de recherche du GRIPP : 1) l’histoire de la pensée libérale et démocratique, et notamment du début de la pensée moderne; 2) la psychologie morale du sujet (ou encore de l’agent) politique, ainsi que la politique et les affects, les émotions ou la rhétorique; 3) la démocratie, la diversité et le pluralisme; 4) la démocratie, la justice et les institutions transnationales.

B- Manuscrit : Sont éligibles tous les manuscrits de livres en français ou en anglais non encore publiés dont l’auteur est détenteur d’un doctorat au 1er août 2012. Les candidats devront avoir une version complète ou presque de leur manuscrit (au moins 4/5e de la version finale) pour présentation à l’atelier. Dans le cas de manuscrits ayant plus d’un auteur, seul l’un des coauteurs est éligible. (Seuls les manuscrits non encore terminés à la date prévue de l’atelier seront considérés ; les auteurs disposant d’un contrat préliminaire de publication ne sont éligibles que si aucune version n’a été encore acceptée pour publication).

C- Soumission : Vous voudrez bien fournir les documents suivants, en format électronique, dans un seul fichier PDF : 1) un curriculum vitae; 2) une table des matières; 3) un court résumé du projet du livre de moins de 200 mots; 4) un résumé plus long, de moins de 2 500 mots; et, dans le cas de candidats ayant déjà publié, 5) trois recensions parues dans des revues spécialisées et reconnues dans le domaine de la plus récente monographie publiée. Les candidats peuvent, s’ils le souhaitent, joindre deux lettres de recommandation présentant l’intérêt de leur projet de livre. Nous vous prions de ne pas envoyer d’extraits de manuscrit. Envoyez ces documents par courriel, avec le sujet « 2013 GRIPP Manuscript Workshop Award » à Arash Abizadeh mcgill.ca

>. L’examen des candidatures commencera le 10 janvier 2013. Pour toute information supplémentaire, veuillez contacter Dominique Leydet uqam.ca>
 

Processus d’évaluation :

La décision finale pour la sélection du lauréat du prix du manuscrit du GRIPP est prise par le jury du GRIPP. Le jury tentera de se rencontrer dans les premières deux semaines suivant la date limite de soumission des manuscrits. Tous les professeurs qui sont bilingues et membres réguliers du GRIPP ont le droit de participer au processus de sélection à titre de membres du jury. Tout professeur membre régulier du GRIPP a le droit de suggérer une liste courte de cinq titres au maximum pour considération par le jury. La décision finale demeure du seul ressort du jury lui-même. Les délibérations du jury sont confidentielles ; il n’est malheureusement pas possible pour le jury ou ses membres de donner aux candidats des informations concernant l’évaluation qui a été faite de leur proposition. Une liste complète des professeurs membres réguliers du GRIPP est disponible au <http://www.mcgill.ca/rgcs/gripp/faculty>

Ateliers de manuscrit précédents:
Mai 2012: Daniel Viehoff (Sheffield), The Authority of Democracy
Mai 2011: James Ingram (McMaster), Radical Cosmopolitics: The Ethics and Politics of Democratic UniversalismAvril 2010: Hélène Landemore (Yale), Democratic Reason: Politics, Collective Intelligence, and the Rule of the ManyAvril 2009: Alan Patten (Princeton), Equal Recognition: The Moral Foundations of Minority Cultural RightsMars 2009: Kinch Hoekstra (UC Berkeley), Thomas Hobbes and the Creation of Order

<http://www.mcgill.ca/rgcs/gripp/fellowships>

ASPLP at AALS: Immigration, Emigration and Migration, January 4th, 2013

Annual meeting of the American Society for Political and Legal Philosophy:"Immigration, Emigration and Migration"January 4th, 2013Crescent Room 11th Floor, Westin, New Orleans Canal Place, 100 Rue Iberville, New Orleans,

8:00 AM-9:45 AM: Panel 1.

Chair:  Nancy Rosenblum, Political Science, Harvard University
Principal Paper: “Law’s Migrations, Mobilities and Borders”
Author: Judith Resnik, Law, Yale.
Commentaries:
James Bohman, Philosophy, Saint Louis University
Jennifer Hochschild, Political Science, Harvard

10AM-11:45  Panel 2
Chair: Robin West, Law, Georgetown University
Principal Paper: “Why Do States Have the Right to Control Immigration?"
Author: Sarah Song, Political Science and Law, Berkeley

Commentaries:
Adam Cox, Law, NYU
Michael Blake, Philosophy, University of Washington

11:45: Box lunches and drinks available
12:00 Business Meeting


12:15-2:00 PM  Panel 3
Chair: Jeremy Waldron, Law and Political Science, Oxford and NYU
Principal Paper:  “Immigration and Legitimate International Institutions”
Author: Tom Christiano, Philosophy,  University of Arizona

Commentaries:
Arash Abizadeh, Political Science, McGill
        Cristina Rodriguez, Law, NYU

For information on attending, please e-mail azakaras@uvm.edu

Please don't do that, HAL.

I've stuck with facebook through 493 format changes, 3,268 changes to the privacy settings and options, and the horrors of Zynga. But these new status update prompts might well be the end. The idea of having one of my browser tabs constantly ask me "what's happening," "what's going on," "how's it going," "how are you doing," or, fercryinouloud, "how are you feeling" is shudder-inducing. At best, it makes me think I'm interacting with ELIZA circa 1978. At worst, it turns facebook into a hellish dystopian nightmare.

APT CFP 2013

Association for Political Theory Call for Papers

Association for Political Theory Annual Conference, October 10-12, 2013

Proposal deadline: Monday, February 18, 2013

Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee

Program Co-Chairs: Eric MacGilvray (Ohio State University) and Jennifer Rubenstein (University of Virginia)

The Association for Political Theory (APT) invites proposals for its eleventh annual conference, to be held October 10-12, 2013 at Vanderbilt University.  We welcome proposals from faculty, independent scholars, and graduate students who have completed all requirements except for the dissertation.  Proposals will be considered on all topics in the fields of political theory, political philosophy, the history of political thought, and cognate disciplines.  We also encourage faculty to volunteer to serve as chairs and/or discussants.

How to apply: Abstracts of 300-400 words are due by midnight PST on Monday, February 18, 2013.  To apply online, click on the following link.  Please review the guidelines listed below before completing a proposal form.  Each participant may submit one paper proposal and one co‐authored paper proposal.  Please note that the APT conference does not accept panel or roundtable proposals.  Each participant is required to submit a proposal form, even if the proposal is for a co‐authored paper.

Chairs/Discussants: If you wish to participate as a chair and/or discussant, please indicate your areas of expertise in the relevant box on the proposal form.  Serving as a chair or a discussant does not preclude you from presenting a paper on another panel.  Chairs and discussants must have a Ph.D.

Pre‐circulation requirement: All papers accepted for the conference must be submitted electronically to the archive on the APT website no later than October 1, 2013.  Papers should be no more than 30 double‐spaced pages in length so that discussants may provide suitable feedback.  The archive will be password‐protected so that access is limited to members of APT.  Participants who fail to submit their paper to the archive by October 1, 2013 will be removed from the program.

Conference participants must be members of the Association.  Membership is free.  The paper archive is available to APT members only, so conference participants will need to join the Association in order to gain access to the archive.  Click here to submit a membership application.

Questions and assistance: For questions about the program or proposal guidelines, or if you have difficulty submitting a proposal, please contact one of the Program Committee Co‐Chairs, Eric MacGilvray (macgilvray.2@osu.edu) or Jennifer Rubenstein  (rubenstein@virginia.edu).

To learn more about the Association and its annual conference please visit the APT website athttp://www.apt-us.org.

APT Initiative for 2013: Themed Panel Series on Emotion, Imagination and Experience in Politics

In recent years, political theorists and philosophers working in a wide range of areas have produced an explosion of exciting work about the role of emotion, imagination, and lived experience (including perception) in politics.  Examples include studies of the relationship between reason and the passions in the cultivation of civic virtue; the revival of interest in the sentimentalist moral philosophy of David Hume, Adam Smith, and others; attention to the role that affective concerns play in political deliberation; attention to the ways in which sensory perception shapes political participation; the use of empirical insights from social and political psychology to inform the design of political institutions; and the appeal to the imagination as a way of fostering cosmopolitan political commitments.

Although these diverse areas of study address a common set of concerns, they are too often pursued in isolation from each other.  The Program Co-Chairs therefore plan to organize an interdisciplinary series of panels on the theme of emotion, imagination and experience in politics.  The panels will be scheduled consecutively, with the exact content and mix of presentations to be determined by the proposals that we receive.  We hope to assemble panels that are coherent enough to foster discussion, but dissonant enough to enable participants to make new and fertile connections.  Although each panel will function as a stand-alone event, we hope that interested participants will attend the entire series, and that fruitful conversations will extend over the course of the conference.

If you would like your paper to be considered for the themed panel series, simply indicate this on the proposal form.  All proposals will automatically be considered for the general APT program as well.

Freedom of, or in, universities watch

Whither Goes Free Speech at Harvard?

Ivy League Cracks Down as Students Spiral Out of Control

Note the different framings, even though there are speech cases mixed in with the other examples in the second article.

It's not the case that residential colleges and universities face a choice between in loco parentis and internal rulelessness, standardlessness, normlessness.  Universities are associations; associations normally have the right to set domestic rules of conduct.  There are standards of liberty within universities that are different from, and more demanding than, the standards that govern the civil state: "academic freedom" is not the same as constitutional freedom of speech.  But associational freedom means that universities-- like churches, like the Boy Scouts-- have the authority to set rules of membership, and that the norms of constitutional law are not only legally but conceptually somewhat out of place in evaluating them.

And associational freedom is part of freedom.  Those choosing which residential college or university to attend are free to choose one whose domestic rules suit their tastes, values, and norms, from Brigham Young to Notre Dame to Reed.  Internal norms of behavior are an important part of how one collegiate experience differs from another; and it's no violation of liberty to offer the choice of a college life that expects civility and decency in recreational speech, or that limits or prohibits Greek life.

I would also note, though, that lurid stories about alcoholic excesses on college campuses should always be accompanied with an explanation of how the 21-year drinking age encourages concentrated binge drinking.