Academia

Earlier in the week, a thinktank called “Onward UK” got some press for a report condemning the proliferation of “Mickey Mouse Degrees” in British universities. You might think (and indeed say, as I did) that a bucket shop policy institute consisting of a recently resigned special advisor and a “Senior Research Fellow” with a lobbyist day job has a bit of brass neck calling anyone else “Mickey Mouse”, and that’s why I’m not linking to the report (although I did finally crack and read it; it’s not terrible quality stuff, but as an example of the genre of policy entrepreneurship it’s an American trend that I don’t want to see embedding in British public life). Instead of getting into an empirical debate, I want to address what I see as a more interesting question; the whole way we think about our creative industries is fundamentally misconceived, because of a sort of methodological individualism that stops us seeing the system as a system.
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I’ll be teaching a Ph.D. level class on globalization this semester – the draft syllabus is below. The direct aim of the class is to provide doctoral students in both international relations and comparative politics with an understanding of broad debates about globalization, without duplicating the materials of the (separately taught) class in international political economy. The indirect aim is to get them reading at least some material outside the field of political science (specifically: sociology and financial history – they get plenty of economics elsewhere). Comments and suggestions gratefully received. [click to continue…]

One charge that conservatives often level at professors in universities is that we are biased and that in the humanities and social sciences, our teaching amounts to left/liberal propaganda. Much of this is silly and some of it is self-fulfilling: vilify a group of people long enough, attack their funding and, hey presto!, they end up favouring your political opponents. But I take seriously the pedagogical need to put arguments on both sides in political philosophy. And actually, for some issues in political philosophy it isn’t too hard because there are pro-capitalist libertarians out there who aren’t shy about articulating their reasons. Some of them are even very gifted at crafting teaching-discussion friendly cases and examples: Robert Nozick, for instance or Mike Huemer.

But there’s an issue where I’m struggling to find a text that articulates the conservative case well, and that’s the issue of access to national citizenship, an issue where the libertarians and the liberal left are broadly in agreement. The case isn’t entirely hopeless: I can find plenty of people willing to argue that adult immigrants who chose to immigrate, particularly those who don’t share the culture or values of the receiving state, should face obstacles to naturalization, or even should be barred from it altogether. The trouble is that none of those arguments really works to justify similar barriers to membership for children.
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Not the best of light, but having fun with the new camera:

It’s been a busy month for John and Belle. Certain difficulties involved, as you can see from the photo. Hope it’s been a good month for you and yours and that Santa brings you many appropriate gifts.

In the UK every day is Brexit day, but today more than most because our hapless Prime Minister’s attempts to persuade Parliament to back her “deal” have run into the sand. The wall-to-wall coverage means that there’s every danger that the state’s victimization of human rights defenders will not get the coverage it should. [The Stansted 15 are a group who took direct action to prevent a flight deporting people from taking off from Stansted Airport last March](https://novaramedia.com/2018/12/10/stansted-15-activists-who-stopped-deportation-charter-flight-convicted-of-terrorism-charge/). Originally charged with “aggravated trespass”, the prosecutors sought and received permission to accuse them of an obscure terrorism offence involving intentional disruption of services at an aerodrome, a provision of the 1990 Aviation and Maritime Security Act. This was brought in after the Lockerbie bombing of 1988 and carries the possibility of life in prison. The judge in the case instructed the jury to ignore all arguments to the effect that the defendants had prevented a greater evil. It is clear however that they have indeed prevented a great evil, since several of those whose deportation they prevented have now had their cases reassessed and have been granted leave to remain in the UK. I blogged the other day about Candice Delmas’s book *A Duty to Resist*. At least two of her grounds of justified resistance are plainly at stake in this case: first by preventing the *refoulement* of people to jurisdictions where they face persecution, the Stansted 15 were acting in accordance with the natural duty of justice to uphold just institutions in a case where states try to subvert or ignore those institutions; second, the Samaritan duty, acting to prevent great harm and human rights violations to individuals, is in play. The most plausible defences of state authority base themselves on the fact that states make justice possible: in this case it is those who have acted against the state and now face prison who have acted in defence of justice.

Still getting used to the new camera, but there was some fantastic light first thing this morning.

Crossposted by co-writer Tim Meijers at Justice Everywhere

Political philosophers often engage in thought experiments, which involve putting hypothetical persons in hypothetical scenarios. However, it is often challenging to find ways to involve real, non-hypothetical, people with the questions we are dealing with, aside from the more traditional ways to engage in outreach such as debates and opinion pieces. Recently, the Fair Limits team* – which studies the plausibility of upper limits in the distribution of economic and ecological resources – attempted a new way to engage the public by making use of a participatory “veil-of-ignorance” thought experiment. [click to continue…]

Here’s a row of houses in Southville, Bristol near where I live. I’m hoping to have a burst of photographic activity now, having just taken delivery of a new camera, a Panasonic G9, last week.

And now for an appeal: Bristol Refugee Rights, where I’m chair of the board of trustees, is a charity providing support, advice, education, meals, social space and other services to refugees, asylum seekers and other vulnerable migrants in the Bristol area. Funding is always tight, and we desperately need to raise £29,000 to keep our advice services running. We’ve [started a crowdfunder to this purpose](https://www.fundsurfer.com/crowdfund/bristol-refugee-rights-advice-service), and I’d urge everyone (especially if you like these Sunday photos) to contribute.