Toward a Humanist Justice, a collection of critical essays on the work of Susan Moller Okin edited by my friends Debra Satz and Rob Reich, has just been published. The essays were first presented at a conference in honour of Okin organized at Stanford shortly after her death (which we reported here), and the book includes essays by Alison Jaggar, Joshua Cohen, Cass Sunstein, Mary Lyndon Shanley, the late Iris Young, David Miller, and others. One of the big problems with collections like this, focused on a single person’s work and deriving from a conference, is that they can be very disparate. Unlike a volume conceived around a single theme or problem, it is very hard to discipline contributors, and the contributors themselves are invited to the conference for a variety of reasons which include deep personal connections to the subject of the conference, a consideration which is sometimes, and not wrongly, given more weight than consistent engagement with the themes of that person’s work. The difficulty arises when it comes to the volume, and the editors don’t dare to dis-include those papers which don’t really belong in a unitary collection (I hereby request any editors who ever feel awkwardness about dis-inviting me in such a situation – which I can envisage arising – to be frank with me without any fear of me being even mildly irritated). So it really is a delight to find no such problem with the volume – not only are the essays all on central themes in Okin’s work, but they are well written (or well edited, you can never be sure) and all that I have read are very good indeed.

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A 60 minute interview between rockumentarian Peter Curran and the boys, here, celebrating the release of their not-yet-posthumous, Back from the Dead. Unmissable.

Via “Arthur Goldhammer”:http://artgoldhammer.blogspot.com/2009/06/new-blog-of-interest.html, this is a “very interesting post”:http://withoutbanisters.blogspot.com/2009/06/what-was-algerian-warwhy-should-you.html.

The French military tortured systematically from the beginning to the end of the war, most spectacularly during the “Battle of Algiers” in 1957. They used all the classic methods: electricity, simulated drowning, beatings, sexual torture and rape. …The FLN’s use of terrorism — in particular their targeting of European civilians at popular clubs, bars, and so on in urban bombing campaigns — served as the rationale for this “exhaustive interrogation” of “suspects.” … The Algerian War was a war of independence, a war of decolonization. In that sense, it cannot and should not be understood as analogous to, or a direct precursor to, the United States’ “war on terror.”

As an American today, what I find really significant about the use of torture in the Algerian War is what it did to *France*, which underwent a profound crisis of democracy as it attempted to hold on to Algeria. … what torture did do was poison the public sphere: to conceal the fact that the military was torturing, French governments turned to censorship, seizure of publications deemed deleterious to the honor and reputation of the Army, paralyzing control over the movements of journalists, and prosecution of those who nevertheless continued to publish evidence that torture was going on. … The reason all the government censorship was necessary was that a small but incredibly passionate, intellectually high-powered anti-torture movement developed in France from late 1956. … historical comparison can function as illuminating intellectual practice. … cell phone cameras really changed the world. Because the main reason the French torture-defenders didn’t argue that stuff like simulated drowning was no big deal was because *they didn’t have to: they didn’t have to admit simulated drowning was happening AT ALL.* In the absence of certain forms of highly-circulated, red-handed visual evidence, like the Abu Ghraib photos in Bush-era America, “deny, deny, deny” (even if massive, overwhelming proof actually does exist) remains a plausible public-relations strategy. … Denial that these things happened at all, which will always be the first line of defense, is no longer possible. And that is encouraging, despite everything.

The sacking of Dan Froomkin by the Washington Post reminds me of something attributed (IIRC) to Auberon Waugh on being told that Randolph Churchill had undergone the surgical removal of a tumour that turned out not to be malignant.

It is a marvel of medical science that they could first locate the one part of Randolph that was not malignant, and, having found it, immediately remove it

More from the ever-growing Wapo fan club.

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I don’t always get xkcd although often enough I think it’s quite funny and on occasion I think it’s just brilliant. Here’s one I’m surprised my students haven’t put on a T-shirt for me yet. And you might recall our CT discussion of this one. Today, Randall Munroe has added another to my collection of favorites, check it out. (I even forgive him for a slight misspelling at the end. I won’t get into specifics, because it would be a spoiler. See the first comment below for more. UPDATE an hour later: typo I write about has been fixed.:)

… as, for example, when the conversation is <a href=”http://theconversation.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/06/03/guns-gays-and-abortion/”>an exchange between Gail Collins and David Brooks</a> on “Guns, Gays and Abortion” that begins,

<blockquote><b>Gail Collins:</b>  David, can we talk hot-button social issues for a second? I know this is not really an area where you fly the conservative colors, but <i>you’re the go-to guy on how America lives</i>, and I’d like to hear your thoughts even if we can’t work up a fight.</blockquote>

This just makes me want to lie down on top of the <a href=”http://www.hoffmania.com/blog/2008/06/brooks-obama-do.html”>Applebee’s salad bar</a> and never get up again.

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Thanks for those podcast links to the talks from the Cohen conference, Harry. Very interesting. Let me talk briefly about one. David Estlund’s paper on “Utopophobia” – which, I see, is also available as a PDF download in draft form. The title gives you the right general idea about the topic: why are people hostile to utopian thinking – to ‘ideal theory’ in political theory and philosophy? To what degree is such hostility justified; to what degree unjustified?

It’s a good paper.

Let me begin with a mild expression of total difference of opinion. Estlund naturally addresses the concern that ideal theory is a waste of time because it’s useless. ‘It’s never gonna happen.’ He makes a comparison to higher mathematics, which is also generally acknowledged to be pretty inapplicable to anything that might be empirically real. He doesn’t push this analogy, so it’s not like weight is resting on it. Still, it seems to me so much more natural to say that ‘ideal theory’, if useless, is probably useless in the way a painstakingly-constructed model train system in your basement is useless – or that writing Mary Sue-style fanfic about the Form of the Good is useless. That is, it’s a rather indulgent, mostly harmless private make-believe sort of affair, but really not much like higher mathematics, honestly. I guess I’m impressed that you could be enough of a Platonist about it to presume the higher maths angle, in passing, with all the attendant implications of precision and purity and truth. (As someone who just wrote a book about Plato, part of me is happy that the old ways never die. But the part of me that is a die-hard later Wittgensteinian can only shake its head in wonder that the old ways never die. Back to the rough ground!)

Right. That’s out of the way. (You can’t refute an incredulous stare, nor does one count as an objection. We’re done.) Overall, it seems to me that Estlund says a lot of smart stuff that is relatively small-bore – stuff about how certain applications of ‘ought implies can’ can be fallacious. I found myself nodding and saying: ‘yes, I never noticed that before. It seems right.’ So: good. But these generally good points don’t feel large enough, in the aggregate, to cover the grand area staked out by the title: “Utopophobia”.

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Its good to see that John Ensign is consistent on the issues: voting for a constitutional ban on marriage for same sex couples, and taking direct action against the institution of marriage for opposite-sex couples.

My colleagues will like this one:

Most of the 277 survey respondents reported no positive correlation between a professional focus on ethics and actual moral behavior. Respondents who were ethicists themselves shied away from saying that ethicists behave worse than those outside the discipline – generally reporting that ethicists behave either the same or better – but non-ethicists were mostly split between reporting that ethicists behave the same as or worse than others.

Even those ethicists who did rank their peers’ behavior as better than average said their moral behavior is just barely better than average – hardly a ringing endorsement.

The paper does not control for the possibility that the joke widespread within the profession that ethicists are the least ethical philosophers might have influenced responses (influencing ethicists to protest too much, and others to go with the joke).

So I’m back from the AAUP national meeting, and I’ve decided that I’m a bad person for not blogging about <a href=”http://www.law.duke.edu/publiclaw/supremecourtonline/certgrants/2005/garvceb.html”><i>Garcetti v. Ceballos</i></a> or <a href=”http://www.umich.edu/~sacua/sacmin/hongvgrant.pdf”><i>Hong v. Grant</i></a> (.pdf) until now.  (Marc Bousquet was all over it <a href=”http://chronicle.com/review/brainstorm/bousquet/high-noon-for-academic-freedom”>more than a year ago</a>.)  The <i>Hong</i> case is just one example of what I call the Children of Garcetti, and if you teach at a public university in the United States (or if you know someone who does), you should know about <i>Garcetti</i>.

Here’s the <i>Oyez</i> <a href=”http://www.oyez.org/cases/2000-2009/2005/2005_04_473″>summary of the case</a>.  Since <i>Garcetti</i> involves the fate of a deputy district attorney in Los Angeles who was whistleblowing with regard to what appeared to be a fraudulent affidavit, most people didn’t realize that it might have implications for academic freedom.  Ah, but not the AAUP’s legal staff!  They were on the case, so to speak, from the start (here’s a .pdf of <a href=”http://www.aaup.org/NR/rdonlyres/FA297466-D642-4040-987D-BAF46DDA0CA0/0/GarcettiSupremeCourtFinal.pdf”>the brief</a>).  Which is yet another reason you all (if you’re college professors) should have <a href=http://www.aaup.org/AAUP/involved/join/>joined the AAUP</a> by now, because (a) the AAUP sees these things coming when most of the rest of us don’t and (b) helps to fight ‘em in court.  Indeed, the AAUP/ Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection of Free Expression brief seems to have caught the attention of David Souter, who, bless his retiring heart, wrote in dissent:

<blockquote>This ostensible domain beyond the pale of the First Amendment is spacious enough to include even the teaching of a public university professor, and I have to hope that today’s majority does not mean to imperil First Amendment protection of academic freedom in public colleges and universities, whose teachers necessarily speak and write “pursuant to official duties.”</blockquote>

In response, Justice Kennedy’s majority opinion, citing Bugs Bunny, replied, “ehhhhhh … <i>could be</i>!”  Though the actual language was this:

<blockquote>There is some argument that expression related to academic scholarship or classroom instruction implicates additional constitutional interests that are not fully accounted for by this Court’s customary employee-speech jurisprudence. We need not, and for that reason do not, decide whether the analysis we conduct today would apply in the same manner to a case involving speech related to scholarship or teaching.</blockquote>

In other words, <i>we’re leaving that door open, thanks — if any lower courts want to walk through it, just make sure they wipe their feet on the 1940 Statement of Principles of Academic Freedom</i>.

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I’ve got a long post in the works touching on some of the same issues as John’s “recent piece”:https://crookedtimber.org/2009/06/10/suicidally-strong-ip/, which began as a response to Larry Lessig’s recent silliness on socialism (which he has qualified in the meantime) but has since metastasized into something much shaggier and alarming. In the meantime, some speculation regarding a smaller question – is the Pirate Party’s presence in the European Parliament going to change anything? This is something that I wanted to talk about in a “bloggingheads debate”:http://bloggingheads.tv/diavlogs/20468 with Judah Grunstein yesterday, but we got stuck into more general questions of copyright good or bad. Anyway – my answer to the question is yes, plausibly – but around the margins, and depending on what alliances it strikes.
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The criticism of philosophers in the discussion of Michele’s post, specifically from our own Daniel that not much of the discussion was about how philosophers might listen to people from other disciplines, reminded me that I have been meaning to say something about one of my favourite books that I didn’t read in graduate school, Neil Postman’s The Disappearance of Childhood. Like another of my favourite books I would notice it in piles of textbooks for other departments in the university bookstore while I was in grad school, and spurned it mainly for its title. About 6 years ago, my wife read it for a class on children’s literature, and her rendering of the thesis that childhood was socially constructed made it sound so preposterous that I was compelled to read the book.

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While we all wonder what is going to happen in Iran, a trivial question: what are single quotes for?

I just got my Plato book [yes, you can read the whole thing!] ms. back from Pearson for final-final-final corrections and it’s clear the proofreader is not a philosopher. That’s actually not a bad thing, since it means fresh eyes about some things. One thing I’m not sure about: I’m being told not to use single-quotes. Since there are a number of places where I definitely need them for use-mention purposes, I’m going to have to put my foot down. This probably means I should announce to the reader what the convention is. But then I have to state it and, the truth is, I also use ‘scare quotes’ – single-quotes to indicate that there’s something questionable or problematic about a term or phrase. There are a few bits where I briefly conjure a bit of hypothetical dialogue and use single quotes to make it look more speech-like. Looking at all these red marks, I gotta clean up my act. Maybe the proper thing to do is restrict myself to necessary use-mention uses and don’t use the things for anything else. What is your preference, if any? (I don’t mean just about my book. In general. What are single-quotes for?)

Like all of you, I’m wondering what’s going on in Iran. Here’s a question I haven’t seen addressed (because it’s premature, that’s why, but I’ll ask it anyway): assuming that the election was stolen, why didn’t those responsible do a more competent job of covering up the evidence? Why the 11th hour scramble? If the election was stolen in this apparently crude, last-minute way, it would appear that the regime was in substantial denial about what was about to happen; which says something. Or it was unable to coordinate a large scale conspiracy to rig the election smoothly, further in advance, presumably for fear that some who were brought into the effort would betray it. That would say something, too.

Here’s a question that maybe people can answer: what’s the history of rigged elections? Are they mostly rigged well in advance, or do those in power do something crude and last-minute when they realize, to their surprise, that they are actually in danger of losing?