Simon Cabulea May is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Virginia Tech. He received his PhD from Stanford University in 2004 and his MA from Rhodes University in 1996. His present research project concerns conflict of moral convictions in public deliberation.
I’m looking for one or two graduate students to take over the technical nuts and bolts administration of the website, i.e., sign up new members, keep the site WordPress and theme up-to-date, fix broken links, keep a lookout for new plugins and capabilities that we could incorporate into the website, and the like. Such a person or persons should have the following qualities:
Relatively advanced technical competence regarding WordPress, blogging, the ability to write/fix code, etc.
Commitment to academic political philosophy/theory.
General togetherness, punctuality, reliability, etc.
There is little prospect of any meaningful remuneration, but it should provide the opportunity to become more involved in the political philosophy community and play an important role in interesting new initiatives. Since the website is international, you needn’t be located in the US. I’d be especially interested if some graduate students located at a single institution were to work together to keep things ticking along smoothly, although it shouldn’t be an onerous responsibility for a single person.
If you’re interested, please send me a CV, some evidence regarding your technical expertise, and any feasible ideas/thoughts you may have about how the website could be improved. Ideally, I’d like to sort this out by the end of the month.
Graduate students are invited to submit paper proposals for the inaugural Oxford Graduate Conference in Political Theory, to be held at the Department of Politics and International Relations, University of Oxford, on 19-20 April 2012. The theme for this conference is “Political Theory and the ‘Liberal’ Tradition”, and there will be two keynote addresses, given by Professor Jeremy Waldron (University of Oxford) and Professor Charles Mills (Northwestern University). The theme may be broadly construed, and we welcome papers addressing any of the following themes:
The ‘liberal’ tradition and history of political thought: The canon of great political works is still believed to offer crucial insights for current theorising, thanks to their perception as continuous sources of wisdom about the salient principles of good government. But why are certain thinkers traditionally included, whilst others are not? Why are most ‘great’ thinkers dead, white, and male? Has liberalism been insensitive to the grievances of minorities, and to certain forms of oppression and exclusion? Finally, is the ‘liberal’ tradition a retrospective construct, which paradoxically includes thinkers who never considered themselves ‘liberals’?
Via Ted Lechterman, this year’s CFP for a great graduate conference in political theory:
The Committee for the Graduate Conference in Political Theory at Princeton University welcomes papers concerning any topic in political theory, political philosophy, or the history of political thought. Papers should be submitted via the conference website by January 16, 2012. Approximately eight papers will be accepted.
The Graduate Conference in Political Theory at Princeton University will be held from April 6-7, 2012. This year, we are excited to include Professor Elisabeth Ellis, Texas A&M University, as keynote speaker and conference participant.
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, will focus exclusively on one paper and will feature an extensive question and answer period with Princeton faculty and graduate students. Papers will be pre-circulated among conference participants.
Matthew Noah Smith has written the following open letter from the faculty of US universities and colleges to to their chancellors and presidents regarding the use of violence against student protesters. If you would like to add your name to the letter, please email Matthew at matthew.noah.smith [at] yale.edu
Open Letter to Chancellors and Presidents of American Universities and Colleges From Your Faculty
We have witnessed, over the past two months, police departments using significant amounts of force against individuals peacefully participating in the Occupy movement. But during the week of November 13 – November 19, there was an astonishing escalation of the violence used by municipal police departments against non-violent protesters.
We hoped that even as politicians and municipal police violently responded to the Occupy movement, college and university campuses would remain safe locations for non-violent political dissent. But that has not been the case. In fact, universities and colleges appear to be using the same tactics in their interactions with unarmed, non-violent members of the university community as we have seen municipal police use against the broader Occupy movement.
In particular, we are concerned with the actions by police associated with two University of California campuses. At UC Berkeley, police beat faculty and students who were peacefully attempting to establish an Occupy camp on Sproul Plaza. At UC Davis, police casually pepper sprayed protesting students who were peacefully sitting with their arms linked. The message sent by university officials is clear: if you engage in non-violent political protest on the university campus, you run the risk of being assaulted by university police.
We condemn this and any deployment of violence by university officials against members of the university community who are non-violently expressing their political views.
We condemn university officials using violence or the threat of violence in order to limit political dissent to the narrow confines of print and university-sanctioned events.
We condemn university officials using violence and the threat of violence to prevent members of the university community from peacefully assembling.
For more than three generations, American university and college campuses have been crucial locations in which inspiring and important political activity has occurred. From the founding of SNCC at Shaw University and the Free Speech Movement at Berkeley in the 1960’s, to the divestment movements across American college campuses in the 1980s, to the establishment of student labor alliances in the 1990’s, American college campuses have pulsed with hopeful and positive forms of dissent and visions of alternatives. This admirable tradition is being threatened by the use of violence by university officials against their own students and faculty who are acting within this tradition.
We therefore call on chancellors and presidents of universities and colleges throughout the United States to declare publicly that their campuses are Safe Protest Zones, where nonviolent, public political dissent and protest will be protected by university police and will never be attacked by the university police.
We call on these chancellors and presidents to commit publicly to making their campuses safe locations for peaceful public assembly.
We call on these chancellors and presidents to institute immediately policies that reflect these commitments, and to instruct their police and security forces that they must abide by these policies.
We believe that this action is necessary for the protection of one of the principal virtues of our higher education system, namely that it is an environment that cultivates an active and engaged political imagination.
We call on the leaders of America’s universities and colleges to stand with us.
“Libertarianism presents itself as a simple, clear, and principled view. It appears to provide a moral basis, in the value of individual liberty, for a specific political program of limited government and low taxes. The moral significance of liberty seems obvious even to those who believe it is not the only thing that matters. But the claim of the libertarian political program to be founded on this value is illusory. Three lines of thought lead to conclusions that might be seen as libertarian. But none of these shows that respect for the value of individual liberty should lead one to support the political program of low taxes and limited government that libertarians are supposed to favor.”
Replies by Will Wilkinson and Brad DeLong are forthcoming tomorrow, with a response from Scanlon.
For 2012-2013, we seek up to four new postdoctoral fellows. We welcome candidates with substantial normative research interests from diverse backgrounds including philosophy, the social sciences, and professional schools. We are especially interested in candidates with research interests in inequality, human rights, immigration, and environmental justice, but we welcome all applicants with strong normative interests that have some practical implications. Fellows will teach one class, participate in a Political Theory Workshop, interact with undergraduates in the Ethics in Society Honors Program and help in developing an inter-disciplinary ethics community across the campus.
The appointment term is September 1, 2012 - August 31, 2013; however, the initial term may be renewed for an additional year. Applicants must have completed all requirements for their PhD by June 30, 2012. Candidates must also be no more than 3 years from the awarding of their degree (i.e., September 2009).
Stanford University is an equal opportunity employer and is committed to increasing the diversity of its faculty. It welcomes applications from women and members of minority groups, as well as others who would bring additional dimensions to the university’s research and teaching missions. Salary is competitive.
The application deadline is January 11, 2012 (5:00pm Pacific Standard Time).
To access the online application system, click here
For more information on the Center and our fellowship program, click here.
This year, we’re looking for a tenure-track Assistant Professor in Moral and Political Philosophy with interdisciplinary research and teaching interests. It’s a 2/2 load, including a graduate seminar. Applications should be received by 14 November and applicants MUST complete the online application (per university policy) in addition to sending the department a complete dossier. Here’s the ad that will appear in the JFP:
Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA. The Department of Philosophy and the interdisciplinary program, the Alliance for Social, Political, Ethical, and Cultural Thought (ASPECT), invite applications for a tenure track position in the Philosophy Department, to begin August 10, 2012.
Rank: Assistant Professor
AOS: Moral or Political Philosophy
AOC: Moral and Political Philosophy
The department is a major component of the ASPECT interdisciplinary PhD program. Since this position is part of an ASPECT cluster hire, the successful candidate will have a special interest in and a commitment to interdisciplinary teaching and research connected with the ASPECT program.
Teaching load is four courses per year, including one graduate seminar. Evidence of excellence in research and teaching required. Salary: competitive. Ph.D. completed by August, 2012
The department offers a strong MA in Philosophy, and is also involved in an interdisciplinary PhD program in Science and Technology Studies. Virginia Tech is an EO/AA employer and particularly encourages applications from women, veterans, persons with disabilities, and minorities.
Interested candidates are REQUIRED to complete a brief on-line application at www.jobs.vt.edu (posting # 0110928) and send dossier (cover letter with statement of interest, CV, 3 letters of recommendation, graduate transcripts, a writing sample, and evidence of teaching excellence) to ASPECT Search Committee, Department of Philosophy—0126, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA 24061. We will begin reviewing applications as soon as they are received, until the position is filled. Applications should be received by November 14, 2011, for full consideration.
Tulane University Center for Ethics and Public Affairs | Deadline: 15 November 2011
This is a great fellowship opportunity in a great place:
The Murphy Institute’s Center for Ethics and Public Affairs at Tulane University invites applications for up to three Faculty Fellowship positions for the 2012-2013 academic year. These fellowships are available to support outstanding faculty whose teaching and research focus on ethics, political philosophy, political theory, or questions of moral choice in areas such as, but not restricted to, business, government, law, economics, and medicine. While fellows will participate in conferences and seminars organized by the Center, they will be expected to devote most of their time to conducting their own research. Faculty Fellows receive a stipend of 60,000 USD and are eligible for Tulane faculty benefits, including health insurance. Applicants should hold a doctorate in philosophy, political science, political theory, or political economy (or a related discipline), or a professional, terminal degree in a field such business, law, or medicine, at the time of application. Tulane University is an affirmative action/equal opportunity employer. Women and minorities are encouraged to apply. Required application materials include the completed fellowship application form, curriculum vitae, project description with bibliography, scholarly paper, and 2 reference letters. Applicants must submit their materials via Academic Jobs Online website. For more information and the application form click here or contact Margaret Keenan at mkeenan [at] tulane.edu or 504-862-3236.
Cornell University, 27-28 April 2012 | CFP Deadline: 1 Nov 2011
Via Pinar Kemerli at Cornell:
“From Meydan Tahrir to Wisconsin: Rethinking Revolution, Democracy and Citizenship”
An interdisciplinary graduate student conference, hosted by the political theory graduate students in the Department of Government at Cornell University, April 27 – 28, 2012.
From revolutionary awakenings in the Arab world to protests against austerity measures in Europe and assaults on labor rights in Wisconsin, a “specter is haunting the world” – the specter of democracy and equality. This conference aims to bring together a diverse group of graduate students to discuss the significance of these revolutionary mobilizations and moments of solidarity for political thought. How do unfolding events challenge us to reconsider political concepts such as democracy, revolution, and citizenship? In light of these historical developments, papers might address political possibilities and anxieties unleashed by the current revolutionary enthusiasm: To what extent are these demands for economic equality, labor rights, and democracy compatible with contemporary hegemony of (neo)liberalism? Does the Tea Party as a conservative social movement challenge our ideas regarding the content of democratic politics? Is it the attempt to weaken union rights in Wisconsin that represents an undermining of democratic citizenship, or the recall efforts that have followed them? When are “rebels/protesters” justified in claiming popular authority and taking up “constituent power”? How should we interpret the nationalist discourse and imagery evoked in revolutions? What is at stake in the tendency to present the Egyptian revolution as a radical break from the past, as a distinctively “secular moment”? What do transnational connections between the protesters in Tahrir Square and the public workers of Wisconsin tell us about revolutionary enthusiasm from afar, about democracy’s ‘witness’, or about projection of democratic imagery and metaphor?
We seek papers that will engage a wide range of disciplines, including politics, sociology, developmental sociology, history, anthropology, and near eastern studies. In order to be considered, applicants should email their proposals to cornelltheoryconference [at] gmail.com by November 1, 2011. Proposals should include a two-page c.v. and a prospectus of 500-1000 words.
Suppose an academic were to (a) succumb to Apple’s marketing prowess and (b) invest a great deal of time and energy researching/discovering the best ways to make use of his/her new iPad 2, what would be the most valuable information s/he would learn, particularly regarding which apps to get?
I’m primarily interested in using the iPad to read and take notes on books and journal articles, and take it that iAnnotate is (one of) the best apps for that. But I’m also interested in suggestions about the iPad’s capabilities that are not so obvious, i.e., things someone who doesn’t have much time for (b) wouldn’t even think to look for.
I’m very happy to say that a symposium on Corey Brettschneider’s Democratic Rights has now been published in Representation. The symposium is based on the contributions to the reading group on the book that took place here in late 2008. (This follows an earlier symposium in the same journal that originated from our earlier reading group on David Estlund’s Democratic Authority.) Representation very generously gave us a lot of space to explore the issues that Corey’s book raises, so people working in democratic theory might like to take a look.
The symposium comprises my introduction and the following papers:
It’s no doubt impossible to sum up the problems facing women in academia in general and philosophy in particular in any neat way, but the experiences recorded on WIILTBAWIP? strike me as essential reading for anyone thinking about this issue.
Via Jason Swadley at Brown, a new online political philosophy quarterly: The Art of Theory. This issue contains an interview with Michael Sandel, pieces by John McCormick and Sharon Krause, and a roundtable discussion of Ryan Patrick Hanley’s Adam Smith and the Character of Virtue.
The deadline for the 2010-11 fellowships at Tulane’s Center for Ethics and Public Affairs has been extended until 7 March 2011. Please also note that the fellowship amount is $60,000 for the two semesters. There are no teaching requirements. Fellows participate in faculty seminars and other events every week or so. This year (at least) there is also a regular reading group comprising the fellows and the resident value theorists at Tulane. Fellows each have an office in the Center, which is directly across St. Charles Avenue from Audubon Park. Anyone working in ethics or political philosophy, or on moral questions in other disciplines, should definitely consider applying. Plus you get to spend a year in New Orleans.
The 2011 conference of the Association for Legal and Social Philosophy will be held at the University of Warwick on 4-6 July 2011. The theme of the conference is “Authority, Legitimacy and Rights.” Sub-themes include:
Legitimacy and authority
Human rights
Diversity, pluralism and toleration
Political power and punishment
Environmental justice
Democracy
Property rights
Just war.
The keynote speakers are Tom Christiano (Arizona) and Anthony Duff (Minnesota/Stirling). Send an abstract of no more than 400 words to Dean Machin (dean.machin [at] warwick.ac.uk) by 15 March 2011.
A quick housekeeping post: We now have about 650 registered users around the world. Most of these are registered as members, but quite a few are participants. (The former can publish new posts whereas the latter can comment only.) My sense is that it is perhaps inadvisable, as a general rule, for graduate students in the early stages of their studies to post to the front page, but this does not hold for advanced graduate students who have submitted or substantially completed their dissertations, or who have built up a record of publication. The same point applies, a fortiori, to people now working and publishing as academics without Ph.D.s. If you’re (now) in the either of these latter categories and would like to have your status updated, please send me an email at simonmay at vt dot edu (with some sort of verification so I know you’re not flogging junk). Also, members please let me know if your affiliation has changed and I’ll update the Membership page. New members may have noticed I’m no longer adding their books to the Amazon link list in the left hand column, since it has got quite long. I’m keen on making some changes to how the site is organised in the not-too-distant future, so feel free to use this thread as a suggestion box (with the proviso that utopian suggestions must be kept realistic).
Northwestern SETPP: 19-21 May 2011 | CFP: 15 February 2011
The Northwestern University Society for Ethical Theory and Political Philosophy will hold their fifth annual conference on 19-21 May 2011. The keynote speakers are Philip Pettit and R. Jay Wallace. Submissions from faculty and graduate students are welcome, as some sessions will be reserved for student presentations. Please submit an essay of approximately 4000 words and an abstract of at most 150 words. Essay topics in all areas of ethical theory and political philosophy will be considered, although some priority will be given to essays that take up themes from the works of Philip Pettit and R. Jay Wallace, such as responsibility, practical reasoning, freedom, democratic theory, constructivism, contractualism, individual agency, and collective agency. Essays and abstracts should be prepared for blind review in word, rtf, or pdf format. Graduate submissions should be sent by email to leegoldsmith2012 [at] u.northwestern.edu; faculty submissions should be sent by e-mail to garthoff [at] northwestern.edu. Notices of acceptance will be sent by 31 March 2011. For more information, please contact Jon Garthoff at the e-mail address above or visit our website.
The Committee for the Graduate Conference in Political Theory at Princeton University welcomes papers concerning any period, methodological approach or topic in political theory, political philosophy, or the history of political thought. Approximately eight papers will be accepted.
Each session, led by a discussant from Princeton, will be focused exclusively on one paper and will feature an extensive question and answer period with Princeton faculty and students. Papers will be pre-circulated among conference participants.
The keynote address will be given by Professor Patchen Markell of the University of Chicago.
Dave Shoemaker is sending out a call for abstracts for the first biennial New Orleans Workshop on Agency and Responsibility (NO WAR), to be held in New Orleans, LA at the Intercontinental Hotel on November 3-5, 2011.
Abstracts are welcome in any area or on any topic having to do with agency and/or responsibility. Perspectives beyond just those from moral philosophy (e.g., psychology, legal theory, neuroscience, economics, metaphysics, and more) are welcome. (To see more about the workshop’s general aims and other details, follow this link.)
Abstracts should be 2-3 double-spaced pages and are due no later than March 1, 2011. Please send abstracts by e-mail to David Shoemaker, dshoemak [at] tulane.edu. A program committee will evaluate submissions and make decisions by early May.
NO WAR is a biennial workshop featuring the presentation of sophisticated original research on issues roughly captured under the label “agency and responsibility.” This general area involves investigation of such questions as: What does it mean to be an agent? How (if at all) does the nature of personhood and personal identity across time bear on questions of agency? What is the nature of, and relation between, moral and criminal responsibility? What is the relation between responsibility and the metaphysical issues of determinism and free will? What do various psychological disorders (autism, psychopathy, cognitive disabilities) tell us about agency and responsibility? What is involved in the development of moral agency? What is the will, willpower, and weakness (or strength) of will? What do the results from neuroscience imply (if anything) for our questions about agency and responsibility? What is the nature of autonomy and how is it related to agency and responsibility?
Spencer Foundation Post-Doctoral Fellowships in Equality of Opportunity and Education at Stanford University (two positions)
The McCoy Family Center for Ethics in Society is seeking two post doctoral scholars for a project focused on issues of equality of opportunity and the public provision of education. These fellowships have been created with funding by the Spencer Foundation. The fellows will join the community of post doctoral fellows at the Center but will be selected on the basis of their fit with a new multi-year project on Equality of Opportunity and the Public Provision of Education. We seek scholars with a PhD (from disciplines such as philosophy, education or one of the social sciences) or a JD with research interests related to (any of) the following questions:
1. What ideal of equality should govern the public provision of education?
2. What are the implications of this ideal for concrete decisions about school financing, admissions practices, and the national, state, and local distribution of educational responsibility?
3. What are the practical obstacles to achieving this ideal in education?
Fellows will receive training and mentorship; work closely with distinguished faculty related to the project; participate in multi-disciplinary seminars and conferences and meet with leading scholars and policy makers in the field. Fellows may be assigned some teaching responsibilities (at most one course per year), and will be asked to participate in faculty-graduate student workshops, interact with undergraduates in the School of Education and Ethics in Society program and help in developing an inter-disciplinary ethics community across the campus.
“We welcome candidates with substantial normative research interests from diverse backgrounds including philosophy, the social sciences, and professional schools. We are especially interested in candidates with research interests in international topics, including human rights, immigration, and environmental justice, but we welcome all applicants with strong normative interests that have some practical implications. Fellows will teach one class, participate in the Political Theory and Global Justice Workshops, interact with undergraduates in the Ethics in Society program and help in developing an inter-disciplinary ethics community across the campus. Appointment is for one year, but may be renewed for an additional year. Applicants must have their doctoral degree in hand no later than 30 days prior to the appointment start date and be no more than 3 years from the awarding of the degree.”
Applications are to be submitted via an online application system that will be ready later this year. Information about that will be posted on their website. Contact Joan Berry for more details.
Via Abbas Raza, 3 Quarks Daily – the website you should be reading if you are not already — are hosting their second annual prize for the best blog writing in philosophy. Akeel Bilgrami will be the judge. The details of last year’s contest are here. You can nominate blog posts written in English in the last year and not longer than 4000 words.
For everyone intending to go to the Eastern APA in Boston this year, the Society for Philosophy and Public Affairs will be holding a session on the Ethics of Compromise in Democracy on Tuesday 28 December, 2010, from 2pm-5pm. We’ll be looking at the topic of political compromise from a number of angles: compromise in international politics, the epistemology of disagreement, and the role of partisanship in politics. There’s been comparatively little systematic work on this ubiquitous political phenomenon, despite its moral and philosophical complexity, so we’ll be hoping to have a discussion that adds impetus to its study.
Chair: Randall Harp (Vermont)
Speakers:
Eric Beerbohm (Harvard): Compromise among Epistemic Peers
Simon Cabulea May (Virginia Tech): Deep Compromise in Partisan Politics
Dan Weinstock (Montreal): Compromises beyond Peace
Here are two questions that strike me as worth thinking about.
Say you wanted to teach a liberal arts-style freshman seminar that introduced students to the idea of reflecting on politics and society, but you didn’t want to turn it into yet another Applied Ethics or Introduction to Political Philosophy class that crammed in all the essential philosophical problems and texts: Capital Punishment, the Duty to Obey the Law, Abortion, Euthanasia, etc., on the one hand, and Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Marx, Mill, etc., on the other. Instead, you’d much rather just use plain old essays — well-crafted, accessible, insightful, evocative, memorable essays — written by people who may or may not be academics or part of the academic tradition.
The kind of essay I’m thinking of would be one that didn’t so much need to be explained as experienced, that presents a viewpoint that seizes your imagination in some way, rather than an argument or conceptual apparatus that needs to be taken apart, dusted a little by a qualified technician, and then put back together in sound working order. These would be essays that have a force that can’t really be conveyed to someone who has not read them, and that become part of the background framework of your way of thinking about the political and social world and the stuff in it that matters. They would ideally be long enough to be a substantial read, worth assigning as a text, but not too long to be a task that requires the threat of academic sanctions to be completed. Above all, they must not be difficult to read or boring to think about. They should be the sort of thing people mean when they talk about the art of the essay.
We tend to think of liberal democracy as providing the most ethically defensible way to set up a modern society. A separate yet highly relevant issue is whether liberal democracies also are preferable from an epistemological perspective, i.e., from the point of view of promoting true over false belief, knowledge over ignorance, and so on. The purpose of this conference — and of the research project that it is part of — is to investigate the norms, practices, and institutions that determine how belief and knowledge is acquired and transmitted in liberal democracies. Questions to be addressed include but are not limited to the following: Read the rest of this entry »
The Department of Philosophy at Virginia Tech invites applications for a one-year position, to begin August 10, 2010. Rank: Visiting Assistant Professor; AOS: Ethics; AOC: Open. Five courses per year, including one graduate seminar.
Evidence of teaching ability and research potential required. Salary: competitive. Ph.D. completed by August, 2010. In addition to offering a first class MA in Philosophy, the department is also a major component of two interdisciplinary PhD programs: Science and Technology Studies; and The Alliance for Social, Political, Ethical and Cultural Thought. Virginia Tech is an EO/AA employer and particularly encourages applications from women, veterans, persons with disabilities, and minorities.
Interested candidates are REQUIRED to complete a brief on-line application at www.jobs.vt.edu posting #0100027 and send dossier (cover letter with statement of interest, CV, three letters of recommendation, and evidence of teaching excellence) to Chair, Philosophy Search Committee, Department of Philosophy (0126), Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA 24061. We will begin reviewing applications as soon as they are received, until the position is filled. Those received by 12 March 2010 can expect full consideration.
Penn State: 25 July-1 August 2010 | Applications by 10 March (grad) or 15 April (undergrad)
Via Eva Kittay:
The Philosophy in an Inclusive Key Summer Institute (PIKSI) is designed to encourage undergraduate students from underrepresented groups to consider future study in the field of philosophy. PIKSI, held 25 July to 1 August, emphasizes both traditional and nontraditional philosophical scholarship, such as feminist philosophy, critical race theory, and disability studies. All undergraduate student participants are fully funded by PIKSI.
PIKSI is a project of the Association for Feminist Ethics and Social Theory (FEAST) and is supported the Rock Ethics Institute and the College of the Liberal Arts at Penn State, as well as a number of graduate programs which have funded their graduate students to serve as Graduate Student Assistant.
The deadline for applications is 10 March for graduate students and 15 April for undergraduates. For more information on the summer institute, institutional co-sponsorship, and the Iris Marion Young Diversity Scholars fund please visit the PIKSI website.
The Newcastle Ethics, Legal and Political Philosophy Research Group are holding a conference in honour of Professor Peter Jones. The topic of the conference is “The Value and Limits of Rights.” The conference will be held at the Devonshire Building (G21 & G22) at Newcastle from 25-26 February. The programme is as follows:
Thursday, 25 February
1:30-2:00pm: Registration and Welcome Address
2:00-3:15pm: Albert Weale (UCL)
3:30-4:45pm: Simon Caney (Oxford)
Friday, 26 February
9:30-10:45am: Richard Bellamy (UCL)
10:45-11:00am: Tea/coffee
11:00am-12:15pm: John Horton (Keele)
12:15-1:00pm: Buffet lunch
1:00-2:15pm: Susan Mendus (York)
2:15-3:30pm: David Miller (Oxford)
3:30-3:45pm: Tea/coffee
3:45-5:00pm: Hillel Steiner (Manchester)
All are welcome to attend although there is a registration fee of £10 to cover the cost of the refreshments and buffet lunch. Payments can be made online here. Please address any questions to Dr Ian O’Flynn.
According to the BBC, in the latest twist in l’affaire du foulard/voile, a French parliamentary committee has recommended a ban on women wearing Islamic face veils in public [Correction: the proposal applies to public facilities, such as hospitals and mass transit, and not walking about the street]. The reasoning behind the report seems to be that face veils are contrary to the values of the republic, as symbols of women’s repression and extremist fundamentalism.
The proposal strikes me as a very bad idea in a number of ways. I don’t see how the law liberates women from whatever social pressure there exists to wear a veil. Will wearing a balaclava in public be illegal too? If not, then won’t the law just force a change of attire? Nussbaum has some discussion of this general issue in her Liberty of Conscience, pp. 346-53, invoking the ability of Chicagoans (and the Dutch, and presumably the French) to conduct normal social interactions with their faces covered in winter.
What if feminists who believe that make-up is just a manifestation of the objectification of women in patriarchy, and hence symbolic of repression and degradation, are right? Is there a way to support the veil ban, but not think that this claim about make-up would justify a make-up ban?* How about t-shirts with sexist imagery and messages? Quite apart from dress codes, we can recognise prostitution as degrading, and hence contrary to the values of an egalitarian republic, without thinking it should be illegal, primarily because making it illegal may very well just make the lives of those women, so degraded, even worse.
So, a question: can anything be said in support of this proposal (from ideally a feminist perspective), that does not run into these and other problems?
*[I should add I think having to wear a burqa is worse than feeling compelled to wear make-up.]
According to cosmopolitanism, every person has global stature as the ultimate unit of moral concern and is therefore entitled to equal respect and consideration no matter what her citizenship status or other affiliations happen to be. This issue of The Monist is intended as a forum for debates about the pros and cons of cosmopolitanism. It will address questions such as: What does cosmopolitanism require by way of obligations of justice to all? What kinds of reforms to our global and local institutions do cosmopolitan concerns require? Are these requirements feasible? In addition to our obligations to everyone, do we have further, more demanding, obligations to compatriots or to family members? Do non-cosmopolitan theories provide a better account of our obligations and allow us a more useful framework for mediating the interests of compatriots and non-compatriots?
St. Anne’s College, Oxford: 2-4 July 2010 | CFP: 9 January 2010
Moving up to the top because the deadline is soon — SCM.
The 2010 Society for Applied Philosophy annual conference will be held at St. Anne’s College from 2-4 July 2010. It will be an open themed applied philosophy conference (papers will be considered from the full range of topics in applied philosophy). Plenary speakers include Professor Thomas Pogge (Yale), Professor Judith Lichtenberg (Georgetown), Professor Catherine Lu (McGill), and Professor Ingmar Persson (Gothenburg).
The deadline for this conference has now been extended to 18 January 2010 — SCM.
The Committee for the Graduate Conference in Political Theory at Princeton University welcomes papers concerning any period, methodological approach or topic in political theory, political philosophy, or the history of political thought. Approximately eight papers will be accepted.
Linköping, Sweden: 8-12 June 2010 | CFP: 8 March 2010
The European Science Foundation (ESF), in partnership with LFiU is organising a conference on the “Responsibility to Protect: From Principle to Practice” to be held at the Scandic Hotel Linköping Väst, Linköping, Sweden, from 8-12 June 2010. The conference chair is Prof. Andre Nollkaemper, of the Amsterdam Center for International Law, University of Amsterdam.
The closing date for application is the 8 March, 2010. This conference is part of the 2010 ESF Research Conferences Programme and is accessible at its website.
Jacob Levy has put up a link to the podcasts from the recent memorial colloquium on Jerry Cohen’s life and work organised by the Groupe de recherche interuniversitaire en philosophie politique at Montreal. The presentations are from Daniel Weinstock, William Clare Roberts, Joseph Carens, Jurgen De Wispelaere, and Jacob Levy.
Bristol: 30 June - 2 July 2010 | CFP: 1 March 2010
The third International Global Ethics Association conference will be held at the University of the West of England in Bristol from 30 June to 2 July 2010. Confirmed speakers include Simon Caney (University of Oxford) and Darrel Moellendorf (Director, Institute for Ethics and Public Affairs, San Diego State University).
Papers and panels on all aspects of global ethics are invited. The organisers encourage multidisciplinary papers which address the theory and practice of Global Ethics and global justice from academic, policy and practice perspectives. Issues include:
Development issues like progress towards achieving the MDGs and impact of post-colonial and post-development critiques on development ethics
Ecological crises such as global warming and the distribution of increasingly scarce natural resources
War and peace concerns such as the ethical issues arising from the War on Terror, humanitarian intervention, privatization of the military and the ethics of peace-keeping
Gender issues 20 years since CEDAW, for example, transnational feminism and reproductive rights
Human rights issues 60 years after the UDHR
Economic injustices and the global market
Global networks and civil society
Identity politics, multiple identities and transnationalism
Please e-mail panel proposals and abstracts (no more than 500 words) to global-ethics [at] uwe.ac.uk by 1 March 2010. For further information please contact Dr Christien van den Anker and Professor Heather Widdows at the same email address.
Prato, Italy: 25-29 August 2010| CFP: 8 March 2010
Karen Green, Lisa Curtis-Wendlandt and Paul Gibbard are organising a conference on on the contribution of women to the history of political thought in Europe during the Enlightenment period. Papers may discuss the political ideas of individual women such as Mary Wollstonecraft, Catherine Macaulay, Mary Hays, Sarah Churchill, Mary Delariviere Manley, Marie Jodin, Emilie du Châtelet, Madame Dupin, Olympe de Gouges, Felicité Keralio-Robert, Madame Roland, Germaine de Staël, Dorothea Erxleben Leporin, Amalie Holst, Johanna Charlotte Unzer, Luise Gottsched, Mariana von Ziegler, Elise Reimarus, Elisabetta Caminer Turra, and others. Papers placing the work of such women in the broader context of political writing by men are encouraged. ‘Political thought’ is broadly interpreted to include sexual politics as well as political theory, and discussions of the political ideas of women as expressed in genres other than the political treatise are welcome.
Submissions of title and one page abstract should be sent by 8th March 2010 to Karen Green by email or in hard copy to her at the School of Philosophy and Bioethics, Monash University, Melbourne 3800, Australia. Up to five bursaries of up to $500 will be available to help post-graduates and early career researchers to attend the conference. Applicants who wish to be considered for one of these should indicate this with their submission.
An edited volume on women’s political thought in Europe during the eighteenth century is proposed, and contributions to the conference may be submitted for publication in this volume. Contributors who are unable to attend the Prato Conference, but would like to contribute a paper to the volume are invited to submit papers for consideration by September 30th 2010.
The third annual Rockey Mountain Ethics Congress will be held from 5-8 August 2010 at the University of Colorado, Boulder. ?The conference is hosted by the Center for Values and Social Policy. Papers from all areas of ethics and political theory are invited. To encourage the participation of junior scholars, the University of Colorado will be awarding a Young Ethicist Prize of $500 for most meritorious submission. The prize competition is open to any participating untenured philosopher (including, but not limited to, tenure-track faculty, instructors, and graduate students).
Abstract (750-1000 words) should be submitted electronically (in Word format) to Benjamin Hale and Alastair Norcross. Here is a pdf of the CFP.
In the contemporary world the ideal of democratic citizenship appears to be confronted with many challenges and opportunities, and there is substantial disagreement about how it should respond to them. In the light of changing forms of democratic engagement, the globalisation of political power, the continuing challenge of maintaining a common citizenship in the face of cultural diversity and mass migration, the form democratic citizenship will take in the future is open to question. Contributions to this conference will seek to think through the forms that democratic citizenship might, and should, take in the future. We focus on four sets of themes:
* democratic innovations,
* democratic citizenship: from local to global?
* democratic citizenship: threats and insecurities
* competing visions of democratic citizenship.
Keynotes confirmed thus far include Rainer Baubock (European University Institute) and Stuart White (University of Oxford). Selected papers from the conference will be published in a special issue of the Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy.
Sixteen participants (fourteen faculty and two graduate students) will be chosen from among eligible applicants interested in liberalism, democracy and international justice. The seminar will feature appearances by Arthur Applbaum (Harvard), David Estlund (Brown), Debra Satz (Stanford), and Thomas Pogge (Yale), who will discuss their recently-published work and/or work-in-progress. Ample time will be allowed for participants to pursue individual projects on Seminar-related topics.
Summer Stipend: $3,300. Stipends are intended to help cover the cost of travel and living expenses during the course of the Seminar. Applications must be postmarked (or submitted electronically) no later than March 2nd, 2010.
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