Registration Open, send an email to Molesa@ceu.hu or MiklosiZ@ceu.hu

http://www.ceu.hu/events/2010-07-22/democracy-and-legitimacy-dealing-with-extremism

Twenty years after the fall of Communism we witness an important rise in support for right wing political parties across Europe. In the last European elections the vote shifted to the right dramatically. Worryingly, far right political parties have fared well recently in the UK, Bulgaria, Italy, Austria, the Netherlands and Hungary. All of these countries have representatives from far right wing parties in the European Parliament. Many analysts suggest that people are turning to the far right groups as a reaction to (what they perceive as) shortcomings in democratic regimes.

In the face of these developments several questions arise: what resources does democracy have to resist far right parties? And more generally how should liberal democracy respond to illiberal groups? In many cases, these groups challenge the limits of free speech, making necessary to reflect once again on to what extent and why even “hate speech” ought to be protected against legal restrictions. On a related note, some governments have reacted against some groups by restricting the scope of free association or by interfering with the entry policies of some groups. Are there any limits to private association?

Meanwhile, the rise of the extreme right, together with heightened discrimination and segregation of disadvantaged minority groups give rise to another set of related questions about what governments may do to protect and assist these groups which might not be able to protect themselves, which might not be able to respond to prejudice against them. Is it permissible to restrict privacy rights by registering ethnic data in order to help fight against discrimination? Is it permissible to use such data for the purpose of reverse discrimination?

The conference is motivated by two sets of reasons: on the one hand we aim to discuss how the recent ‘turn to the right’ might affect liberal democracy and what can be done about it. On the other hand, we plan to do this by bringing together experts in both political theory, legal studies, public and social policy. We believe that cross-fertilisation is beneficial for all camps of enquiry.

Timetable:

THURSDAY, 22 JULY

Registration 9:30

Welcome 9:45

Keynote speech 10:00-11:15

T. Christiano, Democratic Authority and International Institutions

            Commented by Andrew Williams

Coffee 11:15-11:30

Panel 1 11:30-13:00

Enzo Rossi, Justice, Legitimacy and (Normative) Authority for Political Realists

Emanuela Ceva, Resolving, Containing, Managing: What Response to Value Conflicts in Politics?

Eszter Kollar, Ethical Insignificance and Political Significance of the Nation

Lunch 13:00-14:00

Panel 2 14:00-15:30

Richard Winfield The Vocabulary of Extremism: State-Sponsored Hate Speech Inciting Violence

Lucia Scaffardi, Freedom of Expression and Its Limits: Racial Hate Speech in Italy

Todd Grabarsky, The Rule of Law and Anti-Hate Speech Legislation in Democratic Germany

Coffee 15:30-15:45

Panel 3 15:45-17:15

Alexa Zellentin, Liberal Neutrality, Equal Citizenship and Cultural Differences

Nils Holtug, Secularism and Liberal Neutrality: The Case of Judges and Religious Symbols

Matthew Clayton, Rebutting Arguments for Religiously-Motivated Disobedience: Rawlsian Considerations

Coffee 17:15-17:30

Panel 4 17:30-19:00

Bernard Rorke, Anti-Roma Speech, Segregation and Discrimination

Stanislav (Stanko) Daniel, Mainstreaming Racism in Politics

Laura Ranca, Media(ted) extremism? Addressing Roma minority representation in Romania’s mainstream media

Wine reception at CEU Japanese Garden 19:00

FRIDAY, 23 JULY

Keynote Speech 10:00-11:15

Anthony Appiah, The theory and practice of cosmopolitanism           

Comments, TBD

Coffee 11:15-11:30

Panel 5 11:30- 13:00

Espen Gamlund, The Requirements of Toleration

Kristian Ekeli, The Political Rights of Anti-liberal Democratic Groups

Ekow Yankah, Rawls, Secular Communication and Exclusion

Lunch 13:00-14:00

Panel 6 14:00-15:30

Willem Korthals Altes, Hate speech, Religion, Discrimination

Janne Teller, May Allah Have Mercy on My Country

Naser Khader (Pending)

Coffee 15:30-15:45

Panel 7 15:45-17:15

David Heller, Regulating Hate Speech in Cyberspace: Local Norms, Global Inforcement?

Suzette Bronkhorst, The Internet and How Extremists Use Its Full Potential

Ronald Eissens, Liberty, Progress and Extremism: Lessons not Learned

Coffee 17:15-17:30

Panel 8 17:30-18:30

Rastislav Dinic, Tradition, Prejudice and Folk Epistemology

John Harris, Doubts about Democracy

Closing dinner at a restaurant in historic downtown Budapest 19:30

Speakers:
DR. HELEN FROWE (SHEFFIELD), `Threats and Bystanders’
DR. GERALD LANG (LEEDS), `Self-Defence and Agency’
DR. SETH LAZAR (OXFORD), `Scepticism about the Eliminative/Manipulative Agency Distinction’
PROFESSOR VICTOR TADROS (WARWICK), `Duty and Liability’

Respondents:
JO FIRTH (OXFORD)
DR. JON QUONG (MANCHESTER)
DR. DAVID RODIN (OXFORD)
GUY SELA (OXFORD)

Kima has been drugged and abandoned at the bottom of a well. She wakes up to see Niko hurtling to-wards her. He was walking alongside the (concealed) well when a powerful gust of wind blew him down it. If Kima does nothing Niko’s body will crush her, but he will survive. Or, she can save herself, using her trusty ray gun to disintegrate his body. Most people think Kima is justified in killing Niko to save herself, even though Niko is quite innocent of the threat he poses. But why? One answer is that killing Niko is an example of eliminative agency-Kima is not benefiting from Niko’s presence, but merely eliminating the threat that he poses. This is easier to justify than manipulative agency, which would involve using Niko’s body to secure a benefit she could not enjoy in his absence.This workshop brings together some of the UK’s leading philosophers of self-defence to discuss the eliminative/manipulative agency distinction, and ssess its contribution to the ethics of self-defence.

Lunch served. Papers will be pre-circulated a week in advance. Everyone is welcome, but registration is required. Numbers will be limited so register early to avoid disappointment. Please contact lucy.crittenden (at) politics.ox.ac.uk to register

Thanks!

Please submit a 400 words abstract, suitable for blind review to molesA [at] ceu.hu or to MiklosiZ [at] ceu.hu by 31 May 2010. The conference is free of charge, but participants will need to provide for their own travel costs.

Twenty years after the fall of Communism we witness an important rise in support for right wing political parties across Europe. In the last European elections the vote shifted to the right dramatically. Worryingly, far right political parties have fared well recently in the UK, Bulgaria, Italy, Austria, the Netherlands and Hungary. All of these countries have representatives from far right wing parties in the European Parliament. Many analysts suggest that people are turning to the far right groups as a reaction to (what they perceive as) shortcomings in democratic regimes.

In the face of these developments several questions arise: what resources does democracy have to resist far right parties? And more generally how should liberal democracy respond to illiberal groups? In many cases, these groups challenge the limits of free speech, making necessary to reflect once again on to what extent and why even “hate speech” ought to be protected against legal restrictions. On a related note, some governments have reacted against some groups by restricting the scope of free association or by interfering with the entry policies of some groups. Are there any limits to private association?

(more…)

4:30 - 5:30 Chris Brown, London School of Economics and Political Science: The Normative Foundations of a Post-Western World

5:30 - 6:30 Leif Wenar, King’s College, London: Clean Trade in Natural Resources

6:45 - 7:45 Terry Nardin, National University of Singapore: What is the ‘Political’ in International Political Theory?

For more details and the rest of the program, please see

http://www.politikwissenschaft.tu-darmstadt.de/index.php?id=theoriesektion

Everyone welcome, please register with katharina.grabietz at gmx.de

Please submit a 400 words abstract, suitable for blind review to molesA [at] ceu.hu or to MiklosiZ [at] ceu.hu before the 30 April 2010. The conference is fee of charge, but participants will need to provide for their own travel costs.

Twenty years after the fall of Communism we witness an important rise in support for right wing political parties across Europe. In the last European elections the vote shifted to the right dramatically. Worryingly, far right political parties have fared well recently in the UK, Bulgaria, Italy, Austria, the Netherlands and Hungary. All of these countries have representatives from far right wing parties in the European Parliament. Many analysts suggest that people are turning to the far right groups as a reaction to (what they perceive as) shortcomings in democratic regimes.

In the face of these developments several questions arise: what resources does democracy have to resist far right parties? And more generally how should liberal democracy respond to illiberal groups? In many cases, these groups challenge the limits of free speech, making necessary to reflect once again on to what extent and why even “hate speech” ought to be protected against legal restrictions. On a related note, some governments have reacted against some groups by restricting the scope of free association or by interfering with the entry policies of some groups. Are there any limits to private association?

(more…)

TOLERATION AND RESPECT: CONCEPTS, JUSTIFICATIONS AND APPLICATIONS

Conveners:
Emanuela Ceva (Institute for Advanced Study, University of Pavia)
Sune Laegaard (Roskilde University)
Federico Zuolo (Institute for Advanced Study, University of Pavia)

Discussions of the ideas of toleration and respect have animated vivid and ongoing debates in political and moral philosophy during the last decades. The formulations given to the idea of toleration have come to range from the negative appeal to non-interference to the positive recognition of difference. In a similar vein, the idea of respect has been object of some serious reformulation building on the works of neo-Kantians up to the most recent applications to issues of cultural diversity and religious liberty. However, the sophistication of the dicussions revolving around each of the two ideas has not been accompanied by a clarification of their reciprocal conceptual and normative relations, thus leading, in fact, to a blurring of the lines between them.

On this backdrop, the workshop will offer an occasion to engage in debates leading to a more systematic exploration of the intricate relations, conceptual and practical, between the two ideas. In particular, papers could address one (or more) of the following issues: (more…)

The second University of Copenhagen conference in epistemology will be held from 19-20 August 2010. The following is the description:

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: (more…)

THE APT CONFERENCE 2010 – PROPOSAL GUIDELINES

Reed College, Portland, Oregon, October 21-23, 2010; Proposals Due February 20, 2010

The Association for Political Theory welcomes paper proposals, panel proposals, and proposals for roundtable discussions from all approaches and on all topics in political theory, political philosophy, and the history of political thought. Faculty, advanced PhD candidates, and independent scholars are eligible to apply. We also encourage faculty to volunteer to serve as chairs and/or discussants.

(more…)

Having gained an unprecedented urgency, the topic of global justice has received increasingly public and academic attention, and has lately become a central issue in moral and political philosophy. Our conference seeks to be a forum for discussing the most important theories of global justice, their central concepts and constraints.

Professor Thomas Pogge (Yale University) will deliver the conference keynote address.

The conference will be held at the Faculty of Philosophy, University of Bucharest. The conference is organized by the The Center for the Study of Rationality and Beliefs as part of the research project Reason and Beliefs. Rationality, Public Reason and Education within a Multicultural Society financed by CNCSIS/UEFISCSU.

Submission of papers
We welcome papers concerning any topic related to global justice. Contributions are expected from researchers from different academic fields who are interested in the outlined topic or in closely related ones. Students are also invited to submit papers for the conference, as we intend to organize a student panel. Abstracts should be sent by e-mail as attachment at globaljustice@ub-filosofie.ro until the 20 April 2010. The deadline for submitting the full version of your paper is 10 May 2010. Along with the abstract, please send us your contact details: current affiliation, address and telephone number. The organizers cannot support any travel or accommodation costs.

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Boston University is proud to honor Professor David Lyons with a conference featuring many outstanding scholars in law and philosophy giving papers and commentaries on important topics about which he has written. Professor Lyons will give a response. Boston University Law Review will publish the papers and proceedings. Information about the conference, along with papers (as we receive them), will be posted on the BU School of Law Web site: http://www.bu.edu/law/events/upcoming/. The conference, which is co-sponsored by the BU School of Law and Department of Philosophy, will be held at BU School of Law, 765 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston, MA.

All are welcome to attend. There is no registration fee, but if you plan to attend, please RSVP to Andrea Larsen, alarsen@bu.edu. If you have academic questions about the program, please contact Professor James E. Fleming, jfleming [at] bu.edu.

(more…)

Today western democracies confront social, cultural and political challenges, which call for a reevaluation of our state affairs, our system of practices and our system of discourses. In contemporary pluralist and multicultural societies, there is an increased gap between citizens and political establishments. Traditional approaches of politics of recognition or redistribution, used to translate claims into the public sphere, seem no longer sufficient in this new paradigm of an increased globalized world and trans-national politics. Under this light, the meaning(s) we generally tend to attribute to the concept of democracy need to be re-evaluated and ultimately redefined.

This will be the First International Congress on ‘Democracy Today’ which will take place at Universidade do Minho, Braga. Having as starting point the assumption that the concept of democracy needs to be revised, we intent, during this congress, to accomplish two main tasks: on the one hand, to provide an account of the multiplicity of meanings of ‘democracy’ and its conceptual nuances. On the other hand, to account for the different instantiations of democracy and its intrinsic practices. Under this light we propose four days of reflection, discussion and dialogue, specially under the scope of political philosophy and political theory.

These are some of the questions we expect to explore:

(more…)

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.

Northwestern University Society for Ethical Theory and Political Philosophy

Fourth Annual Conference: May 20-22, 2010

Keynote Addresses: Elizabeth Anderson and Christine Korsgaard

Submission Guidelines: The deadline is February 15, 2010.  We welcome submissions from faculty and graduate students, 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 Anderson and Korsgaard, such as value theory, philosophy and economics, democratic theory, constructivism, practical reason, personal identity, and the moral status of animals.  Essays and abstracts should be prepared for blind review in .doc, .rtf, or .pdf format.  Graduate submissions should be sent by e-mail to leegoldsmith2012@u.northwestern.edu and faculty submissions should be sent by e-mail to garthoff@northwestern.edu.  Notices of acceptance will be sent by March 31, 2010.  For more information, please contact Jon Garthoff at the e-mail address above or visit our website:

http://www.philosophy.northwestern.edu/conferences/moralpolitical/

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).

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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.

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.

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.