The following is a listing of the events on campus that were sponsored by the Institute for Philosophy, Politics, and Economics during the spring semester of 2013.
“Just War Theory in the 21st Century”
February 14 @ 4:15 pm, 27 Persson
Lecture by Jeff McMahan, Professor of Philosophy, Rutgers University, with commentary by David McCabe, Professor of Philosophy, and Valerie Morkevicius, Assistant Professor of Political Science. Jeff McMahan began his doctoral work at Oxford under the supervision of Jonathan Glover and Derek Parfit, and then completed his PhD at Cambridge under the supervision of Bernard Williams. He is the author of The Ethics of Killing: Problems at the Margins of Life (Oxford, 2002), and Killing in War(Oxford, 2009). His forthcoming books from Oxford include a collection of essays, The Values of Lives; a book on warfare, The Right Way to Fight; and a sequel to his 2002 book, The Ethics of Killing: Self-Defense, War, and Punishment.
“The Betrayal of Liberal Education”
February 21 @ 4:15 pm, 27 Persson
Lecture by Peter Berkowitz, Tad & Dianne Taube Senior Fellow, Hoover Institution,Stanford University; Chair, National Security & Law Task Force; & Co-Chair, Virtues of a Free Society Task Force. In addition to his Senior Fellowship, Peter Berkowitz is co-founder and director of the Israel Program on Constitutional Government; a member of the Policy Advisory Board at the Ethics and Public Policy Center; and has served as a senior consultant to the President’s Council on Bioethics. Among his works are Nietzsche: The Ethics of an Immoralist (Harvard, 1995); Virtue and the Making of Modern Liberalism (Princeton, 1999); and Israel and the Struggle over the International Laws of War(Hoover, 2012), and forthcoming in 2013, Constitutional Conservatism. He holds a JD and a PhD in political science from Yale University; an MA in philosophy from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem; and a BA in English literature from Swarthmore College.
“Does Affirmative Action Hurt Those it Intends to Help?”
March 27 @ 4:15 pm, Love Auditorium
Lecture by Richard Sander, UCLA Professor of Law, with commentary by Rhonda Levine, Professor of Sociology. Co-sponsored with The Center for Freedom & Western Civilization and the Arnold Sio Chair on Diversity and Community. After earning a B.A. in Social Studies at Harvard, Richard Sander joined Vista and worked for a small neighborhood-housing group on Chicago’s south side. He continued to work on issues of fair housing and integration as he pursued degrees in law (J.D., 1988) and economics (M.A. 1985, Ph.D., 1990) at Northwestern University. In 1989 he joined the faculty of the UCLA School of Law. After California voters approved Proposition 209 in 1996 – banning the use of race as a criterion of judgment in various government programs, including admissions at UCLA – Sander successfully argued for the adoption of class-based preferences in the Law School’s admissions. In 1998-99, Sander helped the Empirical Research Group (ERG) to assist faculty members in developing greater quantitative and methodological sophistication in their policy-related work. In a series of articles in Stanford Law Review, Yale Law Journal, and North Carolina Law Review, Sander argues that race preferences impose unexpected but substantial costs on their intended beneficiaries. In 2012, he, with Stuart Taylor, co-authored Mismatch: How Affirmative Action Hurts Students It’s Intended to Help, and Why Universities Won’t Admit It (Basic Books, 2012).
“What did the American Founders Learn from Rome?”
April 1 @ 6 pm, 207 Lathrop
Lecture by Paul Rahe, Charles O. Lee & Louise K. Lee Chair in Western Heritage and Professor of History, Hillsdale College. Co-sponsored with Core 151. After reading Litterae Humaniores at Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar, Paul A. Rahe completed a Ph.D. in ancient history at Yale in 1977 under the direction of Donald Kagan. He has since taught at Cornell, Franklin and Marshall, and the University of Tulsa. He is now Professor of History at Hillsdale College. His scholarship has focused on the origins and evolution of Western self-government, and his three-volume, Republics Ancient and Modern: Classical Republicanism and the American Revolution (North Carolina, 1992), surveys the origins and development of self-government in ancient Greece and Rome, its re-emergence in the Middle Ages, and the transformations it underwent at the hands of the political philosophers of early modernity and of the American Founding Fathers. Recent publications include Against Throne and Altar: Machiavelli and Political Theory under the English Republic, (Cambridge, 2008); Montesquieu and the Logic of Liberty and Soft Despotism; Democracy’s Drift: Montesquieu, Rousseau, and Tocqueville on the Modern Prospect, (both Yale, 2009).
“Leadership, Democracy, and the End of History”
April 9 @ 4:15 pm, 27 Persson
Lecture by William A. Galston holds the Ezra Zilkha Chair in the Brookings Institution’s Governance Studies Program, where he serves as a Senior Fellow. He has also served as Saul I. Stern Professor of Civic Engagement and Director of the Institute for Philosophy and Public Policy at the Univ. Maryland, College Park. A former policy advisor to President Clinton and presidential candidates Albert Gore and Walter Mondale, Galston is an expert on domestic policy, political campaigns, and elections. His current research focuses on designing a new social contract, and the implications of political polarization. His many works include Kant and the Problem of History (Chicago, 1975);Justice and the Human Good (Chicago, 1980); Liberal Purposes: Goods, Virtues, and Diversity in the Liberal State (Cambridge, 1991); Liberal Pluralism: The Implications of Value Pluralism for Political Theory and Practice (Cambridge, 2002); Public Matters: Essays on Politics, Policy and Religion(Rowman & Littlefield, 2005). He is a frequent contributor to The New Republic.
“The Ideas of Peace in the Hebrew Bible”
April 22 @ 4:15 pm, Love Auditorium
Lecture by Michael Walzer, Professor Emeritus of Social Science, IAS School of Social Science, is one of America’s foremost political thinkers. He has written about a wide variety of topics in political theory and moral philosophy, including political obligation, just and unjust war, nationalism and ethnicity, economic justice, and the welfare state. He has played a critical role in the revival of a practical, issue-focused ethics and in the development of a pluralist approach to political and moral life. His books include Just and Unjust Wars (Basic Books, 1977); On Toleration (Yale, 1997); Arguing About War (Yale, 2004); and In God’s Shadow (Yale, 2012). For more than three decades he has served as Editor of the political journal Dissent. Currently, he is working on issues concerning international justice and on new forms of welfare as well as on a project focused on the history of Jewish political thought.