According to John Stuart Mill, in a liberal democracy all is permitted save what is prohibited. And what can be prohibited must be demonstrably harmful. But what’s meant by harm? It can’t be just a setback of interests. Your opening a coffee shop across the street from mine might set my interests back considerably, and … Continue reading THE HARMS RACE
Anti-Semitism
THE PLIGHT OF THE ANTI-SEMITIC SEMITE
Down the hall in the English Department, we have an otherwise highly respected colleague who believes, and I quote, that “Any criticism of the State of Israel is anti-Semitism.” I take this to mean that if the Israelis decided to empty the Gaza Strip the way the Nazis emptied the Warsaw Ghetto, she would have … Continue reading THE PLIGHT OF THE ANTI-SEMITIC SEMITE
TRAVIS PATRON AND BERNIE FARBER
The application of Travis Patron’s newly minted Canadian National Party for tax-deductibility status, and the opposition to that status from Bernie Farber’s Canadian Anti-Hate Network, is the perfect test-case for just how far the rest of us are prepared to go in our tolerance of intolerance. But that said, that’s not what I find most … Continue reading TRAVIS PATRON AND BERNIE FARBER
AN OPEN LETTER TO MY AS-YET-UNINITIATED STUDENTS
Some university administrators, and a few of my colleagues, want to offer you a babysitting service, not for your children but for yourselves. And some of you got so used to it in high school that you want to be babysat. Good babysitters are not to be disparaged. They provide a very important service. But … Continue reading AN OPEN LETTER TO MY AS-YET-UNINITIATED STUDENTS
CAUSE FOR CANONIZATION – PIUS XII AND THE CURA
Let’s start with a little Hohfeldian housekeeping. Arguably there’s no such thing as a duty to defend oneself from injury. But no one, save the most bone-headed pacifist, would deny one has a right to defend himself, to defend himself even from state-authored injury, and be that injury an injustice or not. That is, the … Continue reading CAUSE FOR CANONIZATION – PIUS XII AND THE CURA
OF CRIMES BY ASSOCIATION WITH CRIMES
Definitive of the Millian liberalism to which most of us purport to subscribe is the view that a) all is permitted save what is prohibited, and that b) a necessary, albeit insufficient, condition of some behavior being justifiably prohibited is that it be demonstrably harmful to others. Not unlike any one of the Ten Commandments, … Continue reading OF CRIMES BY ASSOCIATION WITH CRIMES
DON QUIXOTE’S BLESSING
Why is it that some truths have to be learned over and over and over again? I suppose it’s because they’re just too hard to believe. I learned about fifteen years ago that many of the people I work with don’t share what I thought were the values we all share, because, well, surely we … Continue reading DON QUIXOTE’S BLESSING
THE HAIDT HYPOTHESIS
Social psychologist Jonathan Haidt has argued, quite convincingly, that a university can dedicate itself to the search for truth, or to the promotion of social justice, but not both. Truth and justice are seldom about the same thing. But when they are, what’s true may not be just, and what’s just may not be true. … Continue reading THE HAIDT HYPOTHESIS
THE TONY HALL CASE REVISITED
I made a stab at this in my blog in an earlier post entitled “Holocaust Denial and Anti-Semitism”. Since that post, an internal investigation of an internal complaint against Tony Hall has exonerated him, and the Administration’s complaint against him to the Alberta Human Rights Commission has been rejected, both pretty much on the same … Continue reading THE TONY HALL CASE REVISITED
HOLOCAUST DENIAL AND ANTI-SEMITISM
Down the hall and around two corners, I have a colleague named Tony Hall. I say ‘colleague’, but only in the sense that we’re both tenured professors at the same university. I teach in the Philosophy Department; he’s a one-man show in a program he calls Globilization Studies. Tony’s an affable enough fellow, but he’s … Continue reading HOLOCAUST DENIAL AND ANTI-SEMITISM
