Public Philosophy

Dewey’s task, then, was to articulate the means by which the public can discover and identify itself, “so that genuinely shared interest in the consequences of interdependent activities may inform desire and effort and thereby direct action.”

Communication of the results of social inquiry is the same thing as the formation of public opinion.

freedom from government-sanctioned doctrinal constraints; and freedom to pursue the truth wherever it might lead in making a contribution to the world of learning.

The unionization campaign at Northwestern is no doubt exciting. That any group of people in their late-teens and early-twenties, football players or otherwise, thought to address their workplace grievances through organizing is, in this rabidly anti-union place and time, nothing short of remarkable. If they succeed (which is still far from certain), their victory could reverberate across the intercollegiate athletic world, transforming the NCAA in the process. And, not inconsequentially, they could pave the road for organizing advances by graduate students, medical residents, and many others who work for the same institution that bestows their degrees or credentials.

At the same time, I want to hold Robin accountable to his desire for a “materialist analysis of the relationship between politics, economics, and culture.”

I think he wrongly characterizes the conditions under which many of these young academics are writing

The risk of being a public intellectual, he posits, comes from the fact that these scholars are taking time away from their academic writing

Legislating morality, unlike improving social services like health and education, is nearly costless for politicians. It is also extremely popular

In addition to winning votes, however, laws such as the criminalization of homosexuality can also be used opportunistically against both the public and political opposition

The anti-homosexuality bill reflects popular sentiment in Uganda, where 90 percent of respondents said that homosexuality was “never justified,

The great story of recent Australian art has been the resurgence of Indigenous culture and its recognition as a major art form. But in a country increasingly divided by class and wealth, the rise of Indigenous art has had consequences undreamed of by those who first projected it onto the international exhibiting stage.

The continuing success of both traditional and western influenced art forms has led to one of the great paradoxes in Australian culture. At a time when art schools have subjugated themselves to the metrics-driven culture of the modern university system, when creative courses are more and more dominated by the children of privilege, some of the most interesting students and graduates are Indigenous.

Because Indigenous students were seen as a special case they managed to avoid the metrification of merit.