Gallowglass

Conferenced Out

After getting back to Toronto post-CFP, I jumped immediately into another one day conference on “Dilemmas of Global Justice,” organized by my colleague Nancy Kokaz. A pretty good political theory conference, although two of the key participants, Charles Beitz and Stanley Hoffmann both had to cancel at the last moment. I chaired a panel, tho’ I at best have a glancing acquaintance with political theory; but then, chairing doesn’t involve anything more demanding than harrumphing loudly when the speakers exceed their allotted time. Thomas Pogge of Columbia delivered a particularly interesting and provocative paper arguing that the developed world had a strong duty to alleviate poverty in the developing world. Of course, much of the discussion focused on the war and its consequences; interesting papers/comments from Janice Stein, Tom Pangle and Lou Pauly, all colleagues of mine in the U of T pol. sci. department. All of them were directly or indirectly critical of the Canadian level of debate on the war, arguing that Canada’s current position wasn’t really tenable. Janice’s position was that the Canadian government hadn’t really begun to grapple with the issue of whether war was justified or not, hiding instead behind the (more or less vacuous) claim that since the UN hadn’t sanctioned war, it was illegitimate. Tom drew on Thucydides and De Tocqueville, expressing the fear that America’s allies, because they had abdicated military responsibility for tackling real world problems, might degenerate into a sort of foreign-policy infantilism - carping, resentful and impotent. Lou shared some of Tom’s fears, but was a little more sanguine about the long term prospects; he spoke of the need for “followership” among the allies as well as leadership from the US. The conference was recorded, so I presume that MP3s or streaming will be available sooner or later. As for me, I’m conferenced out after having had 3 meetings back-to-back. Happily, I don’t have any more to attend before APSR in September.

One final point from CFP - Larry Lessig’s paper (summarized below) is a fascinating further step on a journey from clerking for Scalia to a species of leftish populism. He’s now taken a strong position on concentration of ownership of the media, which he (rightly) views as being very dangerous for creativity. I’m looking forward to seeing his presentation when it gets written up properly.