Monthly Archives: December 2018

Not Born in the USA

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I did the last of my immigration-enforcement events yesterday at Felician–this one really a mini-event, intended for my seminar-sized criminal justice class. The guest speaker this time was my former Felician student Maria Lopez-Delgado.

Quick intro: Maria graduated as a philosophy major from Felician in 2013 (thesis topic: “The Marxian Critique of Capitalism”; advisor: Khawaja), went on to law school at UNC School of Law, did a stint at the New Jersey Office of the Public Defender, and for the past year or so has been back in North Carolina with North Carolina Legal Aid’s Battered Immigrant Project, where she works with victims of domestic violence, sexual assault, and human trafficking.* Since she was in North Carolina and we were in Jersey, we spoke by Google Video Chat.  Continue reading →

The Fragility of Badness

Posted on by under cancel culture

Due to a scheduling conflict, I missed my opportunity last week to see Jonathan Haidt plugging his most recent book, The Coddling of the American Mind (co-authored with Greg Lukianoff). In compensation, a colleague told me a story at lunch about a snowflake student she had to deal with.

The student, a military veteran, objected to the presence of Carol Gilligan’s In a Different Voice on the professor’s syllabus, the objection being that the book glorified abortion, and was in various and sundry respects hostile to men. Apparently, triggered by the book, the student cornered the professor in a small room, yelling at her about it, and demanding its exclusion from the syllabus. Continue reading →

Is authority based on reasons to obey or reasons to agree to obey?

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The plane has crashed.  People are seriously injured, but you are not.  A stewardess, directing things, barks an order at you, “Go get the first aid kit from the overhead compartment!”.  Intuitively, you are obligated to follow her order, due to her issuing it, even if it is not the best order she could have made (maybe the first order of business should have been finding water or finding the radio to call for help).  In other words, something about the situation gives her authority over you (and the other passengers).    Continue reading →