Anyone in the vicinity of Niagara, New York this October is hereby invited to the 2024 Conference of the Peace and Justice Studies Association, where, if you manage to brave the somewhat aggressive registration fee, you’ll be able to take in a bit of Machiavelli and the Weather Underground, among other interesting things. The conference runs October 24-27, at Niagara University near Buffalo. Continue reading
Author Archives: Irfan Khawaja
“Justice by Means of Democracy”
Modesty is supposed to be a virtue. Freeriding is an expression of vice. So how could modesty lead to freeriding? Well, suppose you have bloggers so modest that they refuse to advertise their own publications. Then it’s left to me to do it for them.
With that preface: PoT blogger and freerider John Davenport has a review in Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews of Danielle Allen’s Justice by Means of Democracy. First paragraph: Continue reading
License to Kill: Israel in Tuk’u
I’m writing this at 10-11 pm Eastern time on Monday, August 12th. I’ve just received word from a friend in the West Bank village of Tuk’u (Arab Teqoa) to the effect that the Israeli military has entered the village in force, distributing leaflets that order the expulsion of the village’s population, and threatening to kill those who remain. Direct quote commenting on a video that he sent me: “It’s 4 in the morning, the soldier is spreading papers that says [sic]: [if] you leave your house, you live, if you stay you die.” (To be precise, it was 4:30 am his time when he wrote that.) The video is available as a pinned post on my Facebook feed. Unfortunately, I couldn’t directly upload it here. Continue reading
Stand Up and Shout
The New York Times, making its journalistic contribution to the national circle jerk over Kamala Harris:
When protesters first interrupted Vice President Kamala Harris at a rally in Detroit on Wednesday evening, she smiled, with a gentle corrective. “I am speaking now.”
But as the disruption continued, her patience ran thin. “You know what?” Ms. Harris said, with the sudden force and resolve of a parent in the driver’s seat who has had it. “If you want Donald Trump to win, then say that. Otherwise, I’m speaking.”
As the crowd roared, Ms. Harris stayed silent, jaw set, eyes fixed.
We’ve listened to these people in respectful silence for long enough. We no longer owe criminals like Kamala Harris, Joe Biden, Donald Trump, or JD Vance any duty of civility, respect, or obeisance. We owe ourselves the self-respect that comes from active resistance to the evil they represent. Continue reading
Praying for Kamala
I keep trying to stay on script and keep my mouth entirely shut–I resolved back on January 1 to go on a self-imposed hiatus from blogging–but keep getting provoked into commentary by current events and peoples’ demented reactions to them. I shouldn’t be surprised by the desperate enthusiasm being expressed for the candidacy of Kamala Harris, but for some reason I am. I keep running into people who insist that it’s our duty to vote for this worthless cretin, and that if we don’t, we’ll be responsible for whatever happens if she loses, no matter what it is, and no matter how we’ve voted. It seems futile to wonder if they will hold themselves responsible for whatever happens if she wins, or whatever has happened since she became Vice President. But things don’t seem to work that way in American political discourse. There’s no principle at work here, after all, but the negation of all principles in the interests of partisan tribalism. Continue reading
And So It Continues
I was at first going to call this post “And So It Begins,” except that nothing’s begun. What’s happening right now in America is just a continuation of what’s been happening all along. President Biden’s true-believing Democratic boosters keep reminding us that a Trump presidency betokens fascism, but someone needs to tell these people that fascism is already here, care of their favorite cantankerous, incoherent, amnesiac president. Biden has recently taken to bragging about the draconian, quasi-Trumpian quality of his “border enforcement” policies. I don’t doubt that Trump’s policies will be worse, or even much worse. What I doubt is that the difference matters enough to be worth a vote for Biden. What I don’t doubt is that he’s not getting one, at least from me. Continue reading
American Light
I wanted to note the passing of John Wilmerding (1938-2024), for many years the Christopher Binyon Sarofim Professor of American Art at Princeton University. He died on June 6 of this year at the age of 86.
I didn’t really know Wilmerding at all–never met him, never really took a class with him. He was the guest lecturer for the week-long section on American art in my college-level art history class, Art 100, “An Introduction to the History of Art”–the closest to physical contact I ever got. But more than anyone, I owe Wilmerding credit for my decades’- long love affair with American art, and in particular, American landscape and maritime painting of the mid- to late-nineteenth century. Continue reading
Thoughts and Prayers for Donald Trump Redux
It seems appropriate to offer thoughts and prayers for Donald Trump at this challenging time. God speed. And Happy Bastille Day.
“Pedagogy Under Occupation”: Slides and Key Formulations
Here is the plain text version of the PowerPoint slides (or Google Slides slides) for my July 11 presentation, “Between Indoctrination and Neutralism: Pedagogy Under Occupation,” to be given at the NASSP Conference at Creighton University.
Here is an unstructured list of some of the key formulations from the paper. Continue reading
Michael Sugrue (1957-2024), RIP
I was pained to read of the untimely death of philosopher Michael Sugrue, most recently of Ave Maria University, but for twelve years a lecturer in political philosophy at Princeton. He was 66.
I met Sugrue sometime in 2002 when I was living in Princeton and trying, with conspicuously little success, to make ends meet and get my dissertation done. I applied in late 2001 for an adjunct job at Princeton, and got a position as teaching assistant for Sugrue’s POL 307, “The Just Society,” a standard survey course in political philosophy–the first half devoted to classic works, the second to contemporary ones. Continue reading
Policy of Truth 