Firestone Plaza, Princeton University
Every Life, A Universe
Vote Like It Matters
It’s become a cliché of philosophical commentary on the ethics of voting that voting is prima facie irrational. If you vote as an individual, your vote represents a mere 1/n of the totality of the election, where n represents the total number of voters in the election. If we consider, say, national elections in the United States, then n will be a very large number. Since it is, 1/n represents a tiny number. The tiny number represents a given individual’s contribution to the overall electoral result, the implication being that each individual’s contribution is, qua individual, de minimis. It’s so small that it seems irrational to bother with it. The effort you put in is not worth the result that comes out. Continue reading
Arrested Princeton Students’ Statement on Court Appearance
Princeton, New Jersey
5 months ago, 15 of us were arrested for protesting the University’s complicity in the ongoing genocide against the people of Gaza. 2 of us—both graduate students—were arrested on the 25th of April minutes after the launch of the Gaza Solidarity Encampment. 13 of us—Princeton students, researchers, and affiliates—were arrested on the 29th of April for participating in a peaceful protest in a University administrative building. At the time of our arrests, the university barred us from campus and evicted us from university housing, all without formal disciplinary charges. Weeks later, the university conducted a “disciplinary investigation” and sanctioned us with four years of disciplinary probation. One of us, postdoctoral researcher Sam Nastaste, remains barred from campus. These measures are far harsher than Princeton’s response to previous campus protests.
Continue reading
Gaza Medical Evacuation Initiative
Fajr Scientific, a Texas-based volunteer medical group specializing in surgical procedures, is organizing a series of medical evacuations for Gazan children with complex war injuries. The plan is to evacuate these children from Gaza to the United States and place them in U.S. hospitals “willing to provide essential treatment and support.” I don’t know how many hospital executives read this blog, but if you know any, or know anyone who does, please send this post along to anyone willing to have their hospital participate. Continue reading
Philip Pettit’s Republicanism: A Series (5/6)
4200 words, 25 minutes’ reading time
For part 1, go here. For part 2, go here. For part 3, go here. For part 4, go here.
5. Pettit on employment-at-will
I said above that I agree in a broad way with Pettit’s critique of employment-at will. Let me put it this way: I agree that employment-at-will, at least as currently practiced in the American labor market, is a highly problematic institution, one that frequently exemplifies domination for just the reasons Pettit gives. But while this may sound like substantial-enough agreement, I think it conceals some subtle but significant disagreement. In this post, I want to work through some of the agreement and the disagreement.
Though Pettit doesn’t put things quite this way, I think we can probably agree that two things make employment-at-will problematic. One is its asymmetric character. The other are the stakes involved when it’s invoked and exercised. Continue reading
Defiance and Compliance in Princeton (2)
Back on September 3, I posted a letter here that I’d sent to Town Topics, a local paper in my hometown of Princeton, New Jersey, asking why the paper hadn’t covered the legal proceedings against the activists who’d been arrested this past April at a Gaza Solidarity event at Princeton University. A staff writer from the paper responded, promising coverage in the future. In the three weeks since then, three issues of Town Topics have come out–September 4th, 11th, and 18th. How well has it delivered? Continue reading
Philip Pettit’s Republicanism: A Series (4/6)
2800 words, 15 minutes’ reading time.
For part 1 of this series, go here. For part 2, go here. For part 3, go here.
4. Pettit on domination
I started out by saying that I have a conflicted–with any luck, instructively conflicted–view of Pettit’s republicanism, and of its application to employment-at-will. I wish I had a single snappy way of describing my conflict, but I don’t. At one level, I agree in principle with Pettit; at another level, I don’t. At one level, I agree with Pettit’s critique of employment-at-will; at another level, I don’t. Let me work through some of this out loud in the hopes that my tangles are instructive to others. Continue reading
Save Your Outrage
About a month ago, a woman having a mental health episode was shot dead by the police in the city of Fort Lee, New Jersey. About a week ago, schools in South Jersey were closed after shooting threats there. Before that, a shooting at a New Jersey football game caused a stir. Then a dirt bike theft and shooting incident in Dennis, New Jersey caused school cancellations. Two days ago, a burglary suspect was non-fatally shot by the police in Rumson, New Jersey. Around the same time, perhaps for comic relief, a New Jersey police officer shot himself in the leg during a drill at a shooting range in Passaic County. Back on August 9, a Jersey City activist was shot in the leg by the Israel Defense Forces in Beita, in the West Bank. To cap it off, almost exactly a month later, another American activist was shot dead by the same Israel Defense Forces in the same place. She was buried yesterday. Continue reading
Philip Pettit’s Republicanism: A Series (3/6)
For part 1 of this series, go here. For part 2 of this series, go here.
5300 words, 28 minutes’ reading time
Trigger warnings: broken promises, failed hookups, orgasm gaps, Immanuel Kant, Murray Rothbard, Richard Epstein, employment
3. Contract and liberal interference
Traditionally, liberals have insisted that property and contractual rights—including those rights exercised within a corporate setting–are expressions of freedom, and so, fall within the zone or space to be protected by the State. Buying, selling, paying, loaning, renting, hiring, firing, investing, gifting, donating and so on are all protected on the side of what we might call the economic agent, as are being bought-from, being sold-to, being paid, being loaned-to, being rented-to, being hired, being fired, having someone invest your money, and so on, on the side of what we might call the economic patient. A third party “interferes” here when agent and patient consent to engage in one of the preceding activities, but the third party steps in to intrude on (hence violate) the agreed-upon terms, putting an impediment in the way of one of the party’s satisfaction of the terms. Continue reading
Dreaming 9/11
From a journal entry I wrote on the morning of September 10, 2021:
I just woke up from a dream in which I went to the Taliban’s Afghanistan to “see what would happen.” Ten minutes into the dream, I get apprehended and set up for interrogation and torture. Predominant feeling is disappointment at how dumb, sadistic, and unreligious my captor is, as though I was expecting a Taliban interrogation to be an academic seminar on the pros and cons of theocracy led by a latter-day Abul Ala’ Mawdudi rather than a torture session led by a bunch of illiterate psychopaths. (As it happens, Mawdudi was my father’s Arabic teacher in real life. Was Freud right? Are all dreams about wish fulfillment?)
Policy of Truth 