PeerReview is a magazine published by the Association of American Colleges and Universities. The current issue is devoted to students and political engagement. My Tisch College (Tufts University) colleagues Rob Hollister and Nancy Wilson and I have an article, and there is a nice mix of other pieces on everything from civic engagement at a historically Black college to Facebook and politics .
Monthly Archives: August 2008
momentum for service policy
Both Senator McCain and Senator Obama have now agreed to participate in a summit on national and community service in New York City on Sept. 11. This will be their first joint appearance after the conventions–not a debate, but a pair of in-depth statements by the candidates. For those of us who have floated around the “service” world for a long time, this is pretty exciting. (I was one of two token college students at a Wingspread summit on service in 1988, so I’ve been in it for 20 years.) There are important debates about whether the federal service programs should be rethought and also whether “service” is the best word or concept to advance the highest values of the movement. There is also a big question about whether Congress will fund a major expansion of service programs in an era of deficits, even if it authorizes an expansion. But it’s clear that service has momentum right now.
McCain in a prisoner’s dilemma
David Brooks argued yesterday that “[John] McCain and his advisers have been compelled to adjust to the hostile environment around them. They have been compelled, at least in their telling, to abandon the campaign they had hoped to run. … The man who lampooned the Message of the Week is now relentlessly on message …. The man who hopes to inspire a new generation of Americans now attacks Obama daily.”
This column provoked derisive responses from some liberal readers. Tom Fornholtz summarizes Brooks thus: “The American people have forced John McCain to run a dishonorable campaign.” It’s as if there were two possible culprits to blame for the strong negativity of the McCain campaign–the candidate or the audience–and Brooks was blaming the latter.
Clearly, the candidate bears some responsibility. But blame can also fall on the situation–the logic of the game. A presidential campaign is strictly zero-sum: a vote against Obama is a vote for McCain. Only one of the candidates can win the White House. By attacking the other person, you can improve your relative standing; witness the way that negative opinions about Obama have risen and his margin has fallen–for example, according to the LA Times–as McCain has attacked him. “All the negative attacks from the McCain campaign seem to have been paying off,” said [LA] Times Poll Director Susan Pinkus.
Now if you think that tearing down your opponent is morally bad, and the only reason you’re doing it is to enhance your own personal prospects, then you shouldn’t do it. But that’s not McCain’s situation. He no doubt believes that: (a) the attacks are at least partly justified and therefore actually informative, (b) there are principled reasons why he (McCain) should win the presidency; (c) thousands or even millions of people are resting their hopes on him; (d) negative campaigning works; and (e) negative campaigning is the norm and is likely to come from the Democratic side as well, sooner or later.
This is a classic situation in which two players are likely to harm the overall atmosphere in the pursuit of their own interests. One will attack the other, if only as a preemptive strike; and then his opponent will attack back. One way to mitigate the situation is to build up mutual trust through private and candid conversations. But that’s almost impossible for two competitors in the glare of national publicity. Another way is to put principle above self-interest, but that is always rare, and is especially unlikely when some principles seem to favor negative campaigning.
The solution lies not in blaming either the candidate or the public, but in structural reforms. The idea that McCain floated for numerous joint appearances–while obviously in his own self-interest–might also have mitigated the impact of negative campaigning in the race. Another idea is the kind of election coverage pioneered by public journalists in the 1990s: newspapers can stop reporting on campaign tactics and ads and start explaining policy differences. Finally, if the Obama “ground game” (thousands of paid local organizers) wins the election for him, it will show that increasing turnout through grassroots action is more effective than using ads to tear down one’s opponents. That may change the next election for the better.
a wooden house at the edge of campus
Last Friday, I visited the Tufts Institute for Global Leadership. This is an important organization that provides “classes, global research, internships, workshops, simulations and international symposia” for Tufts students and for many other people in the US and overseas.
But I don’t want to write about the Institute today; I want to mention the building. It’s a modest-sized wooden house near the edge of Tufts. It contains meeting spaces with chairs pulled up in circles, cubbyholes with young people hunched over computers, and lots of books, framed photos, news clippings, and gifts of art from around the world. When I visited, Kurdish folk music was playing on the speaker.
The Institute’s building is more attractive than most of its type. TGI focuses on documentary photography, so many of the pictures are stunning. Its international programs have yielded handsome works of art. And someone with an aesthetic sense has helped pull it all together. But what struck me most was the familiarity of this place. I have enjoyed visiting similar institutes and centers in former private houses on the margins of campuses from Berkeley to Oxford. I think especially of the Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis at Indiana; or Telluride House at Cornell, where I spent my 18th summer; or the Eagleton Institute at Rutgers. These are my favorite parts of academia. In contrast to most teaching departments, they house collaborative projects that provoke intense debate, reflection, and interaction of people from different backgrounds on common issues.
broadening philosophy
Moral philosophy (or ethics) forms a diverse and eclectic field, about which few accurate generalizations can be made.* However, I think I detect a very widespread preference for concepts whose significance is always the same–either positive or negative–wherever they appear. In defining moral concepts, philosophers like to identify necessary and sufficient conditions, such that if something can be done, it will always be obligatory, praiseworthy, desirable, permissible, optional, regrettable, shameful, or forbidden to do it. These moral propositions may have to be considered along with other valid propositions that also apply in the same circumstances. For instance, honesty may be obligatory (or at least praiseworthy); yet tact is also desirable. Honesty and tact can conflict. Hardly anyone doubts that we face genuine moral conflicts and dilemmas. Yet the hope is to develop general moral propositions, built of clearly defined concepts, that are always valid, at least all else considered.
But what should we say about complex and ambiguous phenomena that have evolved over biological and historical time and that now shape our lives? I am thinking of concepts like love (recently discussed here), marriage, painting, the novel, lawyers, or voting. We can’t use these words in a deontic logic made up of propositions like “P is necessary.” They are sometimes good and sometimes not. We could try to divide them into subconcepts. For instance, love could be divided into agape, lust, and several other subspecies; painting can be categorized as representational, abstract, religious, etc. Once we have appropriate subconcepts, we can say that they have a particular moral status if (and only if) specified conditions apply.
The urge is to avoid weak modal verbs like “may” and “can” or other qualifiers like “sometimes” and “often.” Love can be wonderful; it can also be a moral snare. Paintings sometimes invoke the sublime; sometimes they don’t. Lawyers have legitimate and helpful roles in some cases and controversies, but not in others. A core philosophical instinct is to get rid of these qualifiers by using tighter definitions. For example, agape (properly defined) might turn out to be always good and never a snare. You always need and have a right to a lawyer when you are arraigned. All paintings by Giorgione or similar to Giorgione’s are sublime. And so on.
My fear is that the pressure to avoid soft generalizations prevents us from saying anything useful about a wide range of social institutions, norms, and psychological states. They don’t split up neatly into subcategories, because they didn’t evolve or develop so neatly. They won’t work in a deontic logic unless we allow ourselves soft modals like “may” and “can.” And yet, outside of philosophy, much of the humanities involves moral evaluations of just such concepts. For example, a great nineteenth-century novel about marriage does not claim that marriage is always good or bad, or always good or bad under specified conditions. The novel evaluates one or two particular marriages and supports qualified conclusions: marriage (in general) can be a happy estate, but it also has dangers. It is wise, when contemplating a marriage, to consider how events may play out for both partners. “Marriage,” of course, means marriage of a specific, culturally-defined type (monogamous, exogamous, heterosexual, voluntary, permanent, patriarchal, and so on). That institution will evolve subtly and may be altered suddenly by changes in laws and norms. The degree to which the implied advice of the novel generalizes is a subtle question which the novel itself may not address.
Much contemporary philosophy has a forensic feel. The goal is to work out definitions and rules that, like good laws, permit the permissible and forbid the evil. I do not doubt the value of forensic thinking–in law. I do doubt that it is adequate for moral thinking. It seems to me that the search for clearly defined and consistent concepts narrows philosophers’ attention to discrete controversial actions (abortion, torture, killing one to save another) and discourages their consideration of complex social institutions. It also directs their energy to metaethics, where one can consider questions about moral propositions, rather than “applied” topics, which seem too messy and contingent.