Injustices: Human & Animal

This is the syllabus for a course I am teaching at Haverford College in Fall 2015: "Injustices: Human and Animal." To view midterm evaluations of this course, please click here and here.

Injustices: Human and Animal

Thomas J. Donahue

POLSH207A001

Fall 2015

Haverford College

MW 10-11:30

Stokes 207

Office: KINSC Link 107

Office Hours: W, 2-4, CPGC Cafe; or by apptmt

Almost everyone today pledges allegiance to justice. Politicians, pundits, and ordinary people declare their commitment to human rights, equal respect, fairness, and even-handedness. And yet the world is awash in accusations of injustice and oppression. We are frequently told that we live in a world marked by global gender injustice, global racial domination, the brutal exploitation of sweatshop labor, the social exclusion and humiliation of people of diverse sexualities, the mass murder and torture of animals, and the legacies of systematic subordination and brutalization of the Jews. What should we do about these accusations? Some people ignore them, some dismiss them, and some assert them as obviously true. This course is for those who want to think them through. What does it mean to say that a group is oppressed? What sorts of harms or rights-violations are central to social injustice? What role do human rights, liberal principles, socialist principles, national self-determination, and cultural recognition play in claims of social injustice? What, fundamentally, is wrong with oppression? What kind of responsibility do people have for such injustices? And, above all, who today is oppressed, and what should be done about it? We shall examine arguments aiming to show that today there are worldwide injustices done to refugees, women, non-white people, colonized people, indigenous people, the global poor, sweatshop workers, and the working class. In each case, we look at proposed remedies for the claimed injustice, and questions about who has what kind of responsibility for dealing with it. We pay special attention to the question of whether animals are currently victims of a worldwide injustice by those who eat them; kill them for their skins or furs; or use them to produce eggs, milk, wool, or the like. We examine proposals to remedy this alleged injustice by morally requiring people to recognize animals as moral equals, or by awarding them citizenship rights. By the end of the course, students should have a firm grasp of the arguments for and against the existence of these injustices, and of arguments for and against prominent proposals to remedy them. They should also have a command of the concepts of injustice, oppression, systematic harm, rights-violations, misrecognition, maldistribution, disrespect—and their contraries: justice, respect for rights, recognition, etc.

Course Requirements. To earn full credit, you must:

(1) Participate in class discussion. I know many people find this daunting. Nevertheless, try. One main aim of the course is to help you improve in argument.

(2) Submit 6 response papers. Each session, you may submit in hard copy a paper, of not more than 350 words, that examines some thesis that that week’s reading has argued. The paper should state the thesis and then argue for or against it. If you argue for it, you should provide your own reasons for it--not the author's reasons. Here's an example: "Judith Shklar argues that it was better to proceed with the Tokyo and Nuremberg Trials than to summarily punish the accused, as Winston Churchill had proposed. I shall argue instead that it would have been better to follow Churchill's proposal and summarily punish the accused. My main reason will be that summarily punishing the top leaders while avoiding trials would have given the world the punishment it wanted to see, while ensuring that no one could argue that the Allies were using corrupt and unjust legal procedures to obtain predetermined political results. By contrast, the trials muddied the distinction between normal times and extraordinary times, and thus encouraged people to think that the Allies valued neither legality nor justice." Click here for guidelines on writing response papers. Note that for full credit, you need only submit 6 such papers.

(3) Submit a paper proposal. You are required to submit, in Week 8, a proposal for your final paper. The proposal should have a title, state a question concerning one of the topics covered in the course, say why the question is important, state your answer to the question (i.e., your thesis), give the key reasons by which you will defend the thesis, state two serious objections to your thesis, and state how you will respond to the objections. The proposal should be not more than 800 words long. (For tips on how to say why the question is important--i.e., to show that there's a more general question we can't fully answer until we've answered yours, check out Chapter 4 of Wayne Booth et al, The Craft of Research (Chicago, 2008, available online through Tri-Co libraries), especially sections 4.1 and 4.2.)

(4) Submit a final paper. You are required to submit, on the last day of exams, a final paper. The paper should state a question concerning one of the topics covered in the course, say why the question is important, state your answer to the question (i.e., your thesis), defend the thesis with argument, state two serious objections to your thesis, and respond to the objections. The paper should be not more than 4,000 words long.

Course Assessment. Course marks will be computed on the following distribution: Class Participation: 20%; Response Papers: 30% (5% each); Paper Proposal: 20%; Argumentative Paper: 30%

Course format. The course will be discussion oriented. I will usually begin sessions by presenting a thesis advanced in the week’s reading. I will discuss its implications. I will then ask one or many of you whether you think the thesis true or false, and why. We shall then examine the reasons you offer for your view. We shall then turn to the reasons the text offers in defense of the thesis. I will ask you what you think of those reasons, and so forth. The course in part aims to improve your skill in reasoned argument.

Course Objectives. By the end of the course, students should

(1) Have become familiar with the key concepts of the theories and arguments about injustice and proposed remedies for them covered in the course;

(2) Have strengthened their skills in applying these concepts to current debate about the problems of political morality;

(3) Have honed their ability to specify how and why specific values clash when dealing with problems of injustice;

(4) Have improved their skills in specifying the disagreement over the relevant facts involved in disagreement over problems of injustice;

(5) Have learned how to accurately describe the structure of a theory, specifying its key concepts, its main claims, the basic model underlying it, and the

question to which it is an answer;

(6) Have honed their skills in specifying the structures of arguments, breaking them into premises-axioms, middle premises-lemmas, and conclusions-theorems;

(7) Have improved their ability in distinguishing between similar concepts denoted by the same word and spotting equivocations;

(8) Have honed their skills in evaluating and challenging the premises of an argument with rational and well-ordered arguments of their own;

(9) Have improved their ability to evaluate the deductive validity or inductive strength of an argument’s progress from premises to conclusions;

(10) Have worked out for themselves a detailed and developed argument arguing a thesis about one of the questions covered in the course.

E-mail policy. You are welcome to e-mail me with questions about the course. I try to answer e-mails within 48 hours of receipt. Don’t expect an answer before then. Fast generally means shoddy.

Academic Dishonesty: Don’t do it! Here is Haverford College's official language on the subject:

"A Note from Your Professor on Academic Integrity at Haverford:

"In a community that thrives on relationships between students and faculty that are based on trust and respect, it is crucial that students understand a professor’s expectations and what it means to do academic work with integrity. Plagiarism and cheating, even if unintentional, undermine the values of the Honor Code and the ability of all students to benefit from the academic freedom and relationships of trust the Code facilitates. Plagiarism is using someone else's work or ideas and presenting them as your own without attribution. Plagiarism can also occur in more subtle forms, such as inadequate paraphrasing, failure to cite another person’s idea even if not directly quoted, failure to attribute the synthesis of various sources in a review article to that author, or accidental incorporation of another’s words into your own paper as a result of careless note-taking. Cheating is another form of academic dishonesty, and it includes not only copying, but also inappropriate collaboration, exceeding the time allowed, and discussion of the form, content, or degree of difficulty of an exam. Please be conscientious about your work, and check with me if anything is unclear."

I may, at any time, use tools like turnitin.com to detect plagiarism.

Students with Disabilities, Special Needs, or Having Difficulties: Here is the Haverford Office of Access and Disability Services' Statement, which I affirm:

"Haverford College is committed to supporting the learning process for all students. Please contact me as soon as possible if you are having difficulties in the course. There are also many resources on campus available to you as a student, including the Office of Academic Resources (https://www.haverford.edu/oar/) and the Office of Access and Disability Services (https://www.haverford.edu/access-and-disability-services/). If you think you may need accommodations because of a disability, you should contact Access and Disability Services at hc-ads@haverford.edu. If you have already been approved to receive academic accommodations and would like to request accommodations in this course because of a disability, please meet with me privately at the beginning of the semester (ideally within the first two weeks) with your verification letter."disability, please meet with me privately at the beginning of the semester with your verification letter."

Writing response papers: Here are guidelines on what I’m looking for, and what I’m not looking for, but other teachers might be: https://sites.google.com/site/tjdonahu/home/writing-response-papers

How to understand and use theories: Puzzled? You're not alone! Even the professionals find this difficult. Click here for some tips on how to do it: https://sites.google.com/site/tjdonahu/home/using-theories

How to do political philosophy: The approach used in this course is political philosophy. For some tips on how to do it, click here:

https://sites.google.com/site/tjdonahu/home/political-philosophy-why-and-how

REQUIRED BOOKS

[1] Marilyn French, The War against Women (Ballantine Books, 1992)

[2] Charles W. Mills, The Racial Contract (Cornell UP, 1997)

[3] Jurgen Osterhammel, Colonialism: A Theoretical Overview (Markus Wiener, 2007)

[4] Peter Singer, Animal Liberation (HarperCollins, 2009)

[5] Sue Donaldson and Will Kymlicka, Zoopolis: A Political Theory of Animal Rights (Oxford UP, 2011)

[6] Nancy Fraser and Axel Honneth, Redistribution or Recognition? A Politico-Philosophical Exchange (Verso, 2003)

RECOMMENDED BOOKS

[1] Ann E. Cudd, Analyzing Oppression (Oxford UP, 2006)

[2] Iris Marion Young, Justice and the Politics of Difference (Princeton UP, 1990)

SCHEDULE

Week 1. Session 1. Introductory Session.

Overview of the course.

Optional reading: Michael Sandel, “Doing the Right Thing," Justice: What’s the Right Thing to Do? (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2009): 3-30.

Week 1. Session 2. What Makes Something an Injustice? Liberal and Socialist Ideas about Basic Rights.

Stephen Holmes, “The Liberal Idea,” Passions and Constraint: On the Theory of Liberal Democracy (UChicago Press,

1995): 13-41

Andrew Heywood, “Socialism," Political Ideologies, 4th edition (Palgrave): 99-106, 108-111.

LABOR DAY--NO CLASS

Week 2. Session 1 (Weds Sept 9). What Makes Something an Injustice? (1) The Widespread Commitment to a Right to National Self-Determination. (2) The Increasingly Popular Right to Cultural Recognition. (3) Human Rights: Which Are They? The View from the United Nations

Yael Tamir, “The Right to National Self-Determination,” Liberal Nationalism (Princeton UP, 1993): 57-76

Charles Taylor, “The Politics of Recognition,” in Multiculturalism and the Politics of Recognition, pp. 25-73

Universal Declaration of Human Rights

Week 3. Session 1 (Mon Sept 14). Human Rights: Which Are They? The View from Islamic States. (2) Human Rights: What Do They Do?

Cairo Declaration on Human Rights in Islam (1990)

James Nickel, “The Contemporary Idea of Human Rights,” Making Sense of Human Rights, 2nd ed (Blackwell, 2007): 7-22

James Nickel, “Making Sense of Human Rights,” Making Sense of Human Rights, pp. 35-53

Week 3. Session 2. (1) What Are the Core Harms of Injustice? A Five-Fold Idea. (2) Oppression as an Institutionalized Practice of Harm

Iris Marion Young, “Defining Injustice as Domination and Oppression,” Justice and the Politics of Difference, pp. 33-38

Young, “Five Faces of Oppression,” Justice and the Politics of Difference, pp. 39-65

Ann E. Cudd, “Oppression: The Fundamental Injustice of Social Institutions,” Analyzing Oppression (Oxford UP, 2006): 1-29

Week 4. Session 1 (Mon Sept 21). Refugees and Stateless People.

Re-read all of Young, "Five Faces," and pp. 20-26 of Cudd, "Oppression."

Check out media coverage (whatever you like) of the European refugee crisis.

Hannah Arendt, “The ‘Nation of Minorities’ and the Stateless People,” The Origins of Totalitarianism (Harcourt Brace, 1973),

READ pp. 276-290 ONLY

Andrew E. Schacknove, “Who Is a Refugee?” Ethics 95 (1985): 274-284

So you'd like to know more...

NPR audio of German minister making the same distinction among types of refugees that Schacknove critiques.

Week 4. Session 2. Global Injustice Done to Women?

Marilyn French, "Introduction," "Systemic Discrimination against Women," The War against Women (Ballantine Books,

1992), READ ONLY pp. 9-51, 99-106

So you'd like to know more...

Click here for images and texts.

DEADLINE TO SUBMIT FIRST TWO RESPONSE PAPERS.

Week 5. Session 1 (Mon Sept 28). (1) History of Women's Legal and Economic Disadvantages in English-speaking Countries (2) Sexual Double

Standards, Objectification of Women, Pornography, Sadism and the Eroticization of Domination--Components of a Global Oppression of Women?

(3) Global Violence against Women and Sexual Slavery--Also Components of a Global Oppression of Women?

Carole Pateman, "Wives, Slaves, and Wage Slaves," The Sexual Contract (Polity, 1988), READ pp. 119-133 ONLY.

Catharine MacKinnon, "Sexuality," Toward a Feminist Theory of the State (Harvard UP, 1989), pp. 126-154.

Ann E. Cudd, "Violence as a Force of Oppression," Analyzing Oppression, READ ONLY pp. 85-98

Week 5. Session 2. Did Europeans Construct a Global Racial Order that Persists Today? If They Did, What Would Explain Its Persistence? How

Europeans Invented the Idea of Race, and the Uses to which They Put It. The Idea of a Racial Contract. Global White Supremacy.

Charles W. Mills, The Racial Contract (Cornell University Press, 1997), pp. 1-62

Week 6. Session 1 (Mon Oct 5). (1) How the Global Racial Contract and Global White Supremacy Support the Modern Social Contract. (2) If There Is a

Racial Contract in the USA in 2015, What Do We Do about It?

Charles W. Mills, The Racial Contract, pp. 62-64, 72-89

Charles W. Mills, “White Supremacy as Sociopolitical System,” From Class to Race: Essays in White Marxism and Black

Radicalism (Rowman & Littlefield, 2003): 177-194

Week 6. Session 2. Colonial Injustice: Types of Colonies, Types of Colonial Empires, Periods of Colonialism, History of Conquest and Resistance.

Jurgen Osterhammel, "Colonies: A Classification," “ 'Colonialism' and 'Colonial Empires',” "Epochs of Colonialism," "Conquest and Resistance," "The Colonial State," "Colonial Economic Forms," "Colonial Societies," "Colonialism and Indigenous Culture," "Decolonization," Colonialism: A Theoretical Overview (Markus Wiener, 1997), pp. 10-12, 15-22, 25-38, 41-47, 51-68, 71-79, 83-91, 95-104, 115-119

WEEK 7: FALL BREAK (NO CLASS OCTOBER 12 & 14)

Week 8. Session 1 (Mon October 19). How Racist Colonialism Brutalizes Both the Colonizer and the Colonized. (2) Harms of Colonialism to the Colonized: Exploitative Rule and Humiliating Affirmations of Inferiority?

Aime Cesaire, Discourse on Colonialism (40pp-ish double spaced)

John Plamenatz, "The Arguments Against Continued European Rule Over Subject Peoples," On Alien Rule and Self-Government (Longman, 1960): 112-114, 127-131, 146-157. [Click here for Part 1] [Click here for Part 2]

Week 8. Session 2. Can Anti-Colonial Violence Liberate the Colonized from These Feelings of Domination and Dehumanization?

Frantz Fanon, "Concerning Violence," The Wretched of the Earth (Grove Press, 1968): 35-95.

PAPER PROPOSAL DUE IN CLASS

Week 9. Session 1 (Mon Oct 26). A Right to National Self-Determination—A Tool for Colonized Peoples, Oppressed Racial Groups, and Indigenous Minorities?

Avishai Margalit and Joseph Raz, “National Self-Determination,” Journal of Philosophy (1990)

Tommie Shelby, "Black Power Nationalism," We Who Are Dark: The Philosophical Foundations of Black Solidarity (Belknap Press, 2005): 101-135.

Week 9. Session 2. (1) The Plight of Indigenous Peoples. (2) The Rights of Indigenous Peoples and Internal National Minorities.

Rodolfo Stavenhagen, "Indigenous Peoples," Encyclopedia of Human Rights,Volume 3 (Oxford UP, 2009): 17-26.

Garth Nettheim, " 'Peoples' and 'Populations'--Indigenous Peoples and the Rights of Peoples," in The Rights of Peoples, ed.

James Crawford, pp. 113-125 ONLY

Will Kymlicka, “Human Rights and Ethnocultural Justice,” Revue d'etudes constitutionelles (1998): 213-236 READ pp. 213-228 ONLY

United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (2007)

Week 10. Session 1 (Mon Nov 2). Does the Global Economic Order Oppress the Poor?

-Thomas Pogge, Politics as Usual: What Lies behind the Pro-Poor Rhetoric (Polity, 2010), Sections 1.1-2.5, pp. 10-52.

-Thomas J. Donahue, "The Severest Harm of Global Poverty: Entanglement in a Web of Crises,"

Chapter 6 of Unfreedom for All: How Global Injustices Harm You (book manuscript, under review) READ INTRO & SECTION 2

ONLY

Week 10. Session 2. (1) What To Do about the Current Global Order’s Impact on the Poor? (2) Do the Severely Poor Have the Right to Resist Their

Governments?

Thomas Pogge, “Eradicating Systemic Poverty: Brief for a Global Resources Dividend,” World Poverty and Human

Rights: Cosmopolitan Responsibilities and Reforms (Polity, 2002): 196-215

Roberto Gargarella, "The Right of Resistance in Situations of Severe Deprivation," in Freedom from Poverty as a Human

Right, ed. Thomas Pogge (Oxford UP 2007): 359-374.

Week 11. Session 1 (Mon Nov 9). Sweated Labor in the Globalized Economy: Wrongful Economic Exploitation?

Terri Judd, "United States, Borax Miner," Invisible Hands: Voices from the Global Economy, ed. Corinne Goria (McSweeney’s, 2014): 231-256

Sung Huang, "China, Factory Worker," in ibid., pp. 315-326

Allen W. Wood, "Capitalist Exploitation," Karl Marx, 2nd ed. (London: Routledge, 2004), pp. 242-264.

Week 11. Session 2. (1) Are People in the Rich Countries Responsible for Sweatshops in the Poor Countries? An Argument for “Yes.” (2) Are

Sweatshop Working Conditions Better than the Feasible Alternatives for Sweatshop Workers? An Argument for “Yes.”

Iris Marion Young, “Responsibility and Global Justice: A Social Connection Model,” Social Philosophy and Policy (2006), READ pp. 102-103, 107-130 ONLY

Benjamin Powell, “In Defense of Sweatshops,” Library of Economics and Liberty (2008)

DEADLINE TO SUBMIT FIRST FOUR RESPONSE PAPERS.

Week 12. Session 1 (Mon Nov 16). Does the System of Social Class Systematically Harm the Lower Classes? How?

Owen Jones, “A Class in the Stocks,” Chavs: The Demonization of the Working Class (Verso, 2011): 109-138.

Jones, " 'We're All Middle Class Now'," Chavs, pp. 139-167.

Richard Sennett and Jonathan Cobb, “Introduction: Hidden Injuries,” The Hidden Injuries of Class (W. W. Norton, 1993),

pp. 1-50, READ pp. 10-37 ONLY

Week 12. Session 2. The Oppression of the Jews in the Modern World?

Walter Laqueur, “The Enlightenment and After,” The Changing Face of Anti-Semitism (Oxford UP, 2006): 71-91

Laqueur, "Racialism and Jewish Conspiracies," “Toward the Holocaust,” The Changing Face of Anti-Semitism, pp. 91-124

So you'd like to know more...Click here for videos on the injustices that led many Jews to take up Zionism

Week 13. Session 1 (Mon Nov 23). Is There an Animal Question, Just Like the Colonial Question, the Race Question, the Jewish Question, the Social

Question, or the Woman Question? Are We Doing an Injustice to Animals by Killing them for Food, Leather, and Fur; by Doing Scientific and

Medical Research on Them; by Using them to Provide Milk, Eggs, and Wool? The Animal-Welfare View

Peter Singer, “All Animals Are Equal…” Animal Liberation (HarperCollins, 2009): 1-25

Singer, “Down on the Factory Farm…” Animal Liberation, pp. 95-158

Week 13. Session 2 (Weds Nov 25). NO CLASS--ENJOY THANKSGIVING BREAK...AND CATCH UP ON RESPONSE PAPERS

Week 14. Session 1 (Mon Nov 30). (1) Challenges from Speciesism to the Animal-Welfare Theory of Animal Injustice, and Responses. (2) Do Animal-

Welfare and Animal-Rights Views Wrongly Privilege Individual Animals over Species and Ecosystems?

Singer, “Speciesism Today…” Animal Liberation, pp. 213-250

J. Baird Callicott, “Animal Liberation: A Triangular Affair,” Environmental Ethics 2 (1980): 311-338

Week 14. Session 2. Should We Deal with the Animal Question by Giving Individual Animals Citizenship Rights, and Wild Animal Groups a Form of

Sovereignty?

Sue Donaldson and Will Kymlicka, “Extending Animal Rights via Citizenship Theory,” Zoopolis: A Political Theory of

Animal Rights (Oxford UP, 2011): 50-72

Donaldson and Kymlicka, “Domesticated Animal Citizens,” Zoopolis, pp. 101-155

Week 15. Session 1 (Mon Dec 7). Sovereignty for Wild Animals?

Donaldson and Kymlicka, “Wild Animal Sovereignty,” Zoopolis, pp. 156-209

Week 15. Session 2. What Is the Fundamental Harm of Social Injustice? Maldistribution, or Misrecognition?

Nancy Fraser, “Social Justice in the Age of Identity Politics: Redistribution, Recognition, and Participation,” in Nancy

Fraser and Axel Honneth, Redistribution or Recognition? (Verso, 2003): READ pp. 7-26, 34-54, 70-78 ONLY

Scott Atran and Nafees Hamid, "Paris: The War ISIS Wants," New York Review of Books Daily Blog (16 Nov 2015)

FINAL PAPER DUE LAST DAY OF EXAMS AT NOON VIA E-MAIL.