Podcasts about tomlinson professor

Send us a textThe title of this episode might confuse you: what on earth do Adam Smith and F. A. Hayek have to say about social justice? A surprising amount, given how much we talk about it!Smith makes a big point of critiquing men of pride and vanity. What happens when those ultimately negative aspects of humanity go too far, into the territory of what he calls “domineering”? What happens when small acts of domination are aggregated throughout a society? So here we are, talking about slavery, Jim Crow, and the civil rights movement, through the lens of Hayek and Adam Smith. Our tour guide on this perilous journey towards the implementation and understanding of justice is the wonderful Jacob Levy.  Levy is the Tomlinson Professor of Political Theory at McGill University. He is also the coordinator of the research group on Constitutional Studies at McGill. Want to explore more?Jacob Levy, Rationalism, Pluralism, and the History of Liberal Ideas, a Liberty Matters symposium at the Online Library of Liberty. Don Boudreaux on the Essential Hayek, a Great Antidote podcast.Steven Horwitz, Spontaneous Order in Adam Smith, at AdamSmithWorks.Dan Klein on Adam Smith's Justice, a Great Antidote podcast.Rosolino Candela, Private Property and Social Justice: Complements or Substitutes? at Econlib.Never miss another AdamSmithWorks update.Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

A liberal society is necessarily an open and diverse one. When people are free to move and free to choose, a country's population and culture will reflect all those differences in tastes, preferences, and ways of living. And that's part of what makes liberalism so great.But a pluralistic society can be bothersome for those who'd prefer everyone be just like them. And if those sorts get uncomfortable enough with cultural diversity and dynamism, they can turn against liberalism itself.To help think through these tensions, and how liberalism can defend itself against those who would rather it weren't so diverse, I've brought on my friend Jacob T. Levy. He's the Tomlinson Professor of Political Theory at McGill University and author of the terrific book Rationalism, Pluralism, and Freedom.Want to listen to new episodes of ReImagining Liberty two weeks early? Become a supporter and get early access and other perks.Produced by Landry Ayres. Podcast art by Sergio R. M. Duarte. Music by Kevin MacLeod. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Here's a question we rarely explicitly ask: Who should we honor, celebrate, and remember ... and why? What's the point of it? Scores of statues to confederate soldiers, slaveowners, and other dubious but celebrated characters have been recently toppled from their pedestals. Was this a good idea? Should we worry that we'll forget our history? This week's guest, Jacob T. Levy, argues that the greater risk is that we won't go far enough. We might need to topple a few more statues. We discuss Levy's two-part essay "Honoring the Dishonorable," one on the living and one on the dead. Both turn on an intriguing idea from Adam Smith: that we humans are saddled with a deep-seated bias toward over-praise and over-honor and over-identify with the great, powerful, and famous, even if they're objectively vile. Levy ingeniously applies Smith's idea to question of statue toppling, but also to the question of what to do about notable and notorious Trump administration cronies and collaborators after they return to private life. In addition, we talk about why we both stopped worrying and started to love democracy. We also dig into the question of why we should believe that old dead guys like Adam Smith could be good guides to human nature and the nature of moral truth? Jacob T. Levy is Tomlinson Professor of Political Theory at McGill University. He is the author of "The Multiculturalism of Fear" and "Rationalism, Pluralism, and Freedom." He's a Senior Fellow at the Niskanen Center and the Institute for Humane Studies.

The United States, as Alexis de Tocqueville wrote in his account of the USA, is a country where people spend most of their lives in voluntary associations. He meant clubs, community organizations, and all sorts of activities that tie us together in communities which are not imposed on us by the state. How can we balance this fundamental right of free association (anchored, in the US, in the First Amendment), and the government's obligation to protect its citizens from unjust and illegal treatment? Should the government intervene when there’s a speech controversy on campus? Or should universities be allowed to set their own rules, like other associations such as clubs, homeowner associations, or churches? Jacob Levy has written extensively about the tension between the idea that the state grants or restrict our liberties while allowing private associations to set their own rules for their members. When is the right moment for the state to interfere in a group's (a church, a baseball team, a religious sect, a school, a homeowners' association) rules? And when can a university assert its right to regulate itself without external pressure and political interference? Professor Levy has thought a lot about the tension between allowing people to associate voluntarily in groups that have their own rules, and the state's obligation to make sure no one's constitutional or human rights are infringed upon. Universities here provide a special case. People enter them voluntarily, but then do they leave their constitutional rights at the college gate? Certainly not. So I asked Professor Levy how to make sense of the relationship between associations and the state itself. Can voluntary associations deprive members of rules set otherwise guaranteed by the state? In the context of the university, can the university have speech codes or codes of conduct that are different from those in the public square? How is this different from a church, temple or mosque, which imposes religious conformity on its members while the state allows for religious freedom, and even freedom from religion? Should the state intervene if a university does not grant a political speaker an opportunity to speak, and is this different from forcing a church to host a speaker who questions or attacks that religion? Professor Levy offered a nuanced and precise definition of academic freedom, what constitutes academic speech and external commentary by faculty members, what the purpose of a university is, and how speech controversies turn exceptions into generalizations that will ultimately do more harm than good. Professor Levy is the Tomlinson Professor of Political Theory and Professor of Political Science and Philosophy at McGill University. He is the author of Rationalism, Pluralism, and Freedom, and The Multiculturalism of Fear, and writes frequently about academic freedom, freedom of speech, and other issues of political importance.    

In this KosmosOnline podcast, Jeanne Hoffman talks with Professor Jacob T. Levy about book editing. Dr. Levy discusses his experiences with editing his recent book, Colonialism and Its Legacies, and offers advice for apsiring editors. Dr. Levy  is Tomlinson Professor of Political Theory in the Department of Political Science at McGill University and a member of the McGill Centre for Human Rights and Legal Pluralism. He blogs at http://jacobtlevy.blogspot.com/

Jeanne Hoffman talks with Jacob Levy about his introduction to classical liberal ideas and academia, his career and advice for aspiring academics.  Dr. Levy is the Tomlinson Professor of Political Theory at McGill University.

Jacob Levy talks about making the most of academic conferences. Dr. Levy is the Tomlinson Professor of Political Theory at McGill University.