Political Science 695-003
Edward Friedman
II, 2009-2010
Syllabus
The Politics of Freedom
The goal of the course is to understand why people all around the world struggle for
freedom and why freedom is so difficult to achieve. This task will require us to explore the
politics of freedom from multiple and competing perspectives.
Required Readings
Farnoosh Moshiri, The Bathhouse, Beacon Press.
Aravind Adiga, The White Tiger, Free Press.
Other books are to be selected by seminar members after receiving approval from the instructor.
Each seminar member must report on sections I, II and III and all but one of the following
sections.
Assignments: There are no exams. The course is writing intensive. The first two papers are one
page each. The next two papers and item VII are two pages each. The other papers are three
pages each. The final paper, due on the date of the final exam, is to be twelve (12) pages.
In addition, there will be numerous oral assignments, many to be preceded by a meeting with the
instructor.
Final paper essay topic: Clarify both the major errors and the major lessons in trying to establish
political freedom.
The paper should both quote from your course readings and refer to the material of the seminar
conversation.
I.
What are the costs of a lack of political freedom? (1 week)
Moshiri, The Bathhouse
(1 page paper)
II.
What keeps really existing democracies from delivering the blessings of freedom?
(2 weeks)
Adiga, The White Tiger
(1 page paper)
Lecture topic: Are some political imperatives more important than political freedom? The
perspectives of Hobbes and List.
III.
Slavery: The Ultimate Unfreedom (2 weeks)
(Select one book)
Write a two (2) page paper on how much the struggle to abolish slavery can be
generalized to understand the struggles to win political freedom.
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Seymour Drescher, Abolition: A History of Slavery and Anti-Slavery.
Madison Smartt Bell, All Souls Rising.
Rebecca J. Scott et al., The Abolition of Slavery and the Aftermath of Emancipation in Brazil.
Youval Rotman, Byzantine Slavery and the Mediterranean World.
Alexandre Popovic, The Revolt of African Slaves in Iraq.
Adam Hochschild, Bury the Chains.
Evan Carton, Patriotic Treason: John Brown and the Soul of America.
Adrian Desmond and James Moore, Darwin’s Sacred Cause: How a Hatred of Slavery Shaped
Darwin’s Views on Human Evolution.
The final four books build on the theme of section II. The danger of “electoralism.”
Leon Litwack, How Free is Free?
Eric Foner, Nothing But Freedom.
Charles Lane, The Day Freedom Died: The Colfax Massacre, the Supreme Court and the
Betrayal of Reconstruction.
David Oshinsky, “Worse Than Slavery”: Parchman Farm and the Ordeal of Jim Crow Justice.
IV.
Anarchism (2 weeks)
Does political freedom require state coercion? (2 pages)
James C. Scott, The Art of Not Being Governed.
George Woodcock, Anarchism.
Chomsky on Anarchism (skip chapter 1).
Or analyses from leading anarchists such as Kropotkin, Bakunin, Emma Goldman, etc.
E.g. Alexander Berleman, The ABC of Anarchism.
Peter Kropotkin, Anarchism.
Emma Goldman, Anarchism and Other Essays.
Is it true that the government that governs least governs best?
V.
The Economics of Political Freedom. (3 weeks)
Does political freedom require a market free of regulation or does political freedom
require regulation of the economy to constrain injustices and extreme volatility? (3 pages)
F. A. Hayek, The Road to Serfdom.
Jennifer Burns, Goddess of the Market; Ayna Rand and the American Right.
A book on Keynes or Keynesianism such as Peter Clarke, Keynes.
A study of the consequences of not regulating the market.
Upton Sinclair, The Jungle.
Liquat Ahamed, Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World.
Kevin Phillips, Bad Money.
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VI.
Promoting Human Rights. (3 weeks)
Micheline Ishay, The History of Human Rights.
Jonathan Power, Like Water on Stone: The Story of Amnesty International.
Mary Ann Glendon, A World Made New.
Lawrence Weschler, A Miracle, A Universe: Setting Accounts with Torturers.
Jack Donnelly, Universal Human Rights in Theory and Practice.
Gary Bass, Freedom’s Battle: The Origins of Humanitarian Intervention.
Gary Bass, Stay the Hand of Vengeance: The Politics of War Crimes Tribunals.
William Schulz, In Our Own Best Interest: How Defending Human Rights Benefits Us All.
James Traub, The Freedom Agenda.
J. L. Holzgrefe and Robert Keohane, eds., Humanitarian Intervention.
Daniel Thomas, The Helsinki Effect.
Paul Gordon Lauren, The Evolution of International Human Rights.
Margaret Keck and Kathryn Skkink, Activists Beyond Borders.
What does the concept of human rights add to our understanding of the politics of freedom? (3
pages)
VII
European Political Philosophy Classics. (1 week)
(2 page paper)
Ancient Athens
John Locke, A Letter Concerning Toleration.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The First and Second Discourses.
J. S. Mill, On Liberty.
Thomas Paine, The Rights of Man.
Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies.
Quentin Skinner, Hobbes and Republican Liberty.
Annelien de Djin, French Political Thought from Montesquieu to Tocqueville.
Isaiah Berlin, Four Essays on Liberty.
Hannah Arendt, On Revolution.
Danny Postel, Legitimation Crisis in Tehran.
What is most important for the freedom project in the analysis of the classical thinkers?
VIII.
What are the main obstacles to freedom today? A rising authoritarian China?
Globalization? Intolerant and violent politics based on religion? Patriarchy and the
plight of women?
A. C. Grayling, Toward the Light of Liberty.
Perez Zagorin, How the Idea of Religious Toleration Came to the West.
Nonie Darwish, Cruel and Unusual Punishment.
Paul Berman, Terror and Liberalism.
Christopher Caldwell, Reflections on the Revolution in Europe: Immigration, Islam and the
West.
Bruce Bower, Surrender: Appeasing Islam, Sacrificing Freedom.
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Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn, Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for
Women Worldwide.
Tiantian Zheng, Red Lights: The Lives of Sex Workers in Postsocialist China.
Kevin Bales, et al., Modern Slavery.
Explain the new light thrown by your book on why it is so difficult to achieve political freedom.
(3 pages)
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