HS 400a: GREAT DEBATES IN SOCIAL POLICY
Spring 2016, meets Tuesdays and Thursdays 9 am – 12pm
Visiting Professor Deborah Stone
Office: Heller 346
Email: stone@brandeis.edu
Course Overview and Objectives
In this course, we engage the philosophical debates underlying the major questions of
social policy by reading both classic and contemporary authors. Content-wise, the main
objective is to reflect on the deeper value questions and philosophical assumptions that
shape social policy.
Apart from the substantive content, the course also has pedagogical objectives. In my
view, doctoral education is overwhelmingly preoccupied with teaching you how to “do
things right.” Thus, coursework emphasizes learning how to fit your questions into other
scholars’ theoretical frameworks and how to use methods that have received a
disciplinary stamp of approval. That approach doesn’t leave much room for pursuing
your curiosities and experimenting with how to find answers. In this course, I aim to give
you space to foster your own creativity and to explore your own moral commitments and
be able to build them into your work.
To those ends, Week 1 focuses on the nature of social inquiry and the relationship
between knowledge and policy planning. I chose the readings to provide a range of views
about what “science” is and about the kinds of knowledge people deem useful for policy
making. In Week 2, we read some views on the nature of the creative process, how
people get their big ideas, and the place of moral and ideological commitments in social
science. These first two weeks are designed to let you step back and reflect on what kind
of knowledge you are seeking and hope to produce, and to liberate you at least
temporarily from all the “shoulds” of graduate education. In the remainder of the course,
each week focuses on a key issue in social policy.
Other objectives for this course are:
To hone your critical reading skills, meaning the ability to identify and re-state an
author’s argument; analyze how he or she goes about substantiating the argument; and
recognize and analyze the rhetorical devices an author uses to be persuasive.
To hone your writing skills, meaning the ability to make an argument about a policy
question; situate your argument in a larger theoretical and philosophical debate; and write
clearly, engagingly and persuasively.
To hone your speaking and discussion skills, meaning the ability to present your ideas or
question clearly; respond to questions; and advance group discussion by helping your
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classmates articulate their ideas more clearly through constructive questions and
suggestions.
To bring some levity into graduate school and remind you not to take academic big-whigs
or yourself too seriously.
To resist mindless use of bureaucratic boilerplate, professional clichés, jargon and
buzzwords (never mind that I just used some…). See next section.
Statement on Integrity
I think each person should reflect on and develop his or her own standards of integrity. I
do not use the standard university templates for this purpose because they let you off the
hook and they permit, even encourage, mindless repetition of boilerplate, clichés, and
jargon. Here are four thoughts on my own standards.
First, professional integrity is broader than academic integrity. In contrast to the
prevailing norms in academia about researchers being “objective” and “unbiased,” I
believe we do and ought to have moral commitments. Each of us believes certain things
are morally right or wrong, and we organize our work and careers to act on our moral
principles. In the policy world, we all aspire to use policy analysis and policy reform to
make the world a better place, but each of us must think deeply about what we mean by
“better.” (In some sense, this question is at the heart of each of the great debates in this
course.) Most important, we should not be hired guns. In deciding whether to accept a job
or to work on a policy project, we should first question the goals and premises of the
work and ask whether they accord with our own best judgments. We should always be
guided by our moral principles and continually ask ourselves how the work we are doing
accords with them. Of course, anyone in public life will face “the problem of dirty hands,”
as the philosopher Michael Walzer called it. We will have to make compromises with our
moral principles, presumably because we think a particular compromise is the best
outcome we can obtain under the circumstances. But, as my friend and colleague Judy
Layzer put it to her students, “the point is to be aware when you are making
compromises, not talk yourself into believing that you’re doing the right thing when you
really know you’re compromising.” In short, it is not only permissible but desirable to
have moral and ideological commitments and to let them inform your work.
Second, the prevailing norms in academia and the standard Heller template on academic
integrity forbid collaboration with others except when explicitly allowed by the instructor.
“Each student is expected to turn in work completed independently, except when
assignments specifically authorize collaborative effort” (Heller School template on
academic integrity, 2015). That rule reflects the profoundly individualistic political
culture of contemporary U.S. and is out of synch with the more group-based and
cooperative cultures of the rest of the world, especially the developing world. I
encourage you to cooperate and collaborate, to discuss, argue, critique, and help each
other develop your ideas. As in the standard university template, I expect you to write
your own papers, but you don’t have to quote every word or phrase you heard from
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someone else; it’s enough to acknowledge someone in a note with a phrase such as, “I
would like to thank so-and-so [or my study group, or my classmates] for suggesting this
idea to me.” Of course you will put the idea in your own words and develop it.
Third, the standard university warnings on academic honesty put the fear of God in
students about being accused of plagiarism: “[Y]ou must use footnotes and quotation
marks to indicate the sources of any phrases, sentences, paragraphs or ideas found in
published volumes, on the internet, or created by another student” (Heller School
template on academic integrity, 2015). Such dire language leads students to rely way too
heavily on direct quotations. You do not need to quote words, phrases, or ideas in
common usage. And as a matter of good writing and good thinking, it’s best to put as
much as possible in your own words. In my view, there are only four situations when you
should directly quote someone else’s words:
1) If someone coined an original phrase or term, put it in quotes, attribute it to
them, and be sure to define it or express it in other words. If it’s a new and unique
usage, your readers won’t know what it means unless you tell them. Putting it in
your own words is the best way to find out whether you really understand what
the author meant. If you have a hard time expressing the phrase (or a longer idea)
in your own words, that’s often an indication that the author didn’t really know or
wasn’t clear about he or she meant. Sometimes this simple process of restating
something in your own words can generate an important debate or critique.
2) Use long quotations only if the author’s prose absolutely “turns your spine to
jelly.” That phrase and the rule come from Mr. Chester Mattson, my 10th grade
Social Studies teacher, who gave me not only this and the next rule, but also the
very idea that I could develop my own rules for quotation.
3) Quote a piece of text, such as a law, a document or a speech, if you want to
discuss and analyze the actual words of the text. In that situation, you are laying
the text on a table like a laboratory specimen for dissection. (Thank you, Mr.
Mattson, for this rule, too.) This rule covers all those extensive quotations in
ethnographic research and discourse analysis.
4) Quote someone’s words if you think what they said or wrote is so crazy,
outrageous, or beyond the pale that your audience might not believe the person
actually used those words unless you quote them. (Donald Trump comes to mind.)
In that case, you are using quotations rather like evidence in court, placing the
person’s words before a judge.
Finally, although most journals and academic publishers ask you to use in-text citation
styles, my own view (Stone 2015) is that the APA style (American Psychology
Association 2010), the Chicago style (Turabian 2010), and the MLA style (Modern
Language Association,2008 ) all interfere with narrative flow, if you see (Panek 1998)
what I mean. One cannot write well using in-text citations. I encourage you to use
endnotes or footnotes instead. I always compose with endnotes and then convert my
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references to my publisher’s required style once the piece has been accepted, but
following my first principle of integrity above, I try to persuade publishers to let me use
the endnote system by arguing that it makes for better prose.
Requirements
Class sessions
1. Be present! Do the readings. Start early, give yourself time to savor, ponder and
analyze. Come prepared to teach the readings to your classmates and get their help
understanding what puzzles you. Study hint: as you read each reading, pretend you are
going to have to teach it to undergraduates. Before you launch into critiquing it (that’s
what graduate students are mainly trained to do), explain to your imaginary
undergraduates where it fits in the literature, what question it is trying to answer, what
answer it gives, and most of all, why they should care about it. Justify why you assigned
it to them.
2. Attendance should be near perfect. If you have to miss a class, come late or leave early,
please let me know in advance.
3. Please let me know if you need any special accommodations for a disability or other
life circumstances that might interfere with your attendance, class participation or
meeting deadlines. You can learn about the process for documenting disabilities and
requesting accommodations through Mary Brooks, Heller School’s disabilities
coordinator (maryeliz@brandeis.edu).
4. Devices: You are welcome to bring your laptops and tablets for note taking and
referring to readings if you don’t use hard copies. Any other use (Web surfing and email) is the height of rudeness. If I get an inkling that anyone is doing anything but
referring to assigned texts and note taking, I’ll put an end to in-class device use for
everyone. Please keep your phones turned off and tucked away. (Exception: if you have
some kind of family emergency and need to be accessible, you may keep your phone on
vibrate, but please tell me before class.) In short, back to Requirement #1: Be present and
think of the common good.
Written Assignments
A “Letter to Your Grandmother” in week 1, which will be ungraded (for reasons that will
be obvious when you read the assignment below).
Three short (3-5 page) papers sprinkled throughout the semester
One longer 10-page paper due after classes end, whenever the last date for papers due is.
The last two class sessions will be devoted to students’ presentations of their final papersin-progress so you can get feedback.
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Please type your papers in 12-point font, double spaced (not 1 ½ ), with one-inch margins
all around, and insert page numbers. I provide written feedback mainly by hand, so that’s
why I ask for double space and margins. Name your file with your last name rather than
the course number or name, and don’t forget to put your name on your papers.
The short assignments are what I call “Make It Your Own.” Each week I will write
thought questions that ask you to apply one or more concepts, visions, arguments from
the week’s readings to a topic of your choice. You will explore seeing your topic through
a particular lens (theory, concept, argument) so that hopefully, you not only see your
topic in a new way but also gain a deeper understanding of the theory. You may choose
to write your short papers and the final paper on different topics, but if you want to use
this course to explore a possible direction for your dissertation, I encourage you to select
a topic that you will use throughout the semester as a sort of test case or laboratory
specimen for applying each week’s readings.
All students are required to do the assignment on Equality (Week 3) and then may choose
two more short assignments, but I’ll ask you to choose early in the semester and scatter
yourselves so you’re not all doing the same ones, and so that you don’t leave all your
writing to the end.
Grading:
Grades will be based roughly as follows:
Class participation:
Three short papers
Final Paper
20%
30%
50%
If you’ve read this far, you’ve probably figured out that I don’t put great stock in
objectivity and numerical precision. I do put great stock in active, kind, cheerful and
creative engagement in class sessions. I also put great stock in improvement over the
course of the semester and so I weight later papers more heavily.
Books Recommended for Purchase
We will be reading large portions of these books. I will put copies on reserve but you
might want to have your own copy.
Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow New Press, 2010.
Alice O’Connor, Poverty Knowledge, Princeton University Press, 2001.
Deborah Stone, Policy Paradox W.W. Norton, 2012, 3rd edition.
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TOPICS, READINGS AND EXERCISES
Week 1: Ways of Knowing
Michael Agar, The Lively Science: Remodeling Human Social Research (Minneapolis:
Mill City Press, 2013), chaps. 1-2, pp. 1-64.
Richard Panek, Seeing and Believing (Penguin Books, 1998), chap. 2 “God’s Eye,” pp.
54-62–science as philosophy)
James Scott, Seeing Like a State, Introduction and ch. 1 pp. 1-52 [skip p. 36 from section
called “The Code Rural that Almost Was” to p.44 (start again at “The Cadastral Map as
Objective Information”). Note: the terms “cadastral and cadastral map” come up early
but are not defined until p. 36. Jump to there to find the definition when you need it—or
look it up!)
Recommended here: Alice O’Connor, Poverty Knowledge (Princeton University
Press, 2001), Chap. 7 “Fighting Poverty with Knowledge,” pp. 166-95. We will
read most of this book later in two sessions devoted to poverty, but take a quick
peek now if you can, because this chapter exemplifies the “high modernist”
approach to policy planning that Scott describes.
Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities (Random House, 1961), chap
2 “The Uses of Sidewalks: Safety,” pp. 30-54. (Jane Jacobs uses personal observation,
experience, shoe-leather research, and common sense to build theory. She was a mother
and homemaker with no professional training in social science or urban planning, but her
book became the Bible of Urban Planning.)
Joe Soss, “Talking Our Way to Meaningful Explanation,” in Interpretation and Method:
Empirical Research Methods and the Interpretive Turn ed. Dvora Yanow and Peregrine
Schwartz-Shea (Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 2nd. ed., 2014), pp. 161-82.
Recommended:
Bruce Spitz, “When Health Policy is the Problem,” Journal of Health Politics, Policy and
Law, vol. 30, no. 3, June 2005, pp. 327-365. This article is a critical look at policy
analysts as lobbyists for knowledge—their own—and our unquestioned belief that
knowledge is the crucial ingredient for solving policy problems. It’s about the health
policy field, but read it as a metaphor for policy analysis and policy research in general.
Do you agree with his critique, and do you see parallels or counterevidence in your own
policy area? Spitz spent many years here at the Heller School until he died in 2007.)
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Week 2: Creativity and Moral Commitments: How Do People Get Ideas and Why
Do They Pursue Them?
Jacob Bronowski, “The Creative Mind,” essay in his Science and Human Values (Harper
and Row, orig. 1959, rev. ed. 1965), pp. 1-24. This is the essay that resolved my identity
crisis as a sophomore in college. It liberated me to believe that I could be both a scientist
and a creative artist. Bronowski argues that the essence of creativity, whether in science
or art, is seeing a likeness between two apparently dissimilar things. In other words,
creativity is metaphor-making in the mind. As you read this essay, think about whether it
accords with your own experience of having new ideas and whether it explains (or
accurately describes) other works of policy thinking that you find original.
Austin Kleon, Steal Like an Artist (New York: Workman, 2012) Chaps. 1-2, pp. 4-31.
Kleon argues that “nothing is original” and we all build on the ideas of others, starting by
imitating them in some way. I think he’s right—and I’ll also use this book to launch a
discussion of the difference between collaboration and plagiarism.
Muhammed Yunus, Banker to the Poor (Public Affairs Press, 2003), chapter 4, “The
Stool Makers of Jobra Village,” pp. 43-58. This book is Yunus’ autobiography of an idea,
his idea of microcredit. In “The Stool Makers of Jobra Village,” he describes how he got
the idea in a vivid, dusty-feet story. As you read it, think about the interplay of face-toface experience, conversation, observation, nitty-gritty facts, sociological understanding,
compassion, moral indignation, and intellect in Yunus’ re-conceptualization of poverty
and economic development. How do and can we as policy thinkers bring all these things
to bear in our work?
George Orwell, “Why I Write,” orig. 1946 in Gangrel Magazine; the essay is also in a
collection of Orwell’s essays titled Why I Write (Penguin Books, 2005), pp. 1-10
Available at: http://orwell.ru/library/essays/wiw/english/e_wiw
Howard Becker, “Whose Side Are We On?” Social Problems, vol. 13, no. 3 (1967), pp.
239-47.
Assignment: “Letter to Your Grandmother*: Why are you in this PhD program? What’s
your overriding commitment? What journey do you want to take? Length: 3-5 pages
maxiumum.
Due in class on DATE and post to Latte. We’ll ask you to read your letters aloud in class.
Details of the “Letter to Your Grandmother*” Assignment: Before beginning this
assignment, do two thought exercises:
*First, create an imaginary audience for the letter you are about to write. Choose
someone who loves you unconditionally, who thinks you are a genius and can walk on
water, and who can never be disappointed in you. The person doesn’t even have to be still
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living. For me, that person is my long-gone Grandma Celia Stone. Hence the title of the
assignment. I use the word “grandmother*” with an asterisk when describing this
assignment to indicate that you can substitute an equivalent figure in your life.
Second, select one of your all-time favorite authors, one you most enjoy reading, one
whose prose envelops you in a warm blanket or sends your mind reeling or makes you
fall in love with language again, or just makes you forget everything else in the world. It
can be a children’s book author, a fiction writer, a song-writer—any kind of wordsmith.
Your favorite author may not write in English, but for this assignment, I suggest you
choose an English language writer (not something in translation), so as to get the music
of the language in your ear. Before you begin to write this assignment, read some of that
author. DO NOT spread out academic articles around you, and in fact hide them in a lock
box so you can’t refer to them.
Give yourself whatever time, space, and things make you feel cozy, and then write your
letter. Never mind that you’re just beginning your academic career and have no idea why
are on this path. Just schmooze to your Grandmother* about why you wanted to enter this
PhD program, what you think is your overriding personal/intellectual/political/moral
commitment at this moment, and where you imagine this career path might take you. You
could think of it as a prospective travelogue: What journey do you want to take as you
travel through Heller? Trust that your imaginary recipient will be fascinated and ever so
grateful that you are sharing your life as a grad student with her or him.
Week 3: Equality-—What is it, should policy promote it and if so, how?
Stone, Policy Paradox, chap. 2 “Equity”, pp. 39-62.
Optional: Deborah Stone, “Sneha’s Birthday Cake” (copyright 2012 by Deborah
Stone). This is a short story I wrote to present the ideas of Chapter 2 to Nepali
students. The exercise forced me to clarify my ideas, and was fun besides. Maybe
it will help you digest the chapter, too.)
Jill Lepore, “Richer and Poorer: Accounting for Inequality,” New Yorker, Mar. 16, 2015.
Harry G. Frankfurt On Inequality (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2015), Part I,
sections 1-8, pp. 1-15 and Part II, sections 1-11 pp. 65-89.
Anthony B. Atkinson, Inequality: What Can Be Done? (Harvard University Press, 2015),
Introduction and Chap. 1, pp. 9-45.
World Bank, Equity and Development, World Development Report 2006, overview and
introduction (pp. 18-24); pp. 66-68 (inequities in power); intro to Part II (“Why Does
Equity Matter,” pp. 73-75; and chapter 4 (pp. 76-88)
Assignment: Pick your issue, analyze conflicting interpretations of equality. [will flesh
out assignment in more detail]
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5-6 pages (max), double-spaced, 12-pt. font, 1 inch margins. Due in class.
Week 4: Migration and Citizenship—Should national borders and citizenship be
open to all comers? What policies do and should nations have regarding migrants?
Question:
Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities (New York: Verso revised edition 1991);
Introduction, excerpt from p. 5 bottom (paragraph that begins “In an anthropological
spirit.”) to 7.
Michael Walzer, Spheres of Justice (Basic Books, 1983) chap. 2 “Membership,” pp. 3163.
Linda Bosniak, The Citizen and the Alien: Dilemmas of Contemporary Membership, pp.
9-16 and chap. 3 “The Difference that Alienage Makes,” pp. 37-76
Joseph Carens, “Aliens and Citizens: The Case for Open Borders,” Review of Politics, vol.
49, no. 2 (1987), pp. 251-73.
Joseph Carens, “On Belonging,” Boston Review on line, June 2005
Available at http://www.bostonreview.net/carens-on-belonging
Daniel A. Gerber, American Immigration: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University
Press, 2011), Intro to Part I “The Law of Immigration and the Legal Construction of
Citizenship,” pp. 15-24; and Intro to Part II, “Emigration and Immigration from the
International Migrants’ Perspectives,” pp. 65-71.
Rogers Smith, “Beyond Tocqueville, Myrdal, and Hartz: The Multiple Traditions in
America,” American Political Science Review vol. 87, no. 3 (1993), pp. 549-66.
Case Study: The migration crisis in Europe
Nicholas Schmidle, “Ten Borders: One refugee’s epic journey from Syria,” New Yorker
Oct. 26-2015, pp. 42-53.
James Hollifield, interview on Europe’s migration crisis, Wilson Center, available at:
https://www.wilsoncenter.org/article/update-europes-migration-crisis
Hollifield is a leading scholar on migration, and incidentally, taught for several years here
in Brandeis’ Politics Department. The interview took place in October 2015.
Dvora Yanow. “Accounting for ‘Natives’ and ‘Strangers’: The work of metaphors and
categories,” Migration and Citizenship (newsletter of the American Political Science
Association Organized Section on Migration and Citizenship), vol. 3, no. 1 (2015), pp.
15-22.
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I will add current material on this issue closer to the start date of course.
Week 5: Markets and Capitalism—What and who are markets good for? Bad for?
Friedman, Capitalism and Freedom (University of Chicago Press:1962), Intro and chaps.
1-2, pp. 1-36. (The argument for free markets, the locus classicus for the masses and the
spark plug for neoliberalism.)
Michael Polanyi, The Great Transformation (Beacon Press, 1944), chap. 6, “The SelfRegulating Market,” pp. 68-76.
Ha-Joon Chang, 23 Things They Don’t Tell You About Capitalism (Penguin, 2011),
"Thing 3: Most People in Rich Countries Are Paid More Than They Should Be," pp. 2330.
Deborah Stone, Policy Paradox, chap. 1 “The Market and the Polis” pp. 19-36; and chap.
3 “Efficiency, pp. 63-80.
Alice Walker, “Everyday Use” in In Love and Trouble (Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich
1973), pp. 47-59.
Robert Kuttner Everything for Sale: The Virtues and Limits of Markets(Alfred Knopf,
1997), chap. 4“Markets and Medicine,” pp. 110-158.
Case: Is there an Efficiency/Equality Trade-Off?
Charles Wheelan, Introduction to Public Policy (W.W. Norton 2011), chap. 5, section 5.4
“The efficiency-equity trade-off,” pp. 163-167
Stone Policy Paradox, “Efficiency” chapter above, last section, pp. 80-84
Anthony B. Atkinson, Inequality: What can be done? (Harvard University Press 2015),
chap. 9 “Shrinking the Cake?”, pp. 243-62.
Week 6: Freedom—What do we mean by it and how can policy promote it?
Deborah Stone, Policy Paradox, chap. 5 “Liberty,” pp. 107-128.
Amartya Sen, Development as Freedom (Random House, 1999), chap. 1 “The
Perspective of Freedom,” pp. 13-44.
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Kent Greenfield, The Myth of Choice (Yale University Press, 2011), chap. 1 “Choices,
Choices, Choices,” only pp. 14-25; chap. 5 “Choice and Power,” pp. 98-118.
Joe Soss, Richard C. Fording and Sanford F. Schram, Disciplining the Poor: Neoliberal
Paternalism and the Persistent Power of Race (University of Chicago Press, 2011) chap.
9 “Performance, Perversity, and Punishment” pp. 297-32.
Ruth W. Grant, Strings Attached: Untangling the Ethics of Incentives (Princeton
University Press, 2012), pp. 43-44 (for definitions); chap. 4 pp. “Ethical and Not-SoEthical Incentives,” pp. 44-59 and chap. 5 “Applying Standards, Making Judgments,” pp.
60-74.
Week 7: What Causes Poverty?
Alice O’Connor, Poverty Knowledge, Introduction and chaps. 1-4, pp. 1-123; and chap. 6,
pp. 139-65.
Amartya Sen, Poverty and Famines (Oxford University Press, 1981), chap. 1 “Poverty
and Entitlements,” pp. 1-8; and chap. 6 “The Great Bengal Famine,” pp. 52-85 (note that
the tables referenced in the text occur at the end of the chapter on pp. 84-85).
Arturo Escobar, Encountering Development (Princeton University Press, 1995), chap. 2
“Discourses of Poverty,” pp. 21-54.
Optional: World Bank, Equity and Development, World Development Report 2006,
overview and introduction (pp. 18-24)
Week 8: What Should Be Done About Poverty? Views of Domestic Social Assistance
Alice O’Connor, Poverty Knowledge, Chap 7 “Fighting Poverty with Knowledge,” pp.
166-95; chap 9 “The Poverty Research Industry,” pp. 213-14 (this is us!); chapters 10-11,
pp.242-95.
Charles Murray, Losing Ground, chap. 12 “Incentives to Fail: Short Term Gains,” pp.
154-66.
Andrea Campbell, Trapped in America’s Safety Net (University of Chicago Press, 2013),
prologue, pp. ix-x; and chap. 4 “How Means Tested Programs Keep People Poor,” pp.
57-70.
Joe Soss, "Lessons of Welfare," American Political Science Review, Vol. 93, No. 2. (Jun.,
1999), pp. 363-380.
Deborah Stone, Policy Paradox, chap. 4 “Welfare,” pp. 85-106. (One way to read this
chapter would be to see it as an answer to Harry G. Frankfurt’s question about how to
define “sufficiency” (in On Inequality, Week 3).
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Martin Gilens, Why Americans Hate Welfare: Race, Media, and the Politics of
Antipoverty Policy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999), Introduction, pp. 1-9,
and Chap. 3 “Racial Attitudes, the Undeserving Poor, and Opposition to Welfare,” pp.
60-79. (Never underestimate the importance of race on every aspect of American politics
and policy.)
Week 9: Security—What is it and how does insurance work to mitigate it?
Deborah Stone, Policy Paradox, chap. 6 “Security,” pp. 129-53.
David Moss, When All Else Fails: Government as the Ultimate Risk Manager (Harvard
University Press, 2002), chap. 7 “Social Security,” pp. 180 to 215.
Jacob S. Hacker, The Great Risk Shift (Oxford University Press, 2006), chap. 2 ”Risking
It All,” pp. 35-60.
Chris Edwards and Michael Tanner, ”Reforming Social Security Retirement,” Cato
Institute, 2013), available at:
http://www.downsizinggovernment.org/print/ssa/social-security-retirement
Deborah Stone, “The Struggle for the Soul of Health Insurance,” Journal of Health
Politics, Policy and Law, vol. 18, no. 2, Summer 1993, pp. 287–317.
Deborah Stone, "Beyond Moral Hazard: The Moral Opportunity of Insurance," in
Embracing Risk, edited by Tom Baker and Jonathan Simon. Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 2002, pp. 52–79;
Week 10: Race Discrimination
Richard Wright, “The Ethics of Living Jim Crow,” in Uncle Tom’s Children (New York:
HarperPerennial Classics, 2008, orig. 1945), pp. 1-15
Julie Messner and Edwom Martinez, “The Scars of Stop and Frisk,” “op-doc” video,
New York Times June 13, 2012, 6 minutes, available at
http://www.nytimes.com/video/opinion/100000001601732/the-scars-of-stop-andfrisk.html
Richard Wright and Tyquan Brehon (the subject of the video) are both young black males,
and both develop rules of thumb for surviving in America’s racial order. Try to articulate
(write) each of their sets of rules as though you were writing a guidebook for young
blacks –“Do this, don’t do that,” etc. Wright and Brehon were born nearly a century apart.
Compare how the rules are the same and different from the early twentieth century to the
early 21st century.
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Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow (New York: New Press, 2010), Introduction and
Chaps 1-4 (pp. 1-208).
Review Martin Gilens reading from Week 8
Week 11: What to Do About Discrimination?
The conventional American government textbook answer to this question suggests that
the democratic process can remedy the problem by passing civil rights legislation and
enforcing it through the courts. Most of this week’s authors and most scholars see civil
rights as extremely important and instruments of progress, but they also think
discrimination is an overly narrow conception of the race problem, because it suggests
individual acts and effects that can be addressed piecemeal through legislation. Each of
the readings presents a view of a different kind of system or “racial order” and a theory
about why and how the American racial order has, will, and can be changed.
Dennis W. Johnson, “The Laws That Shaped America: Fifteen Acts of Congress and their
Lasting Impact (Routledge 2009), chap. 10 “Justice, Equality and Democracy’s Promise,”
pp. 293-332. (I will add a short reading updating this chapter to include recent
developments in the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act.)
Martha Minow, In Brown’s Wake: Legacies of America’s Educational Landmark (New
York: Oxford University Press, 2010), chapter 3 excerpt on disability and sexual
orientation, pp. 69-85;
Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow (New York: New Press, 2010), Introduction and
Chap.5 (pp. 209-248).
Howard Winant, The World is a Ghetto: Race and Democracy Since World War II
(Basic Books, 2001), chap. 6 “Notes on the Postwar Break,” pp. 133-46; and chap. 7
“The United States: The End of Innocence,” pp. 147-206. (Winant situates American
racial politics and policy in a global context and emphasizes the role of social movements
and black mobilization in changing policy.)
Jennifer Hochschild, Vesla Weaver and Traci Burch, Creating a New Racial Order: How
Immigration, Multiculturalism, Genomics and the Young Can Remake Race in America
(Princeton University Press 2012), chaps. 1 (pp. 3-18) and 7, pp. 167-181. The authors
Week 12: Community and Loyalty: What Do We Owe Each Other and How Do We
Practice Community?
Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities (Random House, 1961),
Chapter 3 “The Uses of Sidewalks: Contact,” pp. 55-73.
George P. Fletcher Loyalty: An Essay on the Morality of Relationships (Oxford
University Press, 1993), chapters 1 and 2 (pp. 3-40) and chap. 8 (only 162-75).
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Michael J. Sandel, Justice: What’s the Right Thing to Do? (Farrar, Strauss and Giroux,
2009), chap. 9 “What Do We Owe One Another?” pp. 208-43.
Michael Shalev, “’Loyalty Benefits’ and the Welfare State,” (Oxford UK: Foundation for
Law Justice and Society, 2010) available at:
http://www.fljs.org/sites/www.fljs.org/files/publications/Shalev.pdf
Lisa Dodson, The Moral Underground: How Ordinary Americans Subvert an Unfair
Economy (New Press, 2009), Introduction, pp. 1-10; chap. 3 “American Bosses,” pp. 5771; and chap. 9 “Roots of Disobedience,” pp. 171-98.
Peter Singer, “Famine, Affluence, Morality, Philosophy and Public Affairs vol. 1, no. 3
(1972), pp. 229-243. [or excerpt from The Life You Save]
Trish Siplon, “Once You Know, You Are Responsible,” Journal of Health Politics,
Policy and Law, vol. 39, no. 2 (2014), pp. 485-91.
Weeks 13 and 14: Student Presentations of their final projects-in-progress
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