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Thematic
Statement
Fairness is a central motivating force in our private and public
lives. Who gets what, how is it distributed, and how do we feel
about that parceling out of power, resources, access, even
attention? When allocation and distribution lead to indignation,
the results can be explosive: witness the civil rights movement in the
United States or, earlier, the Revolutionary War; the overthrow of
apartheid in South Africa; the experiment of the Soviet Union.
Current examples abound, from the struggle for a Palestinian state to
questions of how to handle taxation, health insurance, and social
security in the USA.
Equality, justice, and social change all have their roots in our
perceptions of fairness, and the very ability to perceive fairness is
itself rooted in the behavior of our animal ancestors. It arises
early in childhood, when it is echoed in the familiar cry of “That’s
not fair.” Understanding what drives those perceptions, and
examining how issues of fairness have played out through history, is
key to effecting lasting change.
This conference brings scientists, policy makers, historians,
philosophers, and economists together in a public forum, to explore
research on perceptions of fairness and consider historical case
studies in the context of that science. Our shared purpose is to
move toward informed solutions to some of the serious social problems
that now confront us.
Conference Location
The New School Tishman Auditorium
66 West 12th Street, between Fifth and Sixth Avenues, New York City
Registration
Preregistration is now closed.
For tickets, please visit the box office at 66 W. 12th Street, NYC,
between 5th and 6th Aves.
Social Research Conferences
E-mail: socres@newschool.edu
Telephone: (212) 229-2488 or 229-5776
Fax: (212) 229-5476
65 Fifth Avenue, Room 375
New York, NY 10003
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Conference
Agenda
Thursday April 14,
2005 2:00 P.M. - 5:00 P.M.
SESSION I. SCIENCE LOOKS AT FAIRNESS
Frans de Waal, C.H. Candler
Professor of Primate Behavior; Director, Living Links, Yerkes National
Primate Research Center, Emory University
Jon Elster, Robert K. Merton
Professor of Social Science, Columbia University
Herbert Gintis, Santa Fe Institute
Matthew Rabin, Edward G. and Nancy S.
Professor of Economics, University of California at Berkeley
Moderator: Nicholas Humphrey,
School Professor, London School of Economics
Thursday April 14,
2005 6:00 P.M. - 7:30 P.M.
SESSION II. KEYNOTE ADDRESS
John Edwards,
2004 Vice Presidential Candidate and former U.S. Senator from North
Carolina
LIVE
WEBCAST at www.dialnsa.edu, under Special Events.
Friday April 15,
2005 10:00 A.M-
1:00 P.M.
SESSION III. WHEN DOES FAIRNESS BECOME AN ISSUE? GENERAL
CONDITIONS THAT GIVE RISE TO A SENSE OF UNFAIRNESS
Lawrence Bobo, Professor of
Sociology, Director, Center for Comparative Studies in Race and
Ethnicity, Stanford University
Jennifer Hochschild, Professor
of Government and Afro-American Studies, Harvard University
Sidney Verba, Carl H. Pforzheimer
University Professor, Harvard University
Ira Katznelson, Ruggles
Professor of Political Science and History, Columbia University
Moderator: Victoria Hattam,
Professor of Political Science, New School University
Friday April 15,
2005 2:00 P.M. - 5:00
P.M.
SESSION IV. REASONING ABOUT FAIRNESS AND UNFAIRNESS IN LAW,
PHILOSOPHY AND POLITICAL THEORY
Edna Ullmann-Margalit,
Professor of Philosophy, Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Alan Ryan, Warden, New College, Oxford
University
Ian Shapiro, William R. Kenan, Jr.,
Professor and Chair, Political Science, Yale University
Cass Sunstein, Karl N. Llewellyn
Distinguished Service Professor of Jurisprudence, University of Chicago
Law School
Moderator: Richard Bernstein,
Vera List Professor of Philosophy, New School University
Friday April 15,
2005 6:00 P.M. - 9:00
P.M.
SESSION V. FAIRNESS AND SOCIAL JUSTICE
Christian Barry, Editor, Ethics
and International Affairs, Carnegie Council on Ethics and International
Affairs
Julian Le Grand, Richard Titmus
Professor of Social Policy, London School of Economics
Richard Wilkinson, Professor of
Epidemiology and Public Health, University of Nottingham Medical School
Adolfo Aguilar Zinser, Former
Ambassador of Mexico to the UN and Professor, National Autonomous
University of Mexico,
Moderator: Michael Cohen, Director,
International Affairs Program, New School University.
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Speaker
Bios
Christian Barry is Editor of Ethics
& International Affairs. He formerly directed the program on
Justice and the World Economy at the Carnegie Council on Ethics and
International Affairs, and has served as a consultant and contributing
author to several of the United Nations Development Program's Human
Development Reports. His recent publications include "Understanding and
Evaluating the Contribution Principle," "Redistribution," and (with
Thomas Pogge, eds.) Global Institutions and Responsibilities: Achieving
Global Justice (Blackwell).
Richard Bernstein is Vera List
Professor of Philosophy at the New School University. His
research focuses on American pragmatism, social and political
philosophy, critical theory and Anglo-American philosophy. He is
the author of many books, including: Radical Evil: A Philosophic
Interrogation, (Polity, 2002); Freud and the Legacy of Moses,
(Cambridge University Press, 1998); Hannah Arendt and the Jewish
Question, (The MIT Press, 1996).
Lawrence Bobo is Professor of Sociology
and Director of the Center for Comparative Studies in Race and
Ethnicity at Stanford University. He is the author of many books
including: Urban Inequality: Evidence from Four Cities (co-author with
Alice O'Connor, Russell Sage Foundation, 2001); Racialized Politics:
The Debate on Racism in America (co-author with David Pears, University
of Chicago Press, 2000);and Prismatic Metropolis: Inequality in Los
Angeles (editor, Russell Sage Foundation, 2000).
Michael Cohen is Director of the New
School's International Affairs Program. He was a Visiting Fellow
of the International. Center for Advanced Studies at New York
Universty, and is a former Senior Advisor to World Bank Vice President
for Environmentally Sustainable Development. He is co-editor of
Preparing the Urban Future and The Human Face of the Urban Environment
and author of Urban Policy and Economic Development: An Agenda for the
1990s, and has also published many articles. He is President of
the Board, International Institute for Environment and
Development-Latin America.
Frans de Waal is the C.H. Candler
Professor of Primate Behavior at Emory University and director of the
Living Links Center, Yerkes Regional Primate Research Center. His
publications include Animal Social Intelligence, Culture and
Individualized Societies (co-authored with P. L. Tyack, Harvard
University Press, 2003); Tree of Origin: What Primate Behavior Can Tell
Us about Human Social Evolution (Harvard University Press, 2001);
Natural Conflict Resolution (University of California Press, 2000); and
Bonobo: The Forgotten Ape (University of California Press, 1997) His
research is pursued with chimpanzees, bonobos, several macaque species,
and capuchin monkeys. His current research focuses on cultural
learning, behavioral economics, empathy and communication.
John Edwards, 2004 Vice
Presidential candidate, was formerly U.S. Senator from North
Carolina. He is the Director of the new Center on Poverty, Work
and Opportunity at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Jon Elster is the Robert K. Merton
Professor of Social Sciences at Columbia University. His books
include: Political Psychology (Cambridge University Press, 1993); Local
Justice (Russell Sage Foundation, 1992); Nuts and Bolts of Social
Science (Cambridge University Press, 1989); and Solomonic Judgements
(Cambridge University Press, 1989). His research interests include the
theory of rational choice, the theory of distributive justice and the
history of social thought. Currently, he is working on constitutional
theory related to the ongoing changes in Eastern Europe.
Herbert Gintis is Professor Emeritus
of Economics at the University of Massachusetts, a member of the Santa
Fe Institute external faculty and visiting Professor at Central
European University and the University of Siena. He is very widely
published. His most recent books are: Moral Sentiments and Material
Interests: On the Foundation of Cooperation in Economic Life
(co-authored with Samuel Bowles, Robert Boyd and Ernst Fehr, MIT Press
2004); Foundations of Human Sociality: Ethnography and Experiments in
Fifteen Small-Scale Societies (co-authored with Joe Henrich, Robert
Boyd, Samuel Bowles, Colin Cramerer and Ernst Fehr, Oxford University
Press, 2004). In 2000, Dr. Gintis won the Museum of
Education Books of the Century award for Schooling in Capitalist
America.
Victoria Hattam is Associate
Professor of Political Science at the New School University's Graduate
Faculty. Her research interests include American political
thought and culture, American political economy and American political
development. She is a contributing author to many journals and
books such as: Labor Visions and State of Power: The Origins of
Business Unionism in the United States, (Princeton University Press,
1993).
Jennifer Hochschild is a member
of the Government Department at Harvard University and has a joint
appointment in the Department of Afro-American Studies. She also has
lectureships in the Kennedy School of Government and the Graduate
School of Education. Professor Hochschild studies the intersection of
American politics and political philosophy -- particularly in the areas
of race, ethnicity, and immigration -- and educational policy. She also
works on issues in public opinion and political culture. She is the
author of The American Dream and the Public Schools (Oxford University
Press, 2003); Facing Up to the American Dream: Race, Class, and the
Soul of the Nation (Princeton University Press, 1995); The New American
Dilemma: Liberal Democracy and School Desegregation (Yale University
Press, 1984); and What's Fair: American Beliefs about Distributive
Justice (Harvard University Press, 1981).
Nicholas Humphrey is School
Professor of Psychology at the Centre for Philosophy of Natural and
Social Science, London School of Economics. He works on issues
addressing Darwinian approaches to illness, and in particular on the
evolutionary background of the placebo effect. He is the author
of many books, most recently, The Mind Made Flesh: Essays from the
Frontiers of Evolution and Psychology, (Oxford University Press, 2003);
How to Solve the Mind-Body Problem, (Imprint Academic, 2000); and A
History of the Mind: Evolution and the Birth of Consciousness,
(Copernicus Books, 1999).
Ira Katznelson has been Ruggles
Professor of Political Science and History at Columbia University since
1994. His books include Political Science: The State of Discipline (W.
W. Norton & Co Inc, 2004); Shaped by War and Trade: International
Influences on American Political Development (co-authored with Martin
Shefter, Princeton University Press, 2002); Schooling for All: Race,
Class, and the Decline of the Democratic Ideal (co-authored with
Margaret Weir; Basic Books, 1985); City Trenches: Urban Politics and
the Patterning of Class in the United States (University of Chicago,
1981). He is the winner of the American Political Science Association's
Michael Harrington Prize and Columbia's Lionel Trilling Award. He is
completing a book on the New Deal, the South, and the shaping of
postwar liberalism in the United States.
Julian Le Grand currently holds the
following titles: Richard Titmuss Professor of Social Policy at the
London School of Economics; Chair of the London School of Economics
Health and Social Care; Honorary Fellow of the Faculty of Public Health
Medicine; Founding Academician of the Academy of learned Societies for
the Social Sciences and a Senior Associate of the King Fund. He
is the author, co-author or editor of twelve books and over ninety
articles and book chapters on health and social policy. His books
include Motivation, Agency, and Public Policy: Of Knights and Knaves,
Pawns and Queens (Oxford University Press, 2003); Quasi-Markets and
Social Policy (co-author with Will Bartlett, Palgrave, 1993); Equity
and Choice: An Essay in Economics and Applied Philosophy (Routledge,
1992); and The Strategy of Equality (Unwin Hyman, 1982).
Matthew Rabin is aProfessor of
Economics at the University of California, Berkeley. His current
research topics are models of self-control, fairness in economics,
bounded rationality and self-deception. He is a contributing
co-author with Ted O onoghue of Self Awareness and Self Control, to
appear as a chapter of Roy Baumeister, George Loewenstein, and Daniel
Read (eds) Now or Later: Economic and Psychological Perspectives on
Intertemporal Choice (Russell Sage Foundation Press, forthcoming);
Risky Behavior Among Youths: Some Issues from Behavioral Economics
(co-author with Ted O onoghue), in Jon Gruber, editor, Youthful Risky
Behavior: An Economic Perspective, (University of Chicago Press, 2000);
and Addiction and Self-Control (with Ted O onoghue), in Addition:
Entries and Exits, Jon Elster, editor, Russell Sage Foundation, 1999.
Alan Ryan is Warden of the New College,
Oxford University and a member of the British Academy since 1986. He is
the author of many articles and books. His books include Liberal
Anxieties and Liberal Education (Hill and Wang, 1998); John Dewey and
the High Tide of American Liberalism (W. W. Norton & Company,
1997); and Russell: A Political Life (Hill and Wang, 1995). He
was the editor of the Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, Mill: A
Critical Edition (W. W. Norton & Company, 1997); Karl Marx (Harper,
1995) and Democracy in America (Everyman Library, 1994).
Ian Shapiro is William R. Kenan,
Jr., Professor and Chairman of the Political Science Department and was
previously Director of the Program of Ethics, Politics, and Economics
at Yale University. His research interests include the
methodologies of the social sciences, theories of justice and
democracy, the relations between democracy and the distribution of
income and wealth, and the prospects for sustainable democracy in the
post-communist world and sub-Saharan Africa. Professor Shapiro is
author of The State of Democratic Theory (Princeton University Press,
2004); The Moral Foundations of Politics (Yale Press, 2003); and The
Evolution of Rights in Liberal Theory (Cambridge University Press,
1986).
Cass R. Sunstein is Karl N.
Llewellyn Dist. Service Professor of Jurisprudence, in the Law School,
with an appointment in the Department of Political Science at the
University of Chicago. He is author of many articles and books,
including The Second Bill of Rights: FDR'S Unfinished Revolution and
Why We Need It More than Ever (Basic Books, 2004); Why Societies Need
Dissent (Oliver Wendell Holmes Lectures) (Harvard University Press,
2003); and The Cost-Benefit State (American Bar Association, 2002).
Edna Ullmann-Margalit is Professor
of Philosophy in the School of Education at The Hebrew University of
Jerusalem and is currently a Fellow at the Russell Sage
Foundation. Her research interests include practical
reasoning, philosophy of action, social choice theories, rationality
and behavioral economics and the law. She is editor of Reasoning
Practically (Oxford University Press, 1999); co-editor of Isaish
Berlin: A Celebration (with Avishai Margalit, Univesity of Chicago
Press, 1991); editor of Science in Reflection: The Israel Colloquium:
Studies in History, Philosophy, and Sociology of Science (Kluwer
Academic Publication, 1988) and author of The Emergence of Norms
(Oxford University Press, 1977).
Sidney Verba is Carl H. Pforzheimer
University Professor at the J.F.Kennedy School of Government at Harvard
University. He is the author and co-author of a number of books
on American and comparative politics, including The Private Roots of
Public Action (co-author with Nancy Burns, Kay Lehman Schlozman,
Harvard University Press, 2001); Voice and Equality (co-author with Kay
Lehman Schlozman, Henry E. Brady, Harvard University Press, 1995); and
Designing Social Inquiry (co-author with Gary King, Robert O. Keohane,
Princeton University Press, 1994). He won the Kammerer Prize of the
American Political Science Association for the best book on American
politics for Participation in America (Harper and Row,1972), and in
1976 his book, The Changing American Voter, won the Woodrow Wilson
Prize for the best book in political science.
Richard Wilkinson is Professor of
Social Epidemiology at The University of Nottingham, UK. His
research interests include social determinants of health, psychosocial
influences on population health, health inequalities, income
inequalities and population health. He is the author of many
books and articles. Among his recent books are: Mind the Gap:
Hierarchy, Health and Human Evolution (Yale University Press, 2001);
Social Determinants of Health (co-author with M.G. Marmot, Oxford
University Press, 1999); and Unhealthy Societies: The Afflictions of
Inequality (Routledge, 1997).
Adolfo Aguilar Zinser is a Professor
at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. He recently served as
Permanent Representative of Mexico to the UN (2002-2003). Mr. Aguilar
has been widely published on political and international issues
including the following books: Aun Tiembla (Editorial Nueva Imagen,
Mexico, 1985); Vamos a Ganar, La Pugna de Cuauhtémoc
Cárdenas por el Poder (Editorial Océano, México,
1995); and Compromisos por la Nación (Editorial Plaza y
Janés, México, 1996.)
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