The Poynter Center for the Study of Ethics
and American Institutions

Poynter Center Fellows

2006-07: Memory: Ethics, Politics, Aesthetics | 2005-06: Nature in the Scientific and Moral Imagination | 2004-05: Ethics and Politics of Childhood | 2003-04: Democracy and Dissent

2003-04 | Fall Readings

2003-04: "Democracy and Dissent"

During the 2003-04 academic year, the Poynter Center sponsored five IU faculty fellows in an interdisciplinary seminar on the subject of "Democracy and Dissent." The seminar met ten times during the year, focusing on theoretical and practical dimensions of the theme. Each fellow produced an article that draws on the year's research.

In addition to the seminar, there was a public lecture each semester on the topic. Arthur Applbaum, Center for Ethics and the Professions, Harvard University, spoke Thursday, April 1, 2004.

In a discussion afterward, Philosophy graduate student Melissa Seymour conversed with Richard Miller, Director of the Poynter Center, and Arthur Applbaum.

The seminar participants were from a variety of disciplines and experience.

Robert L. Ivie is Professor of Communication and Culture and a member of the faculties in American Studies and Cultural Studies. His teaching and research interests focus on rhetoric as a mode of political critique and cultural production, with particular emphasis on democracy and the problem of war. Ivie serves as founding editor of Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies, a new journal of the National Communication Association published by Routledge.

Ann Mongoven was an Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at Indiana University. Her research has addressed bioethical issues (particularly the ethics of organ donation and transplantation), gender theory, and conceptions of civic virtue. She is completing a monograph entitled Just Love: The Transformation of Civic Virtue, which explores the interface between religious studies, ethical theory, and political theory, and considers how Christian interpretations of neighbor-love influence American political theory and practice.

John H. Stanfield II was a Professor of African- American and African Diaspora Studies. He is a historical sociologist of knowledge interested in questions regarding race, racism, and anti-racism in knowledge-producing institutions and communities such as the sciences, universities, and faith communities; and in ways of knowing, such as logics of inquiries, common sense, folklore, and oral traditions.

Jeffrey Wasserstrom is a Professor of History and of East Asian Languages and Cultures and the Director of Indiana University's East Asian Studies Center. He has published widely, mostly on China, in academic venues as well as in newspapers (such as the Nation, Dissent, the international edition of Newsweek, and the American Scholar). His previous works on the topic of dissent include three books: Student Protest in Twentieth-Century China; Protest and Political Culture in Modern China; and Human Rights and Revolutions. He served as a consultant for "The Gate of Heavenly Peace," a documentary on China's Tiananmen protests of 1989 which was shown on PBS and won a Peabody Award.

David C. Williams graduated magna cum laude from Harvard Law School, clerked for Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and taught at Cornell Law School before coming to IU in 1992. His scholarship focuses on the constitutional treatment of cultural difference and resistance, especially in the contexts of Indian Law and the right of revolution. In 2003, Yale University Press published his book The Mythic Meanings of the Second Amendment: Taming Political Violence in a Constitutional Republic. In 2001, the law school named him its first John S. Hastings Professor of Law, and in 2002-03, he delivered the University Distinguished Research Lecture.

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Fall Readings, 2003

dis-sent intr. v. 1. To differ in opinion or feeling; to disagree; 2. To withhold assent or approval; -n. 1. Difference of opinion or feeling; disagreement. 2. The refusal to conform to the authority or doctrine of an established church; nonconformity. 2. Law. A justice's refusal to concur with the opinion of a majority.

The 2003-04 interdisciplinary faculty seminar focused on theoretical and practical aspects of democratic dissent. We examined some foundational material on dissent and democratic politics and then turned to the place of dissent in recent discussions of multiculturalism; race, power, gender, and ethnicity; particularism, religion, and cultural difference; and political legitimacy, among other topics.

Week 1 Expressions of Dissent

a. Taylor Branch, Parting the Waters: America in the King Years: 1954-53 (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1988), Chapters 11, 12, "Baptism on Wheels," and "The Summer of the Freedom Rides," pp. 412-491.

b. Texas v. Johnson (1989).

c. Jeffrey Gettleman, "Alabama's Top Judge Defiant On Commandments' Display," New York Times August 21, 2003, A1.

Week 2 Some Foundational Considerations: Classical and Contemporary

a. Aristotle, Politics, Bk. 3, chaps. 1-5.

b. Amy Gutmann, "Democracy," from Blackwell Companion to Political Philosophy, 411-21.

c. Charles Taylor, Multiculturalism and "The Politics of Recognition" (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992).

Suggested reading:

" Allen Buchanan, "Political Legitimacy and Democracy," Ethics 112 (July 2002): 689-719.

Week 3 Dissent, Social Criticism, and Reciprocity

a. Michael Walzer, "The Practice of Social Criticism," from The Company of Critics (New York: Basic Books, 1988), pp. 3-28.

b. James F. Childress, Civil Disobedience and Political Obligation, (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1969), pp. 123-49 (on fairness); 149-64 (on unjust laws in relatively just system).

c. John Rawls, "The Idea of Public Reason Revisited," from Collected Papers, ed. Samuel Freeman (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1999), 573-94; 601-15.

Week 4 Dissent, Difference, and Civility

Seyla Benhabib, "Toward a Deliberative Model of Democratic Legitimacy," in Democracy and Difference: Contesting the Boundaries of the Political, ed., Benhabib (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996), 67-94.

Chantal Mouffe, "Deliberative Democracy or Agonistic Pluralism?" in Social Research 66 (Fall 1999).

David Estlund, "Deliberation Down and Dirty: Must Political Expression be Civil?" and responses by Byron, McWhorter, and Estlund in The Boundaries of Freedom of Expression and Order in American Democracy Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 2001, pp. 49-79.

Week 5 Dissent and Political Religion

a. Mozert v. Hawkins (1987).

b. Mark Juergensmeyer, "Soldiers of God," in Terror in the Mind of God: The Global Rise of Religious Violence (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000), 19-43.

Suggested readings:

Amy Gutmann and Dennis Thompson, Democracy and Disagreement (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1996), 63-69.

Jeremy Waldron, "Religious Contributions in Public Deliberation," San Diego Law Review 817-848.

The Fellows selected the readings for the second semester.

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