Spring Semester 2025 – Cross-Sectional Course: Law 210.2B, Political Science 211, & Philosophy 290-6
All sessions for Spring 2025 will be held in person in Room 170 Law Building on Fridays from 12:10 pm-2:00 pm (until 3:00 pm for enrolled students only). Papers for upcoming talks will become available to download in the table below one week before their respective workshop dates and will be taken down after their workshop has concluded. Alternatively, copies of papers may be requested by contacting Jennifer McBride at jrmcbride@berkeley.edu. Please note that we can only distribute each paper for the week of its workshop.
The full Spring 2025 workshop schedule is available for download here.
Course Description:
A workshop for presenting and discussing work in progress in moral, political, and legal theory. The central aim is to provide an opportunity for students to engage with philosophers, political theorists, and legal scholars working on normative questions. Another aim is to bring together people from different disciplines who have strong normative interests or who speak to issues of potential interest to philosophers and political theorists.
The theme for Spring 2025 is “Critics of Liberalism,” and we will host scholars working in Philosophy, Law, History, and Political Science. Our underlying concern will be the normative critiques of substantive liberal ideas from both the left and right, as well as staunch defenders of liberalism.
This semester the workshop is co-taught by Joshua Cohen and Desmond Jagmohan.
Format: for the first two hours, a student will lead off with a 15-minute comment on the presenter’s paper, and the presenter will have 5-10 minutes to respond before we open up the discussion to the group. The first two hours will be open to non-enrolled students and faculty. For the third hour, the guest presenter will continue the discussion with students enrolled in the course. Enrolled students must serve as a discussant for at least one presenter’s work in progress and write three short response papers as well as a final paper of 15-20 pages.
The course is cross-listed with the Philosophy and Political Science Departments.
Zoom is available for here those who cannot attend in person.
| Jan. 17 |
Introduction (Enrolled Students Only) |
Instructors: Professor Josh Cohen joshua_cohen@apple.com Professor Desmond Jagmohan jagmohan@berkeley.edu |
| Jan. 24 | Stephen Macedo, Political Theory, Princeton University | In Covid’s Wake: How We Failed Liberalism |
| Jan. 31 | Helena Rosenblatt, History, The City University of New York (CUNY) | Liberal Political Economy on the Eve of the French Revolution: Jacques and Suzanne Necker, Critics of Laissez-Faire |
| Feb. 7 | Hanoch Dagan, Law, University of California, Berkeley | Freedom of Contract |
| Feb. 14 | Anna Stilz, Political Theory, University of California, Berkeley | Lenin’s Theory of Self-Determination |
| Feb. 21 | Ricarda Hammer, Sociology, University of California, Berkeley | Atlantic Reconstruction: Empire, Race, and the Making of Political Personhood |
| Feb. 28 | Keidrick Roy, Political Theory, Harvard University |
Can Black Liberalism Save US?: The Case for Prudential Politics |
| Mar. 7 | Steven Hahn, History, New York University (NYU) |
Illiberal America and the Invention of the Liberal Tradition (For a copy of this paper, please send a request to jrmcbride@berkeley.edu) |
| Mar. 14 | Patrick Deneen, Political Theory, Notre Dame University | Cold War Right Liberalism: The Case of Leo Strauss and the Straussians |
| Mar. 21 | James Orr, Religion, Cambridge University | TBA |
| Apr. 4 | Linda Zerilli, Political Theory, University of Chicago | Toward a Critical Freedom-Centered Feminist Historiography |
| Apr. 11 | Sophie Smith, Political Theory, Oxford University | Should (Political) Philosophers Care about History? |
| Apr. 18 | Samuel Moyn, Law & History, Yale University | From One Crisis of Liberalism to Another |
| Apr. 25 | Michelle Schwarze, Political Theory, University of Wisconsin | After Liberal Utopia: Judith Shklar on Injustice and Political Reform |