Academic participation in social movements: A call for ethical review

Posted on 31 December 2018 by Mark Lance

I’ve been an academic for some 35 years. Since 1991, I have been a (first assistant, then associate, then full) professor at Georgetown University in the philosophy department and since 1996 the program on justice and peace. For roughly the same number of years, I have been actively involved in social movements, working with dozens
Read more

Lyrical Politics: Reflections on the Role of Grief in Political Life

Posted on 17 December 2018 by L. Ashley Atkins

It’s said that Mamie Till Mobley helped to catalyze the civil rights movement. When people say this what they have in mind, principally, is her decision to present her son’s lynched body in public. Sometimes though her influence is tacit and the catalyst becomes the verdict to acquit the two men accused of Till’s murder.
Read more

Coming to Grief: Violence, Mourning, and Interracial Intimacy

Posted on 3 December 2018 by L. Ashley Atkins

In my last piece, I defended two claims regarding the relationship of Dana Schutz to Mamie Till Mobley. The first concerned Schutz’s statement that Open Casket was undertaken through empathy with Mobley. The response among critics has been to treat this ‘claim of empathy’ as a terribly naive. I think that this is a mistake
Read more