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University says about 20% of final-year students will face delays if industrial action continues
More than 1,000 final year students at Durham University could be left without a degree this summer because of the marking boycott disrupting universities across the UK.
Durham, one of 145 universities affected by the industrial action over pay and working conditions called by the University and College Union (UCU), said about 20% of its 5,300 final year students would “at the moment, face delays in receiving all their marks and final classifications”.
Continue reading...My former colleague Osman Durrani, who has died aged 77, was a scholar of German literature and culture with a broad range of research interests. He wrote books on Goethe, Faust and the Bible (1977) and Faust: Icon of Modern Culture (2004), and another on fictions of Germany in the modern novel. He also edited an anthology of German Romantic poetry and had a collection of his poems, After Sunset, published in 1978.
There was more to Osman’s range than classical literature, though. He was a close observer of the contemporary literary scene, a friend of the novelist Joseph von Westphalen, and a key participant in the 1990s at conferences on post-unification German themes, one of which he organised himself at University College Durham in 1994, resulting in the publication The New Germany: Literature and Society after Unification, co-edited with Colin Good and Kevin Hilliard. To the end of his life he enjoyed reviewing books, for academic journals and the Times Literary Supplement, insisting that a review should never take more than a day to write.
Continue reading...An unlucky cohort of undergraduates has been plagued by Covid restrictions, education strikes and finally a marking boycott
Emily Smith, a final-year geography student at Durham University, never imagined her already heavily disrupted university experience could end like this. She won’t be graduating this summer because half her work remains unmarked owing to a national marking boycott by lecturers.
She refuses to attend the “completion ceremony” Durham has offered her instead. Without an actual degree classification it seems like a “farce”. Like so many in this deeply unlucky cohort of students, she feels this is the last straw.
Continue reading...Guest post by Brandon Bolte
On April 15, the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) surprised many Western observers when it launched an assault against the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) in Khartoum. Led by Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo (“Hemeti”), the RSF previously fought for the Sudanese regime against rebels for years. In 2019, it participated in a coup alongside General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan of the SAF that ousted Sudan’s long-time dictator, Omar al-Bashir. Both generals have since been on a transitionary council meant to shape a new government before popular elections take place. In the 11 days since the violence in Khartoum began, over 400 people have been killed, thousands are trying to flee the capital, and there are signs of the conflict spreading to other parts of the country.
Transitions to democracy are usually rocky, but coups can lead to democratization when coupled with the kind of popular mobilization seen in Sudan. The irony of the current situation is that at one point the RSF was considered by al-Bashir as his “praetorian guard,” meant to deter the SAF from staging a coup. Coup-proofers aren’t usually successful coup-perpetrators. Moreover, the current rupture was caused by a disagreement between the two generals over how the RSF might be integrated into the army’s command structure. Why is the proposed merging of forces so contentious? What do we expect the long-term outcome of this conflict to be?
In a study published in International Studies Quarterly, I unpack the politics of how governments try to manage, regulate, and contain militias like the RSF. I describe how and why states and professed pro-state militias compete for power at one another’s expense. Viewed in this light, the outbreak in Khartoum is part of a predictable, if not inevitable, vicious spiral of poor militia management politics over the course of the last two decades.
Pro-government militias are commonly defined as organized armed groups allied with the state but are not formally part of the official security forces. These groups range from well-equipped paramilitaries designed to supplement the regular army to localized civil defense forces meant to hold territory and extract local information about insurgents. Sometimes they are tasked with carrying out human rights violations like mass killings or genocide, allowing the government to evade accountability. Professionalized militias are also used by certain types of dictators to counterbalance the official military in order to prevent coups d’état.
The challenge for governments employing militias is that militias themselves are perfectly aware the state could eliminate them once they are no longer needed. This is why governments often keep their auxiliaries contained in some way, by actively monitoring them or restricting their capabilities. Otherwise, these militias could switch sides in a conflict, restart a war, be more difficult to disintegrate or integrate, or otherwise undermine the state’s long-term ability to govern.
Weak states facing capable rebellions, however, are usually unable to regulate and contain their militias. Instead, they have to focus on short-term threats from insurgents, allowing militia allies to have free reign. The consequence is that militia groups have incentives to take advantage of these windows of opportunity to “bargain” with the state for resources that they can eventually use to stave off their own future demise.
The RSF is a reorganization of disparate Arab militias called the Janjaweed, which were remobilized from scattered murahileen groups after a coalition of rebel groups shocked Khartoum by seizing an air force base in 2003. The SAF and Janjaweed militias then perpetrated a genocidal campaign in Darfur, leading to over 200,000 deaths.
Over time, the combination of weak state capacity and a significant rebel threat drove al-Bashir’s regime to become dependent on militias for survival. Militia leaders knew this and pursued their own interests unabated. Many leaders profited from looting and extortion during the war, so when the Darfur Peace Agreement (DPA) was signed in 2006 with a provision to disarm the Janjaweed, many, including Hemeti’s faction, revolted against the state. Eventually, Khartoum weakened Hemeti enough to force him to negotiate. There the government again co-opted Hemeti by providing his militia more weaponry, financial rewards, and eventually legitimacy by reorganizing it into the RSF. Al-Bashir soon brought the RSF out from under the command of the National Intelligence and Security Services, ensuring the group’s independence from the constraints of the state.
In the end, al-Bashir’s failure to contain these militias was part of a vicious cycle of his own doing. His growing dependency on militias like the RSF afforded Hemeti multiple windows of opportunity to increase his own capabilities, which he then used to resist his group’s demobilization. Now, even integration is worth resisting for Hemeti, since it would effectively represent the dissolution of his autonomy and influence.
A durable resolution can only occur if the RSF loses its bargaining power. This may require immediate international commitments by Russia, China, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates to stop supplying weapons to the RSF and/or the SAF suppressing Hemeti’s forces to a point where the latter has incentives to negotiate but not retreat to remobilize for large-scale war. Unlike the immediate post-DPA period, however, appeasement cannot come in the form of greater autonomy, resources, and capabilities if the end goal is political stability. Al-Burhan knows this, and given the SAF’s own involvement in repression and mass killing, the military will resist appeasing Hemeti in an effort to signal to the pro-democracy movement a desire to turn a new leaf.
The problem is that the RSF is situated with considerable bargaining leverage and has every incentive to use force to preserve the status quo. “Power is as power does.” Temporary ceasefire efforts notwithstanding, until the RSF is demobilized or neutralized, Sudan’s pro-democracy advocates will be sidelined while military strongmen violently compete to fill the void in Khartoum.
Brandon Bolte is a 2022–23 Peace Scholar Fellow with the US Institute of Peace and a Postdoctoral Teaching Fellow at Penn State University. He will start as an assistant professor of political science at the University of Illinois Springfield in the fall. The views expressed in this commentary are his own and do not necessarily reflect the views of the US Institute of Peace.
Phillip D. Jones was appointed vice president for institutional effectiveness and strategic planning at Hampton University in Virginia. He has been serving as the mayor of Newport News, Virginia.
Jones is a graduate of the United States Naval Academy, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in history. He holds a master of public policy degree from the Harvard Kennedy School and an MBA from Harvard Business School.
Karla C. Lewis has been named the associate director of state and community relations at the SERVE Center of the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Prior to this role, she focused on evaluations of Early College high school projects, student support services, and STEM initiatives at the university.
Dr. Lewis is a graduate of the University of Chicago, where she majored in sociology. She holds a master’s degree and Ph.D. in educational policy studies from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Andrea Simpson will serve as chief information security officer at Howard University in Washington, D.C. She was the chief information security officer at the Federal Communications Commission.
Simpson holds a master’s degree in information systems and telecommunications from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.
Camacia Smith-Ross has been appointed chief of staff at Southern University New Orleans. She is the former dean of the School of Education at Louisiana College in Pineville. Earlier in her career, Dr. Smith-Ross was an assistant professor of education at Southern University.
Dr. Smith-Ross is a graduate of Southern University in Baton Rouge, where she majored in elementary education. She holds a master’s degree in urban education and leadership from the University of New Orleans and an educational doctorate in organizational leadership from Nova Southeastern University.
Zenobia Lane was named vice president for human resources at Santa Clara University in California. She has been serving in the role on an interim basis. Before joining the staff at Santa Clara University, Lane held human resources leadership roles in Pennsylvania at Saint Joseph’s University and at Swarthmore College.
Lane earned a bachelor’s degree in industrial and organizational psychology from West Chester University in Pennsylvania and a master’s degree in human resources management from Walden University.
What does the decline of the English major mean for society at large, and university presses in particular?
The post Fallout from the Implosion of Humanities Enrollments appeared first on The Scholarly Kitchen.
Dr. Fayneese Miller, the president of Hamline University, lost the confidence of the university’s full-time faculty members.
Despite the reassuring pleasure that historians of medicine may feel when they recognise in the great ledgers of confinement what they consider to be the timeless, familiar face of psychotic hallucinations, cognitive deficiencies, organic consequences or paranoid states, it is impossible to draw up a coherent nosological map from the descriptions that were used to confine the insane. The formulations that justify confinement are not presentiments of our diseases, but represent instead an experience of madness that occasionally intersects with our pathological analyses, but which could never coincide with them in any coherent manner. The following are some examples taken at random from entries on confinement registers for those of ‘unsound mind’: ‘obstinate plaintiff’, ‘has obsessive recourse to legal procedures’, ‘wicked cheat’, ‘man who spends days and nights deafening others with his songs and shocking their ears with horrible blasphemy’, ‘bill poster’, ‘great liar’, ‘gruff, sad, unquiet spirit’. There is little sense in wondering if such people were sick or not, and to what degree, and it is for psychiatrists to identify the paranoid in the ‘gruff’, or to diagnose a ‘deranged mind inventing its own devotion’ as a clear case of obsessional neurosis. What these formulae indicate are not so much sicknesses as forms of madness perceived as character faults taken to an extreme degree, as though in confinement the sensibility to madness was not autonomous, but linked to a moral order where it appeared merely as a disturbance. Reading through the descriptions next to the names on the register, one is transported back to the world of Brant and Erasmus, a world where madness leads the round of moral failings, the senseless dance of immoral lives.
And yet the experience is quite different. In 1704, an abbot named Bargedé was confined in Saint-Lazare. He was seventy years old, and he was locked up so that he might be ‘treated like the other insane’. His principal occupation was
lending money at high interest, beyond the most outrageous, odious usury, for the benefit of the priesthood and the Church. He will neither repent from his excesses nor acknowledge that usury is a sin. He takes pride in his greed. Michel Foucault (1961) [2006] History of Madness, Translated by Jonathan Murphy and Jean Khalfa, pp. 132-133
In larger context, Foucault is describing how during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries (the so-called 'classical age') a great number of people (Foucault suggests a number of 1% of the urban population) were locked up in a system of confinement orthogonal to the juridical system (even though such confinement was often practically indistinguishable from prison--both aimed at moral reform through work and sermons). This 'great confinement' included people with venereal disease, those who engaged in sodomy and libertine practices as well as (inter alia) those who brought dishonor (and financial loss) to their families alongside the mad and frenzied.
To the modern reader the population caught up in the 'great confinement' seems rather heterogeneous in character, but their commonality becomes visible, according to Foucault, when one realizes that it's (moral) disorder that they have in common from the perspective of classical learning. According to Foucault there is "no rigorous distinction between moral failings and madness." (p. 138) Foucault inscribes this (moral disorder of the soul/will) category into a history of 'Western unreason' that helps constitute (by way of negation) the history of early modern rationalism (with special mention of Descartes and Spinoza). Like a true Kantian, Foucault sees (theoretical) reason as shaped by practical decision as constitutive of the whole classical era (see especially p. 139). My present interest is not to relitigate the great Derrida-Foucault debate over this latter move, or Foucault's tendency to treat -- despite his nominalist sensibilities -- whole cultural eras as de facto organically closed systems (of the kind familiar from nineteenth century historiography).
My interest here is in the first two sentences of the quoted passage. It describes what Thomas Kuhn called 'incommensurability' in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Kuhn's Structure appeared in 1962, and initially there seems to have been no mutual influence. I don't want to make Foucault more precise than he is, but we can fruitfully suggest that for Foucault incommensurability involves the general inability to create a coherent mapping between two theoretical systems based on their purported descriptive content. I phrase it like to capture Foucault's emphasis on 'descriptions' and to allow -- mindful of Earman and Fine ca 1977 -- that some isolated terms may well be so mapped. As an aside, I am not enough of a historian of medicine (or philosopher of psychology) to know whether nosological maps can be used for such an exercise. (It seems like a neat idea!)
So, Foucault is thinking about ruptures between different successive scientific cultures pretty much from the start of his academic writing (recall this post on the later The Order of Things). In fact, reading History of Madness after reading a lot of Foucault's other writings suggests a great deal of continuity in Foucault's thought--pretty much all the major themes of his later work are foreshadowed in it (and it also helps explain that he often didn't have to start researching from scratch in later writings and lectures).
In fact, reading Foucault with Kuhn lurking in the background helps one see how important a kind of Kantianism is to Foucault's diagnosis of incommensurability. I quote another passage in the vicinity that I found illuminating:
The psychopathology of the nineteenth century (and perhaps our own too, even now) believes that it orients itself and takes its bearings in relation to a homo natura, or a normal man pre-existing all experience of mental illness. Such a man is in fact an invention, and if he is to be situated, it is not in a natural space, but in a system that identifies the socius to the subject of the law. Consequently a madman is not recognised as such because an illness has pushed him to the margins of normality, but because our culture situates him at the meeting point between the social decree of confinement and the juridical knowledge that evaluates the responsibility of individuals before the law. The ‘positive’ science of mental illness and the humanitarian sentiments that brought the mad back into the realm of the human were only possible once that synthesis had been solidly established. They could be said to form the concrete a priori of any psychopathology with scientific pretensions.--pp. 129-130
For Foucault, a concrete a priori is itself the effect of often indirect cultural construction or stabilization. In fact, for Foucault it tends to be an effect of quite large-scale and enduring ('solidly') social institutions (e.g., the law, penal/medical institutions) and material practices/norms. The discontinuity between concrete a priori's track what we may call scientific revolutions in virtue of the fact that systems of knowledge before and after a shift in a concrete a priori cannot possibly be tracking the same system of 'objects' (or 'empirical basis').
I don't mean to suggest that for Foucault a system of knowledge cannot be itself a source/cause of what he calls a 'synthesis' that makes a concrete a priori possible. That possibility is explicitly explored in (his discussion of Adam Smith in) his The Order of Things. But on the whole a system of knowledge tends to lag the major cultural shifts that produce a concrete a priori.
Let me wrap up. A full generation after Structure appeared there was a belated and at the time revisionary realization that Structure could be read as a kind of neo-Kantian text and, as such, was actually not very far removed from Carnap's focus on frameworks and other projects in the vicinity that were committed to various kinds of relativized or constitutive a prioris. This literature started, I think, with Reisch 1991. (My own scholarship has explored [see here; here] the surprising resonances between Kuhn's Structure and the self-conception of economists and the sociology of Talcott Parsons at the start of twentieth century and the peculiar fact that Kuhn's Structure was foreshadowed in Adam Smith's philosophy of science.) I mention Carnap explicitly because not unlike Carnap [see Stone; Sachs, and the literature it inspired], Foucault does not hide his debts to Nietzsche.
So here's my hypothesis and diagnosis: it would have been much more natural to read Structure as a neo/soft/extended-Kantian text if analytic philosophers had not cut themselves off from developments in Paris. While I do not want to ignore major differences of emphasis on scope between Kuhn and Foucault, their work of 1960 and 1962 has a great deal of family resemblance despite non-trivial differences in intellectual milieus. I actually think this commonality is not an effect of a kind of zeitgeist or the existence of an episteme--as I suggested in this post, it seems to be a natural effect of starting from a broadly domesticated Kantianism. But having said that, that it was so difficult initially to discern the neo-Kantian themes in Kuhn also suggests that not reading the French developments -- by treating 'continental thought' as instances of unreason (which is Foucault's great theme) -- also created a kind of Kuhn loss in the present within analytic philosophy.
This article received an honourable mention in the graduate category of the 2023 National Oxford Uehiro Prize in Practical Ethics
Written by Kyle van Oosterum, University of Oxford student
Section 1 – Introduction
Many of us are part of or aware of the existence of widespread echo chambers on social media. Echo chambers seem concerning because their members are led to believe bizarre things and disagree viciously with others. For example, some people genuinely believe the Earth is flat. Others disagree about basic political reality as we saw with those who stormed the U.S. Capital on January 6th 2021 and, more recently, the Brazilian congress. A great deal of this may be attributable to the way social media algorithmically sorts us into echo chambers. However, this sorting is partly so effective because we have not become disposed to exit echo chambers or deal well with the individuals who inhabit them. Even if we change these algorithms, we may also need to change our dispositions to better deal with these individuals.
In this paper, I argue that Confucius’ ideal of harmony provides us with practical dispositions that help with the problems posed by echo chambers. In brief, my view is that echo chambers threaten our social relationships which can undermine social stability. As such, maintaining social stability may require managing these social relationships. Confucius’ ideas are well-suited to making these points.
To that end, I start by briefly defining what echo chambers are (Section 2). I then introduce Confucius’ idea of harmony and how it helps diagnose what is wrong with echo chambers (Section 3) and prescribes how we can live harmoniously with echo-chambered individuals (Section 4).
Section 2 – What is an Echo Chamber?
The concept of an ‘echo chamber’ is still being figured out in academic circles. However, almost all philosophers and non-philosophers agree there is something wrong with being in an echo chamber.[1] If we suggest a person is in an echo chamber, this is usually meant as a criticism either of what they believe or how they have come to believe it. This might be quite obvious, but it raises an interesting question about people in echo chambers. Why would people be part of something that they know is wrong or problematic?
My explanation for this starts from the observation that people in echo chambers probably do not think there is anything wrong with the environment they are in. In fact, given how confident people in echo chambers tend to be, they will think they have joined (or remained in) the echo chamber for good reasons. Perhaps they think they are more likely to discover the truth about something, so they join the echo chamber to obtain knowledge. Alternatively, they may join the echo chamber to obtain the good of a community who share their values. These are perfectly good reasons that motivate much human behavior. However, given our shared fallibility, we sometimes make mistakes in pursuit of what we think is good. I think this last point is crucial for understanding what echo chambers are. An echo chamber looks like the kind of social environment in which goods like knowledge or community can be obtained, but, in reality, they frustrate our access to these goods. In other words, they are troubling social environments that are parasitic on ones from which we can obtain certain goods. This squares well with what we think of a typical echo chamber member. Despite their efforts, they tend to have false beliefs and viciously dislike people who do not share their beliefs and values. In short, from understanding why individuals join these environments – to pursue goods they think they will achieve – we get a better understanding of what echo chambers are.
Section 3 – Introducing Harmony
Harmony or 和 (pronounced ‘her’) is a crucial concept in Confucian thought rendered in different ways over time and by different thinkers (Li, 2008). In keeping with the methods of the Confucian tradition, the concept of harmony is best illuminated with an analogy. The oldest analogy relies on the similarity between governing harmoniously and making a good soup. When one makes a soup, there are a variety of ingredients that one needs to add and different quantities of each ingredient must be added carefully to achieve a dish that is balanced in flavor. Similarly, a ruler should solicit many different points of view on what an acceptable policy is and take note of the dissenting and approving verdicts and determine an optimal balance of preferences. ‘Harmony’ is explicitly referred to in Analects 13.23:
The Master said, “The gentleman harmonizes without being an echo. The petty man echoes and does not harmonize.” (Confucius, 2014: 13.23).
The thing to avoid in making soup, ruling a country, or trying to reconcile different things that are in tension is to have too much ‘echoing’ or ‘sameness’. For example, having too much of the same opinion in government or having too much of the same ingredient in a soup. The problem with this, to reference an ancient Chinese thinker, is that “this is like trying to improve the taste of water with more water. Who would want that?” (Confucius, 2014: ‘Commentary on 13.23’). Harmony in the broadest sense is a process by which different things are brought together into a constructive whole (Wong 2020). In this context, I will work with harmony as a moral ideal which implores us to reconcile our inevitable differences with other people in a constructive manner and without conforming to what others believe or how they act.
The ideal of harmony sheds light on the problem of echo chambers. Whether we are in or exposed to them, echo chambers show us individuals with whom we viciously disagree yet must co-exist. Their members ‘echo’ each other too much and those outside the echo chamber become too frustrated or bitter to try to break up these echoes. Over time, echo chambers cause damage to these interpersonal relationships and to the prospect of managing our differences with others. Research by political scientists confirms these ideas; people are far too polarized around their partisan political views and continually told their ideological opponents are not to be trusted (Jamieson and Capella, 2008; McCarthy, 2019; Nguyen, 2020). This is a familiar problem and Confucius recognized a version of it, though perhaps not remotely on the same scale as today. Nevertheless, Confucius would urge that we manage the delicate relationships we have with others – relationships to our family, friends, and civic peers – to which echo chambers cause much damage. Why must we learn to do this? Insofar as we are interested in maintaining social stability, we can work on maintaining the social relationships that together constitute a society. As such, harmony offers a plausible way of diagnosing the echo chamber as partly one of fractured moral relationships with one another, which, over time, may threaten social stability.
Section 4 – Harmonizing with Others
So far, we know that harmony is a kind of moral ideal or standard, but it is not yet clear how we ought to harmonize with others. Which actions or which ways of acting count as satisfying the standard of harmony? Confucius does not offer direct advice on this question, but David Wong (2020, MS) suggests that harmony can be elaborated through the idea of accommodation. Accommodation is a moral value whose emphasis is on maintaining a constructive relationship – of respect and concern – in the face of continuing disagreement. It comes into play because societies, in their best attempts to maintain convergence on moral values and ideas, will nevertheless disagree on how to interpret the weight of their shared values and how those values interact when they conflict (Wong, 1992). Human life is marked by significant disagreement and to accommodate is to live with such disagreement rather than seek, unsuccessfully, to dissolve it.
Accommodating others involves three things. First, it involves having an epistemic openness to the possibility of expanding one’s view of the good life or at least trying to understand other ways of life. Second, it involves a tactfulness to act on your moral opinions and values in ways that aim to minimize damage to your relationships with others who have opposed views. Third, it involves amenability. This is the willingness to compromise on what we hope to gain for our moral views for the sake of sustaining relationships with disagreeing others (Wong 2020: 133). Accommodation is key to living harmoniously with others, but does it help us deal with echo chambered individuals? I will argue that it does.
The value of epistemic openness is readily seen when dealing with run-of-the-mill echo chambers containing political partisans. Some philosophers have argued that the chances that one will be right about everything are often very slim (Joshi, 2020). When one is a stubborn political partisan and, I would argue this is true of echo-chambered individuals, one believes those outside the echo chamber are systematically getting things wrong. This is a belief that it will be hard to find a rational justification for. To move forward will involve being epistemically curious and being genuinely prepared to change one’s mind, which may help others become open and curious to make such changes too.
Openness does not always require one to change one’s moral beliefs for these may be foundational to one’s identity. But the importance of our moral beliefs and values does not entitle us to insult or denigrate those who oppose us in attempts to ‘score points’ for our views. This is unfortunately how much discourse in echo chambers and social media in general takes place. Just as we would hope that others not denigrate our views, exercising a similar tactfulness towards them builds the relationship within which these difficult conversations can take place. Relatedly, the familiar injunction to ‘pick one’s battles’ becomes relevant here too – never being amenable frustrates the relationships with these disagreeing others and robs us of the potential to find some degree of harmony. In short, harmony recommends we become disposed to being open, tactful, and amenable in accommodating those with whom we disagree. As such, it is a useful prescription for dealing with echo-chambered individuals with whom we encounter serious disagreement.
Of course, one might doubt whether harmony requires us to be open, tactful, and amenable with echo chamber members whose views are beyond the pale. I am referring to the ones that espouse controversial conspiracy theories and morally offensive political ideologies. The temptation may be either to ignore or ‘force’ such individuals to change their mind. Even in these cases, I argue one should maintain their epistemically open disposition. It is likely those individuals are mistaken about the good life, but curiosity and tactful question-asking may help them become aware of the implications and difficulties of holding their beliefs. Empirical evidence in psychology suggests this approach may nurture their motivation to change their mind, which may be more effective than acting on the temptations above (Itzchakov et al., 2018; Wong, MS). More to the point, taking this step does not foreclose the opportunity of living harmoniously.
However, missing from this is the element of courage one needs to harmonize with others. This is especially true in online environments where much disagreement takes place that is fueled by echo chambers. Acting in a harmonious manner is demanding, the gains are often not visible to us and the costs are unpleasant and even dispiriting. As a result, harmonizing with disagreeing others – whether in Confucius’ time or ours – must involve some degree of courage to be open, tactful, and amenable in the face of these obstacles.
Conclusion
I have argued that Confucius’ notion of harmony offers (i) a diagnosis of why echo chambers are problematic and a (ii) prescription for how to manage our social relationships with echo-chambered individuals through openness, tactfulness, amenability, and courage.
This prescription highlights the final point that I want to make, namely, that the problem with echo chambers is not only an epistemic one to do with what people believe. As I hope to have shown, the problem is also profoundly ethical. It is equally about what we owe to our disagreeing others and how we can relate to them better. Confucius’ ideas practically orient us toward managing these social relationships, the flourishing of which contributes to a stable society where people can co-exist despite persistent disagreement.
—
Notes:
[1] Well, not every philosopher agrees with this, see Lackey, 2018; Elzinga, 2020; Fantl, 2021. However, that is not unique to this issue.
References
Confucius (2014) The Analects (Lunyu): Translated with an introduction and Commentary by Annping Chin. Translated by A. Chin. New York: Penguin Books.
Elzinga, B. (2020) ‘Echo Chambers and Audio Signal Processing’, Episteme, pp. 1–21. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1017/epi.2020.33.
Fantl, J. (2021) ‘Fake News vs. Echo Chambers’, Social Epistemology, 35(6), pp. 645–659. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/02691728.2021.1946201.
Itzchakov, G. et al. (2018) ‘The Listener Sets the Tone: High-Quality Listening Increases Attitude Clarity and Behavior-Intention Consequences’, Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 44(5), pp. 762–778. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167217747874.
Jamieson, K.H. and Capella, J. (2008) Echo Chamber: Rush Limbaugh and the Conservative Media Establishment. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Joshi, H. (2020) ‘What are the chances you’re right about everything? An epistemic challenge for modern partisanship’, Politics, Philosophy & Economics, 19(1), pp. 36–61. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1177/1470594X20901346.
Lackey, J. (2018) ‘True Story: Echo Chambers are not the Problem’, Morning Consult. Available at: https://morningconsult.com/opinions/true-story-echo-chambers-not-problem/.
Li, C. (2008) ‘The Philosophy of Harmony in Classical Confucianism’, Philosophy Compass, 3(3), pp. 423–435. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1747-9991.2008.00141.x.
McCarthy, N. (2019) Polarization: What Everyone Needs to Know. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Nguyen, C.T. (2020) ‘Echo Chambers and Epistemic Bubbles’, Episteme, 17(2), pp. 141–161.
Wong, D.B. (1992) ‘Coping with Moral Conflict and Ambiguity’, Ethics, 102(4), pp. 763–784. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1086/293447.
Wong, D.B. (2020) ‘Soup, Harmony, and Disagreement’, Journal of the American Philosophical Association, 6(2), pp. 139–155. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1017/apa.2018.46.
Wong, D.B. (MS) ‘Metaphor and Analogy in Early Chinese Thought: Governance within the Person, State and Society’.
Multidisciplinary artist, multi-instrumentalist musician, illustrator, and independent curator are a few of the biggest hats Brooklyn, NewYork-based Michael Hambouz wears. The first-generation Palestinian-American creates chromaesthesia-influenced works – experiments in dimension and color, created under the guidance of music – to process bouts of loss and self-reflections on cultural identity.
“The moment I paid off my student loans and was able to put away enough savings to keep me afloat for 6 months, I quit my last paid salary position…throwing caution and good healthcare coverage to the wind,” Michael says of the moment art went from hobby to career for him. “At the very end of my 6-month mark, I was commissioned to paint the titling sequences for Oliver Stone’s “Untold History of the United States” ad campaign for Showtime – this gig provided me with enough income to extend my time in the studio for another year, cover the expenses for my first solo show, and the campaign was ultimately awarded a 2013 Silver Promax BDA Award, helping to launch my illustration side business. It has been 12 years now that I have been working full-time in my studio (I superstitiously knock on wood every time I state this).”
Experimenting freely with mediums, Michael encourages unexpected results and mutations to bloom in the studio, resulting in conceptually abstracted paintings and prints, intricate paper cutouts, 3-dimensional sculptural works, drawings, and animations.
Michael Hambouz \\\ Photo: Lauren Silberman
It clicked for Michael around the age of 7 that art could be something bigger for him. “At age 7, my 2nd grade classmates and I were each assigned to create an art piece inspired by our favorite fairytale. While most students delivered heavy-on-the-parent-assistance shoebox dioramas, I spent two hours after school every day for two weeks in the classroom working on a 9-foot-tall portrait of the giant from Jack and the Beanstalk. I was shy and not quite keen to the concept of showing off at that age, which made the feat feel very pure in motivation. To me, the grand scale was essential. Anything smaller would have simply been inaccurate,” he shared. “It was also during this time that my parents were going through a very turbulent and nasty separation. In retrospect, it was absolutely this moment that I realized art could provide me with positive escapism, independence, confidence, and the tools to process life’s most difficult challenges – there was no other path for me.”
Today, we’re happy to have Michael Hambouz join us for Friday Five!
Photo: Fred R. Conrad, The New York Times
Hungarian-born American industrial designer Eva Zeisel made works of pure beauty – colorful, elegant, playful, tactile, and accessible. She was astoundingly prolific and her work always so very distinctly “Eva.” It was an honor for me to plan her 100th birthday party many years ago and get to know her a little better – sharp sense of humor, kind, and so thoughtfully well-spoken. She promptly arrived at 6pm and was the last to leave her party around 11pm. She continued actively making work until she passed away just a few years later at the remarkable age of 105. Though our practices and mediums of choice differ, I find it hard to think of another artist that is more inspiring to me than Eva. I highly recommend reading Eva Zeisel: A Soviet Prison Memoir.
Taraka performing at Our Wicked Lady, Brooklyn, New York \\\ Photo: Michael Hambouz
As a spectator or as a participant, live music has always been a very important part of my life. When I first started visiting New York City in the late 90s, I would pour over the show listings in the Village Voice in a similar fashion to looking at the Sears’ Christmas toy catalog as a little kid. I didn’t quite realize just how much I missed seeing shows during the pandemic until I finally masked up and hit the streets after a two-year hiatus. I promised myself that if the following bands came to town, I would make the effort: Bristol UK’s Beak>, Montreal’s Godspeed You! Black Emperor, and New York state’s own Taraka. I was fortunate to see all three in the last year – absolutely transcendent. As a musician, I’ve found that the ultimate show makes me 50% entranced and 50% inspired to leave immediately to go play music as loud as I can in my rehearsal space. These three shows did that to me (I stayed until the end for all of them, so I suppose 51% to 49%?).
From left to right, top to bottom: the studios of Will Hutnick, Courtney Childress, Julia Norton, Tony Cox, Stephen Somple, and Roxanne Jackson \\\ Photos by Michael Hambouz
I am a very social, community-oriented soul by nature. Though I can easily spend weeks on end focused on my own work in the studio, often forgetting when to blink or eat lunch. I’ve found that I really thrive most when I take time to engage with fellow creatives, talking through our current projects, and more often than not, talking about everything under the sun except art. I make sure I take at least two days off each month to studio visit with other artists, and a least two days each month to visit friends’ and friends-of-friends’ gallery shows throughout the city. Sharing a few recent studio visit highlights – I’m especially drawn to visiting artists that work with materials and processes foreign to my personal practice.
Image courtesy Democracy Now!
Democracy Now! host Amy Goodman gave a talk at my alma mater Antioch College in the mid-90s shortly after the launch of the show, leaving an indelible impression on me. I’ve been an avid follower since, tuning in daily, and have even volunteered in their development office over the years during fund-drives. I firmly believe that we all have an obligation to know and care about what’s going on in the world around us, and have access to unbiased, uncensored free press to keep us informed. As a longtime human rights and social justice advocate, there are few other sources I trust more than Democracy Now!
Monsanto, Portugal \\\ Photo: Michael Hambouz
Traveling wasn’t in the cards for me growing up. We didn’t have the money, and my mother rarely had time off from working multiple jobs to even leave if we had had the resources. I never resented this, but I have made it a point in my post-adolescent years to make up for lost time by traveling whenever I possibly can. International travel is most desired, but there is still so much to see in the U.S. (I still have yet to visit the Grand Canyon!), and even an afternoon bike ride over the Brooklyn Bridge can be a thrilling adventure. My last big trip was to the mountains of Portugal to visit my sister after a long gap since our last time together. We hiked, cooked, caught up on SNL, chopped wood, and picked olives – it was beautiful – all of it!
S in the G (2022), acrylic, flashe, and gouache on multidimensional panel, 36″ x 36″ x 3″. A recent 3-dimensional painting featured in my upcoming solo exhibition Hot Blooded at Troutbeck, presented by Wassaic Project and curated by Will Hutnick. \\\ Image courtesy Michael Hambouz
Current Mood (2022), acrylic, flashe, and gouache on multidimensional panel, 36″ x 36″ x 3″. \\\ Image courtesy Michael Hambouz
I Think We’re Alone-ish Now 2077 (2022), hand-cut paper on panel, 18”x24”. \\\ Image courtesy Michael Hambouz
Occupational Hazard (2022) \\\ Image courtesy Michael Hambouz
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