L.R.J.
@ethicalllama.bsky.social
Moral philosopher and poet. Post-graduate. I research obligation and resistance.
Reposted by L.R.J.
My first academic article was on the dictatorship of Uzbekistan inventing a group called "Akromiya" that did not really exist but which they used to arrest anyone with whom they disagreed under the pretext of "terrorism". Just bringing this up for no reason whatsoever!
September 18, 2025 at 1:55 PM
My first academic article was on the dictatorship of Uzbekistan inventing a group called "Akromiya" that did not really exist but which they used to arrest anyone with whom they disagreed under the pretext of "terrorism". Just bringing this up for no reason whatsoever!
Reposted by L.R.J.
again, again, again, again: autocrats like to declare themselves untouchable and all-powerful. sometimes they even write it into law. and yet that does not make it so
“52% of all autocratization episodes become U-Turns, which increases to 73% when focusing on the last 30 years. The vast majority of U-Turns (90%) lead to restored or even improved levels of democracy”
V-Dem data
V-Dem data
When autocratization is reversed: episodes of U-Turns since 1900
The world is in a “wave of autocratization.” Yet, recent events in Brazil, the Maldives, and Zambia demonstrate that autocratization can be halted and reversed. This article introduces “U-Turn” as ...
www.tandfonline.com
September 20, 2025 at 10:23 PM
again, again, again, again: autocrats like to declare themselves untouchable and all-powerful. sometimes they even write it into law. and yet that does not make it so
Reposted by L.R.J.
Review of Ben Shapiro's new book co authored with Nathan Robinson
Its very bad.
Its very bad.
Ben Shapiro's latest book presents a bifurcation even more superficial than the “oppressor/oppressed” binary so many people on the right project into left-wing thinking in order to dismiss it as reductive.
www.currentaffairs.org/news/ben-sha...
www.currentaffairs.org/news/ben-sha...
Ben Shapiro’s Latest Book Adopts a Horrifying “Creators vs. Parasites” Worldview
Supposedly, the world is divided into good, noble “lions” and evil, grasping “scavengers.” Guess which one Ben thinks he is?
www.currentaffairs.org
September 18, 2025 at 1:16 PM
Review of Ben Shapiro's new book co authored with Nathan Robinson
Its very bad.
Its very bad.
Reposted by L.R.J.
Judith Butler: "It is important to refuse the notion that this is just how things are right now, invoking a feckless realpolitik that justifies complicity with a brutal and rising authoritarianism."
Opinion | When Universities Become Informants
A practice from the McCarthy era makes an ugly return.
www.chronicle.com
September 13, 2025 at 9:24 PM
Judith Butler: "It is important to refuse the notion that this is just how things are right now, invoking a feckless realpolitik that justifies complicity with a brutal and rising authoritarianism."
Reposted by L.R.J.
Charlie Kirk spent his life making people like me unsafe. His followers sent me death threats for years and threatened my employer if they didn’t terminate me.
His work was NEVER about free speech. It was about hate and emboldening violent people. The dishonesty of the past 24hrs is disgusting.
His work was NEVER about free speech. It was about hate and emboldening violent people. The dishonesty of the past 24hrs is disgusting.
September 11, 2025 at 12:53 PM
Charlie Kirk spent his life making people like me unsafe. His followers sent me death threats for years and threatened my employer if they didn’t terminate me.
His work was NEVER about free speech. It was about hate and emboldening violent people. The dishonesty of the past 24hrs is disgusting.
His work was NEVER about free speech. It was about hate and emboldening violent people. The dishonesty of the past 24hrs is disgusting.
Reposted by L.R.J.
We can only resist this together. Join AAUP! #DefendHigherEd
"We live in fear of using the wrong word. We self-censor. We do not have academic freedom.”
www.texastribune.org/2025/09/05/t...
www.texastribune.org/2025/09/05/t...
Professors want to leave Texas because of tense political climate, survey says
Professors’ concerns included the state’s DEI ban and new limits to faculty influence at colleges and universities.
www.texastribune.org
September 8, 2025 at 2:10 PM
We can only resist this together. Join AAUP! #DefendHigherEd
Reposted by L.R.J.
“I’m not uninterested in how to draw the narrative line that starts at Fanon and ends somewhere in my apartment or whatever. But it’s not the thing that’s important about activism.”
@olufemiotaiwo.bsky.social author or Elite Capture interviewed for @truthout.org
truthout.org/audio/awaren...
@olufemiotaiwo.bsky.social author or Elite Capture interviewed for @truthout.org
truthout.org/audio/awaren...
Awareness Protests Won’t Threaten the Richest, Most Well-Armed People on Earth
“Making durable changes isn’t always about the raw numbers,” says Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò.
truthout.org
July 20, 2025 at 11:57 AM
“I’m not uninterested in how to draw the narrative line that starts at Fanon and ends somewhere in my apartment or whatever. But it’s not the thing that’s important about activism.”
@olufemiotaiwo.bsky.social author or Elite Capture interviewed for @truthout.org
truthout.org/audio/awaren...
@olufemiotaiwo.bsky.social author or Elite Capture interviewed for @truthout.org
truthout.org/audio/awaren...
Reposted by L.R.J.
You would think that political theorists, who read multiple, incompatible theories our whole lives, would be less prone to do this.
Some of us are. Others, alas, are more so.
One whom I know risibly recommends the same *article*, repeatedly, to anyone who disagrees on a certain issue.
Some of us are. Others, alas, are more so.
One whom I know risibly recommends the same *article*, repeatedly, to anyone who disagrees on a certain issue.
my favourite type of person is the guy (you find them on both the right, center, and left) convinced that if only you read the right Theory(TM) you would subscribe to their ideology without question
July 5, 2025 at 11:48 PM
You would think that political theorists, who read multiple, incompatible theories our whole lives, would be less prone to do this.
Some of us are. Others, alas, are more so.
One whom I know risibly recommends the same *article*, repeatedly, to anyone who disagrees on a certain issue.
Some of us are. Others, alas, are more so.
One whom I know risibly recommends the same *article*, repeatedly, to anyone who disagrees on a certain issue.
Reposted by L.R.J.
What can we learn about people's #MoralCircle using dilemmas about who to save?
Daniel Martin et al. showed really nice plots of reaction times, similarity scores, and choice changes.
Follow Daniel via @researchgate.bsky.social: www.researchgate.net/profile/Dani...
#bioethics #appliedEthics #xPhi
Daniel Martin et al. showed really nice plots of reaction times, similarity scores, and choice changes.
Follow Daniel via @researchgate.bsky.social: www.researchgate.net/profile/Dani...
#bioethics #appliedEthics #xPhi
June 26, 2025 at 9:29 AM
What can we learn about people's #MoralCircle using dilemmas about who to save?
Daniel Martin et al. showed really nice plots of reaction times, similarity scores, and choice changes.
Follow Daniel via @researchgate.bsky.social: www.researchgate.net/profile/Dani...
#bioethics #appliedEthics #xPhi
Daniel Martin et al. showed really nice plots of reaction times, similarity scores, and choice changes.
Follow Daniel via @researchgate.bsky.social: www.researchgate.net/profile/Dani...
#bioethics #appliedEthics #xPhi
Reposted by L.R.J.
New article in Political Philosophy / @polphiljournal.bsky.social > "We Cease to be Mere Fragments: Justice, Alienation, Liberalism and Socialism" by Jan Kandiyali (@jkandiyali.bsky.social) and Martin O'Neill (@martinoneill.bsky.social): doi.org/10.16995/pp....
We Cease to be Mere Fragments: Justice, Alienation, Liberalism and Socialism
What is the relationship between liberalism and socialism? Partisans of each political tradition often focus on the shortcomings of the other, with socialists charging liberals with defending merely f...
doi.org
May 19, 2025 at 9:37 AM
New article in Political Philosophy / @polphiljournal.bsky.social > "We Cease to be Mere Fragments: Justice, Alienation, Liberalism and Socialism" by Jan Kandiyali (@jkandiyali.bsky.social) and Martin O'Neill (@martinoneill.bsky.social): doi.org/10.16995/pp....
Reposted by L.R.J.
The paperback is now out! "Hope and the Kantian Legacy: New Contributions to the History of Optimism" - an anthology I co-edited with Katerina Mihaylova: www.bloomsbury.com/us/hope-and-...
Hope and the Kantian Legacy
Hope is understood to be a significant part of human experience, including for motivating behaviour, promoting happiness, and justifying a conception of the sel…
www.bloomsbury.com
April 25, 2025 at 3:38 AM
The paperback is now out! "Hope and the Kantian Legacy: New Contributions to the History of Optimism" - an anthology I co-edited with Katerina Mihaylova: www.bloomsbury.com/us/hope-and-...
Reposted by L.R.J.
I'm re-upping this because it's so horrible, and yet so clearly a key to their current strategy: destroy US education, science, and universities because an educated public will push back against their fascist policies.
Yes, in 2021 JD Vance literally said
"[W]e have to honestly and aggressively attack the universities in this country... The professors are the enemy."
And no, he wasn't joking. The video is chilling.
bryanalexander.org/politics/the...
"[W]e have to honestly and aggressively attack the universities in this country... The professors are the enemy."
And no, he wasn't joking. The video is chilling.
bryanalexander.org/politics/the...
“The professors are the enemy”: J.D. Vance on higher education
[W]e have to honestly and aggressively attack the universities in this country. -JD Vance Greetings from a somewhat less infernal Virginia July day. A storm front broke through our heat last night…
bryanalexander.org
March 14, 2025 at 3:58 AM
I'm re-upping this because it's so horrible, and yet so clearly a key to their current strategy: destroy US education, science, and universities because an educated public will push back against their fascist policies.
Reposted by L.R.J.
Was reminded last night of the one time I spoke to John Rawls. In a seminar I asked him how likely it is that society could achieve an overlapping consensus on a theory of justice as he had proposed. He replied ‘not a one in one thousand chance’.
March 11, 2025 at 7:55 AM
Was reminded last night of the one time I spoke to John Rawls. In a seminar I asked him how likely it is that society could achieve an overlapping consensus on a theory of justice as he had proposed. He replied ‘not a one in one thousand chance’.