Biased Professor - Brooke Ackerly: Political Science

Required Readings

PSCI 201: Contemporary Political Theory
Claims of Culture: Equality and Diversity in the Global Era by Seyla Benhabib
Justice as Fairness by John Rawls
Multicultural Citizenship: A Liberal Theory of Minority Rights by Will Kymlicka (liberal)
Justice, Gender, and Family by Susan Moller Okin (feminist)

PSCI 209: Issues Political Theory
Feminist Thought by Rosemarie Putnam Tong

From Library Journal: Okin, also author of Women in Western Political Thought ( LJ 1/15/80), here is concerned with the lack of justice experienced by American women in both the public and private spheres. Lack of justice in the private sphere of gender-structured marriage leads to a lack of justice in the public sphere of the work place, the professions, and politics. Marriage makes women vulnerable due to the devaluation of human reproductive work and the persistence of a traditional division of labor within marriage. Divorce compounds the problem since it results in poverty for many women. This is a strong study of the contradictions in a democratic form of government, but Okin's recommendations lack analysis and are not fully linked to the political and economic arena... this is the first feminist critique of modern political theory that in shows why and how in order to include all of us, theories of justice need to apply their standards to the family itself.

Book Description: Multicultural Citizenship. It argues that certain "collective rights" of minority cultures are consistent with liberal democratic principles, and that standard liberal objections to such rights can be answered. However, the author emphasizes that no single formula can be applied to all groups, and that the needs and aspirations of immigrants are very different from those of indigenous peoples and national minorities. He looks at issues such as language rights, group representation, religious education, federalism, and secession--issues central to an understanding of multicultural politics, but which have been neglected in contemporary liberal theory.