Course Info
POWER, RIGHTS, AND SOCIAL CHANGE: ACHIEVING JUSTICE
Professor Camila vergara
Dr. Camila Vergara is a critical legal theorist, historian, and journalist from Chile writing on the relation between inequality, corruption, and domination, and how to institutionally empower common people to resist oppression from the powerful few. Currently, she is a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellow at the University of Cambridge conducting research on plebeian constitutional rights. Vergara has published academic articles on corruption and populism in peer-reviewed journals as well as contributed opinion pieces on neoliberalism and the popular uprising in Chile for Jacobin Magazine and Sidecar—New Left Review. She holds a PhD in Political Theory with specialization in Constitutional Law from Columbia University, and has taught political theory courses at New York University, Columbia University and Universidad Diego Portales. Currently she teaches an open-access class in the Escuela Popular Constituyente on Youtube to guide Chileans during the ongoing constituent process.
course details
POLS UN 3173
Course Day/Time: Tuesday 10:10 - 12:00pm
Course location: 317 Hamilton Hall
COURSE DESCRIPTION
This seminar course will introduce students to the field of justice. It will combine an intellectual history of conceptions of justice and modes of political change with an exploration of the main areas of public interest and advocacy. The course is intended to serve as a bridge from the Columbia Core to present issues of social justice. Throughout, the discussion will center on how we—contemporary public citizens—can improve our social and political condition and achieve justice.
The course will integrate three principal dimensions. First, it will explore how conceptions of justice have changed over the course of the past three millennia and will ask which conceptions of justice make more sense in our present political condition. From ancient ideas of substantive justice and natural law to more modern liberal ideas of legalism and the rule of law, the course will outline, compare, and interrogate different ways of thinking about a just society. Second, the course will offer an overview of five areas of major struggle for social justice today: school re-segregation; police brutality and mass incarceration; reproductive rights; gender discrimination; and immigration, detention centers, and deportations). Third, the course will interrogate different kinds of political action and explore what type of political interventions seem most suited to our current political condition.
The course will explore what it means to pursue the public interest and to become a public citizen today, informed by the long tradition of writings on justice and social change. We will analyze social justice issues through theory, history, judicial decisions, law, and facts about our current conjuncture. How do we pursue justice in these troubled times? How can history and social theory inform our current political practices? In sum, what is to be done in the face of political oppression or injustice? How do we build more just societies?
Course rquirements
Students will be required to read the assigned materials, attend the weekly seminar, and participate in seminar discussion.
Students will be required to write two 1,000-word essays, one final 1,400-word group paper due on dates indicated in this syllabus, and make one in-class group presentation of a case study. The first two papers will respond to prompts and are aimed at evaluating knowledge acquired in the first two sections of the course, which are dedicated to theoretical approaches to justice and the socio-political context of oppression and injustice. The topic of the group presentation and third paper is to be decided by students after submitting a proposal. The aim of this final paper is to apply theory, history, and praxis to one of the five areas of struggle for social justice that we will study in the final section of the course (school
re-segregation; police brutality and mass incarceration; reproductive rights; gender discrimination; and immigration, detention centers, and deportations). Students are required to choose a current problem of social justice within these five areas of struggle, analyze it according to the materials seen in class, and put forward a position on how best to resolve it. Audiovisual presentations are encouraged.
The final grade for the course will be determined in the following manner:
Seminar Attendance and Participation (10%)
Two short essays (25% each)
Group presentation and final paper (40%)
Statement regarding academic integrity
Each student in this course is expected to abide by the Columbia University Code of Academic Integrity. Any work submitted by a student in this course for academic credit must be the student’s own work. The complete Faculty Statement on Academic Integrity can be
found at: https://www.college.columbia.edu/academics/integrity-statement and the Columbia University Undergraduate Guide to Academic Integrity can be found here: https://www.college.columbia.edu/academics/academicintegrity
Any violation of the Academic Code of Integrity will be forwarded to the Office of Judicial Affairs and Community Standards and will result in a failing grade for the course.
statement regarding disability accomodations
If you are a student with a disability and have a DS-certified Accommodation Letter, please come to my office hours to confirm your accommodation needs. If you believe that you might have a disability that requires accommodation, you should contact Disability Services at 212-854-2388 and disability@columbia.edu.
readings
All assigned readings will be available on Courseworks. A course reader will be available for purchase.
Laptop policy
No laptops will be allowed in class unless you have accommodations to use a laptop.
Syllabus
I. THEORIES OF LIBERTY & JUSTICE
01/21: Introduction: Theories of Liberty
Lecture on different kinds of liberty and rights.
01/28: Conservative Theories of Justice
Plato, The Republic, Book I from 330d; Book II 368b-378b; Book IV 419-424d
Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, Book V
Aristotle, Politics, Book 3, Chapter 9.
02/04: Subaltern Theories of Justice
Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Chapter 1
bell hooks, Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center, Preface new edition, Chapter 4
Amartya Sen, Inequality Reexamined, Chapter 5
02/11: Critiques of Justice under Liberalism
Karl Marx, On the Jewish Question (excerpt)
Michael J. Sandel, Liberalism and the Limits of Justice, 175-183.
Iris Marion Young, Justice and the Politics of Difference, 3-14, 156-191.
II. LIBERTY AND JUSTICE IN THE AMERICAN CONSTITUTION BEFORE EQUAL PROTECTION
First essay due: 02/17 @noon via Courseworks
02/18: Slavery and Subordination, Ancient and Modern Justifications
Aristotle, Politics, Book 1 (excerpts on slavery and women)
Locke, Second Treatise of Government, Chapter IV.22-23, VII. 85-89
Condorcet, “Letters From a Freeman of New Haven,” Letter Two (excerpts)
Condorcet, “Rules for the Society of the Friends of Negroes” (excerpts)
02/25: Judicial Review and the Legacy of Slavery
Reconstruction Amendments
Civil Rights Act (excerpts)
Civil Rights Cases (excerpts)
Plessy v. Ferguson (excerpts)
Charles W. Mill, Racial Liberalism
03/03: Reproductive Labor and the Subordination of Women
Rosa Luxemburg, “The Junius Pamphlet” (excerpts)
Mignon Duffy, “Doing the Dirty Work: Gender, Race, and Reproductive Labor in Historical
Perspective”
*Nancy Fraser and Sarah Leonard, “Capitalism’s Crisis of Care”
*Kimberlé Crenshaw, “Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and
Violence against Women of Color”
III. PEOPLE’S POWER AND THE STRUGGLE FOR EQUAL RIGHTS
03/10: The Right to Rebel
Thomas Jefferson, letter to Colonel Smith (Nov., 13, 1787)
Martin Luther King, “Letter from Birmingham Jail,”
Malcolm X, The End of White World Supremacy: Four Speeches by Malcolm X.
Fox Piven and Cloward, Poor People's Movements: Why They Succeed, How They Fail (excerpts).
Civil Rights Act (excerpt)
Bernard E. Harcourt, “Political Disobedience”
SPRING BREAK
*Second essay due 03/23 @noon via Courseworks
03/24: Segregation in Education
Brown v. Board of Education (excerpts)
Board of Education of Oklahoma City v. Dowell (excerpt)
Erica Frankenberg, et al., “Choice without Equity: Charter School Segregation and the Need
for Civil Rights Standards”
R. Fryer, et al., “Affirmative Action and Its Mythology”
Michelle Chen, “Millennials Have Lived Through a Doubling of School Segregation”
03/31: Police Brutality and Mass Incarceration
Michel Foucault, “Illegalities and Delinquency”
Loïc Wacquant, “From Slavery to Mass Incarceration”
David G. Embrick, “Two Nations, Revisited: The Lynching of Black and Brown Bodies,
Police Brutality, and Racial Control in ‘Post-Racial’ Amerikkka”
Keeanga-Yamatha Taylor, From #BlackLivesMatter to Black Liberation (excerpts).
04/07: Feminism, Abortion, and Rape
M Foucault, The Will to Knowledge: The History of Sexuality Volume 1 (excerpts)
Roe v. Wade (excerpts)
Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc. (excerpts)
Jex Blackmore, “Restricting Abortion Access Is Class Warfare”
Rebecca Solnit, “In Patriarchy No One Can Hear You Scream”
04/14: Gay rights: From Stonewall to Gay Marriage
Judith Butler, Undoing Gender (excerpts)
Ellen Ann Andersen, Out of the Closets and Into the Courts: Legal Opportunity Structure and Gay Rights Litigation (excerpts)
Lawrence v. Texas (excerpts)
Obergefell v. Hodges (excerpts)
04/21: Immigration, detention centers, and deportation
Korematsu v. United States (excerpts)
Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (excerpts).
M. Juárez, et al. “Twenty Years after IIRIRA: The Rise of Immigrant Detention and its
Effects on Latinx Communities across the Nation”
Robert S. Chang, “Whitewashing Precedent: From the Chinese Exclusion Case to Korematsu to the Muslim Travel Ban Cases”
04/28: Group presentations & conclusions
*Group papers due 05/05 @noon via Courseworks