For this episode, I spoke to Wendy Salkin, a philosophy professor at Stanford University, about informal political representatives: people who speak or act on behalf of groups in the political sphere without being elected to do so. Familiar examples include Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Malala Yousafzai, and Greta Thunberg.

Informal political representatives raise awareness of issues and bring about political change, often achieving things that people with more formal power cannot or do not. But their existence also raises some ethical questions. Do they need to be authorised? Can they be held accountable? What if the things they say diverge from the views of the people they represent?

Professor Salkin's book on this subject, Speaking for Others: The Ethics of Informal Political Representation, was released by Harvard University Press on July 9th.

Relevant reading:

1. Alcoff, L. (1991). The Problem of Speaking for Others. Cultural Critique, 20, 5–32.
2. Chapman, E.B. (2022). Election Day: How We Vote and What It Means for Democracy. Princeton University Press.
3. Du Bois, W.E.B. (1997). “Of Mr. Booker T. Washington and Others” in The Souls of Black Folk, ed. David W. Blight and Robert Gooding-Williams, 62–72. Bedford Books.
4. Jagmohan, D. (forthcoming). Dark Virtues: Booker T. Washington’s Tragic Realism. Princeton University Press.
5. King, M.L., Jr. (2010) Stride Toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story. Beacon Press.
6. Mansbridge, J.J. (1983) Beyond Adversary Democracy. University of Chicago Press.
7. Montanaro, L. (2017). Who Elected Oxfam?: A Democratic Defense of Self-Appointed Representatives. Cambridge University Press.
8. Pitkin, H. (1967). The Concept of Representation. University of Los Angeles Press.
9. Rehfeld, A. (2006). Towards a General Theory of Political Representation. Journal of Politics 68, no. 1: 1–21.
10. Saward, M. (2010). The Representative Claim. Oxford University Press.
11. Washington, B.T. “The Standard Printed Version of the Atlanta Exposition Address,” in The Souls of Black Folk: Authoritative Text, Contexts, Criticism, ed. Henry Louis Gates, Jr., and Terri Hume Oliver, 167–170. W. W. Norton.

Ethics Untangled is produced by the IDEA Ethics Centre at the University of Leeds.

Twitter: @EthicsUntangled
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In May 2023, the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Bill received Royal Assent after two years of debate in Parliament. The new Act will strengthen the statutory duty already imposed on English higher education providers by previous legislation to secure freedom of speech within the law. Arif Ahmed, a former philosophy professor at Cambridge University, has been appointed as a Director overseeing free speech at the Office for Students, informally known as the 'Free Speech Tsar'.

Free speech is one of several fronts in the so-called culture wars. Ahmed has been at great pains to say that his office, and he, will be politically neutral. The idea is to protect the right of academics to express their views, wherever on the political spectrum those views fall. But is there a role for legitimate gatekeeping of academic speaking opportunities? And is there a principled way of making decisions about when, if ever, academics should be prevented from speaking on the grounds that what they say might be harmful? Gerald Lang, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Leeds, has been trying to dig under the headlines to get at the ethical concerns underlying this debate.

You can read Gerald Lang's blog on this topic, and a reply to it by the philosopher Robert Simpson, here:

https://peasoupblog.com/2023/11/soup-of-the-day-free-speech-and-academic-freedom-with-contributions-from-gerald-lang-and-robert-simpson/

You can find out more about the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act here:

https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2023/16

You can read Arif Ahmed's first speech as Director for Freedom of Speech and Academic Freedom at the Office for Students, or 'Free Speech Tsar', here:

https://www.officeforstudents.org.uk/news-blog-and-events/press-and-media/transcript-of-arif-ahmeds-speech-at-kings-college-london/

Ethics Untangled is produced by the IDEA Ethics Centre at the University of Leeds.

Twitter: @EthicsUntangled
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ideacetl
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/idea-ethics-centre/

Never let it be said that we don't tackle the big questions on this podcast. This week we're discussing no less a subject than the meaning of life, with Predrag Cicovacki.

Predrag is Professor of Philosophy at the College of the Holy Cross (USA), where he has been teaching since 1991. He has served as a visiting professor in Germany, Russia, Luxembourg, Serbia, France, and India. He's interested in problems of good and evil, violence and nonviolence, philosophy of war and peace, and ethics.

In 2021, in the midst of very difficult personal circumstances and a global pandemic, Predrag set to work on a book called The Meaning of Life: a Quick Immersion. It's a great book: very clear, heartfelt, personal and full of insights. I hugely enjoyed reading it, and enjoyed even more the opportunity to talk to Predrag about it.

You can find out more about Predrag here:

https://www.holycross.edu/academics/programs/philosophy/faculty/predrag-cicovacki

A few places you can buy The Meaning of Life: A Quick Immersion:

https://bookshop.org/p/books/the-meaning-of-life-a-quick-immersion-predrag-cicovacki/17413009?ean=9781949845280
https://blackwells.co.uk/bookshop/product/THE-MEANING-OF-LIFE-A-Quick-Immersion-by-Cicovacki-Predrag/9781949845280
https://www.amazon.co.uk/MEANING-LIFE-Quick-Immersion-Immersions/dp/1949845281

I asked Predrag to recommend some further reading and, in line with the general vibe of this episode, he suggested that you might like to reconnect with a book that meant a lot to you in childhood or adolescence. For Predrag, it's The Glass Bead Game by Hermann Hesse. The first one that came to mind for me was The Old Man and The Sea by Ernest Hemingway. What about you?

Ethics Untangled is produced by the IDEA Ethics Centre at the University of Leeds.

Twitter: @EthicsUntangled
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ideacetl
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/idea-ethics-centre/