Public Philosophy

In every issue of modern society - from climate change to vaccinations, transportation to technology, health care to defense - we are in the midst of an unprecedented expansion of scientific progress and a simultaneous expansion of danger. At the very time we need them most, scientists and the idea of objective knowledge are being bombarded by a vast, well-funded, three-part war on science: the identity politics war on science, the ideological war on science, and the industrial war on science.

Urgent as ever, Like a Thief in Broad Daylight illuminates the new dangers as well as the radical possibilities thrown up by today's technological and scientific advances and their electrifying implications for us all.

If America's public schools don't survive the COVID-19 pandemic, it won't just be due to the virus. Opponents of public education have long sought to dismantle our system of free, universal, and taxpayer-funded schooling. But the present crisis has provided them with their best opportunity ever to realize that aim.

Judicial decisions assessing the constitutional rights of students in the nation’s public schools have consistently generated bitter controversy. The Schoolhouse Gate gives a fresh, lucid, and provocative account of the historic legal battles waged over education and illuminates contemporary disputes that continue to fracture the nation.

We live under an ideology that preys on every aspect of our lives: our education and our jobs; our healthcare and our leisure; our relationships and our mental wellbeing; even the planet we inhabit – the very air we breathe. So pervasive has it become that, for most people, it has no name. It seems unavoidable, like a natural law. But trace it back to its roots, and we discover that it is neither inevitable nor immutable. It was conceived, propagated, and then concealed by the powerful few. It is time to bring it into the light - and, in doing so, to find an alternative worth fighting for.

This compassionate, personal, and illuminating work of nonfiction draws on the author's celebrated work as a director of socially conscious theater to connect listeners with the power of an ancient artistic tradition. For years Bryan Doerries has been producing ancient tragedies for current and returned servicemen and women, addicts, tornado and hurricane victims, and a wide range of other at-risk people in society.

Few of us need convincing that the American health insurance system needs reform. But many of the existing proposals focus on expanding one relatively successful piece of the system or building in piecemeal additions. These proposals miss the point. As the Stanford health economist Liran Einav and the MIT economist and MacArthur Genius Amy Finkelstein argue, our health care system was never deliberately designed, but rather pieced together to deal with issues as they became politically relevant.

The automobile was one of the most miraculous inventions of the 20th century. It promised freedom, style, and utility. But sometimes, rather than improving our lives technology just makes everything worse. Over the past century cars have filled the air with toxic pollutants and fueled climate change. Cars have stolen public space and made our cities uglier, dirtier, less useful, and more unequal. Cars have caused tens of millions of deaths and injuries. They have wasted our time and our money.

A History of the World in Six Plagues shows that throughout history, outbreaks of disease have been exacerbated by and gone on to further expand the racial, economic, and sociopolitical divides we allow to fester in times of good health. Princeton-trained historian Edna Bonhomme’s examination of humanity’s disastrous treatment of pandemic disease takes us across place and time from Port-au-Prince to Tanzania, and from plantation-era America to our modern COVID-19-scarred world to unravel shocking truths about the patterns of discrimination in the face of disease.

Whether or not you have children, you know that education is vital to the prosperity and future of our society. Yet our current system simply doesn't work. Parents feel increasingly powerless, and nearly half of Americans give our schools a grade of "C". Now, in his new book, Ron Paul attacks the problem head-on and provides a focused solution that centers on strong support for home schooling and the application of free market principles to the American education system.

Horace Mann was the founder of the free public school movement in Massachusetts then America and, by inference, the whole world. This was his great mission, which he accomplished.

At the turn of the twenty-first century, more than 150 countries pledged to eradicate hunger by 2030. But with only a few years left, we’re far from reaching that goal. Instead, hunger is on the rise—America itself recently experienced levels of food insecurity not seen since the Great Depression. How could the richest nation in the world have so many people going hungry? In The New Breadline, aid worker and activist Jean-Martin Bauer unravels this paradox.

From dolphins to crows, elephants to octopuses, Nussbaum examines the entire animal kingdom, showcasing the lives of animals with wonder, awe, and compassion to understand how we can create a world in which human beings are truly friends of animals, not exploiters or users. All animals should have a shot at flourishing in their own way. Humans have a collective duty to face and solve animal harm. An urgent call to action and a manual for change, Nussbaum’s groundbreaking theory directs politics and law to help us meet our ethical responsibilities as no book has done before.

America is in crisis, from the university to the workplace. Toxic ideas first spread by higher education have undermined humanistic values, fueled intolerance, and widened divisions in our larger culture. The Diversity Delusion argues that the root of this problem is the belief in America’s endemic racism and sexism, a belief that has engendered a metastasizing diversity bureaucracy in society and academia.

At a time of bitter national polarization, there is a critical need for leaders who can help us better communicate with one another. In A Search for Common Ground, Rick Hess and Pedro Noguera, who have often fallen on opposing sides of the ideological aisle over the past couple of decades, candidly talk through their differences on some of the toughest issues in K-12 education today - from school choice to testing to diversity to privatization.

A true story of perseverance, unity, and hope, The Kindness of Color follows two immigrant families facing separate battles with racism in WWII-era Southern California. Unexpectedly, their paths intertwine, ultimately paving the way for the landmark court case Mendez, et. al v. Westminster and the desegregation of California public schools seven years before Brown v. Board of Education. In the face of discrimination, the Mendez and Munemitsu families are sustained by the acts of kindness extended to them by friends and strangers as they navigate their journeys toward justice.

From one of the foremost authorities on education and the history of education in the United States, Slaying Goliath is an impassioned, inspiring look at the ways in which parents, teachers, and activists are successfully fighting back to defeat the forces that are trying to privatize America’s public schools.

One of the greatest American achievements in the 20th century was the creation of public schools and universal education, an ideal now deeply at risk. Cornell University professor Noliwe Rooks provides a critical account of the making and unmaking of public education in Cutting School, the first book to foreground how vast racial and economic divides are part and parcel of the push to privatize our education system.

While politicians, entrepreneurs, and even school children could tell you that sustainability is an important and nearly universal value, many of them, and many of us, may struggle to define the term, let alone trace its history. What is sustainability? Is it always about the environment? What science do we need to fully grasp what it requires? What does sustainability mean for business? How can governments plan for a sustainable future?

The natural limits of the human body make us vulnerable and therefore dependent, throughout our lives, on others. Yet American law and policy disregard these stubborn facts, with statutes and judicial decisions that presume people to be autonomous, defined by their capacity to choose. As legal scholar O. Carter Snead points out, this individualistic ideology captures important truths about human freedom, but it also means that we have no obligations to each other unless we actively, voluntarily embrace them.