Ethics in Your World with Danielle Allen and Rohini Somanathan

Date: 

Friday, September 18, 2020, 12:00pm to 1:00pm

Location: 

Harvard Book Store Virtual Events

black and white photo of a smiling Indian womancover of a green book titled Difference without Dominationblack and white headshot of a woman with short black hair and a dark skin tone

Harvard Book Store's virtual event series and the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics welcome DANIELLE ALLEN—James Bryant Conant University Professor at Harvard University and the EJ Safra Center's director—for a discussion of her co-edited book, Difference Without Domination: Pursuing Justice in Diverse Democracies. She will be joined in conversation by her fellow editor ROHINI SOMANATHAN, Professor of Economics at the Delhi School of Economics.

 

About Difference without Domination

Around the globe, democracy appears broken. With political and socioeconomic inequality on the rise, we are faced with the urgent question of how to better distribute power, opportunity, and wealth in diverse modern societies. This volume confronts the dilemma head-on, exploring new ways to combat current social hierarchies of domination.

Using examples from the United States, India, Germany, and Cameroon, the contributors offer paradigm-changing approaches to the concepts of justice, identity, and social groups while also taking a fresh look at the idea that the demographic make-up of institutions should mirror the make-up of a populace as a whole. After laying out the conceptual framework, the volume turns to a number of provocative topics, among them the pernicious tenacity of implicit bias, the logical contradictions inherent to the idea of universal human dignity, and the paradoxes and problems surrounding affirmative action. A stimulating blend of empirical and interpretive analyses, Difference without Domination urges us to reconsider the idea of representation and to challenge what it means to measure equality and inequality.

To register for this virtual event, please click here

The “Ethics in Your World” series, presented with Harvard University’s Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics, features leading thinkers taking on tough problems that matter to us all.