Political theory at McGill University

For a calendar of recent and upcoming events in political theory at McGill and in Montreal, click here. For past years' events, see here.

McGill has a distinguished history in political theory: Harold Laski taught here; Judith Shklar and G.A. Cohen were both undergraduate alumni; and, perhaps most famously, Charles Taylor was both an undergraduate alumnus and, for decades, a professor of Political Science and Philosophy, shaping the field at McGill.

Among the many political theorists who have studied at McGill are Ruth Abbey, Notre Dame; James Booth, Vanderbilt; Monique Deveaux, Williams; Jill Frank, South Carolina; Duncan Ivison, Sydeny; David Kahane, Alberta; Rebecca Kingston, Toronto; Guy LaForest, Laval; Andrew Lister, Queens; Leslie Thiele, Florida; and Daniel Weinstock, Montreal.

Political, moral, and legal theory at McGill are currently taught by five members of the political science department, five members of the philosophy department, and two members of the Faculty of Law:.

In Political Science: Arash Abizadeh, Jacob T. Levy, Catherine Lu, Victor Muniz-Fraticelli, and Christina Tarnopolsky.
In Philosophy: Iwao Hirose, Calvin Normore, Hasana Sharp, Natalie Stoljar, and Sarah Stroud.
In Law: Mark Antaki and Evan Fox-Decent.
In addition, courses are offered by Will Roberts, a Faculty Lecturer in the departments of Political Science and Philosophy.

Among the areas of emphasis in this intellectual community are international and global justice (Abizadeh, Antaki, and Lu), affect, rhetoric, and the emotions (Abizadeh, Sharp, Stroud, Tarnopolsky), early modern political thought (Abizadeh, Antaki, Sharp, Levy), liberalism (Abizadeh, Hirose, Levy, Lu, Muniz-Fraticelli), pluralism (Fox-Decent, Levy, Muniz-Fraticelli), nationalism and multiculturalism (Abizadeh and Levy), critical theory (Abizadeh, Sharp, Tarnopolsky), and jurisprudence (Antaki, Fox-Decent, Levy, Muniz-Fraticelli, and Stoljar).

Faculty with allied interests in the department include the comparative political scientist and scholar of constitutionalism Filippo Sabetti, and IR theory specialist Vincent Pouliot. Other allied faculty around the university include the historian of economic thought George Grantham in Economics; and members of the Faculty of Law including Frederic Megret, Rene Provost, Colleen Sheppard, and Shauna Van Praagh.

The shared political theory and political philosophy at all four universities in Montreal takes place under the rubric of the Groupe de Recherche Interuniversitaire en Philosophie Politique. GRIPP sponsors the Montreal Political Theory Workshop and additional workshops for the presentation of graduate student work; conferences on specialized themes at least semiannually; competitive graduate student fellowships; and postdoctoral fellowships. The GRIPP postdoctoral fellow at McGill for 2008-09 is Kirsten Fischer, whose dissertation examined the normative foundation of international prosecution for serious human rights abuses.

Recent publications from the political theory community at McGill:

Arash Abizadeh, Cooperation, Pervasive Impact, and Coercion: On the Scope (not Site) of Distributive Justice, Philosophy and Public Affairs 35(4) 318 - 358 (2008

--, Democratic Theory and Border Coercion: No Right to Unilaterally Control Your Boders, Political Theory 36(1) 37-65 (2008).

--, On the philosophy/rhetoric binaries: Or, is Habermasian discourse motivationally impotent? , Philosophy & Social Criticism, Vol. 33, No. 4, 445-472 (2007)

--, Does Collective Identity Presuppose an Other? On the Alleged Incoherence of Global Solidarity, American Political Science Review 99: 45-60 (2005)

--, Was Fichte An Ethnic Nationalist? On Cultural Nationalism and Its Double, History of Political Thought, Volume 26, Number 2, pp. 334-359 (2005)

Mark Antaki, The Critical Modernism of Hannah Arendt, Theoretical Inquiries in Law 8(1) 251-75

Jason Ferrell, On the alleged relativism of Isaiah Berlin, Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy 11(1) 41-56 (2008)

Evan Fox-Decent, Is The Rule of Law Really Indifferent To Human Rights? Law and Philosophy 27: 533-81 (2008).

--The Fiduciary Nature of State Legal Authority, 31 Queen’s Law Journal 31: 259 – 310 (2005).

Volker Heins, Orientalising America? Continental Intellectuals and the Search for Europe's Identity, Millennium: Journal of International Studies, Volume 34, Number 2, February 2006 , pp. 433-448

Iwao Hirose, Weighted Lotteries in Life and Death Cases, Ratio 20(1) 45-56 (2007)

--, Intertemporal Moral Judgment, Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 8(4) 371-86 (2005)

Jacob T. Levy, National and Statist Responsibility, Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy, 11(4), 485-99 (2008)

--, Self-determination, Non-domination, and Federalism, Hypatia 23(3) 60-78 (2008)

--, Federalism and the Old and New Liberalisms, Social Philosophy and Policy 24: 306-326 (2007)

--, Federalism, Liberalism, and the Separation of Loyalties, American Political Science Review 101 (3), 459-477 (2007)

--, Contextualism, constitutionalism and Modus Vivendi approaches, in Multiculturalism and Political Theory, Edited by David Owen and Anthony Laden (2007)

Catherine Lu, Just and Unjust Interventions in World Politics: Public and Private (2006)

--, Reparations in World Politics: Of Debt and Disgrace after War, in Reparations: Interdisciplinary Inquiries, Edited by Jon Miller and Rahul Kumar (2006)

--, World Government, in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (2006)

Hasana Sharp, The Force of Ideas in Spinoza, Political Theory 35(6) 732-755 (2007)

--, Why Spinoza Today? Or, "A Strategy of Anti-Fear", Rethinking Marxism, Vol. 17, No. 4, 591 - 608 (2005)

Sarah Stroud, Moral worth and rationality as acting on good reasons, Philosophical Studies Vol. 134, No. 3, 449-456 (2007)

--, Epistemic Partiality in Friendship, Ethics, volume 116, 498–524 (2006)

Christina Tarnopolsky, Platonic Reflections on the Aesthetic Dimensions of Deliberative Democracy, Political Theory, Vol. 35, No. 3, 288-312 (2007)

--, Prudes, Perverts, and Tyrants: Plato and the Contemporary Politics of Shame Political Theory, Vol. 32, No. 4, 468-494 (2004)