Philosophy

Dr. Naomi Zack (Lehman College, CUNY) will give a talk as part of the Philosophy, Race, and Justice Speaker Series. Please join us in Ustler Hall at 4:00pm on September 29.

Title: Affirmative Action is Dead, Long Live Affirmative Action

Abstract: This paper builds on ideas in a chapter of my forthcoming book with Oxford University Press, Intersectionality: A Philosophical View, and it anticipates theses in a book in progress, Affirmative Action is Dead, Long Live Affirmative Action. With elite schools as a target, the US Supreme Court has struck down what’s known as Affirmative Action, whereby minority racial identities may be positive factors for admissions. However, more than a half century of resistance to the backlash against Affirmative Action ensures that the idea of Affirmative Action leads to new conceptions of it and progressive action on that basis. One ‘candidate’ for these efforts is consideration of class in place of race. However, there is “class” in the Marxist sense of identity tied to economics, and “class” as forms of ‘capital’ that can be taken up á l carte, so to speak. Along those lines, I argue for the importance of higher education for minorities as an egalitarian opportunity to pursue and develop leisure, an argument that resurrects the wrongness of Booker T. Washington’s aspirations for advancement through primarily or only the practical work and labor needed by dominant sectors of society.

Dr. Zack’s Abbreviated CV: Naomi Zack, PhD, Columbia University, has been Professor of Philosophy at Lehman College, CUNY, since 2019. She earlier taught at SUNY, Albany and the University of Oregon. Her most recent book is Ethics and Race (September 2022) a textbook. Also recent are: The American Tragedy of COVID-19: Social and Political Crises of 2020 (March 2021); Progressive Anonymity: From Identity Politics to Evidence-Based Government (December, 2020). Additional books include: Reviving the Social Compact: Inclusive Citizenship in an Age of Extreme Politics (2018). Her edited 51-essay Oxford Handbook on Philosophy and Race (2017) and Philosophy of Race, An Introduction (2018). Earlier books include: The Theory of Applicative Justice: An Empirical Pragmatic Approach to Correcting Racial Injustice (2016), White Privilege and Black Rights: The Injustice of US Police Racial Profiling and Homicide (April 2015), The Ethics and Mores of Race: Equality after the History of Philosophy (2011/2015), Ethics for Disaster (2009, 2010-11), Inclusive Feminism: A Third Wave Theory of Women’s Commonality (2005), Philosophy of Science and Race (2002) and Race and Mixed Race (1992). Published in 2023 have been Democracy, a VSI (Very Short Introduction in the Oxford University Press series) and new editions of Ethics for Disaster and Philosophy of Race, An Introduction. In production, based on 2020/2022 Phi Beta Kappa-Romanell lectures is Intersectionality: A Philosophical Perspective. Zack teaches and lectures broadly on the subjects of these books. She gave the John Dewey Lecture at the Pacific Division Meeting of the American Philosophical Society in April 2021.