Events
Philosophers Against Malaria: Fundraising Competition Across Departments
What good can philosophers do? Let’s see.
As in years past, Malte Hendrickx, a philosophy graduate student at the University of Michigan, has set up a charity “competition” for philosophy departments to raise money for the Against Malaria Foundation.
Here’s what he says about it:
Mirror, mirror on the wall—who’s the most virtuous department of them all?
As in previous years, there’s an end of year interdepartmental competitive fundraiser for the Against Malaria Foundation. This year’s fundraiser runs until December 24th. All donations are tax-deductible, and 100% of donations go to the purchase of long-lasting insecticidal bed nets.
Roughly 250,000,000 people fall sick from Malaria each year, roughly 625,000 of which are killed. More than three quarters of these deaths are children under the age of 5, who are especially vulnerable to infection. These deaths are as tragic as they are preventable: long-lasting insecticidal nets cost around $2 and provide effective protection to the households that receive them.
The Against Malaria Foundation has an excellent track record in distributing such bed nets. In the last 19 years, the 250 million nets they funded and distributed protected 450 million people. It is estimated that this translates to roughly 185,000 deaths prevented, and 100 to 185 million cases of malaria averted. It is also estimated to have led to an improvement of US$6.5 billion in local economies since malaria is a crucial factor in reducing the productivity of those it affects. AMF has been rated as a top charity by GiveWell, a charity evaluator, each year since 2009.
You can take part in the fundraiser and see the current tally here. If you want to add your department to the list, you can email hmalte@umich.edu with the name of the department you want to add or do it yourself by using this link. Sharing the fundraiser via social media, mailing lists, or other means is highly encouraged!
At the end of the competition, I’ll post about the results.
The post Philosophers Against Malaria: Fundraising Competition Across Departments first appeared on Daily Nous.
Webinar: The Atlas Network: Big Oil, Climate Disinformation and Constitutional Democracy
UTS Comms Critical Webinar Series #2
The Atlas Network: Big Oil, Climate Disinformation and Constitutional Democracy
Date and time:
10-12 noon, Friday 8 December, Sydney time
6-8pm, Thursday 7 December, New York time
Register here
Welcome: James Goodman
Chair: Scott Ludlam
Speakers:
Dr Jeremy Walker (Silencing the Voice)
Prof Nancy MacLean (Democracy in chains)
Amy Westervelt (Drilled)
Prof J. Timmons Roberts
Responses:
Brendan Demelle – Desmog
Climate Investigations Center (tbc)
Info:
Prof. James Goodman, james.goodman@uts.edu.au
School of Communication, University of Technology Sydney
Background:
Whether we look at climate disinformation, attacks on constitutional democracy and Indigenous rights, the criminalisation of civil protest, the return of white nationalism and authoritarian ‘populism’, or the acceleration of fossil-fuel extraction against the UN Paris Climate Accord, there is a common pattern to be found: the transnationally co-ordinated campaigns of the little-known Atlas Network, a permanent architecture of political influence through which fossil fuel (and other) corporations and the ultra-wealthy seek to ‘manufacture consent’ and capture state power. The purpose of this global webinar is to familiarise those of us engaged in public policy with the history, methods and present activity of the global Atlas Network – now comprising c. 600 ‘thinktanks’ in 100 nations – and to equip scholars, civil society organisations, public lawyers, and investigative journalists with the tools to identify, research, report on, and counter the transnational strategies deployed by Atlas actors and their allies to neutralise democracy.
Since the economic counter-revolution of the Thatcher and Reagan era, we have understood ‘neoliberalism’ in terms of the policies advocated by law and economics scholars Friedrich von Hayek, Milton Friedman and James M. Buchanan: free trade, deregulation, privatisation. These intellectuals would likely have remained isolated on the radical far-right fringe were it not for the English entrepreneur Antony Fisher. Fisher pioneered the free-market ‘think-tank’ as a means by which financial elites and global corporations could continuously influence public opinion, swing elections, and shape law, legislation and government policy – all without appearing to engage in political activity at all.
Building on his success in establishing the Institute of Economic Affairs (UK, 1955), the Fraser Institute (Canada, 1974), the Centre of Independent Studies (Australia, 1976), the Manhattan Institute (USA, 1978), and providing the model for the Heritage Foundation (US, 1973) and the Cato Institute (USA, 1977) – all of which founded with oil-derived core funding – in 1981 Fisher founded the Atlas Economic Research Foundation (now the Atlas Network). Not itself a thinktank, the Atlas aims to ‘litter the world with free-market thinktanks’: to co-ordinate funding (eg. from oil billionaires Charles Koch and Richard Scaife), personnel and campaigns internationally.
By 1981, oil multinationals already possessed two decades of internal scientific research confirming the coming planetary catastrophe caused by fossil carbon combustion. Since 1988, when Big Oil launched its permanent global campaign of counter-science disinformation and climate policy obstruction, the number of ‘thinktanks’ comprising the global Atlas Network has grown to c. 600 in some 100 nations. Climate policy has not failed, it has been defeated. And yet few journalists, public policy actors or researchers have heard of the Atlas, despite the constant flooding of the public sphere with the output of its so-called ‘independent institutes’ and ‘adjunct scholars’. So far, the Atlas Network has successfully obscured its very existence from the public whose ‘opinions’ it constantly seeks to manipulate. With your help, we hope to change that.
The post Webinar: The Atlas Network: Big Oil, Climate Disinformation and Constitutional Democracy appeared first on Progress in Political Economy (PPE).
Flipping the Conference
An upcoming philosophy conference is organized around those interesting and fruitful conversations that take place between the official talks.
The Coffee Break Conference of Aesthetics will be organized such that “the proportions of a traditional academic conference are inverted; while in conferences we normally have long lecture sessions of passive listening and short coffee breaks for some talk, this time the focus is on the coffee break discussions—regarding each other’s academic research and beyond.”
The organizers, Zoltán Somhegyi (Károli Gáspár University) and Max Ryynänen (Aalto University), provide an attractive pitch of the idea:
Do you remember that highly inspiring discussion you were having with a fellow speaker in one of the last conferences you participated in about his/her paper, when the organisers suddenly reminded you of the end of the coffee break, and you had to rush back to listen to the next speaker? Do you remember the exhausting days of the conference that are fully packed with presentations, with barely any time to have more leisurely chats with other participants (except if you skip an otherwise surely interesting talk, hence causing dilemmas and bad conscience…)? Do you remember how refreshing it is when in a conference you have excursions, city visits, common dinners, or even hiking? And finally, do you remember how much we all missed, during Corona-times and zoom-conferences, that we can finally meet in person again and have thorough conversations, not only about papers, but on anything else, like a good coffee break?
To facilitate productive informal conversations, the conference will be a “read ahead” event in which the participants will be required not only to read the papers in advance, but also to provide comments on them. The organizers say:
In this way we “gain” a significant amount of time; in other words, we do not spend most of the conference simply listening to and getting introduced to a presentation and its main points and ask basic questions or express our first-impression-reactions. Instead, we can use the time we will spend together to go deeper into ideas, concepts and insights developed in the participants’ texts that, by then, we all already know. We understand the papers better, as we read them, and we do not have to work on straightening misunderstandings, which often is the case after 20-minute talks. During the actual meeting, through moderated sessions and guided discussions all papers will be thoroughly debated, hence we can focus on scrutinising the presented issues.
The topic of the conference is “Trying Out New Paths in Aesthetics,” and its schedule will include a number of interesting aesthetic events. You can learn more about it here.
The post Flipping the Conference first appeared on Daily Nous.
Push the Big Blue Button again for DWCA 2023 AGM
DATE:Sunday 20 August 2022 TIME: 3pm VENUE: 2nd Floor Club Burwood, 97 Burwood Road, Burwood NSW AGENDA: President’s Report; Treasurer’s Report; and Election of Office Bearers. Once again we’ll be offering people an online attendance option conferencing software Big Blue Button, which has a neat built-in poll function for taking votes. An email with the invite code will be sent out to members the day before (Saturday August 19). Any candidate standing for election as an Office Bearer (President, Vice President, Secretary or Treasurer) must be a current DWCA member who has held membership for a minimum period of five… Continue reading
Review: Sirens of Audio present Janet Fielding 2023
For those unaware, the Sirens of Audio is a podcast focused on the huge amount of audio dramas that have expanded the universe of Doctor Who during the 21st century. Although unaffiliated with the Doctor Who Club of Australia, it is run by two former members of its executive committee who have been able to leverage that time at the coal face to build a rapport with the stars of the series, whom the cornucopia of audio dramas continue to bring into our lives. I wax nostalgic because their initial event, featuring Australia’s own Janet Fielding — aka Tegan Jovanka,… Continue reading
Push the Big Blue Button again for DWCA 2022 AGM
DATE: Sunday 21 August 2022 TIME: 4pm VENUE: 2nd Floor Club Burwood, 97 Burwood Road, Burwood NSW AGENDA: President’s Report; Treasurer’s Report; and Election of Office Bearers. Once again we’ll be offering people an online attendance option conferencing software Big Blue Button, which has a neat built-in poll function for taking votes. An email with the invite code will be sent out to members the day before (Saturday August 20). Any candidate standing for election as an Office Bearer (President, Vice President, Secretary or Treasurer) must be a current DWCA member who has held membership for a minimum period of… Continue reading
The Game of Rassilon returns for 2019
How many limbs does a Racnoss have? Who was the Guardian of the Solar System who betrayed it to the Daleks in the 41st century? Why does the Fifth Doctor wear celery in his frock-coat lapel? How much do YOU know about Doctor Who? Yes, it’s time again for the DWCA’s annual Trivia Night and Cosplay Competition – The Game of Rassilon. And we’re very excited to announce that the host of this year’s event is actor, comedian, Whovians High Brain and friend of the DWCA, Patrick Magee. The night will see teams test their knowledge of classic and revived… Continue reading
It’s time to open up academic conferences to the wider world
Academia must recognise that it's only one part of the wider scholarly ecosystem, and academic conferences must reach outside to the wider world. Matthew Flinders explains how this has influenced the Political Studies Association.
The post It’s time to open up academic conferences to the wider world appeared first on Wonkhe.
Simon Springer, ‘Neoliberalism and Discourse: Politics between Poststructuralism and Political Economy’
Simon Springer (University of Victoria, Canada), 'Neoliberalism and Discourse: Politics between Poststructuralism and Political Economy'
This is the eighth seminar in the Semester 1 series of 2016 organised by the Department of Political Economy at the University of Sydney.
Date and Location:
14 July 2016, Darlington Centre Boardroom, 4:00pm – 5.30pm
All welcome!
The post Simon Springer, ‘Neoliberalism and Discourse: Politics between Poststructuralism and Political Economy’ appeared first on Progress in Political Economy (PPE).
Phil Toner and Mike Rafferty, ‘Financialisation of the Australian Construction Industry’
Phil Toner and Mike Rafferty (University of Sydney), 'Financialisation of the Australian Construction Industry'
This is the seventh seminar in the Semester 1 series of 2016 organised by the Department of Political Economy at the University of Sydney.
Date and Location:
2 June 2016, Darlington Centre Boardroom, 4:00pm – 5.30pm
All welcome!
The post Phil Toner and Mike Rafferty, ‘Financialisation of the Australian Construction Industry’ appeared first on Progress in Political Economy (PPE).