bakiner.bsky.social
Assoc. prof. of political science & director of Tech Ethics Initiative at Seattle University. Works on tech governance, human rights, law & society, transitional justice. He/him.
88 posts
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245 following
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The honor is mine, Erin.
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*not
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Here is the link to the special issue academic.oup.com/ijtj/issue/1... with @kellyzvobgo.bsky.social @geoffdancy.bsky.social @erinbaines.bsky.social @ulrike-luehe.bsky.social and many other wonderful colleagues.
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What does it all mean for us? Past wrongs require an unapologetically radical reckoning that connects past and future, symbolic struggles and material ones. Contemporary liberal democratic discourse celebrated limited achievements for too long; now is time to build a genuine human rights movement.
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Ultimately, addressing past wrongs is not only about the past, either. Transforming biased, violent attitudes ("subjective" conditions in Adorno's words) should go hand in hand with building a society liberated from economic, military, and political repression ("objective", material conditions).
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Many of these ideas ("Never again", "There is no future without the past") are integrated in to transitional justice & human rights practice today, but societies too often forget Adorno's maximalist moral duty to celebrate themselves on successful reckoning with past wrongs.
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His entire post-WWII scholarship is clear: historical responsibility for Auschwitz should be fundamental to ethics, politics, poetry, even "living and dying" in Germany. Coming to terms with the past allows no quick fixes, no shortcuts, no success stories. It's a solemn, perpetual moral duty.
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Adorno delivered a series of radio lectures in the 50s&60s to warn the W. German public against complacency. When everyone else was celebrating the economic miracle & democratization, he worried that ppl did not take responsibility for the Holocaust seriously enough.
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Saluting during the anthem would have been a good one, too
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I agree completely. Today's tech sector rests on the fiction that their interests equal the public good. The more that fiction becomes untenable, I hope, the stronger efforts to defend the public good (which I think the NSF serves) will be.
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In a way, this is already happening, as tech companies spirit away top academic talent. The university system still provides the credentialing and fundamental research. Eliminating that would be self-defeating, but for all their long-termism, I don't think most tech leaders think 2 steps ahead.
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Meanwhile, if you want to hear an insightful analysis of what AI can and cannot do, and the state of private and public AI investment in today's U.S., I recommend @rcalo.bsky.social's latest interview.
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More Murphy outside USAID: "This is a constitutional crisis that we are in today. Let's call it what it is. The people get to decide how we defend the USA. The people get to decide how their taxpayer money is spent. Elon Musk does not get to decide."
"We are weaker today than we were yesterday."