CFP: What is Liberty Studies?

What should undergraduate college students be learning about liberty? That's a great question, one posed by the The Center for Liberty Studies at the first Liberty Studies Conference. Below is the CFP for the conference.

First Conference on Liberty Studies

What is Liberty Studies?

5 - 6 April 2008

The College of New Jersey
Ewing, New Jersey

Call for Papers

The first annual Liberty Studies Conference, sponsored by The Center for Liberty Studies, will be held this April 5 - 6 at The College of New Jersey in Ewing New Jersey. The theme of our conference is "What is Liberty Studies?" This conference will put forth various ideas of what would constitute Liberty Studies by starting a debate and discussion concerning what undergraduate students ought to be learning about liberty. We are looking to disseminate substantive ideas that professors can consider for their own classes and home institutions.

Papers are welcome on any topic in liberty and from any discipline. We are looking for submissions that are accessible to a wide audience. Bibliographies and works cited should be limited to those works that either will be directly used in the classroom or are deemed important for instructor reference. Reading time of papers should be approximately 20 minutes. Accepted papers will be published in the new online Journal of Liberty Studies.

Abstracts of no less than 250 words are due by January 15th. Email submissions to conference@libertystudies.org Early submission is encouraged.

For more information about Liberty Studies and The Center for Liberty Studies, please visit our website at www.libertystudies.org

This year we are holding our conference in conjunction with the 35th Conference on Value Inquiry "Values and Medicine". For information on the Conference on Value Inquiry go to www.valueinquiry.net

A Question of Political Philosophy

Last night, in Phil of Bio, I made the comment that Nazism is a form of Marxism (most obviously so in that 'Nazism' is an abbreviation of National Socialism, more correctly Nationalsozialismus). It could have been my imagination run amok or it could have in fact happened that when I did so, I heard sneers and gasps of disbelief.

My question is this. If Nazism is not in fact a form of Marxism, (or outgrowth, or direct product, or interpretation), then what is it?

It seems to me that once we make the claim that all property is to be distributed (evenly, or not) by some entity (governmental in the case of fascist Germany), it's only what most people colloquially call a 'semantical game' that we distinguish one form of distribution from another, i.e. 'Fascism' from 'Communism' from 'Socialism', etc.

Hitler and the crew chose to rob from a particular racial or ethnic group. How does that really distinguish them, in any meaningful sense, from Stalin, Chairman Mao, Trotsky, Lenin, or any of their more contemporary heirs (e.g. GW Bush, Gordon Brown, Vladimir Putin).

Maybe not a burning question in 21st century analytic philosophy, but a question nonetheless.

Smooches