Talk: Ann Cudd

“What Is Equality in Higher Education?”

Abstract:

In order to discover how best to approach the goal of equality in higher education, we need to examine what it would mean to say that equality has been achieved. I argue that higher education should serve three goals in a democratic society, which make conflicting apparently equality claims. First it should serve individuals’ goals of achieving flourishing lives. Here the ideal of equality demands that each individual who can achieve and desires a higher education should be able to attend some institution to meet their needs. Second, higher education should serve the social goal to develop competent and creative workers to collectively provide for society’s needs and aspirations. To achieve this, the equality ideal must permit the development of a diverse elite. Third, education should serve the goal of producing democratic equality among persons. Here the equality ideal demands that each person receive enough education to gain the respect and dignity to allow effective political participation. Despite the apparent tension between the demands made by equality on higher education, there is some prospect of realizing them together.

Lunch will be provided. This event is free and open to all; registration is required.
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Professor Ann Cudd works in social and political philosophy, with special interests in feminist theory and the philosophy of economics.  She is the co-author, with Nancy Homstrom, of Capitalism For and Against: A Feminist Debate (2011) and the author of Analyzing Oppression (2006), as well as of a number of articles including “A Contractarian Approach to Corporate Bailouts,” in the Georgetown Journal of Law and Public Policy (2013), “Commitment as Motivation: Sen’s Theory of Agency and the Explanation of Behavior,” in Economics and Philosophy (forthcoming), and “Human Rights and Global Equal Opportunity,” in Human Rights: The Hard Questions, Cindy Holder and David Reidy, eds. (2013).