Forgive me if I sent this out earlier, but this OpEd was where I first heard
of Michael Sandel.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/15/opinion/15friedman.html
I'm nearly done with the set of videos, and when done, I plan to start in on
his book.
-- Owen
Justice Goes GlobalBy THOMAS L.
FRIEDMAN<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/opinion/editorialsandoped/oped/columnists/thomaslfriedman/index.html?inline=nyt-per>Published:
June 14, 2011
You probably missed the recent special issue of China Newsweek, so let me
bring you up to date. Who do you think was on the cover — named the “most
influential foreign figure” of the year in China? Barack Obama? No. Bill
Gates? No. Warren Buffett? No. O.K., I’ll give you a hint: He’s a rock star
in Asia, and people in China, Japan and South Korea scalp tickets to hear
him. Give up?
Josh Haner/The New York Times
Thomas L. Friedman
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It was Michael J. Sandel, the Harvard University political philosopher.
This news will not come as a surprise to Harvard students, some 15,000 of
whom have taken Sandel’s legendary “Justice” class. What makes the class so
compelling is the way Sandel uses real-life examples to illustrate the
philosophies of the likes of Aristotle, Immanuel Kant and John Stuart Mill.
Sandel, 58, will start by tossing out a question, like, “Is it fair that
David Letterman makes 700 times more than a schoolteacher?” or “Are we
morally responsible for righting the wrongs of our grandparents’
generation?” Students offer competing answers, challenge one another across
the hall, debate with the philosophers — and learn the art of reasoned moral
argument along the way.
Besides being educational, the classes make great theater — so much so that
Harvard and WGBH (Boston’s PBS station) filmed them and created a public
television series that aired across the country in 2009. (My wife, Ann, and
I were among the many donors to the PBS broadcast.) The series, now freely
available online (atwww.JusticeHarvard.org <http://www.justiceharvard.org/>),
has begun to stir interest in surprising new places.
Last year, Japan’s NHK TV broadcast a translated version of the PBS series,
which sparked a philosophy craze in Japan and prompted the University of
Tokyo to create a course based on Sandel’s. In China, volunteer translators
subtitled the lectures and uploaded them to Chinese Web sites, where they
have attracted millions of viewers. Sandel’s recent book — “Justice: What’s
the Right Thing to Do?” — has sold more than a million copies in East Asia
alone. This is a book about moral philosophy, folks!
Here’s The Japan Times describing Sandel’s 2010 visit: “Few philosophers are
compared to rock stars or TV celebrities, but that’s the kind of popularity
Michael Sandel enjoys in Japan.” At a recent lecture in Tokyo, “long lines
had formed outside almost an hour before the start of the evening event.
Tickets, which were free and assigned by lottery in advance, were in such
demand that one was reportedly offered for sale on the Web for $500.” Sandel
began the lecture by asking: “Is ticket scalping fair or unfair?”
But what is most intriguing is the reception that Sandel (a close friend)
received in China. He just completed a book tour and lectures at Tsinghua
and Fudan universities, where students began staking out seats hours in
advance. This semester, Tsinghua started a course called “Critical Thinking
and Moral Reasoning,” modeled on Sandel’s. His class visit was covered on
the national evening news.
Sandel’s popularity in Asia reflects the intersection of three trends. One
is the growth of online education, where students anywhere now can gain
access to the best professors from everywhere. Another is the craving in
Asia for a more creative, discussion-based style of teaching in order to
produce more creative, innovative students. And the last is the hunger of
young people to engage in moral reasoning and debates, rather than having
their education confined to the dry technical aspects of economics, business
or engineering.
At Tsinghua and Fudan, Sandel challenged students with a series of cases
about justice and markets: Is it fair to raise the price of snow shovels
after a snowstorm? What about auctioning university admissions to the
highest bidder? “Free-market sentiment ran surprisingly high,” Sandel said,
“but some students argued that unfettered markets create inequality and
social discord.”
Sandel’s way of teaching about justice “is both refreshing and relevant in
the context of China,” Dean Qian Yingyi of Tsinghua’s School of Economics
and Management, explained in an e-mail. Refreshing because of the style and
relevant because “the philosophic thinking among the Chinese is
mostly instrumentalist and materialistic,” partly because of “the
contemporary obsession on economic development in China.”
Tsinghua’s decision to offer a version of Sandel’s course, added Qian, “is
part of a great experiment of undergraduate education reform currently under
way at our school. ... This is not just one class; it is the beginning of an
era.”
Sandel is touching something deep in both Boston and Beijing. “Students
everywhere are hungry for discussion of the big ethical questions we
confront in our everyday lives,” Sandel argues. “In recent years, seemingly
technical economic questions have crowded out questions of justice and the
common good. I think there is a growing sense, in many societies, that
G.D.P. and market values do not by themselves produce happiness, or a good
society. My dream is to create a video-linked global classroom, connecting
students across cultures and national boundaries — to think through these
hard moral questions together, to see what we can learn from one another.”
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