EMS and Multicultural Outreach in Sweden; Fulbright Update

 

For the past six months I’ve been living in Sweden, serving as the Fulbright Distinguished Chair in American Studies at Uppsala University. I’ve been teaching and lecturing about U.S. constitutional law, and I’ve been learning a lot about Sweden, too. I’ve been especially interested in understanding reported tensions between emergency medical service providers and immigrant communities.

As part of that work, I recently got to know an innovative community outreach program called the Person Behind the Uniform, which brings young people and first responders together to learn about each other’s lives. You can learn more about the program in an article and three documentary videos I published in the Journal of Emergency Medical Services, here. I think it’s a fantastic thing—in fact, I think it provides the philosophical seeds for reframing the entire social contract in a nation undergoing rapid demographic change.

I spoke about a set of related issues recently to the Swedish magazines Respons (here; in Swedish) and Kvartal (here; in English), and at a panel discussion at Culture House co-sponsored by the publisher Fri Tanke and the Royal Academy of Science (here; in English), and I’ve meditated for Expressen (here; in English) on why an increasingly multicultural Sweden ought to institute a civics test for citizenship (hint: it’s not especially to test immigrants). I also spoke early during my time in country to Fri Tanke for its Friday podcast series (here; in English)—and look for an interview with me to be published soon in the online journal Quillette.

Many of these discussions and publications touch on my book The Rule of the Clan, which I’m honored played a role in the thinking of Per Brinkemo as he and Johan Lundberg put together their influential edited collection Klanen (discussed here, in Swedish; see circa time stamps 1:40 and 9:50).

For anyone interested in other things I’ve published in Sweden, you might check out a series of op eds in Dagens Nyheter (about Trumpism and the philosophy of world order; about the Swedish parliamentary elections; about political roadblocks to gun control in America; and about President Trump’s then-threat to declare a national emergency to fund the border wall).

For readers who have come to this post because of their interest in the work of a Fulbright scholar, you might be interested to know that during my time here I’ve also

Blues Break

It’s true, this video has nothing at all to do with law, except that it was made by a legal historian. Still, I had a great time the other week helping spin blues and R&B records with my friend Al Bell at the WPKN studios in Bridgeport, Connecticut … and I brought along my camera … so I thought I’d post this for a fun break on a Saturday night.

 

Water, Paper, Law

In my latest video, an eighteenth-century Italian legal treatise about water inspires some thoughts about law, rare books, and the passage of time. The video is part of a series I’m developing about rare law books. You can view the video here:

I’ve also posted the video on my new channel on Vimeo, to which I’ll be posting all my videos in the future.

Blackstone Goes Hollywood

I’ve made a new video—about Blackstone’s Commentaries. It’s also about storytelling form in legal history. My sister-in-law once named a fish Blackstone, which I thought was a very nice sign of respect to the great eighteenth-century explicator of the common law, but the fish plays no part in this video. But Humphrey Bogart does. And so does Orson Welles. You can watch the video here:

Odds & Ends

Five odds and ends today:

1) My discussion “The Legal Foundations of Individualism,” which I presented as a talk at the annual Telos conference in January, is now available on TELOSscope. As I explain at the start of the piece: “I’ll be addressing two questions about democracy raised by our conference description: first, ‘the reasons for its rarity and volatility’; and, second, ‘the factors that are essential for its stability.’ For each question, I’ll try to provide a concise, mildly provocative answer from my perspective as a writer and scholar about constitutional law and comparative legal history.”

Regarding the first question, “why is democracy so rare and volatile,” I write: “I think one answer we could give to this question is that democracy is volatile because the modern self is a legal achievement. There is nothing outside of law, including individual subjectivity.”

2) ICYMI (in case you missed it): the forum last month about The Rule of the Clan on Cato Unbound was really interesting—and great fun. I was very fortunate to have three thoughtful commentators from different parts of the political spectrum engage with my work: libertarian blogger Arnold Kling, American Conservative editor Daniel McCarthy, and Yale Law School professor John Fabian Witt. There were also many lively comments from readers. The editor of Cato Unbound, Jason Kuznicki of the Cato Institute, posted his own very interesting response on the website Ordinary Times, speaking to some debates within libertarian theory.

3) There were a number of responses to the Cato Unbound forum in various corners of the blogsphere, including an especially interesting discussion on The Sweep, which published another post today that comes into dialogue with my work.

4) My lead essay on Cato Unbound is now available in Spanish on La Tercera Cultura. There seem to be a number of interesting comments en español. To the translator and editors: abrazos!

5) This coming week I’ll be speaking at the Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues at Dickinson College. My fellow panelists will be Prof. Carol Horning of the U.S. Army War College, Prof. Erik Love of the Sociology Department at Dickinson, and Prof. Andrew Wolff of the Dickinson Political Science Department. Earlier that day I’ll be speaking to one of Prof. Horning’s classes on international development at the Peacekeeping and Stability Operations Institute.

6) Totally apropos of nothing I’ve discussed above: I’m looking forward to spending the weekend at a course on wilderness first aid sponsored by the Appalachian Mountain Club. If any of my readers have taken one of SOLO’s wilderness first responder courses, do let me know. See you on the trails!

 

Rule of the Clan Unbound

There’s a symposium this month about The Rule of the Clan on Cato Unbound, the online journal of the Cato Institute. My contribution is now online. In coming days there will responses by Arnold Kling, on March 12; Daniel McCarthy, on March 14; and John Fabian Witt, on March 17. I hope readers will join in the conversation, which promises to be lively and controversial.

In other news, I’ll be speaking tomorrow at Yale Law School beginning at six o’clock, and the paperback of The Rule of the Clan is now available from the good folks at Picador.

It Don’t Mean a Thing if It Ain’t …

“What can the jazz process tell us about life?” That’s the overriding theme of Trading Fours on Blog Talk Radio, hosted by Drs. Jackie Modeste and Wesley J. Watkins, IV.

I had a lively conversation about The Rule of the Clan on the show today, and in keeping with the spirit of Trading Fours—and trading fours—our discussion ranged widely. You can hear the full one-hour show through this media player (or by clicking on the link in the first paragraph):

In the course of our conversation, the three of us had a lively exchange about jazz and democracy I thought worth sharing. Among other things, it seemed like an American version of the discussion I had with Prof. Stefan Kirste about the relation between law and musical aesthetics:

Here’s an excerpt from the conversation, which in the audio file begins at about 33:00:

Me: What liberal government has to sell has to be better than what’s on offer from other social theories.

Jackie: Right.

Me: And if liberal government is working, if it’s corrupt along any lines, certainly those of nepotism, if it’s ineffective, then liberal government deserves to lose. But I don’t think it should. And that’s why I think it’s important to defend central government, to defend modern liberal ideals of robust government capable of vindicating the public interest and thereby liberating individual energy.

Jackie: OK, yes. Yes! So what I’m thinking about is when we—

Me: Jackie, sorry to interrupt you. Something that Wes said … maybe we could play with this a little bit. I’m trying to draw connections to the jazz concerns that you have here on the show. Maybe government is like a band leader. And so if you’re thinking about Duke Ellington, right, and the kind of music that he was able to enable, if you don’t have a good band leader, then someone is going to steal that show and the swing is going to be undermined. I’m not sure if … is that the case in jazz?

Jackie: Wes, do you want to talk about that?

Rule of the Clan Radio Interviews

I’ve really enjoyed speaking on the radio about The Rule of the Clan over the past few months. The interviewers have been really sharp and insightful, and it’s been great to have the chance to talk with readers well outside university circles.

I’ve posted links to the interviews as they were broadcast, but I’ve just learned how to embed audio files from external sites into WordPress (better late than never!). And so for ease of use, I’ll make them available again here, all in one place. To listen, just click on one of the audio players below.

The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC (New York)—12 minutes:

The American Bar Association (Chicago)—15 minutes:

“Think,” with Krys Boyd, on KERA (Dallas)—50 minutes:

Central Standard, with Susan Wilson, on KCUR (Kansas City)—one hour:

Unfortunately, my hour-long interview with The Kathleen Dunn Show on Wisconsin Public Radio can’t be embedded into WordPress. If you’d like to listen, click here for the audio file. And if you’d like to watch a lecture I gave at BYU in 2012 about the book’s national security implications, click here.

I’ve also held an online interview Deven Desai of the blog Concurring Opinions: here.

If Your Law Were an Animal … or a Tool … or Music?

When I was in Europe last November, I asked a group of legal professionals some unusual questions. The results are in my new video.

 

A Lively, Learned Symposium

The symposium about The Rule of the Clan on Concurring Opinions continues—and continues to be highly engaging, with many intelligent, learned posts from the respondents and interesting comments from readers, spanning subjects as diverse as the war in Afghanistan, Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, and “The Godfather.”

You can find the full symposium thus far, with posts in reverse chronological order, here. The provided link will continue to update until the symposium comes to a close this Friday.