THE CONCEPT OF MIXED MIGRATION: REFLECTING ON TODAY'S MIGRATORY POLICIES, MOVEMENTS AND PARADIGMS SHIFTS

From the Programme for the Study of Global Migration:

A conference on THE CONCEPT OF MIXED MIGRATION: REFLECTING ON TODAY'S MIGRATORY POLICIES, MOVEMENTS AND PARADIGMS SHIFTS.

Date: 8-9 April 2010

Place: AJF

Full programme here.

The Life Raft Debate

A week ago one of my favorite public radio shows aired an interesting story on the Life Raft Debate, which has taken place under the aegis of the University of Montevallo (in Alabama) Philosophy Club for about the past 10 years. The premise of the debate, as explained on the broadcast [FYI you can listen to the broadcast streaming here; the relevant section is about 42 minutes in, but be forewarned, the point of the story is, in part, to chastize pandering in public discourse], is that the audience is on a life raft, and that they can only select one of the faculty members on stage to join their life raft, thus surviving. Each of the faculty members on stage – from departments like English, Art History, Computer Science, Math, History, etc. – have to argue why their discipline would be the most useful to the raft – a parallel with the question of “what is the value of a liberal arts degree”?

One of the history professors who participated in a past debate was quoted as having argued that, in a life raft situation, the value of a historian was to provide instruction on how to be a benevolent dictator to the dictator which would inevitably arise in the chaos of a life raft situation. While this is amusing (and nefarious!), it begs an examination of what value to attribute to the discipline of history. How about this as a springboard for a discussion?