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Parents, educators, and students have criticized the Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts & Literacy in History/Social Studies, Science, and Technical Subjects for expecting students to regurgitate evidence from assigned texts rather than think for themselves. This article argues that this popular critique is accurate and that the Common Core, regardless of its advocates' intentions, has undemocratic consequences. Initially, the essay considers a democratic argument for the Common Core. Then, I show that the standards themselves, faithfully implemented, lead to assignments and assessments that give students few opportunities to articulate their own thoughts or responses. I argue that this kind of education does not inculcate democratic habits and that democratic education requires empowering people in the local school community to construct their own education standards.

This article, titled "Kantian Perfectionists, Muslim Perfectionists, and Intelligent Devils," discusses the book "Kant, Liberalism, and the Meaning of Life" by Jeffrey Church. The article explores the idea that progressive politics can be seen as a kind of religion, providing meaning to people's lives by fighting against ignorance and oppression. Church argues that Kant's philosophy offers a way to inspire progressive politics and counteract nationalist and right-wing populist movements. He suggests that Kant's philosophy, when understood in its entirety, provides a naturalistic and substantive vision of the meaning of life that is compatible with liberalism and cosmopolitanism. The article also examines how Kantian political liberalism can engage with different religious perspectives, such as Muslim perfectionists, and the challenges and potential strategies involved in doing so. [Extracted from the article]

Political theorists argue that justice requires treating people's time as having equal worth. In this article, I contend that justice sometimes requires making exceptions to uniform time rules. The article focuses on New York State's regulations for nonpublic schools and how they affect Haredi (ultra-Orthodox) Jewish day schools, or yeshivas. Dissatisfied yeshiva graduates, the state education department, and several liberal political theorists assert that the state should pressure yeshivas to dedicate more time to secular studies. Reconstructing Horace Kallen's argument against the melting pot conception of citizenship and for cultural pluralism, I maintain that liberal states should be generous toward non-liberal ways of life on condition that they do not systematically abuse children or pose a danger to public safety. A liberal education landscape may sustain many kinds of schooling, including ones that outsiders think waste time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Parents, educators, and students have criticized the Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts & Literacy in History/Social Studies, Science, and Technical Subjects for expecting students to regurgitate evidence from assigned texts rather than think for themselves. This article argues that this popular critique is accurate and that the Common Core, regardless of its advocates' intentions, has undemocratic consequences. Initially, the essay considers a democratic argument for the Common Core. Then, I show that the standards themselves, faithfully implemented, lead to assignments and assessments that give students few opportunities to articulate their own thoughts or responses. I argue that this kind of education does not inculcate democratic habits and that democratic education requires empowering people in the local school community to construct their own education standards. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author stresses the need for school disctrict leaders to empower parents under the adminisrtation of U.S. President Donald Trump. He advises school leaders to invite parents to help chart the course of public education or watch them switch to the side of school choice. He mentions Trump's criticism of public education for depriving children of the opportunity to enter the middle class.

This essay addresses the question of how to build political coalitions to address global warming. For speculative realists such as Levi Bryant, responding to climate change demands materialist ontologies that recognize the efficacy of things themselves, e.g. fossil fuels. And yet, I argue, Bryant does not sufficiently address the political assignment of building political coalitions with people who endorse different ontologies. To illuminate this possibility, I show how the American evangelical David Gushee arrives at similar conclusions by a different route. The essay encourages speculative realists to fold modesty into their political thinking for the sake of building coalitions with theists about matters of common concern. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Critical Islam is an intellectual orientation that prizes timeliness and broad-mindedness and a political sensibility that tends to honor majority rule, minority rights, and the good of pluralism. This essay considers how an important European Muslim scholar, Tariq Ramadan, promotes critical Islam in his call for a moratorium on stoning, his argument for the reformation of fatwa committees, and his analysis of the Arab Awakening. The essay argues that the art of controversy and the building of civil society—more so than political revolution—can cultivate a critical sensibility among Muslim scholars and publics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Political Liberalism, John Rawls describes a metaethical procedure - political constructivism - whereby political theorists formulate political principles by assembling and reworking ideas from the public political culture. To many of his moral realist and moral constructivist critics, Rawls's procedure is simply a recent version of the 'popular moral philosophy' that Kant excoriates in the Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals. In this article, I defend the idea of political constructivism on philosophical and political grounds. Initially, I argue that political constructivism is the best available methodology for self-legislating, socially embedded and fallible human beings; then I show that political constructivism may produce principles that could garner the principled assent of Euro-American Muslims such as Taha Jabir Al-Alwani. The article concludes by considering how political constructivism might be employed to formulate new political principles for Euro-American societies experiencing and confronting the Islamic revival. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author comments on the article "Rawls, Islam, and Political Constructivism: Some Questions for Tampio," by Andrew Valls, which is a response to his paper on political constructivism. He thanks Valls for inviting him to clarify points where he diverged from most Rawls scholars. According to the author, political constructivism is an art that teaches political liberals how to combine empirical data and philosophical reflection to build conceptual systems to guide political action.

The article enters a heated debate about the ideals and organization of the postmodern left. Hardt and Negri, two key figures in this debate, claim that their concept of the multitude -- a revolutionary, proletarian body that organizes singularities -- integrates the insights of Deleuze and Lenin. I argue, however, that Deleuze anticipated and resisted a Leninist appropriation of his political theory. This essay challenges the widely accepted assumption that Hardt and Negri carry forth Deleuze's legacy. At the same time, the essay advocates Deleuze's concept of left assemblages -- protean political bodies working for freedom and equality -- as a valuable but underappreciated contribution to the liberal-democratic tradition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay explores how the garden (in Persian, pairadaeza) may function as an image of flourishing pluralism among theists and naturalists. Initially, the essay draws upon A Thousand Plateaus to formulate the principles of a Deleuzian comparative political theory. Next, the essay interprets and evaluates the work of the Sufi scholar Seyyed Hossein Nasr, the al-Qaeda ideologue Ayman al-Zawahiri, and the Shi'i political reformer 'Abdolkarim Soroush. The essay concludes by considering how diverse existential faiths (or flowers) in the garden may collaborate to address the ecological crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]