On her book Jimmy Carter,Human Rights,and the National Agenda
Cover Interview of June 28, 2009
Lastly
I think this book is significant for two reasons.
First, there is so much smart work in the world that it is almost impossible to keep up with your own field, much less get into a field where you aren’t comfortable. I’m lucky because I’ve always been at the intersection of different areas. That is not to say that I am the expert in any one of them, but I am aware of the work in a lot of different fields. So I was able to synthesize some of the most important ideas from several different subfields. Hopefully, the book brings some insight that we wouldn’t otherwise have.
Second, I think it is important for us to understand how the presidency really works in relation to the mass public. When are presidents persuasive? How does that persuasion work? What are the consequences? The presidency looms so large in public affairs and the stakes are so high that any insight we can muster on the institution is important.
[T]he Holocaust transformed our whole way of thinking about war and heroism. War is no longer a proving ground for heroism in the same way it used to be. Instead, war now is something that we must avoid at all costs—because genocides often take place under the cover of war. We are no longer all potential soldiers (though we are that too), but we are all potential victims of the traumas war creates. This, at least, is one important development in the way Western populations envision war, even if it does not always predominate in the thinking of our political leaders.Carolyn J. Dean, Interview of February 01, 2011
The dominant premise in evolution and economics is that a person is being loyal to natural law if he or she attends to self’s interest and welfare before being concerned with the needs and demands of family or community. The public does not realize that this statement is not an established scientific principle but an ethical preference. Nonetheless, this belief has created a moral confusion among North Americans and Europeans because the evolution of our species was accompanied by the disposition to worry about kin and the collectives to which one belongs.Jerome Kagan, Interview of September 17, 2009
Lastly
I think this book is significant for two reasons.
First, there is so much smart work in the world that it is almost impossible to keep up with your own field, much less get into a field where you aren’t comfortable. I’m lucky because I’ve always been at the intersection of different areas. That is not to say that I am the expert in any one of them, but I am aware of the work in a lot of different fields. So I was able to synthesize some of the most important ideas from several different subfields. Hopefully, the book brings some insight that we wouldn’t otherwise have.
Second, I think it is important for us to understand how the presidency really works in relation to the mass public. When are presidents persuasive? How does that persuasion work? What are the consequences? The presidency looms so large in public affairs and the stakes are so high that any insight we can muster on the institution is important.
© 2009 Mary Stuckey