“Diversity” has become a mantra within discussions of university admissions policies and many other arenas of American society. In the essays collected here, Sanford Levinson, a leading scholar of constitutional law and American government, wrestles with various notions of diversity. He begins by explaining why he finds the concept to be almost useless as a genuine guide to public policy. Discussing affirmative action in university admissions, including the now famous University of Michigan Law School case, he argues both that there may be good reasons to use preferences—including race and ethnicity—and that these reasons have relatively little to do with any cogently developed theory of diversity. Distinguished by Levinson’s characteristic open-mindedness and willingness to tease out the full implications of various claims, each of these nine essays, written over the past decade, develops a case study focusing on a particular aspect of public life in a richly diverse, and sometimes bitterly divided, society. Although most discussions of diversity have focused on race and ethnicity, Levinson is particularly interested in religious diversity and its implications. Why, he asks, do arguments for racial and ethnic diversity not also counsel a concern to achieve religious diversity within a student body? He considers the propriety of judges drawing on their religious views in making legal decisions and the kinds of questions Senators should feel free to ask nominees to the federal judiciary who have proclaimed the importance of their religion in structuring their own lives. In exploring the sense in which Sandy Koufax can be said to be a “Jewish baseball player,” he engages in broad reflections on professional identity. He asks whether it is desirable, or even possible, to subordinate merely "personal" aspects of one’s identity—religion, political viewpoints, gender—to the impersonal demands of the professional role. Wrestling with Diversity is a powerful interrogation of the assumptions and contradictions underlying public life in a multicultural world.

"When a Western-backed leader abuses their power and turns against their own people, bringing them to account for their crimes is an uphill battle. In this fastpaced expose, Reed Brody, a former investigator with Human Rights Watch, describes how he and his international team of investigators and torture survivors did just that. Brody tells how he and his team unearthed evidence and witnesses, petitioned courts and skeptical governments, and lobbied public opinion to bring Hissène Habré, the former dictator of Chad to justice. Habré, whose violent ascent to power was engineered by the U.S. government, had for eight years jailed, tortured and murdered tens of thousands of people in a desperately poor country he held captive to his cruel and uncompromising ambition. This story sounds the alarm about the tragic consequences of such a policy. Furthermore, the Habré case shows there is nothing inevitable about brutal tyrants going unpunished for their crimes, even when they have previously had powerful allies in the United States and Europe. With enough persistence, cunning, and imagination, survivors and their supporters can sometimes bring even the worst criminals to justice"--

"First published in 1974, Charles Fried's Medical Experimentation is a classic statement of the moral relationship between doctor and patient, as expressed within the concept of personal care. This concept is then tested in the context of medical experimentation and, more specifically, the randomized controlled trial (RCT). Regularly referred to as a point of departure for ethical and legal discussions of the RCT, the book has long been out of print. This new, second edition includes a general introduction by Franklin Miller and the late Alan Wertheimer, a reprint of the 1974 text, and an in-depth analysis by Harvard Law School scholars I. Glenn Cohen and D. James Greiner which discusses the extension of RTCTs to social science and public policy contexts. The volume concludes with a new essay by Charles Fried that reflects on the original text and how it applies to the contemporary landscape of medicine and medical experimentation." -- Back cover.

"In a groundbreaking book based on six years of reporting, leading expert on humanitarian aid and development David Rieff offers a review of whether the end of extreme poverty and widespread hunger are within our reach. Some of the most brilliant scientists, world politicians, and development experts agree that the eradication of hunger is an essential task for the new millennium. Yet in the last decade, the prices of wheat, soy and rice have soared. This has condemned the hundreds of millions of the world's population who live on less than one dollar per day to a state of hunger and insecurity. Rieff searches for the causes of this food security crisis, as well as what lies behind the failures to respond to disaster: failures to address climate change, poor governance, and misguided optimism. Rieff cautions against the increased privatization of aid, as well as the interventions of celebrity campaigners, whose business-led solutions rob development of political urgency. He dismisses the idle hope of Bill Gates and Warren Buffett that food scarcity can be solved by technological innovation alone. The path ahead, Rieff reminds us, demands we rethink the fundamental causes of the world's grotesque inequalities and understand that what is at stake is a political challenge we are failing to confront".