第17讲：《讨论反歧视行动》
学生们讨论反歧视行动和大学招生问题。学校在招生的时候考虑种族和族裔因素是否正确？是否侵犯了个人权利？是否和喜欢一个明星运动员一样平等和主观？这样的争论是不是倾向于把推行多样化变成合理的呢？这个观点应该如何来反对一个学生的努力和成绩更重要的观点呢？
Affirmative action平权运动
Cheryl Hopwood case: Is it just to consider race and ethnicity as a factor in admissions?
Law school defender: (Minorities) didn’t receive the same kind of help that they might have received had they gone to a school with better funding. Schools should take into account the different meaning those tests and grades have, in the light of educational disadvantage in the background. “Correcting for the effects of unequal preparation”
Law school defender2: Affirmative action is justified at least for now as a way of compensating for past injustice, the legacy of slavery and segregation.
Answer to it: What happened in the past has no bearing on what happens today.
Answer: Because of past injustices, today we have a higher proportion of African Americans who are in poverty, who face less opportunities than white people.
Answer: There are differences, but the way to fix those differences is not by some artificial fixing of the result. We should fix the differences by, for example, funding schools. Only fixing the results makes it look more equal but it isn’t.
Affirmative action perpetuates divisions between the races rather than achieve the ultimate goal of race being an irrelevant factor in our society.
Major problem with Cheryl’s case is that she can’t control her ethnicity. Basing admissions on factors that people can’t control is fundamentally unfair.
Answer: there are a lot of things that you can’t control besides race. If your parents are scholarly you also have a higher chance to get a better grade.
Three arguments from this discussion in defense of considering race and ethnicity as a factor in admissions:
1. Corrective argument. Correcting for differences in educational backgrounds. (Only academic promise and scholarly potential should count in admissions)
2. Compensatory argument. Compensating for past wrongs.
1. Diversity argument. Makes a certain appeal to the social purpose or the social mission of the college or university. For educational experience, and for society as a whole. The common good is advanced if there is a racially and ethnically diverse student body. 哈佛的argument：只是在专业，出生地，等等一长串diversity的考量中加上了ethnicity这一项。
Objections:
Compensatory argument: Is it fair to make Cheryl Hopwood today to make the sacrifice, to pay the compensation for an injustice that was admittedly committed and egregious, in the past, but which she was not implicated. -> Is there such a thing as group rights or collective responsibility that reaches over time.
Diversity argument: Is there an individual right that is violated? Don’t we deserve to be considered according to our excellences, our achievements, our accomplishments, our hard work?
It is something like Rawls’ rejection of moral desert as the basis of distributive justice. 道义应得并不能作为分配正义的基础
Once Harvard defines its mission, and designs its admission policy in the light of its mission, people who meet the criteria are entitled to be admitted.
第18讲：《目的是什么？》
Sandel介绍亚里士多德关于公平和正义的理论，简单地说，是告诉人们他们该付出什么，该得到什么。亚里士多德认为，一个人在考虑分配问题的时候，必须考虑分配的目标，终点和目的。对他来说，这是关于一个人找到合适的位置来发挥他的美德的事情。
Objection to last class’s final point that a university can define its own mission:
Can a college or university define its social purpose any way it wants to and define admissions criteria accordingly?
Example of Texas Law School 1950’s policy of not accepting black students, and Harvard 1930’s policy of not accepting Jews… what’s the difference between them and today’s Harvard policy of diversity?
Distinction on the existence of malice, exclusive vs. inclusive
Is it possible, and is it desirable, to detach questions of distributive justice from questions of moral desert and questions of virtue?
Aristotle:
Justice is a matter of giving people what they deserve. It’s a matter of figuring out the proper fit between persons, with their virtues, and their appropriate social roles
“Justice involves two factors: things and the persons to whom the things are assigned. In general we say that persons who are equal should have equal things assigned to them.”
Question: equal on what aspects?
Aristotle: that depends on the sort of thing we are distributing
The best flute should go to the best flute players because that’s what flutes are for. To be played well.
Looking to the goal to determine the just allocation
Telos: the goal, the direction, the end
The idea of reasoning form the goal, from the telos, is called “teleological reasoning” 泰洛逻辑推理（目的论）