•  21
    Torture Approval in Comparative Perspective
    Human Rights Review 12 (4): 441-463. 2011.
    Torture is (almost) universally condemned as barbaric and ineffective, yet it persists in the modern world. What factors influence levels of support for torture? Public opinion data from 31 countries in 2006 and 2008 (a total of 44 country-years) are used to test three hypotheses related to the acceptability of torture. The findings, first, show that outright majorities in 31 country-years reject the use of torture. Multiple regression results show that countries with high per capita income and …Read more
  •  9
    Introduction: The view from judgment day
    with Terry Eagleton, Colin Richmond, Lionel Gossman, William Weber, and Glenn Holland
    Common Knowledge 14 (1): 29-33. 2008.
    This essay introduces a cluster of articles titled “Devalued Currency: An Elegiac Symposium on Paradigm Shifts.” Eagleton's piece addresses, from a perspective indebted to Walter Benjamin, the notion of Thomas Kuhn that “shifts” in the controlling paradigms of disciplines and practices are entirely transformative not only of their futures but also of their pasts. Benjamin argued that a work of art is a set of potentials that may or may not be realized in the vicissitudes of its afterlife. The tr…Read more