S. Prakash Sethi is a university distinguished professor at the Zicklin School of Business at Baruch College in the City University of New York; the Forrest Mars, Sr., visiting professor of ethics, politics, and economics at Yale University; and the president of the International Center for Corporate Accountability. An article he wrote on Apple’s labor standards is available from the Carnegie Council’s website.

Click here to download the episode (32:32, 23.5 mb, MP3), or click on the embedded media player below. You can also download the transcript.

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Sethi mentions the FLA, or Fair Labor Association, the monitoring group that has audited Chinese factories on Apple’s behalf. Their report into Foxconn, which was widely discussed in the media, is available on their website.

For readers interested in learning more about Sethi and his work with Mattel in particular, he was profiled in 2007 by Jonathan Dee in the New York Times Magazine.

In addition to its more recent coverage of Apple, the New York Times published its investigative reports into Apple’s supply chain earlier this year in a series titled “The iEconomy.” Charles

This American Life’s controverisal episodes on Apple are “Mr. Daisey and the Apple Factory” and “Retraction.” The former episode was, of course, retracted in the second, but it still makes for entertaining listening—and by most estimates Daisey’s broader picture of Apple is true, whether or not he witnessed it. The New York Times Reporter featured in “Retraction” is Charles Duhigg, who co-wrote the “iEconomy” reports.

The Daily Show jumped on the Apple bandwagon back in January; see the clip here.

S. Prakash Sethi is a university distinguished professor at the Zicklin School of Business at Baruch College in the City University of New York; the Forrest Mars, Sr., visiting professor of ethics, politics, and economics at Yale University; and the president of the International Center for Corporate Accountability. An article he wrote on Apple’s labor standards is available from the Carnegie Council’s website.

Click here to download the episode (32:32, 23.5 mb, MP3), or click on the embedded media player below. You can also download the transcript.

Resources

Sethi mentions the FLA, or Fair Labor Association, the monitoring group that has audited Chinese factories on Apple’s behalf. Their report into Foxconn, which was widely discussed in the media, is available on their website.

For readers interested in learning more about Sethi and his work with Mattel in particular, he was profiled in 2007 by Jonathan Dee in the New York Times Magazine.

In addition to its more recent coverage of Apple, the New York Times published its investigative reports into Apple’s supply chain earlier this year in a series titled “The iEconomy.” Charles

This American Life’s controverisal episodes on Apple are “Mr. Daisey and the Apple Factory” and “Retraction.” The former episode was, of course, retracted in the second, but it still makes for entertaining listening—and by most estimates Daisey’s broader picture of Apple is true, whether or not he witnessed it. The New York Times Reporter featured in “Retraction” is Charles Duhigg, who co-wrote the “iEconomy” reports.

The Daily Show jumped on the Apple bandwagon back in January; see the clip here.

Seth Lazar is a research fellow at the School of Philosophy at the Australian National University. You can find many examples of his work on just war theory and other topics on his website.

Click here to download the episode (28:26, 20.5 mb, MP3), or click on the embedded media player below. You can also download the transcript.

Resources

The modern writer of the definitive traditionalist view of just war theory is Michael Walzer. Lazar mentions his hugely influential book Just and Unjust Wars (New York: Basic Books, [1977] 2000).

Lazar ascribes the notion of a “reductive individualist” view of just war theory to the philosopher David Rodin. For more on that view, see Rodin’s War and Self-Defense (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005).

The “foremost advocate” of the new orthodoxy, as Lazar puts it, is Jeff McMahan. Longtime listeners will remember the PER episode he did back in 2009, on proportionality.

Lazar cites a statistic on the percentage of people in modern economies who work in war-related in industries. The source, as Lazar notes, is Alexander Downes, Targeting Civilians in War (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2008).

The discussion about the permissibility of killing executives from the United Fruit Company, in relation to the U.S. intervention in Guatemala, comes up in Jeff McMahan’s “The Ethics of Killing in War,” Ethics 114 (2004).

Samantha Brennan is a professor of philosophy at the University of Western Ontario. For an example of her work on women and inequality, see her “Feminist Ethics and Everyday Inequalities,” Hypatia 24, no. 1 (2009).

Click here to download the episode (30:45, 22.2 mb, MP3), or click on the online media player below. You can also download the transcript.

* Correction: A commenter rightly pointed out that in the original version of the audio introduction, I grossly mischaractertized the precedent set by Hillary Clinton’s appointment as secretary of state. I regret the error. —MP

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Brennan mentions the work of Mary Rowe of MIT, where she is a professor and ombudsperson.

The story of Claudia Card’s experience at the Harvard library is discussed in Brennan’s Hypatia paper linked above, and was discussed by Card herself in her book The Atrocity Paradigm: A Theory of Evil (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002).

Iris Young talks about oppression versus inequality in her essay “Five Faces of Oppression” in the book Justice and the Politics of Difference (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990).

For an example of the problems facing women in academic philosophy, see Sally Haslinger’s “Changing the Ideology and Culture of Philosophy.” Louise Antony‘s paper on the same subject does not appear to be online, but she gave a presentation titled “Different Voices or Perfect Storm? Explaining the Dearth of Women in Philosophy” at a 2010 conference.

The Walzer Christian refers to is, of course, Michael Walzer, and his concept of spheres of justice are described at length in his eponymous book: Spheres of Justice: A Defense of Pluralism and Equality (New York: Basic Books, 1984).

Finally, the author of the book advising women to educate up and marry down is Rhona Mahoney, and her book is Kidding Ourselves: Breadwinning, Babies, and Bargaining Power (New York: Basic Books, 1996).

Episodes in Part II center on questions of the latter two phases of just war theory:  jus in bello and  jus post bellum. This episode features contributions by the following students.

1. Adam Kisting and Matheus Oliveira, on proportionality.

2. Diego Velasco, on the doctrine of double effect.

3. Joseph Kurts, on the use of drones.

4. Phil Shapiro and Eliot Lilien, on the permissibility of torture.

5. Krystal Gopaul, on the case of Pat Tillman.

6. Francesca Ficalora, on post-traumatic stress disorder.

7. Carlos Sosa, on jus post bellum.

Click here to download the episode (32:32, 23.5 MB, MP3), or click on the online media player below.

The students were asked to answer the question: what do today’s new wars—especially Iraq and Afghanistan—tell us about our traditions of just war theory? Episodes in Part I center on questions of the first phase of just war theory, jus ad bellum. Listen to the episode to hear their answers.

Part I features the following students.

1. Sam Colonna, on humanitarian intervention.

2. Adam Yefet, on jus ad bellum.

3. Raymond Holgado, on terrorism.

4. Jonathan Vazcones, on economic sanctions.

Click here to download the episode (32:32, 23.5 MB, MP3), or click on the online media player below.

Joy Gordon is Professor of Political Philosophy at Fairfield University and a Senior Fellow at Yale University’s Global Justice Program. Her book about the Iraq sanctions regime is Invisible War. Her work on sanctions has also appeared in Harper’s and Ethics & International Affairs.

Click here to download the episode (39:23, 19 mb, MP3), or click on the online media player below. You can also download the transcript.

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The UN Security Council resolutions establishing the sanctions regime are 661 (establishing the initial regime in August 1990) and 687 (extending it after the Gulf War ended). The full quote from 661 is as follows:

All States shall prevent: … The sale or supply by their nationals or from their territories or using their flag vessels of any commodities or products, including weapons or any other military equipment, whether or not originating in their territories but not including supplies intended strictly for medical purposes, and, in humanitarian circumstances, foodstuffs, to any person or body in Iraq or Kuwait or to any person or body for the purposes of any business carried on in or operated from Iraq or Kuwait, and any activities by their nationals or in their territories which promote or are calculated to promote such sale or supply of such commodities or products.

The figure of 500,000 Iraqi children dead due to sanctions is widely cited, but not without controversy. Gordon documents the debate in an extensive endnote in Invisible War (p. 255, n. 82).

Electricity is a major point of contention in present-day Iraq. A recent New York Times article describes the power shortages in Baghdad and elsewhere. Protests over electricity in Basra turned deadly in June, forcing the resignation of the electricity minister.

Gordon mentions “deontological” theories. For nonphilosophers, these are rule-based theories; Kant is their most famous proponent.

The website of the 661 Committee is, surprisingly, still online.

The term “P5″ refers to the five permanent members of the UN Security Council (China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States).

The postive study of sanctions Gordon refers to is Gary Clyde Hufbauer, Jeffrey J. Schott, Kimberly Ann Elliott, Barbara Oegg, eds., Economic Sanctions Reconsidered (Washington, D.C.: Peterson Institute, 2007), currently in its third edition.

Robert Pape, a University of Chicago political scientist, wrote about sanctions in “Why Economic Sanctions Do Not Work,” International Security 22, no. 2 (1997).

Gordon refers to the potential deal between Iran, Brazil and Turkey. The deal would have “Iran send 1,200 kilogrammes … of its low-enriched uranium to Turkey in return for 20 percent high-enriched uranium to be supplied by Russia and France at a later date.”

Our guest is Prof. Matthew Rimmer of the Australian National University. Rimmer is a Senior Lecturer at the ANU College of Law, and a member of the ANU Climate Change Institute. He has published widely on intellectual property issues, and is working on a new book titled Intellectual Property and Climate Change: Inventing Clean Technologies.

Click here to download the episode (31:05, 15 mb, MP3), or click on the online media player below. You can also download the transcript.

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We discussed the problems with the patent regime and pharmaceuticals way back in episode 1.

The Chamber of Commerce is a major trade group, representing a wide swath of business owners in the United States. It is known for its conservatism and its vast expenditures on lobbying. There has been a great deal written on the Chamber’s stance on climate change—here’s a good example.

The Copenhagen Climate Conference, technically the 15th annual Conference of Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, was held in Denmark in December 2009. For a recap, see this piece in Time, or revisit the Guardian’s collection of Copenhagen coverage.

The acronym “BRICs” refers to the major emerging economies: Brazil, Russia, India, China. Similarly, the G-77, or Group of 77, is a negotiating group at the United Nations comprised of developing countries. The small island states are exactly what they sound like.

The Doha Declaration (Wikipedia) is a Minsterial declaration of the World Trade Organization, issued in 2001, that clarifies the right of WTO members to manage intellectual property rights in relation to access to medicines. In particular, it emphasizes that members have the right to issue compulsory licenses (i.e., officially override patents) for medicines. Rimmer has written an interesting essay on the Doha Declaration, where he examines the sole case of a country (Rwanda) exercising its Doha Declaration rights. He found the mechanism for implenting the declaration wanting.

Article 27 of the TRIPS Agreement (the WTO treaty on intellectual property rights), describes the scope of patents. And it provides the exception that “Members may exclude from patentability inventions, the prevention within their territory of the commercial exploitation of which is necessary to protect ordre public or morality, including to protect human, animal or plant life or health or to avoid serious prejudice to the environment, provided that such exclusion is not made merely because the exploitation is prohibited by their law.”

As noted, compulsory licenses are official overrides of patents. (Patent-holders must still be paid some royalties for use of the patent, however.) Although countries are nominally free to issue them, attempts to exercise this right have been met with fierce opposition. Rimmer mentions the infamous case of Thailand, which in 2007 issued a compulsory license for efavirenz, an Abbott Labs HIV/AIDS medication. Abbott responded by withdrawing registration for other medications in Thailand, and successfully lobbied the United States government to exert trade pressure on Thailand. See a review of the case at the pro-compulsory licensing KEI website.

Rimmer mentions “Sachs,” referring of course to the economist Jeffrey Sachs.

Ecomagination.

Specifically, Carl Horton, GE’s IP Chief, said that the “patent system is one of the necessary prerequisites to inspire companies to do the right things about climate change.”

Here, again, is KEI (Knowledge Ecology International).

The Virgin Earth Challenge.

The Nobel Peace Prize was awarded in 2007 to Al Gore and the Intergovermental Panel on Climate Change for “their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change.”

Details on Greenpeace’s Stop Esso campaign.

And finally, here’s the Yes Men‘s Chamber of Commerce hoax. And the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s announcement that they will defend the Yes Men.

Today on Public Ethics Radio, we examine questions of knowledge management, intellectual property rights, and research ethics through the lens of Australia’s Aboriginal groups. Our guest is the social anthropologist Sarah Holcombe. Dr. Holcombe is a research fellow at the National Centre for Indigenous Studies at the Australian National University. Many of Dr. Holcombe’s writings are available on her website.

Click here to download the episode (31:38, 15.2 mb, MP3), or click on the online media player below. You can also download the transcript.

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The Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples was adopted by the UN General Assembly on September 13, 2007. You can read the text and get background here. Australia, Canada, the United States, and New Zealand were the only no votes. Australia’s opposition under the John Howard government is described in this article in the Australian.

Sarah refers to a number of Aboriginal terms that will be unfamiliar to many listeners. I’ll attempt to document those here.

Tjukurpa: often rendered in English as “Dreamtime” or “Dreaming,” this complex term covers law, morality, religion, and specific knowledge (and oral enactments of knowledge) of those concepts among indigenous groups in Australia. Sarah uses it in the latter sense. The Australian government gives a brief introduction; or you can check out the Wikipedia article on Dreaming as a starting place.

Sarah mentions the famous neem tree. This tree is native to India, and has been in use locally for centuries. In the 1990s, the American company W.R. Grace patented the tree’s use as a pesticide. The patent was fiercely contested, and eventually revoked, on the grounds that the patent was inappropriately privatizing the prior knowledge extant in oral and folk traditions. Read up on it here and here.

A similar struggle is ongoing over hoodia, a cactus-like plant native to the Kalahari Desert in South Africa. Well known to the indigenous San Bushmen, the plant is now patented for use as a weight-loss product. 60 Minutes relates the tale.

Bush potato.

Akudjura, or bush tomato.

Christian and Sarah both mention the notion of “benefit sharing.” This is a technical term within intellectual property law, referring to the (moral and legal) obligation to equitably share the benefits of biodiversity. Although the precise positive meaning is fiercely contested, the broad concept can be illustrated negatively. If a researcher patents a new medicine based on plants traditionally used an indigenous group, benefits would not be adequately shared if that group had neither access to that new medicine nor shared in the profits in any way. The governing law here is the 1992 Convention on Biological Diversity, though its provisions on benefit sharing are vague.

Sarah mentions the Northern Territory NRM Boards: NRM stands for Natural Resource Management. The project for them that Sarah mentions resulted in a report, “Guidelines for Indigenous Ecological Knowledge Management (including Archiving and Repatriation).”

Christian asks about the development of ethics protocols for researchers. These protocols are not publicly available, but listeners might be interested in the related community guide to ethics protocols for researchers, which are intended for the consumption of Aboriginal communities that may participate in researcher.

Acephalous societies are those that lack political hierarchies.

The Desert Knowledge CRC, or Cooperative Research Centre, is an Australian research center, which funds some of the research under discussion in this episode. Sarah was previously their Social Science Coordinator.

The International Society of Ethnobiology Code of Ethics is available here.

The “sophisicated land management organization” is Dhimurru. It is located in Australia’s Northern Territory, here.

The Land Rights Act is land reform legislation passed in the 1970s.

Walpiri Media is based in Yuendumu, Northern Territory, here.

John Bulun Bulun is the artist whose work was appropriated without his consent. Terri Jancke, an Australian indigenous intellectual property lawyer, has written extensively about the case.

The Strehlow Research Centre in Alice Springs.

The Aranda people.

Details on the Australian Environmental Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act, and its review (the “Hawke Review”), here.

Mutitjulu is an Aboriginal community located near Uluru in the Northern Territory. As recounted in the episode, the town is at the center of the issues that sparked the Northern Territory Intervention. The intervention is an ongoing federal program officially aimed at stopping child abuse. Started by the Howard government in 2007, it was continued in modified form under Kevin Rudd. Much has been written about Mutitjulu, but the initial controversial report was from the Australia Broadcasting Corporation’s Lateline program.