A collage of images, featuring most prominently a person holding a sign reading "no justice no peace"

Author: admin

Academia / General / Pedagogy / Teaching Philosophy

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Workshop announcement: Tackling speciesism and anthropocentrism in higher education

Before we return to our schedule of regular posts, I wanted to take the opportunity to share information about this online workshop.

From institutional pressures to competing demands from students, teachers are increasingly having to navigate complex political, pedagogical, and ethical challenges. For anti-speciesist teachers in the context of anthropocentric societies, there are several further layers of difficulty: how should we approach the teaching of core subjects and the general “canon”, when those often replicate speciesist norms and assumptions? Is it necessary to balance “objectivity” and advocacy? Is pedagogical or academic rigour threatened by moves towards animal-friendly pedagogy? How should we  engage with students and colleagues who are resistant to non-anthropocentric perspectives? What specific pedagogical strategies or curriculum design choices (e.g., choice of texts, use of various media, interactive activities, assessment design) can anti-speciesist teachers effectively employ to introduce non-anthropocentric materials without alienating students or triggering a defensive backlash?

This online workshop aims to bring together academics working in politics, philosophy, and adjacent fields to consider the challenges and opportunities associated with tackling speciesism and anthropocentrism in higher education. It will be an opportunity to share ideas, research, and experience. We invite contributions from anyone involved in teaching in relevant fields. We’re looking to provide a space to share reflections on experiences as well as formal paper-presentations. Keeping this in mind, we invite submissions of the following types:

  1. Research papers discussing topics related to the workshop theme, including but not limited to:
    1. Animal activism and teaching,
    2. Teaching controversial topics related to animals,
    3. Teaching the canon with animals in mind,
    4. The intersection between non-anthropocentrism/anti-speciesism, decolonisation, and/or diversification of the curriculum,
    5. The effectiveness of pedagogical interventions,
    6. The role (or reaction) of the broader institution in (or to) animal-friendly pedagogy.
  2. Case-studies, including but not limited to:
    1. Experience of developing non-anthropocentric/anti-speciesist curricula.
    2. Experience of teaching on topics such as non-anthropocentrism, animal rights, veganism, and so on.
    3. Experience of non-traditional forms of assessment, such as reflective journals, campaign projects for animal-related issues, policy design or review addressing animal-related issues. 

Submissions must be suitable for approx. 15-20 minute presentations and Q&A/discussion. Please send anonymised submissions to sara.vangoozen [at] york.ac.uk

The deadline for submissions is 30 March 2026

For any further information, please also contact Sara van Goozen.

AI / Education / Technology

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LLMs can be harmful, even when not making stuff up

This is a guest post by Joe Slater (University of Glasgow).

A screenshot of a phone, showing an AI generated summary in response to the question "How many rocks shall I eat".
Provided by author

It is well known that chatbots powered by LLMs – ChatGPT, Claude, Grok, etc. – sometimes make things up. People have sometimes called these “AI hallucinations”. With my co-authors, I have argued that we should describe chatbots as bullshitting, in the sense described by Harry Frankfurt, i.e., the content is produced with an indifference to the truth. Because of this, developing chatbots that no longer generate novel false utterances (or reduce the proportion of false utterances they output) has been a high priority for big tech companies. We can see this in the public statements made by, e.g., OpenAI, boasting of reduced hallucination rates.

One factor that is sometimes overlooked in this discourse is that generative AI can also be detrimental in that it may stifle development, even when it accurately depicts the information it has been trained on.

Recall the instance of the Google AI overview, which is powered by Google’s Gemini LLM, claiming that “According to UC Berkeley geologists, you should eat at least one small rock per day”. This claim was initially made in the satirical news website, The Onion. While obviously false claims like this are unlikely to deceive, it demonstrates a problem. False claims may be repeated. Some of these could be ones that most people accept, or even that most experts accept. This poses serious problems.

In this short piece, I want to highlight three worries that might escape our notice if we focus only on chatbots making stuff up:

  1. Harmful utterances (true or otherwise),
  2. Homogeneity and diminished challenges to orthodox views (true or otherwise)
  3. Entrenched false beliefs
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AI / Economics / Social justice / Technology / Work

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Can entry-level jobs be saved by virtuous AI?

Photo credit: RonaldCandonga at Pixabay.com, https://pixabay.com/photos/job-office-team-business-internet-5382501/

This is a guest post by Hollie Meehan (University of Lancaster).

We have been warned by the CEO of AI company Anthropic that up to 50% of entry-level jobs could be taken by AI in the coming years. While reporters have pointed out that this could be exaggeration to drive profits, it raises the question of where AI should fit into society. Answering this is a complicated matter that I believe could benefit from considering virtue ethics. I’ll focus on the entry-level job market to demonstrate how these considerations can play an important role in monitoring our use of AI and mitigating the potential fallout.

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General

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Welcome to the 2025/2026 season!

Justice Everywhere is back for a new season. We continue in our aim to provide a public forum for the exchange of ideas about philosophy and public affairs.

We have lots of exciting content coming your way! This includes:

  • Weekly posts from our a wonderful team of house authors, offering analysis of a vast array of moral, ethical, and political issues on Mondays.
  • The continuation of our collaboration with the Journal of Applied Philosophy, introducing readers to cutting-edge research being published on justice-related topics in applied and engaged philosophy.
  • More from our special series: Beyond the Ivory Tower where we interview those who work at/across the boundary between theory and practice, and Teaching Philosophy.

If you have a suggestion for a topic or would like to contribute a guest post on a topical subject in political philosophy (broadly construed), or would like to pitch a series or collaboration – such as publishing a series based on a workshop or special issue – please feel free to get in touch with us at justice.everywhere.blog@gmail.com.

So please follow us, read and share posts on social media (we’re on Facebook, Instagram, Bluesky), and feel free to comment on posts using the comment box at the bottom of each post.

General

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From the Vault: Academia, Pedagogy, and the University

While Justice Everywhere takes a short break over the summer, we recall some of the highlights from our 2024-25 season. 

Here are a few highlights from this year’s posts relating to academia, the modern university, and the academic profession:

Stay tuned for even more on this topic in our 2025-26 season!

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Justice Everywhere will return in full swing in September with fresh weekly posts by our cooperative of regular authors (published on Mondays), in addition to our Journal of Applied Philosophy series and other special series (published on Thursdays). If you would like to contribute a guest post on a topical justice-based issue (broadly construed), please feel free to get in touch with us at justice.everywhere.blog@gmail.com.

General

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From the Vault: Technology and AI

While Justice Everywhere takes a short break over the summer, we recall some of the highlights from our 2024-25 season. 

Here are a few highlights from this year’s writing on a the ethics of generative AI, the philosophy of technology and related issues:

Stay tuned for even more on this topic in our 2025-26 season!

***

Justice Everywhere will return in full swing in September with fresh weekly posts by our cooperative of regular authors (published on Mondays), in addition to our Journal of Applied Philosophy series and other special series (published on Thursdays). If you would like to contribute a guest post on a topical justice-based issue (broadly construed), please feel free to get in touch with us at justice.everywhere.blog@gmail.com.

General

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From the Vault: Animals, the Environment, and Nature

While Justice Everywhere takes a short break over the summer, we recall some of the highlights from our 2024-25 season. 

Here are a few highlights from this year’s writing on a wide range of issues relating to nature, animals and environmental politics:

Stay tuned for even more on this topic in our 2025-26 season!

***

Justice Everywhere will return in full swing in September with fresh weekly posts by our cooperative of regular authors (published on Mondays), in addition to our Journal of Applied Philosophy series and other special series (published on Thursdays). If you would like to contribute a guest post on a topical justice-based issue (broadly construed), please feel free to get in touch with us at justice.everywhere.blog@gmail.com.

General

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From the Vault: War and Global Democratic Politics

While Justice Everywhere takes a short break over the summer, we recall some of the highlights from our 2024-25 season. 

Here are a few highlights from this year’s posts on themes relating to global democracratic politics, international politics and the problems facing the world today:

Stay tuned for even more on this topic in our 2025-26 season!

***

Justice Everywhere will return in full swing in September with fresh weekly posts by our cooperative of regular authors (published on Mondays), in addition to our Journal of Applied Philosophy series and other special series (published on Thursdays). If you would like to contribute a guest post on a topical justice-based issue (broadly construed), please feel free to get in touch with us at justice.everywhere.blog@gmail.com.

Academia / General / Pedagogy / Teaching / Teaching Philosophy

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Teaching Freedom: Revisiting Berlin’s Two Concepts

A photograph showing a tiled wall with an ornate pattern. A poster is stuck on the wall, with a drawing of a hand with a broken chain on it. The text reads "Libertad es Sagrada".
A poster on a wall. Photo provided by author.

This is a guest post by Nick Boden (University of Bristol)

Teachers and academics face questions relating to freedom each day. How will students engage with the material? How should students be in the learning environment? Are students free to choose tasks or are their choices constrained by the practitioners preferred methods? These questions place instructors at the centre of an ongoing debate about freedom. Is freedom simply the absence of constraints? Or is there more going on?

At first glance, Isaiah Berlin’s (1958) idea of positive and negative freedom offers a useful framework. Positive freedom can be thought of as “the freedom to”. Rules or regulations are put into place to increase the options available to you. Negative freedom is explained as “freedom from” constraints. Barriers are removed and options are available to you. For example, advocates of negative freedom would explain being left alone to make decisions and choices increases freedom. Whereas advocates of positive freedom would welcome things like welfare funding, taking away the “freedom from” taxes, to “provide freedom to” buy basic goods whilst unemployed. A form of collective freedom.

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Academia / Beyond the Ivory Tower / General / Public Philosophy

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Beyond the Ivory Tower Interview with Toby Buckle

This is the latest interview in our Beyond the Ivory Tower series, a conversation between Sara van Goozen and Toby Buckle. Toby Buckle runs the popular Political Philosophy Podcast. He has a BA in PPE from Oxford University and an MA in Political Philosophy from the University of York. He spent many years working with political and advocacy groups in the United States, such as Human Rights Campaign, Environment America,  Working Families Party and Amnesty International. He started his podcast around seven years ago, and has interviewed academics including Elizabeth Anderson, Orlando Patterson, Phillip Pettit, and Cecile Fabre, as well as politicians (such as Senator Sherrod Brown, or Civil Rights Commission Chair, Mary Francis Berry), commentators (such as Ian Dunt) and public figures (such as Derek Guy AKA Menswear Guy). He is the editor of What is Freedom? Conversations with Historians, Philosophers, and Activists (Oxford University Press, 2021). He writes regularly for Liberal Currents. In this interview, we discuss running a podcast, the enduring relevance of historical philosophers, and what young academics can do to build a public profile.

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