Senior Essay Library

Godless Americans: The Story of America's Atheists

Godless Americans: The Story of America's Atheists
Samuel Bagg
Atheists in America today face a form of symbolic exclusion; every study and poll finds them more publicly detested than Muslims, homosexuals, Mormons and other historically excluded minorities. Detested, that is, in the abstract – though not necessarily in practice. What effects does this symbolic exclusion have on the living, breathing atheists in American communities? Certainly their plight isn’t comparable to the countless other oppressions that scar the nation’s history; and yet, it seems not insignificant that no known atheist has ever been elected to national office, or that atheism is culturally associated with almost every demon imaginable – from godless Communism to amoral individualism; from destitute criminality to loathsome elitism. As a result, some atheists are shunned for their beliefs in their conservative communities; more often, those beliefs are simply hidden. This exclusion is remarkable because it goes against trends in Western Christendom towards acceptance of atheism; perhaps more surprisingly, it also violates trends within American society towards increasing religious pluralism. After showing that this is indeed a phenomenon worth our study and concern, I argue that it is separable both in its historical causes and in its future directions from the parallel “American exception” in secularization. Indeed, the history of atheists in America can shed some new light on this overburdened workhorse of social theory. I conclude by rejecting the claims of several political thinkers that the symbolic exclusion of atheists is a necessary condition of other inclusions.

Groping for Stones to Cross the River: China’s Transition to a Capitalist Economy

Groping for Stones to Cross the River: China’s Transition to a Capitalist Economy
Patrick Hamm
China’s economic growth since 1978 has been used by two competing schools of thought to vindicate their respective views on economic reform in socialist countries. Free Market Theorists of Convergence argue that China is evidence for the primacy of orthodox market reforms in the transition from socialism to capitalism, whereas State Theorists of Divergence maintain that China illustrates the superiority of heterodox state-led reforms. In this paper I argue that China grew because it pursued a set of distinctively experimental statist reforms which allowed for the gradual emergence of a dynamic market sector, as well as the construction of a segment of competitive large enterprises. I then propose a social structural explanation of why this particular reform path was chosen. Both arguments are tested in an analysis of the transitional trajectories of four Chinese economic sectors: automobiles, electronics, oil, and banking. The results provide strong support for the proposed explanations, and also permit some insight into the nature of China’s economic system, and the direction in which it is headed.

Havel’s Art of the Impossible: A Critique Matt Sherwin

Havel’s Art of the Impossible: A Critique Matt Sherwin
Matt Sherwin
I provide an overview of Vaclav Havel’s political foundation in moral principles, and examine whether his approach is applicable to decision-makers in office as well as those in the opposition.
Havel’s Art of the Impossible: A Critique Matt Sherwin
Matt Sherwin
I provide an overview of Vaclav Havel’s political foundation in moral principles, and examine whether his approach is applicable to decision-makers in office as well as those in the opposition.

How the Theory of Confucian Governance Holds up when Looking at the Chinese Government’s Treatment of Tibet

How the Theory of Confucian Governance Holds up when Looking at the Chinese Government’s Treatment of Tibet
Monique Nikolov
Abstract: Confucian philosophy’s heavy-handed role in Chinese governance is often taken as a given–particularly when looking at how Western thinkers have described East Asian development in recent decades. However, when looking at the case study of the Chinese government’s rule over Tibet, we find that the Communist Party inconsistently adopts Confucian values of governance depending on what strategies might be most convenient for asserting its authority over the region. Within this essay, I examine how the pivotal Confucian text, The Analects, describes what effective governance looks like. Using that framework, I evaluate the Chinese government’s stance on Confucianism with regard to the three principles of harmony, individual cultivation to create legitimacy, and morality to create order during the following three time periods: the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976), the Opening and Reform Era (1979-1989), and the Jiang Zemin Administration (1989-2022). I then evaluate the extent to which the Chinese government’s treatment of Tibet can be considered Confucian during these time periods, using the same three criteria of harmony, individual cultivation, and morality. The Chinese government pursues actions that best allow it to maintain and assert its authority at the expense of earning the respect and support of its citizens– thus ignoring crucial Confucian principles regarding accountability in leadership. I thus argue that despite Chinese government rhetoric and the widespread assumption that Chinese governance is often Confucian, in reality, the Chinese government’s treatment of Tibet demonstrates that this is not the case.

Institutional Autonomy and Economic Development in Adverse Structural Conditions: The Case of Two Arab Cities in Northern Israel

Institutional Autonomy and Economic Development in Adverse Structural Conditions: The Case of Two Arab Cities in Northern Israel
Harris Eppsteiner
Arab citizens of northern Israel have consistently fared worse economically than Jewish Israelis, despite living in communities separated by only a few miles. Much of this economic disparity is due to structural factors that have constrained economic development in Arab communities, including discriminatory state economic policy. Despite these structural barriers to development, the city of Nazareth has managed to achieve a fair degree of economic growth and modernization, especially when compared to the nearby city of Sakhnin. This essay attempts to explain the divergent economic trajectories of the two cities, arguing that Nazareth’s success can be attributed largely to the greater educational level of its population and to greater institutional autonomy relative to Sakhnin in pursuing development projects. The results of this analysis have broader implications for processes of economic development under constraints that inhibit progress on the local level.

Intragenerational Equity in the Social Cost of Carbon

Intragenerational Equity in the Social Cost of Carbon
Naomi Shimberg
The social cost of carbon (SCC) reflects a partial estimate of the monetary damages caused by an incremental metric ton of CO2 emissions. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) recently released a long-awaited update to the SCC, increasing its preferred value from $51 per tCO2 to $190 per tCO2. This is the first time the mortality impacts of climate change have been included in the SCC, reviving contentious debates about whether to monetize mortality risk with a value of a statistical life (VSL) that varies with income or remains constant across the population. The EPA diverges from past practice and uses an income-elastic VSL in its updated SCC, therefore assigning greater value to statistical lives in high-income countries than low-income countries. This senior essay proposes two alternative approaches, both of which assign equal value to all statistical lives: (1) using a global average VSL as an extension of past practice and (2) equity weighting—assigning greater weight to dollars in lower-income individuals’ hands. I ultimately defend the use of a global average VSL on ethical, economic, and practical grounds. I then implement each approach in the new open-source Greenhouse Gas Impact Value Estimator (GIVE) model, one of three models used by the EPA in its updated estimate. My preferred mean SCC is $380 per tCO2 ($10-$998 per tCO2: 5%-95% range, 2020 US dollars), double the EPA’s proposed value. If used in benefit-cost analysis, this SCC would substantially increase the estimated benefits of climate change mitigation by reflecting that the harms of climate change are not borne equally across society.

Is Pornography a Moral Problem? Coercive Speech vs. the Freedom of Fantasy

Is Pornography a Moral Problem? Coercive Speech vs. the Freedom of Fantasy
Josh Cohen
This paper investigates the moral status of pornography: is it coercive speech that deserves restriction, or representation of sexual fantasy that deserves protection?  Although the claim that pornography subordinates and silences women demands consideration and respect, it does not show that pornography itself is wrong.  Instead, consideration of pornography’s role in the creation, exploration, and expression of sexuality shows that it should not only be protected, but also be encouraged to develop in progressive directions.

Managing Globalization, Realizing Democracy, and Achieving Distributional Justice: A Theory of Regional Governance for the Global South Sarah Goff

Managing Globalization, Realizing Democracy, and Achieving Distributional Justice: A Theory of Regional Governance for the Global South Sarah Goff
Sarah Goff
The most prominent theorists of supra-national governance, David Held and Jurgen Habermas, both argue that meeting the challenges of globalization requires new levels of democratic governance that supersede the nation-state. I find their empirical analysis of the challenges of globalization valuable, as it is more likely to provoke beneficial changes to the international political order than a purely normative argument. However, there is a need to integrate the normative goal of greater social justice into a theory of supra-national governance, and it is in this integration that Held and Habermas run into difficulties. The question of how to draw the boundaries of supra-national political communities is central to my critique. On the one hand, closed communities are necessary for democratic accountability and civic solidarity; but on the other hand, such boundaries may inhibit the achievement of global distributive justice. I discuss these issues and elaborate a theory of regional governance that allows low-income societies to realize democracy and development, and thereby also global distributive justice.

Media Footprint Project Footprint Estimates for the Borough of Media and Policy Recommendations for Footprint Reduction

Media Footprint Project Footprint Estimates for the Borough of Media and Policy Recommendations for Footprint Reduction
Justin Wright
Transition Town Media began when a small group of people gathered to prepare their local community to confront the dual stresses of climate change and depleting petroleum reserves (peak oil). Part of the broader Transition Town Movement, Transition Town Media seeks to address a wide array of resource management challenges. Humans are consuming natural renewable resources at a rate faster than they can regenerate. For a number of reasons, international solutions, to this problem are currently unfeasible. In order to explore the capacity of local communities to address unsustainable human consumption of renewable natural resources, I worked with the Environmental Advisory Council as well as with the Transition Town group in Media, Pennsylvania to estimate Media’s Ecological Footprint. The Ecological Footprint measures human consumption contrasted against the capacity of biologically productive land on the planet to regenerate the resources required to satisfy human consumption.