Conference on Cognitive Disability

Eva Kittay @ Stony Brook and Licia Carlson @ Harvard are co-directing a conference September 18-20, 2008 at Stony Brook Manhattan: Cognitive Disability: A Challenge to Moral Philosophy. The poster says it all. Except: “Go if you can”.

Visit the website for all the juicy details.

Cognitive Disability: A Challenge to Moral Philosophy (poster PDF)

NT Intervention National Day of Action

The Aboriginal Rights Coalition in Australia held a conference in May, during which it was resolved to have a national day of protest on June 21 — one year after John Howard’s government announced the Intervention in the NT. (I posted about the intervention previously, here)

Among the aims of the national day of action are the following:

- Repeal all “NT intervention” legislation
- Restore the Racial Discrimination Act
- Fund infrastructure and community controlled services
- Sign and implement the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples
- Aboriginal Control of Aboriginal Affairs

I think it is fair to say that without any commitment to consultation with the people whom the intervention measures affect directly—and to international agreements that seek to protect the specific interests of indigenous people—policies enacted in these communities cannot yield unambiguous benefits … and arguably are seriously detrimental to the autonomy aboriginal communities had developed regarding employment, etc.