Yesterday I sent out a version of my paper on Lockean will to the organizers of a postgraduate conference at Harvard. They have a very competitive application procedure. They want a full draft of the paper, which will be peer reviewed by the PhD students at Harvard. They are only going to accept seven presenters, which means, I surmise, that there will only ever be one panel of presentations at a time.
One of the aims of the conference is to bring together a thorough representation of the different sub-fields in political theory. This is especially valuable, they claim, because of the limited institutional support political theory receives. I think this is more representative of the American academy than the British, but it is certainly true that other fields have more research money available to them and are often more compelling to appoint. But at the same time, just about every politics department in the UK will imagine that political theory is necessary and at least one or two specialists must be on staff. I don't know if the same modicum is normal across most American political science and government departments.
All that said, it seems strange that they will only take seven papers, if there ambitions are such. The quality of the papers though, will be very high. I hope that I am able to present; I'll know in a month. But irregardless I will be there for the conference, my ticket is already booked. One of my old Elementary through High school friends is now living in Boston, as is a good friend of Aherum and me. I have another good friend from University who is currently there, but might not be by the time I leave. But hopefully I'll be able to catch up with Professor Patrick Riley, who started me off on political thought.
Afterwards, I'm going home to Janesville for just about one month. And the best thing: Ahreum is coming home for Christmas again this year. It will be exactly four years since we first met. I'm quite excited.
Once more into the breach,
Ben
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