Mark D. White

My weekly update of activity seems to have morphed into every 12 days–odd. Chairing my department continues to take up most of my attention, but things should calm down considerably this week, after which I should be able to re-dedicate myself to some academic writing (more below). In the meantime…

• I have two new Psychology Today posts since the last update: "'Fish' Out of Water" Being Uncomfortable in Social Situations" (November 1, based on Stanley Fish's latest New York Times column) and "The Dark Side of Self-Loathing and Insecurity–and How to Avoid It" (today, November 6, based on Dr. Joseph Nowinski's recent Huffington Post piece).
• On Friday I attended a one-day conference titled "The Retributivist Tradition and Its Future" at St. John's University School of Law, which was structured around my edited book Retributivism: Essays on Theory and Policy, and featured many of the contributors to the book. It was wonderful to talk to many of the people I worked with on the book but not had yet met in person (such as Sarah Holtman, Jane Johnson, and Mark Tunick), to reconnect with many old friends in legal academia (such as Dan Markel, Michael Cahill, and conference organizer Marc DeGirolami), and to meet fascinating new people as well. Perhaps the best thing about the conference was the opportunity it afforded me to revisit my own chapter in the book, which applied the synthesis of Immanuel Kant's ideas about judgment and Ronald Dworkin's theory of judicial decision-making to retributivism policymaking; my presentation of the chapter has helped tremendously to jumpstart my plans for a book project on the topic.
• I'm almost finished organizing the Association for Social Economics sessions for the 2012 meetings of the Eastern Economic Association–some exciting work to be presented there!

After I get my last five untenured people reappointed this week, I'll finalize my new paper to be presented at the Southern Economic Association meetings in Washington in a couple weeks (where I also give a talk drawn from my book Kantian Ethics and Economics: Autonomy, Dignity, and Character). It will be nice to get back into a scholarly writing mode–it was difficult for a while, even when I had more time, but I'm starting to feel better about it, especially after the retributivism conference on Friday. There's nothing like being in the presence of great minds to inspire work!

OK, back to grading exams!