Hartwick’s Goltz to Present Next Faculty Lecture
Hartwick College Assistant Professor of Political Science Dr. Caleb Goltz will present “Orwell’s Donkey,” the next installment of the 2017-18 Faculty Lecture Series. The event will take place Wednesday, March 14 at 12:20 p.m. in Eaton Lounge, Bresee Hall, on the College campus. The lecture is free and open to the public. Light refreshments will be served.
“Since Aristotle argued that ‘man is a political animal,’ men have expended a great deal of effort in arguing that they are the only political animals,” Goltz posits. “While this confining of politics to humanity has allowed humankind to alternately exploit nonhuman animals, or ignore them according to human interests with negative consequences for biodiversity and the climate. Perhaps the greatest disadvantage to the human/nonhuman animal paradigm is the creation of a problem of proximity identified by Adam Smith and later elaborated by Peter Singer: that we naturalize a preference for members of our community over those who belong to other communities.
“During the modern colonial experience, the structure of naturalized division, notice, and worth between human and nonhuman animals in politics was superimposed onto human differences, especially those of race, so that entire sections of the population were excluded from both political participation and policy regard, essentially living invisible lives. But, in his short essay Marrakech, George Orwell lays out a program for subverting our present colonial legacies of disregard by learning once again to see the nonhuman animals who are so different from us in order to recognize the humans who are much more like us. By expanding our political consideration to encompass nonhuman animals, we may learn to govern ourselves more humanely.”
Along with being an assistant professor of political science, Goltz is the Pre-Law Advisor at Hartwick. He teaches courses in political theory and public law, including the history of political thought, contemporary political theory, constitutional law, and legal philosophy. He enjoys creating thematic courses of interest to students that have recently included topics like Democracy and Empire, Power and the Human Body, and Migrant Animal and Human Labor. His research focuses on the ways that legal categories shape how life can be lived today. Goltz has recently published articles on the complexities of using common law cases in historical argumentation, and on the jurisprudence of Hans Kelsen. He is currently working on a book manuscript articulating the legal foundations of Colony Collapse Disorder in honey bees.
Goltz received his Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota.
Throughout the Faculty Lecture Series, Hartwick professors discuss recent research in their fields, focusing on physics, politics, religion, art, economics, biology, psychology, and more. The presentations take place on Wednesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays throughout the academic year. The next faculty lecture will take place Friday, April 6, 2018 at 3:30 p.m. when Professor of Biology Dr. Mark Kuhlmann will present “The Octopus’s Garbage, and Other Tales of Marine Research.”
For more information on the Faculty Lecture Series, contact Associate Professor of Political Science Dr. Amy Forster Rothbart at 607-431-4865 or forsterrotha@hartwick.edu.