Intelligent, informed and thoughtful high school students from the Greater Boston area are invited to be a part of a public discussion about the challenges we face in balancing "national security" and "civil liberties." Going beyond the political issues of the day, this inquiry will address questions that include: How is a nation made "secure?" How should a national government make the lives of its citizens more secure? Does the exercise of civil liberties ever inflict a cost in terms of lessened security? Are some citizens more secure if other citizens' freedoms are limited? As an individual, what do you owe the nation that claims you? Are all elements of a nation equally threatened by different forms of terrorism? How free should we be? And what thinkers of the past can offer us some help as we grapple with these difficult problems? - - - - - - - Logistics: This public discussion will take place Tuesday, December 28th at the Eastern Division Meeting of the American Philosophical Association. Participating students will need to be at the Copley Place Marriott by 12:30PM. The event will take place from 2 to 5 PM. If you plan to take part, please notify us no later than December 7th, 2004. We will send you complete directions and additional information about the event. These conversations will be videotaped for a television program to be nationally broadcast in early 2005. Tapes of the sessions will be made available to participating schools. For information about last year's event, go here. For a 20 minute video of last year's conversation, click here. This project is sponsored by the Committee on Pre-College Instruction in Philosophy of the American Philosophical Association, and by the North American High School Philosophers Association. Serving as advisors for this year's project are Scott Hibbard, Department of Political Science, Johns Hopkins University, and Tara Magner, Counsel, United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary. We urge you to consider being a part of this public conversation. We believe that high school students are uniquely capable of tackling philosophical issues with rigor, passion and imagination. Your future and the future of this country hang in the balance. We look forward to thinking with you and listening to your reflections on these pressing issues. For more information, please e-mail us at HSPhil@nodogs.org - - - - - - - some web resources that might be of use
Short book, big idea: J.S. Mill's On Liberty Where did this idea of a "nation/state" come from anyway? Advocating the Constitution: The Federalist Papers And the Anti-Federalist Papers A PBS forum on security and liberty How about a national identity card?
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