“It settles down into the unconscious,” he says. “I’m teaching a class on emotions this fall, and that’s one of the points—the emotions you feel have to do with how a situation is framed. It’s like the old subliminal advertising thing.”

For Karen Greenberg, director of the Center on National Security at Fordham Law School, threats to democracy from disinformation are vast and real, but voters and election officials have never been more vigilant.

“Look, we know we’re being spun,” says Greenberg, co-editor of Our Nation at Risk: Election Integrity as a National Security Issue. 

“The question is, can we step back for a moment and say, ‘I know I’m being spun. How do I either ignore this and move on to something else, or how do I put this in a category where I know that this is likely disinformation or misinformation and see what I can do to verify it?’”

Here are some tips Greenberg and Davenport shared to help you stay aware of—and minimally influenced by—disinformation this election season.

Be skeptical of new messages about the election—and their messengers.

“Whenever you see new information about the election, really close to the election, you should be suspicious,” says Davenport, who directs Fordham’s Peace and Justice studies program and is a frequent political commentator for publications like Newsweek and America. “If there’s some new news source that you’re just seeing for the first time this fall, and you have questions, google them and find if there are any reports about this source.”

On social networks, he says, keep an eye out for new friend and follow requests from people and groups you don’t know, and “just be conscious that you are being manipulated by algorithms, and their goal is to addict you to hateful content because that’s what sells.”

Greenberg notes that there are laws in place against promoting disinformation related to elections, but they’re hard to enforce without buy-in from private companies. 

Don’t let disinformation lessen your belief in objective facts.

As deepfakes, doctored photos, and AI-generated images flourish, it may feel tempting to dismiss the possibility of objective truth in the media we consume. Davenport cautions against this kind of wholesale skepticism, though.

Disinformation campaigns often try to foster chaos and confusion, Greenberg says, and create the sense that “a country can’t quite hold it together through a transition period.”

“There has to be a counternarrative to ‘we’re doomed, we’re victims,’ she says. “We’re not victims.”  

Be patient at the polls.

No matter how well-trained volunteer poll workers are, it’s going to be hard to prepare them for “any kind of aberrations that come up because of misinformation,” Greenberg says. “Go early … and just be patient.”  

And don’t be deterred, Davenport adds. 

“Don’t be scared away. Even if you see something telling you that the line at your polling place is two hours long.”  

Take advantage of available election resources.

Despite all the worries that election disinformation sparks in experts, Greenberg is heartened by what she says is “an incredible amount of attention” being paid to the issue by voters, law enforcement, and election officials. And she feels confident that voters are, on the whole, savvy enough to have their antennae up. 

To stay informed, she recommends resources like Election Law Blog and Democracy Docket. And Davenport points out that contacting your county clerk’s office—or checking its website—is a good way to get any necessary information about voting.  “We still need to tell people about the threats,” he says, “but then with that, we can say, ‘And here’s how you can find reliable sources on these topics.’”

The 2024 presidential election is likely to be the first time since 1892 that an incumbent president is running against another former president. And with early primaries having such an outsized influence, the slate could be a virtual lock before Super Tuesday even rolls around—even though most Americans don’t want a Biden-Trump rematch.

John Davenport, Ph.D., professor of philosophy at Fordham and former director of Peace and Justice Studies, said there are three main problems with the uniquely American presidential primary system that have contributed to this likely matchup: the scheduling of the primaries, the way the delegates are determined, and a lack of uniformity in who can vote in each primary.

‘Glaringly Unfair Tradition’

The Constitution doesn’t say anything about how political parties or their nomination processes should work, because the authors didn’t foresee the power of parties, which now set their own primaries, Davenport said. One result is that just a few states keep holding the earliest primaries.

Davenport called it a “glaringly unfair tradition” that four states have cornered the market.

“Early primaries bring huge profits to businesses in early states and give them more influence. Iowa rescheduled its chaotic caucus to just a week after New Year’s Day in 2024, and New Hampshire’s Republican primary election was eight days later, followed soon by Nevada and South Carolina.” 

While outcomes in Iowa and New Hampshire are not always decisive, their small populations, combined with South Carolina’s, have enjoyed enormously disproportionate influence that can eliminate candidates who might have remained viable if the first primaries were held in more populous states, he said.

“Thus they can cut nine out of 10 American voters out of the process, especially when early frontrunners gain big leads,” he said, adding that “no other advanced democratic nation” allows this.

Lack of State Uniformity

Inconsistency in how delegates are awarded also affects who ultimately wins the party nominations.

Because the Republican primaries in Iowa and New Hampshire operate somewhat proportionally, Nikki Haley won 17 delegates to Trump’s 33 by garnering about 40% of the combined vote in those two states. But in South Carolina’s Republican primary this month, the majority winner in each district will take all of its delegates—meaning that Haley could get 38 to 40% of the votes but gain zero delegates out of the state’s 50-delegate total, That would make it much harder for her to raise funds for the races in Michigan and on Super Tuesday in early March. Davenport said. In still other Republican primaries, a candidate finishing first gets all or most of the state’s delegates.

By contrast, in Democratic primaries in all states, each candidate gets a number of delegates that is loosely proportional to their percentage of the popular vote. 

Who Gets to Vote?

Equally inconsistent is whether a state’s primaries are open to independent voters or just those in the party holding the primary.

New Hampshire’s Republican primary was open, and many independents voted, boosting Haley’s numbers. Nevada, which this year held both a Republican primary and caucus, closed those races to independents. 

What’s the Solution?

“Congress has the authority to change the primary election calendar, rotating the chance to hold early primaries among five or six regions of the U.S., so that every state gets a fair opportunity over five or six presidential election cycles to hold high-impact primaries,” said Davenport.

Federal law could also solve the delegate problem by mandating that political parties use one method to award convention delegates in all state primaries. And by mandating open primaries in all states, federal law could help moderate candidates continue longer in tight races, he said.

“These are just a few examples of sensible and non-partisan reforms,” said Davenport.

John Davenport has taught in undergraduate and graduate programs at Fordham since 1998. He is the author of several articles and books, including 2023’s The Democracy Amendments, which attempts to synthesize two decades of creative ideas to fix the federal system into a comprehensive program.

For many years, NATO did not admit Ukraine or Georgia to its ranks because its members were afraid that Russia would retaliate by invading Ukraine and other countries, said John Davenport, Ph.D., philosophy professor and director of Fordham’s minor in peace and justice studies. But the effort to placate President Vladimir Putin has gotten us nowhere—except for a war that will result in millions of refugees, hundreds of billions of dollars of damage in Ukraine, and possibly a worldwide recession, he said. 

“What we should be doing now is matching him tit for tat … We [should]admit Georgia next year. And as soon as this war is over in Ukraine, we’ll admit Ukraine as well. We’re going to stand up for a no-fly zone. If he takes further aggressive actions, maybe we’ll get rid of the puppet regime that [he’s] supporting in Venezuela. We’re in a new cold war here,” Davenport said. “Putin is doing this partly because he thinks we’re weak-willed, right? That countries in the NATO alliance don’t have the will to fight. If we don’t show him that’s not true, we’re going to end up—by the end of this century—with a world perhaps completely ruled by dictators.” 

In the virtual panel on March 4, Davenport and Olena Nikolayenko, Ph.D., a Ukraine native and chair and professor of Fordham’s political science department, explained how Western foreign policy led to the Feb. 24 invasion of Ukraine and offered ways that the U.S. can alleviate the conflict. 

A Mission to Revive the Soviet Union

In 1991, the Soviet Union collapsed and Ukraine became an independent state. For Putin, the dissolution of the Soviet Union was the “greatest catastrophe of the 20th century,” said Nikolayenko. 

“He’s on a mission to reset Russian greatness and revive the Soviet Union,” said Nikolayenko, who is originally from Ukraine and has held prestigious positions in several U.S. universities. “This year marks the centennial of the establishment of the Soviet Union, which was set up in 1922. So to some extent, maybe it’s not an accident that he decided to launch this military campaign in order to rewrite history.” 

Since Putin came to power in 2000, he has successfully seized territory from Russia’s neighbors—Georgia and Ukraine—and supported dictatorships across the world, including the Assad regime in Syria, said the professors. Now he has started “the largest ground war in Europe since World War II,” said Nikolayenko. 

Years of Assumptions and Appeasement

There are several factors that emboldened Russia, particularly Western foreign policy, said Nikolayenko. U.S. presidential administrations often downplayed Russia’s belligerent behavior, she said. They expressed concern and implemented soft sanctions to signal disapproval of Russia’s actions, but they continued to maintain diplomatic relations and trade and purchase energy resources from Russia, which inadvertently provided financing for Russia’s military, she said. 

“Over the past decade or more, Western governments tried to appease Russia. They assumed that if Russia takes over just one piece of land—a piece of Moldova, a piece of Georgia, a piece of Ukraine—then the incumbent government in Russia can be appeased and the West can continue to have economic, political, and cultural relations with Russia,” Nikolayenko said. “But of course, as we can see now, this policy might not work very well.”

Finding Solutions: Aid, Trade, and a NATO No-Fly Zone

Nikolayenko said that countries can help Ukraine by providing humanitarian assistance for refugees and military aid for the Ukrainian army. She shared several resources with panel attendees, including a list of charity organizations and upcoming anti-war protests worldwide.

She said that countries can also stop trading with Russia, especially in the oil and gas industries, which would significantly undercut Russia’s ability to finance the war. Davenport added that it will be difficult to make Europe independent of Russian energy, but it’s possible within the next decade. 

“In the long run, it would take a huge investment—maybe five, 10 years at least,” Davenport said. “We could [massively increase]shipping natural gas … There are other countries that could do the same. This could be the beginning of a big push in Europe to try to become free of Russian energy dependence.” 

The U.S. and Western states can also introduce a no-fly zone over Ukraine, which would reduce deaths and overall destruction in Ukraine, said Nikolayenko. However, audience member Annika Hinze, Ph.D., associate professor of political science and director of the urban studies program, pointed out a potential conflict.

“NATO allies are concerned that if they established and policed a no-fly zone over Ukraine, Russia would not respect it and start shooting down NATO fighter jets, putting NATO at a direct confrontation with Russia, and essentially escalating the war into a Great War (and potentially a nuclear conflict),” Hinze typed into a Zoom chat box. “As an expert, do you think these concerns are warranted?”

Nikolayenko said that she didn’t see how, militarily, the Ukrainian army could stop the bombardment of its cities without a no-fly zone. 

“The United States and Western states have the military capacity to confront Russia, but they are reluctant to do it,” Nikolayenko said, adding that these countries are worried about further escalating the war. “And this is a source of frustration for many people in Ukraine because the world is watching and not willing to go that far.”

This event was sponsored by Fordham’s Pi Sigma Alpha chapter. Watch a full recording of the lecture below:

“Marsh was a tireless advocate and activist for civil rights, rights for workers, worker-owned cooperatives, and social justice,” said John Davenport, Ph.D., a former director of Fordham’s Peace and Justice Studies program, which Marsh helped found. Davenport noted that Marsh was known for his defense of “critical modernism”—a form of critical theory that addresses postmodernist arguments by philosophers such as Jacques Derrida and Paul-Michel Foucault.

Born in Polson, Montana, Marsh earned his undergraduate and master’s degrees at Gonzaga University in Spokane, Washington. He entered the Jesuit community there but left the order to pursue a Ph.D. at Northwestern University, which he earned in 1971.

From 1970 to 1985, he taught philosophy at St. Louis University. In 1980, he spent a year at Fordham as a visiting professor; five years later, he joined Fordham’s philosophy department full time. On his 20th anniversary in 2005, he was lauded with a Bene Merenti Medal, and was cited for thought that “fuses Marxist critical theory, phenomenology, process metaphysics and transcendental Thomism in critically constructive ways that counter the canon of modern secularism while issuing a sustained, sophisticated argument for social justice.” A year later, he retired from Fordham, his nephew T.J. Campbell said, and was named professor emeritus.

Over the course of his career, Marsh authored and co-edited nine books, including Post-Cartesian Meditations, (Fordham University Press, 1988); Critique, Action and Liberation (SUNY Press, 1994); Process, Praxis, and Transcendence (SUNY Press, 1999), and Unjust Legality: A Critique of Habermas’s Philosophy of Law, (Rowan and Littlefield, 2001). He was involved in numerous professional associations such as the American Catholic Philosophical Association, for which he served as president from 2004 to 2005.

Davenport said that when Marsh joined the Fordham philosophy faculty, he was part of a new generation of lay philosophers, along with Dominic Balestra, Ph.D., and Merold Westphal, Ph.D., to join what had been a department made up primarily of Jesuits.

“Marsh was seen as a new kind of thinker in the critical thinking tradition, but someone who respected transcendental Thomism, and therefore fit with into the department,” he said.

“What he called critical modernism was his own development of critical theory, which is a tradition of thought that goes back to the Frankfurt School in Germany just after World War II. It attempts to find new ways defending universal or objective standards.”

Davenport, who was on the faculty with Marsh from 1998 to 2006, said Marsh’s critiques of the German philosopher Jürgen Habermas had a big influence on him and his colleagues. A child of the Civil Rights era who was influenced by Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr., Marsh was more open to theological themes and inspirations than Habermas. Marsh’s gift, said Davenport, was that he wielded those themes in ways that even non-believers could appreciate. He was also unfailingly polite to those who disagreed with him, he said.

“I think it’s fair to say he was a Marxist,” he said. “He wasn’t an activist professor though. I heard him say on more than one occasion that it was very important that students of all political persuasion felt free to debate openly. He really bent over backward to accommodate students of different political persuasions.”

Robin Andersen, Ph.D., a professor emerita of communications and former head of Peace and Justice Studies, hosted both Marsh and Berrigan for dinners at her home in New Rochelle. Because neither of them drove, she and her husband, Fordham lecturer of biology Guy Robinson, Ph.D., often found themselves in discussions with them on drives back to Manhattan.

“He was very committed in the classroom and the way that he would integrate his pedagogy in his teaching with the philosophy of aligning yourself to the poor. He would give the students a theoretical and analytical perspective about inequalities and global injustices, imbued with a philosophy about the nature of human lives, and how we all need to live with dignity,” she said.

Marsh was a dedicated pacifist and used The Trial of the Catonsville Nine (Fordham University Press, 2004), in his classes. The book, which details Berrigan’s trial for civil disobedience at the height of the Vietnam War, features afterward by Marsh and Andersen.

Andersen said she’ll miss Marsh’s thoughtfulness and the ease with which he engaged in conversation.

“Some very thoughtful people can be kind of intense, and Jim didn’t have that intensity about him,” she said.

“Both Dan [Berrigan] and Jim were very much into creating community around them. They had a real commitment to bringing young people into a world that is not easy to find in our culture, one filled with thought, compassion, and deep contemplation about what we’re doing in our fast-paced professional world,” she said.

Campbell said that he and his sister Elizabeth Campbell, Ph.D., benefited tremendously from time spent with their uncle, especially through holiday visits to Colorado, where Elizabeth lives and teaches at the University of Denver. Their education began with books on artists he bought them when they were children and continued through the years.

“Jim had an enormous influence on Elizabeth and me from a young age, particularly in terms of our appreciation for modern art and dance and theater,” he said noting that he exposed them to Twyla Tharp’s In The Upper Room, which combined several forms of art, including music by Philip Glass, one of Marsh’s favorite musicians.

Marsh was a devoted fan of the UConn women’s basketball team and subscribed to the Hartford Courant newspaper so he could keep up with them, Campbell said. He also devoted two hours a day to centering prayer, a form of meditation where one focuses on a single word such as light or love.

During one of their last visits to Colorado for Thanksgiving, Campbell said that Marsh confided to him that being a bachelor was also an important part of his identity. Despite a penchant for living alone, Marsh nonetheless drew others to him, he said, with a keen intellect, deep insights into modern culture, and a big booming baritone voice.

“His students loved him, and his friends and colleagues loved him as well. When we were at museums, he would comment on a painting, and people gathered around to listen to his commentary like he was a docent,” he said.

“He was so knowledgeable about the artists and how the paintings were constructed, that people would follow along with us.”

In addition to T.J. and Elizabeth Campbell, Marsh is survived by his sister Mary Ann Courtney and grand-nephews Ryan and Grant Karlsgodt. A funeral Mass will be held for him at St. Francis Xavier Church, 46 W. 16th Street, on Friday, Sep. 24, at 10:30 a.m. All are welcome.

John Davenport, Ph.D., a professor of philosophy, says these and many more developments are proof that NATO and the United Nations Security Council, the two bodies best equipped to promote human rights and peace, are no longer up to the job. In a book that will be published by Routledge this fall, Davenport makes the case for creating what he calls a “League of Democracies.”

Listen below

And in an extended bonus track, Davenport delves into the ways in which game theory explains how the challenges the world’s democracies face are similar to those that America’s founding fathers faced in the 18th century.

Full transcript below

John Davenport: The goal of this proposal is not to create an entity that would take over the whole world. It’s to create a new organization that could protect democracies from the rising threats posed by Russia and China, and to stop the enormous mass atrocities that keep coming at us wave after wave.

Patrick Verel: In 2011 a series of uprisings known as the Arab Spring briefly gave the impression that democracy was on an unstoppable march across the globe. Seven years later, it hasn’t exactly turned out that way. Egypt has embraced authoritarianism, Libya is in a state of near anarchy, and Syria has been mired in a catastrophic civil war for seven years. Meanwhile, the international influence of authoritarian countries such as China and Russia as grown significantly.

John Davenport, a professor of philosophy at Fordham, says these and many more developments are proof that NATO and the United Nations Security Council, the two bodies best equipped to promote human rights and peace, are no longer up to the job. In a new book that will be published by Routledge this fall, Davenport makes the case for creating what he calls a league of democracies. I’m Patrick Verel, and this is Fordham News.

What was the genesis of this book, was there one particular moment that made you think, “You know what, let’s just start all over?”

John Davenport: In a word, Syria. I think the idea for the book really came to me in the summer of 2013 when it became clear that no nations were going to do anything about the new genocide in progress. After seeing this go on for decades, in the period we thought the world was going to get better after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Instead, we had Bosnia, we had Rwanda, we had the slaughter in the Darfur region of Sudan. All of the mass movements of refugees that these crisis cause. The civil war in Libya. There just isn’t a system in place in the world today to prevent mass atrocity crimes that destabilize whole regions.

Patrick Verel: What do you think is the most pressing concern for liberal democracies today?

John Davenport: Clearly we have division among democracies across the world. Those tensions are being aggravated by China and Russia, which are trying to buy off and woo many of these democracies. That’s not something that Western democracies should take sitting down. We need some new system that can unite the will of democratic countries and assure each of those nations that others are going to do their fair share in order to have a real security arrangement that can stand up to the new threats of cyber attacks, of endless hacking of our elections. New technology, unfortunately we’re going to face armed satellites, robotic weaponry, even nanotechnology. Now we have microwave attacks on our diplomats.

Patrick Verel: President Trump’s American First posture has been described by many as a form of isolationism, which would seem to preclude any acceptance of another international body. What do you think needs to happen for that to change?

John Davenport: It’s a natural reaction for people when faced with huge challenges to retrench and say well if we just retreat within our own borders we can weather out the storm that way. Unfortunately, that’s like the illusion that the hobbits suffered from in The Lord of the Rings. If we just stick to our own affairs in the Shire we don’t have to deal with these larger problems. That’s not how the world works. Things are going to get worse and worse in the 21st century as we approach peak population, not only with climate challenges but with pandemic diseases, financial instability across the world, mass movements of people driven by mass atrocity crimes and rising dictatorships.

The United States has to give up the pretension that we can take unilateral action whenever we want to, as we did in 2003. But, I don’t think that would be a huge price for a lot of Americans now, so ironically it might turn out that the isolationist tendency could even help this argument. But then, in other parts of the world, like Europe would have to accept that in order to get the multilateral decision making that they want, they have to be willing to go outside the U.N. Security Council. It’s now proven beyond any shadow of a doubt that this system is never going to work.

If 500,000 people can be killed in Syria with no forceful response, it’s time to abandon the Security Council. By the way, I should note, I don’t propose abandoning the United Nations entirely. This proposal is simply a replacement for the security council. It provides a way for democracies to act outside the purview of the security council, so we no longer give Russia and China a veto over what we’re doing.

Patrick Verel: Now, I understand that the Federalist Papers are actually a source of inspiration for this plan. Can you explain that a little bit more?

John Davenport: Yes, it’s amazing how exactly the situation between nations in the world today fits the analogy of the relation among the 13 young states in the founding of the United States. During the revolutionary war and the period immediately after, we had enormous discoordination among the 13 states. They were being played off against one another by old European powers. They couldn’t form any common foreign policy. They couldn’t even raise revenue to pay their debts or pay their veterans.

The whole relationship among them was falling apart and easily could have devolved into civil war a lot earlier in American history, if it wasn’t for the intervention of Alexander Hamilton with his friends Madison and Jay, who were able to make very powerful and convincing arguments that these problems. The collective action problems is what is the technical term for them between the 13 states, could only be overcome by a strong central authority that could make decisions for all of them and have binding power to enforce those decisions.

That’s exactly what the United Nations Security Council, NATO, and even the European Union for the most part really lack today. All of our international bodies make decisions by consensus, which means that almost every member nation has to agree. That’s how the old American confederation worked, or rather didn’t work, and that was precisely Hamilton’s insight.

Patrick Verel: Have you thought about any unintended consequences that might happen in the event that something like this actually is put together?

John Davenport: Absolutely, there are a lot of possible objections to the plan. Of course the most likely one is you’re going to create a massive leviathan, a world government that’s going to tyrannize humanity for the remainder of our future. The goal of this proposal is not to create an entity that would take over the whole world. It’s to create a new organization that could protect democracies from the rising threats posed by Russia and China, and to stop the enormous mass atrocities that keep coming at us wave after wave. It’s got to be, in my view, a directly elected council. So that, in unlike the U.N. Security Council, it’s answerable directly to people in all of those democratic nations.

It has to have real enforcement powers. It has to have at least a small armed force of it’s own that the council together with the chief executive of the league can deploy when they see that that’s really necessary to prevent new waves of ethnic cleansing or genocide.

Patrick Verel: When I ask about unintended consequences and you mention this idea that oh, it’s not meant to be this world wide government, it allows for freedom. One of the things that dawned on me was, okay, so if you had like a Libya where they fell apart and you did have this league, and the league decided okay, we’re going to go in and we’re going to stabilize it. What happens when China and Russia they’ve formed their own little alliance and they decide, well no, they say they want us to come in and help and we’re going to send in our own troops. Then you end up with a sort of a proxy war.

John Davenport: The first thing to say about Libya, the lack of reconstruction. That’s a case where there was an assurance game between nations and no one nation wanted to be stuck with the bill and the quagmire like what we went through in Afghanistan and Iraq. So, the advantage of a league of democracies is that you could have 30 or 40 nations contributing, so the cost on any one of them is small. You could have a large presence of peace keepers there for 20 years or more and yet, the burden on any one nation is really very small.

Now, the possibility of a league of dictators, Robert Kegan has addressed this. I argue about this in the book that I think it’s very unlikely, although China and Russia are attempting to ally these days and trying to bring other smaller countries into their orbit. I think once there was serious pressure on them from a league of democracies, it would be very hard for them to continue that posture. Unless we wait too long until China’s so big that it’s got most of the worlds economy in it’s pocket. I think actually a league of democracies could simply use trade sanctions to put enough pressure on China that they would probably have to democratize.

Once either China or Russia join the league, well it’s game over. The other one would never be able to continue completely isolated. The problems that are posed by Russia and China today, the rise of their despotis model where you’ve got economic growth without political rights, that would be ended. The future of humanity would be much brighter. It would also be easy for example with a league of democracies to get China to do what it needs to, to disarm North Korea. Can you imagine what trade sanctions between 40 nations that controlled 80% or more of the worlds economy would do to China? They couldn’t withstand a month of that. The regime would collapse within weeks.

Bonus Track

Patrick Verel: Now I understand that the Federalist papers are actually a source of inspiration for this plan. Can you explain that a little bit more?

John Davenport: Yes. It’s amazing how exactly the situation between nations in the world today, fits the analogy of the relation among the 13 young states in the founding of the United States during the Revolutionary War and the period immediately after. We had enormous dis-coordination among the 13 states, they were being played off against one another by old European powers, they couldn’t form any common foreign policy, they couldn’t even raise revenue to pay their debts or pay their Veterans. The whole relationship among them was falling apart and easily could have devolved into Civil War, a lot earlier in American history, if it wasn’t for the intervention of Alexander Hamilton with his friends, Madison and Jay. Who were able to make very powerful and convincing arguments. That these problems, the collective action problems, is the technical term for them between the 13 states, could only be overcome by a strong central authority that could make decisions for all of them and have binding power to enforce those decisions.

That’s exactly what the United Nation Security Council, NATO and even the European Union for the most part, really lack today. All of our international bodies make decisions by consensus, which means that almost every member nation has to agree. That’s how the old American Confederation worked, or rather, didn’t work. And that was precisely Hamilton’s insight.

Patrick Verel: The Federalist papers though, they wrote those in like what, 1780-something? How is that relevant to today?

John Davenport: Well what’s interesting about it is that, although they didn’t use these phrases. The problems that Hamilton, Madison and Jay saw between the states were basically, games of chicken where they’d each wait for other states to do the hard work like, sending troops to Washington’s army, prisoners dilemmas where they would compete with each other to have better trade deals with other nations. And assurance games, which is less of a familiar term, but that stands for cases where the parties will only act together if they have enough trust in one another to do what’s needed for their collective good, so they don’t waste their resources. These are exactly the problems that we see among governments around the world today, SERI is basically a game of chicken. Nobody wanted to intervene. It’s a losing game of chicken, where everybody goes off the cliff.

And, like in the old car chase. In the case of preventing pandemics, like with the Ebola crisis. The U.S. did the work mainly, to prevent the last one from spreading around the world. Prisoners dilemmas, well climate change is a prisoners’ dilemma and nations are not cooperating well enough with each other because, they each gain an advantage by having cheaper energy in short. And so it’s very difficult without some power that can really enforce decisions over enough leading nations to come up with some solution to that problem.

Love, Reason and Will: Kierkegaard after Frankfurt (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2015), released last month, presents a series of arguments on the nature of love, as seen through the lenses of living contemporary philosopher Harry Frankfurt and the19th-century theologian and existentialist Søren Kierkegaard.

Davenport, professor of philosophy and director of Fordham’s Peace and Justice Studies program, likened the contrasting perspectives of love among the two thinkers to the two Greek words for love: Eros, desire-based love, and Agape, unconditional love or neighborly love.

“In a sense the book is about this old conflict,” said Davenport, who co-edited the book with Anthony Rudd, PhD, associate professor of philosophy St. Olaf College. “The Eros theory sees the attraction of love like that of the bee to sugar, a magnetic attraction, and the Agape view sees a love without any prior attraction, such as the benevolent Samaritan helping a stranger.”

Frankfurt, an analytic philosopher, argues that all love has an Agapic form of some kind, said Davenport, and that love is based on “no reason.” If a person sees value in the act of loving a stranger, it is not because of an attraction of any kind; rather, it is volitional: because we are committed to that person, we see value I them.

Kierkegaard’s Christian-influenced writing on Agapic love, however, imagines it as responding to the simple “personhood of another person, or the watermark made in the image of God. So there is in fact a reason for loving a person as a neighbor.”

“Some may find these two philosophers as unlikely conversation partners,” said Davenport; yet Frankfurt’s work, he said, has inspired a renaissance in the examination of love among philosophers such as Stanley Cavell, Iris Murdoch, Alan Soble, and others. At the same time, there has been a new wave of scholarship on Kierkegaard.

Part of Davenport’s interest in doing the book, he said, arose from having studied philosophy with Frankfurt as an undergraduate at Yale, not long after Frankfurt had gained some popular-culture notoriety for a paper he wrote, “On Bullshit,” part of which was featured as an essay in Harper’s magazine. Davenport has contributed an essay to the volume in which he argues that Frankfurt’s critique of bullshit implies that “truth is objectively worth loving. “

The volume is also an homage to Kierkegaard’s insightful thoughts on the topic of love, however, and the hope that comparing his ideas to Frankfurt’s more secular approach, Davenport said, “might shed light on both of these philosophers [and]enable us to think better ourselves about these fundamental issues.”

“We are in the midst of a new era of productive scholarship on forms of human love,” he said.

— Janet Sassi