Search results

This note presents new archival evidence about John Maynard Keynes’ attitudes toward Jews. The relevant material is composed of two letters sent by Robert G. Wertheimer to Bertrand Russell and Richard F. Kahn along with their replies. Between 1963 and 1964, Wertheimer – an Austrian-born Jewish immigrant then professor of economics at Babson College – wrote to Russell and Kahn asking for their personal reminiscences concerning Keynes’ anti-Semitic utterances. In their brief but still significant responses, both Russell and Kahn firmly denied any hint of anti-Semitism in Keynes, thereby providing significant first-hand testimonies from two of his closest acquaintances.

Drugs in the same therapeutic class differ in their therapeutic profile, metabolism, adverse effects, dosing schedules, delivery systems, and other features. In addition, such agents can provide backup if the initial drug sometimes fails in the development stage or in the market. The availability of a broad range of medicines enables physicians to treat with precision the individual needs of diverse patients and provides options when the first agent used is either ineffective or not tolerated. Some incremental innovations have been associated with overall cost savings. Competition among drugs in a therapeutic class drives prices down. Policies that limit research on incremental innovations may deny access to important therapies, reduce competition, and erode incentives for research.

This paper is a case study of the ideology, strategies and process of the Common Knowledge: Pittsburgh project in its attempt at school reform in an urban school district. The paper reflects on the project’s activities, looks at its efforts from the literature of school reform, and uses its experience to develop a conceptual framework for discussing such reform efforts. The conceptual framework is based on Chaos Theory (Gleick, 1987). The objectives of this paper are to apply Chaos Theory, as developed in mathematics and science to educational organizations and present a conceptual model for school reform consistent with this theory.

Describes a project currently under way in the Pittsburgh Public Schools seeking to develop new environments for teaching and learning using the technology of wide area computer networks. The history of this project offers lessons for other school districts which might wish to develop similar resources for their own use. Extracts a set of guidelines that can be followed by these other school districts.

The purpose of this article is to examine the US Supreme Court’s much anticipated decision in Omnicare, Inc. v. Laborers Dist. Council Const. Indus. Pension Fund. In this 2015 case, the Supreme Court announced important principles for interpreting the application of the two bases for liability under Section 11 of the Securities Act of 1933 to statements of opinion expressed in registration statements filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission in connection with public securities offerings.

The article examines the Supreme Court’s articulation of the standards federal courts must apply under Section 11 to determine if opinion statements were untrue statements of a material fact or misleading because they omitted material facts necessary to make the statements of opinion not misleading. The paper identifies a number of the complexities involved in the Supreme Court’s approach and emphasizes the nuanced assessment of the facts surrounding opinion statements courts will be required to undertake by Omnicare.

The Omnicare decision has significant implications for the litigation of Section 11 claims challenging statements of opinion and for the preparation of registration statement disclosures. The Omnicare decision dramatically alters the standards for reviewing Section 11 claims premised on opinions long applied in a number of US federal appellate circuits. The decision is likely to result in more Section 11 claims based on supposedly misleading opinion statements, and potentially in a greater number of Section 11 claims that survive at least an initial motion to dismiss. Omnicare highlights the importance of including in registration statement disclosures meaningful cautionary statements identifying important facts that could cause actual outcomes to differ materially from views expressed in an opinion.

Expert guidance from experienced financial services lawyers.

This short chapter is an introduction to my 2018 book: The Ethics of Surveillance: An Introduction (Macnish, 2018). It is provided at the start of this PRO-RES collection of essays because it anticipates and supplements the range of issues covered in this collection and lays out some of the fundamental considerations necessary to ensure if surveillance must be conducted, it will be done as ethically as possible.

When is surveillance justified? We can largely agree that there are cases in which surveillance seems, at least prima facie, to be morally correct: police tracking a suspected mass murderer, domestic state security tracking a spy network, or a spouse uncovering partner’s infidelity. At the same time, there are other cases in which surveillance seems clearly not to be justified: the mass surveillance practices of the East German Stasi, an employer watching over an employee to ensure that they do not spend too long in the toilet, or a voyeur watching the subject of his lust undress night after night.

As an introductory text, my book does not seek to provide a list of necessary and sufficient conditions for ethical surveillance. What it does provide is an overview of the current thinking in surveillance ethics, looking at a range of proposed arguments about these questions, and how those arguments might play out in a variety of applied settings. It hence provides a useful and accessible volume for policymakers wishing to rapidly get up to speed on developments in surveillance and the accompanying ethical discussions.

Critical Theory was, more than anything else, a determined effort to keep alive the notion that there were alternatives to the existing cognitive order, one that seemed to find necessity in the contingent (and irrational) order of mature capitalism. Herbert Marcuse famously paid tribute to the power of the Imagination to destroy the illusion of the absence of alternatives to the existent, developing both an esthetic social theory and a social theory of esthetics. Yet the founder of Critical Theory, Max Horkheimer, was always suspicious of the Imagination, seeing it as predominantly a reproductive and not productive faculty – something that strengthened the hold of the existent on us, not the reverse. I argue that some of Horkheimer's interpretation of the role of the Imagination is rooted in his early work on Kant's Third Critique, which was conducted under the imprimatur of Gestalt psychologist Hans Cornelius. Thus suggests that there may be more connection between Horkheimer's early Gestalt-influenced thinking and his later work, and may even suggest possible directions for a post-Freudian critical theory.

Given the dramatic changes taking place in society, the economy, and technology, 21st-century organizations need to engage in new, more spontaneous, and more innovative ways of managing. I investigate why an increasing number of companies are including artists and artistic processes in their approaches to strategic and day-to-day management and leadership.

This chapter focuses on the normative importance of what attitudes our actions express to others. Business is not conducted in a vacuum – rather, it is conducted against a background schema of social meaning. This chapter argues that the public meaning of our actions, what our actions express, is normatively important. The piece imports familiar norms regarding expressions from interpersonal morality to business ethics, such as those surrounding insult, blame, and gratitude. It argues that many of ethicists’ gripes across a range of business ethics topics – from disproportionate compensation to immoral investing – can fruitfully be analyzed from an expressive perspective.