If we keep talking about race, doesn’t that just keep racism alive? Now that we have a new president, why keep talking about the last one? Shouldn’t we move forward, and just put the past behind us?
Spencer’s guest this time says we can’t move forward unless we can look back as well, at truths that won’t go away until we face them.
Colleen Murphy is an expert on what’s known as transitional justice. She studies and teaches it at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where she’s a professor of Law, Philosophy, and Political Science. Transitional justice addresses great wrongs, like those experienced in places like South Africa under apartheid, Northern Ireland during the Troubles — and the United States during our long history of racism and our more recent history of democracy under attack.
As Professor Murphy wrote in a recent article for the Boston Review, transitional justice aims to “vindicate victims, hold perpetrators to account, and transform relationships.”
That doesn’t mean just forgive and forget. We all do things we regret from time to time, for which an apology is often enough. Transitional justice comes into play when doing wrong is not the exception, but has been made normal. It offers a way forward through the truth, instead of away from it.
In this interview, you’ll learn exactly how that works, from someone who combines deep expertise with compelling clarity.
Colleen Murphy
Colleen Murphy is the Roger and Stephany Joslin Professor of Law and Professor of Philosophy & Political Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where she also serves as Director of the Women and Gender in Global Perspectives Program in the Illinois Global Institute.
Prior to joining the Illinois faculty, she was an Associate Professor of Philosophy at Texas A&M University. Dr. Murphy has been a Laurence S. Rockefeller Visiting Faculty Fellow at the Princeton University Center for Human Values and a Visiting Professor at the 4.TU Centre for Ethics in the Netherlands. She is the author of The Conceptual Foundations of Transitional Justice (Cambridge University Press, 2017), which received the North American Society for Social Philosophy Book Award; A Moral Theory of Political Reconciliation (Cambridge University Press, 2010); as well as more than 50 articles and book chapters. She has also co-edited three volumes.
Dr. Murphy is an Associate Editor of the Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy, Journal of Human Development and Capabilities, Journal of Moral Philosophy, and Science and Engineering Ethics. She is member of the Editorial Board of Law and Philosophy and Sustainable and Resilient Infrastructure. Professor Murphy is a past member of the American Philosophical Association’s (APA) Committee on the Status of Women and APA Committee on Philosophy and Law. Professor Murphy holds a M.A. and Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a B.A. from the University of Notre Dame.
Links
- Colleen Murphy page at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign website
- Colleen Murphy’s personal website, with links to papers, articles, op-eds, and interviews