Presented with the Stanford Center for Ethics in Society

This conversation concerns loyalty and the limits to which it might be subject when viewed in particular historical, social, and political contexts. What roles does loyalty play in forming personal and social identities? What are the connections between loyalty, patriotism, and pride? Under what conditions can loyalty be a vice and disloyalty a virtue? Is there greater agreement that disloyalty is a vice than that loyalty is a virtue? With class and racial inequalities remaining deeply embedded in our social, political, and economic structures, what is the place of loyalty in America today?

RICHARD T. FORD, George E. Osborne Professor of Law at Stanford
An expert on civil rights and anti-discrimination law, Richard Ford has distinguished himself as an insightful voice and compelling writer on questions of race and multiculturalism. His scholarship combines social criticism and legal analysis and he writes for both popular readers and for academic and legal specialists. His work has focused on the social and legal conflicts surrounding claims of discrimination, on the causes and effects of racial segregation, and on the use of territorial boundaries as instruments of social regulation. Methodologically, his work is at the intersection of critical theory and the law. Before joining the Stanford Law School faculty in 1994, Professor Ford was a Reginald Lewis Fellow at Harvard Law School, a litigation associate with Morrison & Foerster, and a housing policy consultant for the City of Cambridge, Massachusetts. His latest book is The Race Card: How Bluffing About Bias Makes Race Relations Worse (2008).

GLENN C. LOURY, Merton P. Stoltz Professor of the Social Sciences
and Professor of Economics at Brown University
A prominent social critic and public intellectual, Glenn Loury taught economics at Harvard, Northwestern, and the University of Michigan prior to his current appointment at Brown University. He has made scholarly contributions to the fields of welfare economics, game theory, industrial organization, natural resource economics and the economics of income distribution. His essays on racial inequality and social policy have been influential in the United States and abroad, and he is a frequent commentator on national radio and television. His collection, One by One, From the Inside Out: Essays and Reviews on Race and Responsibility in America won the American Book Award and the Christianity Today Book Award in 1996. He is author of The Anatomy of Racial Inequality (2002) and Race, Incarceration, and American Values (2008).

EAMONN CALLAN (moderator), Pigott Family Professor at the Stanford School of Education
Eamonn Callan is a philosopher of education whose work draws on contemporary moral and political theory. His principal interests are in civic and moral education and in the application of theories of justice and democracy to problems in educational policy and practice. His books include Creating Citizens: Political Education and Liberal Democracy (1997).