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Joseph Carens

Carens headshot (1)

Joseph H. Carens is Professor of Political Science at the University of Toronto and Professorial Fellow at the Institute for Social Justice at Australian Catholic University in Sydney. He holds a Ph.D. and an M.Phil. in Political Science from Yale University as well as an M.Phil. in Religious Studies from Yale and an A.B. summa cum laude from the College of the Holy Cross. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada.

Carens is a normative political theorist who works on questions about immigration, multiculturalism, and economic justice. He has written four books, co-edited two others, and published over 90 articles and book chapters. His most recent book The Ethics of Immigration (OUP 2013) won five book awards, including the David Easton award from the Foundations of Political Theory section of the APSA, the C. B. Macpherson award from the Canadian Political Science Association, and awards from two sections of the International Studies Association. An earlier book Culture, Citizenship, and Community: A Contextual Exploration of Justice as Evenhandedness  (OUP 2000) also won the Macpherson award. His 1987 article “Aliens and Citizens: the Case for Open Borders” in Review of Politics has been reprinted fifteen times,  including translations  into French, German, and Spanish. He is currently working on a project entitled “Taming the Market,” whose goal is to find ways to separate the organizational virtues of the market from its distributional and other defects.

Within the APSA, in addition to presenting papers at over 20 of the annual meetings, Carens has served as chair of the Franklin L. Burdette/Pi Sigma Alpha Award Committee for the best paper presented at the 2003 annual meeting, as co-chair of the program committee for the  Division on Migration and Citizenship for the 2013 annual meeting, as a member of the David Easton Book Prize Committee in 2016, and as a member of the committee to choose a new editorial team for Perspectives on Politics in 2016.

Statement of Views: I strongly support efforts to promote diversity of various kinds within the APSA, including (but not only) methodological pluralism. I would also like to try to promote more conversations between scholars in political theory and scholars in other subfields. Finally, for many political scientists, the annual meeting is their most important connection to the APSA.  I worry that many members do not understand what principles govern the organization of the annual meeting with respect to such matters as the number of papers assigned to particular divisions, the principles that affect acceptance or rejection of proposals, the way rooms and time slots are assigned, and so on. Many people may not care about such issues, but I would like the Association to provides as much information as possible to those who do and to find ways to be open to feedback from members about possible improvements.