PHILOSOPHERS' CORNER
PHILOSOPHERS' CORNER
When
Thursday, April 16, 2015 -- 9:00 PM
On Thursday April 16 at 9:00 pm John and Ken will be at the Portland studios of Oregon Public Broadcasting for a special live broadcast of the program.
"When Democracies Torture"
Torture is prohibited under international law and is widely considered a human rights violation. But despite the fact that 157 countries ratified the UN Convention Against Torture, it is still practiced in many states to this day. Moreover, while we might associate torture with dictatorships, liberal democracies pioneered the modern techniques that leave no physical trace. So why do democracies torture? Can calling torture by other names, such as “enhanced interrogation,” really resolve the deep conflict between what we say and what we do? Or has the taboo against torture finally been broken? John and Ken enhance their interrogation of Darius Rejali from Reed College, author of Torture and Democracy.