Andrew Cullison

How did a staunchly conservative Supreme Court judge side with a sweeping win for the LGBT community? The answer lies in textualism.

We take up all sorts of thorny issues with unsatisfactory answers. But there are some unequivocal statements we can make: Black lives matter.

Preparedness might be a virtue, but we all may have a moral duty not to deviate too wildly from our traditional products and past purchases in times of crisis.

Universities and colleges have an obligation to their faculty, staff, students, as well as the larger communities they inhabit to slow the spread of disease.

Does the transcript exonerate the president as his supporters have claimed? And what's the big deal if it doesn't?

Director Andy Cullison argues against the notion that Peter Singer and Jeff McMahan's analysis of the Anna Stubblefield case is merely offensive, rather than harmful.

On Saturday, The New York Times released part of Donald Trump’s 1995 tax returns that revealed over $900 million in business losses and concluded that Trump could have avoided paying any federal income taxes for 18 years, deducting up to $50 million a year from his taxable income each year. If true, Trump may have … Continue reading "The Moral Hazard Hidden in Trump’s Tax Returns"

Donald Trump benefitted from an electoral system that struggles with crowded candidate fields. Instant Runoff Voting could change that.

Happy Back to the Future Day! October 21, 2015 is the day that Marty McFly travelled to the future in Doc Brown’s time-traveling DeLorean. To commemorate this day, I thought we should have a bit of fun and consider an interesting (and hypothetical) moral question. Suppose we could build a time machine. Would it be … Continue reading "Would it be wrong to build a time machine?"

New Reddit CEO, Ellen Pao, is making waves across the tech and finance industry with her recent decision to end salary negotiations for new hires. This new policy was unveiled in her interview with the Wall Street Journal yesterday as she talked about a wide range of issues related to gender in the tech industry. Pao … Continue reading "Should CEOs End Salary Negotiation?"

This week it was announced that the Student Digital Privacy and Parental Rights Act, which will soon be introduced to Congress for consideration, will not extend to college students. The bill is designed to restrict ways in which educational technology companies can use the data of K-12 students. Ed tech companies have an interest in that … Continue reading "New Student Privacy Law Won’t Extend to College Students"

Justin McBrayer, wrote this interesting piece for the New York Times.  He argues that there is a misleading distinction embedded in the common core standards when it comes to teaching students the difference between facts and opinions. We’re all probably familiar with the drill. Students are given a list of sentences and asked to distinguish the facts from the … Continue reading "Are Public Schools Teaching Kids to be Moral Nihilists?"

The Supreme Court is hearing arguments today on a new challenge to Obamacare. Vox has one of the clearest summaries of the issue here. People say the issue hinges around the interpretation of four simple words “established by the state”, but really it’s about where the law mentions tax subsidies and where it does not. The Affordable Care … Continue reading "A New Constitutional Challenge to Obamacare: The Basic Argument"

I recorded the talk I gave last weekend at the American Philosophical Association Central Division. You can listen to it above. In the talk I discuss ways in which Web 2.0 and Web 3.0 could threaten democracy. The bulk of it focuses on Web 3.0 and defends net neutrality as an appropriate and permissible preventative measure. Given … Continue reading "Web 3.0 and The New Epistemic Threat to Democracy"

The American Conservative posted this interesting piece yesterday last week about Virginia’s former attorney general, a Republican, who is now on a crusade against the incarceration state. The article argues that both parties have been complicit in the increase in mass incarceration, but notes that traditionally the push for more incarceration comes from the conservative camp … Continue reading "Could Prison Reform Become Less Partisan?"

Imagine if you could only talk on the phone to people who used the same wireless service provider. Imagine people on Verizon could only call other Verizon customers. Imagine you could only email someone who used the same email service as you. Imagine Gmail users could only email other Gmail users. This is a nightmare communication … Continue reading "It’s Time for an Open Social Web"

The Monon Bell game was broadcast live across the country yesterday on AXS TV. If you were at the game, or if you didn’t get a chance to watch it on TV – you might have missed all of the segments about DePauw that were run during the breaks. Here’s the segment on the Prindle … Continue reading "Prindle Institute’s Segment Broadcast During Monon Bell"

I want to tell you why I’m excited for the new film, Reparation. Before you hear my reasons, you might want to watch the trailer above. Okay. Here’s why I’m excited. 1. The movie looks like it’s going to be great. I have a good feeling about this movie based on the trailer, and the … Continue reading "Three Reasons I’m Excited for Reparation"

The Prindle Institute is excited to announce that Pizza Dude (a DePauw student run food start-up) will be operating out of the Prindle Institute kitchen for three Sundays this semester. You can order pizza for delivery from the comfort of your home or living unit. But what’s exciting for us is that if you’re studying … Continue reading "Pizza Dude at Prindle for Three Sundays This Semester"

  I was listening to this NPR story today that presented two rebuttals to the claim that voter restriction laws make it difficult for historically disenfranchised people to vote. They both strike me as bad rebuttals, and I’d like to consider them in turn. (You can listen to the story above). The first is that it claimed that … Continue reading "How Not to Defend Voter Restriction Laws"