Michael Weisberg, professor and chair of the Department of Philosophy in the School of Arts & Sciences, is aiming to take a deep analytical look at our current political landscape with the half-day conference “Trump, Philosophy, and American Politics,” on Friday, Feb. 3.

Hosted by the Penn Center for Philosophy, Ethics, and Public Affairs, the program runs from noon to 6 p.m. in Claudia Cohen Hall and is free and open to the public. Registration is recommended.

“The election of Donald Trump is surprising and unprecedented,” says Weisberg. “We don’t have an analytical framework to think about the election, the transition, and now, the presidency.”

Philosophers from a number of institutions, such as Stanford, Yale, and Rutgers, will be featured, as well as Penn faculty members Quayshawn Spencer, an assistant professor of philosophy, and Claire Finkelstein, a professor of law and philosophy.

Spencer, who studies the philosophy of race, biology, and science, will discuss how differing contextual meanings of “race” skewed pre-election numbers. As an example, he mentions Florida polling that placed all Hispanic and Latino populations into one homogenous group, which may have led to inaccurate predictions.

During the 2012 presidential election, 60 percent of Latinos in Florida voted for President Barack Obama, including 49 percent of Cuban-Americans, according to Pew Research. In 2016, 54 percent of Cuban-Americans voted for Trump, compared to just 35 percent of all Latinos.

“The way we racially classified people was mistaken for the scientific task at hand,” Spencer says.

That thinking may have changed the election outcome, he adds. Instead of polling Hispanics as one bloc, pollsters could have better caught outliers and made more accurate predictions by looking at voters’ ancestry.  

Finkelstein, who is also director of the Center for Ethics and the Rule of Law at Penn Law School, will tackle another charged topic: the rule of law under the Trump Administration.

“Even the lawmakers are subject to the laws,” Finkelstein says. “It’s the core idea of modern political democratic systems.”

Actions and statements by the Trump transition on topics like torture concern Finkelstein, with regard to the value it places on the rule of law.

Such conversations get to the heart of what Weisberg says he hopes the event accomplishes: to put aside prior beliefs and assumptions, and ask important questions.