For twenty years, a political philosopher named Michael Sandel has taught a course at Harvard simply called “Justice.” It’s been so wildly popular that it became the first Harvard course to be aired on public television and available for free online. I just read the bestseller he wrote, Justice: What’s the Right Thing To Do?, which takes some of the key themes of the course and, presumably, puts the proverbial cookies on a shelf low enough for folks like me to reach them.

Drawing on philosophers both ancient and modern, he wrestles through real life dilemmas that happen all around us, and shows that there are three main ways of thinking about justice: justice as maximizing welfare, justice as respecting freedom, and justice as promoting virtue. We hold our views, in many cases, with unexamined and unarticulated assumptions, which goes a long way in explaining why political and social debates often turn so nasty, even among people who generally like each other.

Of today’s most divisive issues, Sandel says: “Lying just beneath the surface, with passions raging on all sides, are big questions of moral philosophy, big questions of justice. But we too rarely articulate and defend and argue about those big moral questions in our politics.”

Sandel says that most political discourse -- in mass media especially -- pits the welfare camp against the freedom camp. You probably know with which of the two camps you generally align. But he proposes a version of the third view of justice, that of promoting virtue. I won’t go into detail explaining what he means by that; you’ll need to read the book. Or better yet, take the course!

Here Sandel introduces some of the themes he covers in the book, using a fascinating golf quandary as his case study.

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I’m not sure how I missed it, but a month ago the US Treasury Department issued new guidelines on travel to Cuba. These long-overdue changes will ease restrictions on: (1) religious travel, (2) academic travel, (3) people-to-people travel and (4) journalist travel. The Latin American Working Group explains how the changes apply to each of these four types here.

I worked with Cuban refugees in Lancaster a few years ago, and having familiarized myself somewhat with US policy towards Cuba, I've found the logic behind it quite puzzling. In my opinion, these new travel guidelines are pretty sensible (unlike the travel ban), and hopefully we’ll see even more changes made in the near future.

To be clear, I’m no fan of the Castros and their regime; they abuse human rights, silence the press, stifle economic opportunity (with recent small exceptions), and generally I think they’ve done their country a tremendous disservice all these years. But the US embargo against Cuba and its people hasn’t helped matters either, and I'm glad for these small steps in the right direction.

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In anticipation of playing host to both the 2014 World Cup and the 2016 Olympics, Brazil has rolled out a “Favela Pacification Program” in Rio de Janeiro in a desperate attempt to curb rampant violence in its sprawling, gang-controlled hillside slums. When President Obama visited Rio in March, he made a point of stopping by and celebrating one of the slums under police control, called Cidade de Deus (or “City of God”). There he kicked around a soccer ball with neighborhood kids, albeit in a walled school compound with tight security.

The pacification program has its advocates and its critics, and it remains to be seen what kind of effect it will have on Rio’s favela-dwellers in these years leading up to the two big sporting events, and even more crucially, in the years following. ESPN's Wright Thompson has a really well-written piece for "Outside The Lines" on the complicated impact on the favelas even now. It’s lengthy but worth every word. Here’s a blurb:

The favelas, Rio's guilty conscience, almost a thousand of them, overlook paradise but never, ever partake. Dense, urban slums with wretched educational opportunities, no social services, no police protection, they exist outside civilized society. Residents who live in the city don't go up the hill. It's possible to live a middle-class life without the violence of the slums affecting one's daily existence. But the violence is always there. In 2010, there were 4,798 murders in Rio. That's about a fourth the number of murders annually in the entire United States. (The U.S. population is about 300 million people. Rio has 6 million.) Favelas are desperate places, and they've been ignored since the first one popped up in 1897. Only now, some of them are close to venues for the 2014 World Cup and the 2016 Olympic Games.

Rio has less than three years to fix a crisis a century in the making.

The clock is ticking.

Read the whole thing here.

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While indigenous Mayans account for some 40% of Guatemala's population, they are largely left on the sidelines of the country's political affairs. But with presidential elections coming up this fall, there's a ray of hope that they may finally be getting more of a voice, with a voter registration drive specifically targeting four key Mayan languages:

A total of 35,000 announcements will be broadcast over 91 radio stations inviting indigenous Guatemalans to register to vote, as part of a drive to promote more participation in the upcoming September elections.

Supreme Electoral Court president Maria Eugenia Villagran said the broadcasts would be heard throughout Guatemala, but would focuse on regions where most the indigenous communities are located. These include de Totonicapan, Solola, Quiche, Alta Verapaz, Chimaltenango, Baja Verapaz and Huehuetenango. The campaign is aimed about providing information on all aspects of the elections in a dynamic way, Villagran said.

Augusto Tul Rax, president of the Maya Language Academy, said the step was positive, but that it should be expanded to include more the country's 22 languages, including Garifuna and Xinka.

The two leading candidates in the elections are Otto Perez Molina, a retired general, and Sandra Torres, the current first lady. I wrote about Torres back in March, when she announced she was divorcing her husband, President Alvaro Colom, in order to bypass a constitutional law prohibiting immediate family members from running for office. It remains to be seen whether courts will allow that move.

For his part, Perez Molina is soon heading to Washington in an apparent effort to enlist key support for his candidacy from US officials. He'll be met with protests as well, though, because of a rather questionable track record on human rights during his tenure as a general during the civil war. Current polls show Perez Molina with 37% of the vote, and Torres significantly behind at 21%. The indigenous population seems to slightly favor Torres.

Meanwhile, in a major setback for UN efforts to curb rampant corruption in the country, former president Alfonso Portillo was surprisingly acquitted on Tuesday of embezzlement charges. The UN commission expressed its disgust, saying the ruling “reflects the real state of justice in Guatemala.” Portillo may still face extradition to the US, where he's accused of laundering the tens of millions of dollars he's stolen through US banks.

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Photo courtesy of The White House

Yesterday in El Paso, President Obama gave a speech on "building a 21st century immigration system." Although immigration reform is a divisive issue for some, seemingly everyone agrees that the status quo isn't working. So I'm glad that Obama is bringing the issue back into focus, and while there's not much indication this will happen, I sure hope it may signal a new beginning for constructive, healthy, bi-partisan debate that will lead to real results that work both for our immigrant families and for our country as a whole.

For thoughtful, Christian perspectives on the immigration debate, I'd recommend two books:

Welcoming the Stranger: Justice, Compassion and Truth in the Immigration Debate by Matthew Soerens and Jenny Hwang, both with World Relief, the humanitarian arm of the National Association of Evangelicals.

Christians at the Border: Immigration, the Church, and the Bible by M. Daniel Carroll R., a Guatemalan-American seminary professor and author.

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