Rethinking Equal Opportunity - by Harlan Beckley (Paperback)

About the Book

Book Synopsis

Most societies claim they support equal opportunity. But what does equal opportunity mean in practice? Beckley offers a substantive principle, disposition, and set of practices around genuine equality that rescues us from vacuous political cliches. He provides a robust understanding of equality of opportunity to better approximate justice for all.

Review Quotes

Drawing on decades of experience as a poverty-alleviation educator and inter-institutional leader, Harlan Beckley invites us to consider what "equality of opportunity" really means, beyond a trite synonym for the American Dream. What he offers is a nuanced, realistic, and socially embedded interpretation of human capability and freedom, where no one is guaranteed specific successes, but all citizens are empowered to pursue a vision of the good life, unencumbered by food, housing, health, or educational deficiencies, and unimpeded by gender and racial biases. In arguing for a collective responsibility to maximize human capability, Beckley draws on the insight of John Rawls, Martha Nussbaum, Amartya Sen, and Michael Sandel (among others), and in the second half of the book he offers a rich policy discussion of what structural commitment to freedom of opportunity in the US would require. Rethinking Equal Opportunity is a helpful contribution to the discourse around poverty alleviation, suitable for experts, undergraduates, and invested citizens alike.

Harlan Beckley has done a remarkable job of integrating the theoretical case for equal opportunity with the policy questions that shape current debates. Rethinking Equal Opportunity offers a comprehensive review of the strategies for increasing opportunity and a moral argument for equality that links these strategies to our political history and our understanding of human nature.

Harlan Beckley's book offers a careful and powerful rethinking of equal opportunity. Deeply grounded in both theoretical and practical debates, it presents a rich account of equal opportunity as a central part of justice and draws out its implications for institutions, policies, and practices. Interested readers will find this account quite illuminating as will students in undergraduate and graduate courses. I enthusiastically recommend it.

This is an important book for anyone concerned with public policy. Readers will readily appreciate how the formal principle of fair opportunity is wholly dependent on the substantive principle of human capability. The former pertains to social structures: the latter to human agency. The author's discussion is altogether captivating.

About the Author

Harlan Beckley is the author and editor of multiple publications: books, articles, reviews, and more popular essays. His longest single-authored book was Passion for Justice --a widely read interpretation and comparison of Walter Rauschenbusch, Reinhold Niebuhr, and John Augustine Ryan.
Beckley served as editor, for five years, of the Journal of the Society of Christin Ethics (formerly known as the Annual of the Society of Christian Ethics). He was shortly thereafter elected to the Society's board of directors, then became vice president and president of the Society of Christian Ethics in 2000 and 2001.
In addition, Beckley founded the Shepherd Poverty Studies Program at Washington and Lee, which he directed for 16 years. He also founded the Shepherd Higher Education Consortium on Poverty in 2012, serving as executive director off and on through 2019. He also served as acting president of Washington and Lee in 2004-05.
His latest book is a co-edited volume entitled Ethics and Advocacy: Bridges and Boundaries.