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Neil J. Diamant looks at what happened when the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) encouraged millions of citizens to read, listen to, pose questions about, and suggest revisions to drafts of new constitutions, and the implications of such constitutional talk for how we understand constitutionalism and political legitimacy. The CCP cracked open political space for people to criticize the party, the revolution, and the constitution. People pushed authorities to clarify contents and proposed revisions. Many called out the CCP for engaging in what the philosopher Harry Frankfurt defines as “bullshit.” This talk examines the bullshit element of constitutions as well as why they are useful for the CCP and citizens.

Biography:

Neil J. Diamant is the Walter E. Beach ’56 Chair in Political Science and Professor of Asian Law and Society at Dickinson College (Carlisle, PA). His previous books were published by UC Press, Rowman & Littlefield, Cornell, and Stanford. He received his Ph.D. in Political Science from UC Berkeley.