Why Dissent Matters: Because Some People See Things the Rest of Us Miss

by William Kaplan

Overview

Frances Kelsey was a quiet Canadian doctor and scientist who stood up to a huge pharmaceutical company wanting to market a new drug - thalidomide - and prevented an American tragedy. The nature writer Rachel Carson identified an emerging environmental disaster and pulled the fire alarm. Public protests, individual dissenters, judges, and juries can change the world - and they do. A wide-ranging and provocative work on controversial subjects, Why Dissent Matters tells a story of dissent and dissenters - people who have been attacked, bullied, ostracized, jailed, and, sometimes when it is all over, celebrated. William Kaplan shows that dissent is noisy, messy, inconvenient, and almost always time-consuming, but that suppressing it is usually a mistake - it’s bad for the dissenter but worse for the rest of us. Drawing attention to the voices behind international protests such as Occupy Wall Street and Boycott, Divest, and Sanction, he contends that we don’t have to do what dissenters want, but we should listen to what they say. Our problems are not going away. There will always be abuses of power to confront, wrongs to right, and new opportunities for dissenting voices to say, "Stop, listen to me." Why Dissent Matters may well lead to a different and more just future.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780773550704
Publisher:	McGill-Queens University Press
Publication date:	06/01/2017
Pages:	376
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 1.40(d)

About the Author

William Kaplan is a lawyer and author of many books, including A Secret Trial: Brian Mulroney and the Public Trust.

Table of Contents

Preface ix

Chapter 1 The Tenth Man 3

Chapter 2 There Really Is Nothing New under the Sun 39

Chapter 3 A Woman of Fortitude and Determination: Frances Oldham Kelsey 65

Chapter 4 Rachel Was Right: Rachel Louise Carson 92

Chapter 5 Dissenting Juries and Judges 128

Chapter 6 Sentenced to Death 156

Chapter 7 Occupy Wall Street - and This, That, and the Other Place 191

Chapter 8 How Not to Make Public Policy 225

Chapter 9 The Clock Is Ticking and It's 1973 All Over Again 245

Conclusion: Further Reflections on Our Dissenters 301

Acknowledgments 311

Notes 313

Index 349

Editorial Reviews

Kaplan has it exactly right: the reason to listen to dissenters is that humans are fallible.” Andrew Potter, The Literary Review of Canada


“Kaplan’s latest and most powerful book, Why Dissent Matters, is especially timely.” ipoiltics


"Kaplan's simple, single idea is that voices that speak out against the consensus are valuable, desirable, the sine qua non of good decision-making. His book is well written, with plenty of interesting asides and intelligent observations." Times Literary


“Applying a historical analysis to various kinds of dissent through the past century, and focusing on figures as diverse as Rachel Carson (Silent Spring) and Occupy Wall Street's Micah White, Kaplan illustrates the validity of protest as a means of social change.” The Quill and Quire


“Passionate and forceful.” Margaret MacMillan, University of Oxford

From the Publisher