Matthew Beard is the 2020-21 recipient of the Faculty of Social Sciences Dean’s Award for Excellent Writing.

Born in St. Catharines, the 22 year-old has lived in the Niagara region his whole life. He is graduating this year and then heading off to Carleton University to pursue a master’s degree in Political Science.

On choosing Brock: “When I chose Political Science at Brock, the range of political theory course offerings was the most exciting thing about the program to me.”

On his favourite course: “I enjoyed many of my courses, but my favourite would be Professor Bradshaw’s course Tyranny: Classical and Contemporary Accounts. On its face, the course sought to ‘explore the meaning of tyranny in the Western tradition of political thought.’ Though in achieving this goal, it became an exploration not just of tyranny, but of thinking. A resistance to tyranny seems to require a robust public square where ideas can be deliberated freely and with reason. Yet so often throughout history, the philosopher has been the tyrant’s advisor, certain that their ideas will remake the world once and for all. How can we reconcile this tension? I believe this course helped students develop epistemic humility, which is central to a university’s mission and perhaps part of the answer.”

Professor Bradshaw has had a tremendous impact on my time at Brock. I first encountered her as a guest lecturer in the course Political Theory Through Film and Literature (by Professor Dolgert, another fantastic course). I was struck by Bradshaw’s lecturing style – no PowerPoint, no slides. She just speaks and encourages her students to listen and think. To me, this was fantastic. It was clear that she loved ideas; not just her own, but the process of working through ideas with her students. In seminar she always listens and engages with students’ thoughts, believing like Hannah Arendt that it is not her job to teach us what to think, but to cultivate the virtues of reason and practical wisdom altogether.

Advice for new and current students: “There is so much I wish I knew in first year. Almost everything is more complicated than it seems at first. There is no substitute for just doing the reading, or at the very least the beginning and end. The quality of your life will be determined by how well you treat other people. You are often wrong, especially when things feel certain. Extracurriculars really are worth the time and a lot of fun. A few books that I think will help first year social science students in every course: Thank You For Arguing by Jay Heinrichs, On Writing Well by William Zinsser, The Coddling of the American Mind by Jonathan Haidt and Greg Lukianoff.”

Award-winning Thesis Abstract:
In recent years a series of books have been published by scholars criticizing the idea – not just the poor implementation – of meritocracy. Michael Sandel and Lani Guinier of Harvard, as well as Daniel Markovits of Yale, and others, have all rebuked the idea of higher education as an elite “sorting” mechanism for upward mobility. They argue that meritocracy generates hubris by equating career success with moral desert, ignores non-market or less quantifiable virtues, and generates profound social and political resentments in those who fail to “climb the ladder.” Decades earlier, Michael Young warned that if “intelligence” and “hard-work” became the only standards for dignity in society, a “morally naked” underclass would form that struggled economically and entirely blamed themselves. This article seeks to support these arguments, then expand them by shifting their focus away from luck and towards our view of the self. It argues that the core failing of meritocracy is not that it neglects the role of fortune, as Sandel has argued, but that it has a faulty picture of human agency. In the domains of either career success or civic virtue, individuals are not as autonomous as the liberal tradition presents. Success or failure is highly dependent on other people who make up the community and public realm that shapes an individual. Therefore, a proper political and social response to meritocracy should incorporate a relational view of self to rebuild the public square and honour the “ordinary life.”

“My thesis argues that our ideas about individual achievement are flawed insofar as they ascribe success to autonomous agents and inflate a thin conception of success. Our entire lives are tangled in networks of relations that shape who we are and what our aspirations might be. Those who fail, even in a perfect meritocracy, are told that they have no one to blame but themselves. Meanwhile, those who succeed form an ossified elite convinced of their own merit and detached from/disdainful of their fellow citizens. In both cases, a wider view of community and non-market virtues can help us cultivate the ‘good life’ beyond the ‘successful’ life. Rather than building systems of competition that allow ‘meritorious’ individuals to rise, I argue that our politics should seek to rebuild the public square and honour the significance of an ordinary life.”

Earlier this year Matt was recognized with the Best Paper Award at the Crossing Borders Conference, held at Niagara University. He took part in a panel on Citizenship and Immigration in Canada and the U.S., moderated by Ibrahim Berrada, Niagara University/Brock University Therese Purcell (University at Buffalo, State University of New York).

Abstract:
Citizens and Market Men: Civic Unity in the Twenty-first Century 

The roles of populism and polarization in liberal democracies are often discussed in the literature, but a deeper question is less frequently asked— what is citizenship? And how do competing conceptions of it influence political life? This article examines two philosophical ideals of citizenship and uses them to evaluate civic unity in The United States and Canada. In the first conception of citizenship, human beings are political animals who become citizens by transcending the private realm and deliberating about the common good in public. In the second conception, human beings are a bundle of passions who become citizens by securing equality under the law and the right to private autonomous lives. While both strands of citizenship are necessary, this essay argues that the health of liberal democracies depends on a reinvigoration of that first Aristotelian conception of citizenship. For decades, an individualistic and market-based view has turned the “citizen” into a taxpayer and consumer. This essay will examine how civic republican thought aimed at the common good presents a viable alternative.

On future plans: “In a perfect world, I would love to become a professor. But I think ‘careers’ are often overrated. Whatever job I end up in, there are more important factors like trying to serve my community, love my family, and pursue my non-commercial interests. If this is a groan-inducing cliché, maybe we should reconsider why. That is what political theory has been about for me at Brock.”