SLE Salon: Wendy Salkin on Speaking for Others

Political representation is typically assumed to be the purview of formal institutions and elected officials. But many of the people who represent us are not senators or city councilors—think of Martin Luther King, Jr., or Malala Yousafzai or even a neighbor who speaks up at a school board meeting. Informal political representatives are in fact ubiquitous, often powerful, and some bear enormous responsibility. In Speaking for Others, political philosopher and Stanford professor Wendy Salkin develops the first systematic conceptual and moral analysis of informal political representation. She talks about the genesis for the book and some of its main arguments in this salon.