Early Retirement Incentive Plans and the Age Discrimination in Employment Act

Early retirement incentive plans (ERIP) “seek to give incentives to older employees to retire before conventional retirement age. The purpose of these programs is to cut back on salaries and benefits to make way for younger workers.” While some ERIPs might constitute a prohibited act under the Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA), the statute provides an affirmative defense for employers who can prove that the plan is voluntary and “consistent with the purposes” of the Act. Some commentators have suggested that one way to encourage employers to establish bona fide phased retirement programs within their qualified pension plans is to craft an exemption for phased retirement programs from age discrimination claims that is similar to the ERIP exemption. To facilitate a discussion of that idea, this memo provides an overview of the statutory exemption for early retirement incentive plans under ADEA

The separation of knowledge and the concentration of power – what role can the media play today?

This article is by Polis Summer School student Alessandra Bocch

The genealogy of judgement: towards a deep history of academic freedom

The classical conception of academic freedom associated with Wilhelm von Humboldt and the rise of the modern university has a quite specific cultural foundation that centres on the controversial mental faculty of 'judgement'. This article traces the roots of 'judgement' back to the Protestant Reformation, through its heyday as the signature feature of German idealism, and to its gradual loss of salience as both a philosophical and a psychological concept. This trajectory has been accompanied by a general shrinking in the scope of academic freedom from the promulgation of world-views to the offering of expert opinion