Freshman year at Stanford, my peers and I were asked to imagine justice as a city in Plato’s Republic. The violence of this past year has been a disturbing meditation on justice; from the toll of the Covid-19 virus to horrifying hate crimes across the US. I made this collage April 20th, the day that Chauvin was found guilty of the murder of George Floyd. A lot of people online were breathing sighs of relief at the ruling, and rightfully so, but others were concerned; can we call the bare minimum justice? What kind of “just city” is this? I wanted to explore this question using campus as a microcosm of the world. Does our “just city” make sense? Or does it, like Plato’s, sound like a horrible place to live? And more importantly, what can we do about it?
