Featured Events
Education for Citizenship Series:
Loyalty: Virtue or Vice?
Richard T. Ford and Glenn Loury with Eamonn Callan
Wednesday, January 21, 2009 | 7:30 – 9:00pm | Kresge Auditorium | Free and Open to All
This conversation concerns loyalty and the limits to which it might be subject when viewed in particular historical, social, and political contexts. What roles does loyalty play in forming personal and social identities? What are the connections between loyalty, patriotism, and pride? Under what conditions can loyalty be a vice and disloyalty a virtue? Is there greater agreement that disloyalty is a vice than that loyalty is a virtue? With class and racial inequalities remaining deeply embedded in our social, political, and economic structures, what is the place of loyalty in America today?
Related Themes: citizenship, ethics, loyalty, vices, virtues
Creative Couples Series:
Irvin and Marilyn Yalom
Irvin Yalom and Marilyn Yalom with Mark Gonnerman
Thursday, January 29, 2009 | 7:30 – 9:00pm | Kresge Auditorium | Free and Open to All
In the course of over fifty years of married life and raising four children, Irvin and Marilyn Yalom have made marks in their respective fields of psychotherapy and women’s studies with contributions through teaching and research leading to the publication of academic papers and popular books. Last year, they each presented their own research into death: Irv’s Staring at the Sun: Overcoming the Terror of Death and Marilyn’s The American Resting Place: Four Hundred Years of History Through our Cemeteries and Burial Grounds. Our conversation will begin with the Yaloms’ poignant explorations of human finitude and then turn to the story of their time together as a dual-career academic couple.
Related Themes: books, couples, creativity, death
Tibet: Where Continents and Cultures Collide
Simon Klemperer, Lyman P. Van Slyke, Tenzin Tethong, Emily Yeh, and Michael Zhao
with Orville Schell
Thursday, February 19, 2009 | 7:30 – 9:00pm | Kresge Auditorium | Free and Open to All
The Tibetan plateau, a land mass about the size of Western Europe, has great biodiversity despite its high altitudes. Known as “Asia’s Watertower,” Tibet’s glaciers feed rivers in China, India, and Southeast Asia. The region’s importance cannot be overstated, nor can the short- and long-term effects of environmental problems such as the declining quality of grasslands, melting glaciers, and rising population. Our conversation begins with a look at the physical geography of Tibet and will assess the impact of development projects and efforts to protect and restore an ecological system that is crucial for much of the planet.
Related Themes: environment, justice, Tibet
Parker Palmer and the Courage to Teach
Parker Palmer with Mark Gonnerman
Saturday, February 21, 2009 | 1:30 – 3:00pm | Kresge Auditorium | Free and Open to All
First published in 1998 and reissued in a tenth anniversary edition, Parker Palmer’s The Courage to Teach takes teachers of all levels on an inner journey toward reconnecting with themselves, their students, and their colleagues in ways that reignite vocational passion. The book builds on a simple premise: good teaching cannot be reduced to technique but is rooted in the identity and integrity of the teacher. Effective teaching takes myriad forms but good teachers share one trait: they are authentically present in the classroom and weave a life-giving web between themselves, their subjects, and students who must learn how to weave a world for themselves. Join us for a conversation with a teacher’s teacher who has a lifetime of ideas, insights and stories to share.
Related Themes: courage, education, vocation
Education for Citizenship Series:
Responsible Freedom and Education in the Liberal Arts
Martha Nussbaum and Andrew Delbanco with Debra Satz
Thursday, March 5, 2009 | 7:30 – 9:00pm | Kresge Auditorium | Free and Open to All
Universities eloquently proclaim the advantages of education for creating responsible citizens, but their rhetoric is often better than the outcome. All too often, little attention is paid to what education is for and what it should consist of. What should today's students know in preparation for common citizenship in a pluralistic world? What is the role of the humanities in that preparation? Join us for a conversation with two leading public intellectuals about the role of liberal education in promoting civic virtue, as well as about its uncertain future amidst hyper-professionalism and commercialization.
Related Themes: citizenship, democracy, education, freedom, vocation
A Passion for Nature:
Exploring the Life of John Muir
Donald Worster and Richard White with Jon Christensen
Thursday, May 7, 2009 | 7:30–9:00pm | Kresge Auditorium | Free and Open to All
In Donald Worster's new biography, John Muir's "special self" is fully
explored as is his extraordinary ability, then and now, to get others
to see the sacred beauty of the natural world. A Passion for Nature
is the most complete account of the great conservationist and founder
of the Sierra Club ever written. Rich in detail and personal anecdote,
it traces Muir from his boyhood in Scotland and frontier Wisconsin to
his adult life in California right after the Civil War up to his death
on the eve of World War I. It explores his marriage and family life,
his relationship with his abusive father, his many friendships with the
humble and famous (including Theodore Roosevelt and Ralph Waldo
Emerson), and his role in founding the modern American conservation
movement. Inspired by Muir's passion for the wilderness, Americans
created a long and stunning list of national parks and wilderness
areas, Yosemite most prominent among them. Yet the book also describes
a Muir who was a successful fruit-grower, a talented scientist and
world-traveler, a doting father and husband, a self-made man of wealth
and political influence, and a man for whom mountaineering was "a
pathway to revelation and worship."
Related Themes: America, conservation, environment, history
Director's Notes
Post by Mark Gonnerman
Tuesday, 13 January, 2009
Loyalty: Virtue or Vice?
In anticipation of the next conversation in our Education for Citizenship series, we urge you to read Glenn Loury's "The Call of the Tribe" in the December 2008 Boston Review. Professor Loury will be in conversation with Richard Ford of the Law School who discusses his latest book, The Race Card, on FORA.tv. Eamonn Callan will moderate this conversation at Kresge Auditorium on January 21. We look forward to seeing you there.
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