Center for Ethics' Spring Schedule Brings Authors, Scholars to Campus
'Borders, Nationalisms, Identities: The Ethics of Global Citizenship' continues to explore the challenges and issues that exist in an increasingly connected world.Friday, January 10, 2020 09:13 AM
Center for Ethics continues its 2019-2020 program with visits from professor Ayesha Ramachandran, scholar Valerie Hudson, author Mohsin Hamid, musicologist Brigid Cohen, social scientist Arthur Brooks and filmmakers Alex Rivera and Skye Fitzgerald.
Spring 2020 Center for Ethics Schedule
Unless otherwise noted, all events are free and open to the public.
The Infiltrators Screening and Discussion with Alex Rivera
Wednesday, February 12 at 7 p.m. in Trumbower 130 (Lithgow Auditorium)
Award-winning filmmaker Alex Rivera will present and discuss his new film, The Infiltrators. Designed in a hybrid cinematic language, combining familiar documentary form and scripted narrative, The Infiltrators sets out to map an uncharted domain: inside an Obama-era immigration detention system. Based on true events, The Infiltrators is both a suspenseful account of a high-stakes mission and an emotionally charged portrait of visionary youth fighting for their community.
"Conference on Refugees, Migration and the UN" with Richard Towle, acting director of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), New York Office
Friday, February 21 from 9:30 a.m.-3:30 p.m. in the Seegers Union Event Space
In partnership with the Humpty Dumpty Institute and the United Nations
Prior to his role as acting director of UNHCR, Richard Towle previously served as the UNHCR Representative in Malaysia. He is a New Zealander who joined UNHCR in Hong Kong in the early 1990s, working in a variety of capacities with Vietnamese refugees, then moved to the London office of UNHCR. He has since held various senior legal roles in the Department of International Protection at UNHCR headquarters in Geneva and has been involved in the UNHCR development of polities and operations relating to human rights, internally displaced persons and asylum-migration issues. His other United Nations experience includes a role as Chief of Mission for the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, from 2001 to 2003. Towle served as a member of the New Zealand Refugee Status Appeal Authority from 2005 to 2006, as a deputy chair of the Hong Kong Refugee Status Review Board and as a lawyer in New Zealand specializing in refugee and human rights issues. He served as the UNHCR Regional Representative for Australia, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea and the South Pacific, a post he held from 2007 till 2013.
Ayesha Ramachandran, associate professor of comparative literature, Yale University
Friday, February 21 (2-3:30 p.m.)
Miller Forum, Moyer Hall
Ramachandran is a literary critic and cultural historian of early modern Europe. Her recent work focuses on Europe’s relations with an expanding world—her first book, The Worldmakers (University of Chicago Press, 2015) charts transnational encounters and the early mechanisms of globalization from the late fifteenth to the early eighteenth centuries.
Lifeboat Screening and Discussion with filmmaker Skye Fitzgerald
Tuesday, March 10 (7 p.m.)
Recital Hall, Baker Center for the Arts
Volunteers from a German non-profit risk the waves of the Mediterranean to pluck refugees from sinking rafts pushing off from Libya in the middle of the night. Lifeboat puts a human face on one of the world's greatest contemporary global crises and provides a spark of hope surrounding how civil society can intervene in the refugee crisis in a meaningful way.
Phi Beta Kappa Visiting Scholar: Valerie Hudson
We are sorry to report that this event has been canceled. We hope to reschedule our speaker's visit for the Fall 2020 semester.
Valerie M. Hudson holds the George H.W. Bush Chair in the Department of International Affairs at The Bush School of Government and Public Service at Texas A&M University, where she directs the program on Women, Peace and Security. Professor Hudson's research includes foreign policy analysis, security studies, gender and international relations and methodology. Hudson is one of the principal investigators of The WomanStats Project, which includes the largest compilation of data on the status of women in the world today.
Mohsin Hamid, author
We are sorry to report that this event has been canceled. We hope to reschedule our speaker's visit for the Fall 2020 semester.
Hamid will be on campus to discuss his novel, Exit West, which was read by Muhlenberg’s class of 2023 and other members of the College community.
Brigid Cohen, associate professor of music, New York University
We are sorry to report that this event has been canceled. We hope to reschedule our speaker's visit for the Fall 2020 semester.
Brigid Cohen is a historical musicologist who specializes in the historiography of music and musicians in migration. Her research and teaching examine the mass dislocation of peoples over the last two centuries, addressing conditions of empire, globalization, genocide, exile and minority experience.
Arthur Brooks
We are sorry to report that this event has been canceled. We hope to reschedule our speaker's visit for the Fall 2020 semester.
Arthur C. Brooks is Professor of the Practice of Public Leadership at the Harvard Kennedy School and Arthur C. Patterson Faculty Fellow at the Harvard Business School. Before joining the Harvard faculty in July of 2019, he served for 10 years as president of the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), a public policy think tank in Washington, DC. Brooks is the author of 11 books, including the national bestsellers “Love Your Enemies” (2019), “The Conservative Heart” (2015) and “The Road to Freedom” (2012). He is a columnist for the Washington Post, host of the podcast The Arthur Brooks Show and subject of the 2019 documentary film “The Pursuit.”
About 'Borders, Nationalisms, Identities: The Ethics of Global Citizenship'
We live in a global moment with controversies arising from a resurgence in nationalism, the simultaneous hardening and permeability of national borders and boundaries and increased flows of people as tourists, refugees, asylum seekers, laborers and students. Traffic in and exchange of raw materials, information, weapons and diseases have increasingly transformed national identities, cultures and conceptions of citizenship.
What are the ethical implications of these phenomena? How should we understand and respond to global changes in borders, nationalisms and identities? Are there historical precedents for such dynamic changes to the lives of peoples, states and our planet? What roles do new technology and communication play in crossing some borders while raising other barriers? How can we imagine our place in national and global societies when we are at the same time brought closer together and driven further apart?
About the Center for Ethics
The Muhlenberg College Center for Ethics seeks to develop our capacities for ethical reflection, moral leadership and responsible action by engaging community members in scholarly dialogue, intellectual analysis and self-examination about contested ethical issues. The current Center director is Brian Mello, associate professor of political science. To learn more about the Center and its mission, visit the Center for Ethics website.
About Muhlenberg College
Founded in 1848, Muhlenberg is a highly selective, private liberal arts college offering baccalaureate and graduate programs. With an enrollment of nearly 2,000 students, Muhlenberg College is dedicated to shaping creative, compassionate, collaborative leaders through rigorous academic programs in the arts, humanities, natural sciences and social sciences; selected preprofessional programs, including accounting, business, education and public health; and progressive workforce-focused post-baccalaureate certificates and master’s degrees. Located in Allentown, Pennsylvania, approximately 90 miles west of New York City, Muhlenberg is a member of the Centennial Conference, competing in 23 varsity sports. Muhlenberg is affiliated with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.
