“Donald Trump’s inauguration heralds a new age of arrogance and says something sad and scary.” Read the full article here at the New York Times.
Month: January 2017
Get to Know Our Fellows: Four Questions with Ufuk Topkara
Ufuk Topkara is a residential research fellow with the Humanities Institute’s Humility and Conviction in Public Life Project
H&C: What is your academic background and what is your current position in UCHI/at UConn/Your Home Institution?
UT: I received a master’s degree in history from the Humboldt University, Berlin and am completing my doctoral dissertation with the Graduate School of Islamic Theology in Germany. I am a 2017 residential fellow at UCHI.
H&C: What is the project you’re currently working on?
UT: My research centers on the convergence of reason and revelation. I bring Islamic Theology into discourse with Modern Philosophy. This is both the subject of my doctoral dissertation, as well as theoretical and methodological articles that I am currently preparing for publication.
H&C: How did you arrive at this topic?
UT: Both my academic and personal background draw from multiple traditions. I have always been interested in how disciplines can inform and strengthen one another. I also remain dedicated to the translation of academic work for diverse broader populaces, which is a key aspect of my major intellectual project.
H&C: What impact might your work have on a larger public understanding of your topic?
UT: I believe that my work could help society to look at two intellectual and social traditions often misperceived as diametrically opposed to one another (Islamic Theology and Modern Philosophy) as both complementary and complicating simplistic discourses on religion and secularity. I also feel that by providing an initial methodological model that unites these two disciplines, other theologians could apply and expand our understandings of the interrelation between reason and revelation. This is especially important at a time in which much of European and American society feels discomfort with/disconnected from the religion of Islam.
Get to Know Our Fellows: Four Questions with Louise Richardson-Self
Louise Richardson-Self is a residential research fellow with the Humanities Institute’s Humility and Conviction in Public Life Project
H&C: What is your academic background and what is your current position in UCHI/at UConn/Your Home Institution?
R-S: I am a tenured lecturer at the University of Tasmania and teach units which contribute to both the Philosophy and Gender Studies majors. Prior to taking up my post at the University of Tasmania, I was a lecturer at the University of Wollongong, and was awarded my PhD in Philosophy from the University of Sydney in June 2014. I am the author of Justifying Same-Sex Marriage: A Philosophical Investigation (Rowman & Littlefield Intl. 2015), which emerged from research undertaken during the course of my PhD. Broadly speaking, my area of specialty is Feminist Philosophy, but I am particularly interested in events and issues that have contemporary political and ethical significance, privileging intersectionality. I am a Visiting Fellow to the Institute’s Humility & Conviction in Public Life project and will be in residence from mid-January to mid-February 2017.
H&C: What is the project you’re currently working on?
R-S: Currently I am researching hate speech. I’m interested in a variety of overlapping issues, but my main concern is to think through the problem of misogynistic hate speech against women. Little is said about women as targets of hate speech in philosophy, and I want to rectify this issue. That said, I am also interested in the evolution of hate speech alongside emerging technologies and integration of technology in our daily lives: how has the problem of hate speech changed with the emergence of the internet, smart devices, and social media? What are the harms of hate speech online and (how) do they differ from hate speech offline? Why do people disagree about what to do about hate speech (or whether anything should be done at all)? What new strategies can we devise to combat hate speech when legislation is too limited/limiting? These are all questions that I hope to work through. While I’m visiting UConn, I’ll be concentrating on an analysis of hate speech through the framework of social imaginaries – I hope that doing so will permit me to consider whether there is true understanding of the harms of hate speech amongst persons who are rarely, if ever, targeted.
H&C: How did you arrive at this topic?
R-S: Proposals to weaken Australian legislation forbidding hate speech initially sparked my interest in the topic. In my previous research (on LGBT rights and same-sex marriage) I had begun to consider and develop literature on social imaginaries, so it was with this framework in mind that I started to consider the contemporary problem of hate speech. Most philosophical analyses of hate speech utilise ‘speech act theory’ as a method for explaining the harms of hate speech (and sometimes, for justifying the need for legislative prevention/remedy). I hypothesize that applying a different theory to the issue may contribute new insights and provide a more robust understanding of the problem at hand. I do not want to see legislative protections weakened, but I am keenly aware that the law is not the solution to hate speech. We need to find alternative strategies which complement the law if we ever hope to reduce or eradicate the problem.
H&C: What impact might your work have on a larger public understanding of your topic?
R-S: I hope that my research will achieve a few things: I hope that my research will help people to better understand the harms of (misogynistic) hate speech, and how to identify it. I hope that my research will build scholarship on social imaginaries, and that this concept might begin to find greater purchase in the public sphere as a means for thinking through issues of racism, sexism, heterosexism, cissexism, classism, and so forth. I also hope that my research will enable greater empathetic connections with victims of hate speech and target groups, and greater recognition of each individual’s own intersectional location in the world. Of course, I hope that politicians, activists, and the general public will read and be moved by my scholarship, since the point of thinking through the problem of hate speech is to begin to build real-world strategies for change.
January 24, 2017. The Public Discourse Project Seminar: Jordan Labouff
Date & Location: January 24, 2017, UCHI seminar room, Babbige 4th Floor.
Title: Humility and Helpfulness
Abstract: Dispositionally humble persons (i.e., people with characteristically low self-focus and a comfortably accurate perception of one’s strengths and limitations) may be more likely to sacrifice some of their limited resources to help others in need. In several experimental studies we find that dispositional humility predicts willingness to help someone in need – particularly in situations where social pressure to help is low. We will investigate several possible mechanisms by which humility may promote helpfulness, and explore mechanisms for promoting the development of humility and intellectual humility (e.g., education, perspective-taking exercises).