Month: February 2018

SEWing Circle Featured Speaker:Trystan Goetze

Trystan Goetze 
“Moral and Epistemic Responsibility for Conceptual Ignorance”

March 1, 1:00-2:30 Babbidge Library, Heritage Room (4th Floor)

Trystan is currently a Ph.D. Candidate in Philosophy at the University of Sheffield, and a Visiting Research Scholar in the Ph.D. Program in Philosophy at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. His research interests lie at the intersection of epistemology, ethics, and analytic feminism. His dissertation is a novel investigation of our moral and epistemic responsibilities concerning the concepts we use.

Working Group

Midpoint Forum Featured Speaker: Eboo Patel

Eboo Patel, Founder and Executive Director of the Interfaith Youth Core

Eboo Patel is a leading voice in the movement for interfaith cooperation and the Founder and President of Interfaith Youth Core (IFYC), a national nonprofit working to make interfaith cooperation a social norm. He is the author of Acts of Faith, Sacred Ground and Interfaith Leadership. Named by US News & World Report as one of America’s Best Leaders of 2009, Eboo served on President Obama’s Inaugural Faith Council. He is a regular contributor to the public conversation around religion in America and a frequent speaker on the topic of religious pluralism. He holds a doctorate in the sociology of religion from Oxford University, where he studied on a Rhodes scholarship. For over fifteen years, Eboo has worked with governments, social sector organizations, and college and university campuses to help realize a future where religion is a bridge of cooperation rather than a barrier of division.

 

 Interfaith Youth Corp

Midpoint Forum Featured Speaker: Rabbi Melissa Weintraub

Rabbi Melissa Weintraub, Founding Co-Executive Director of Resetting the Table


Melissa is the co-founding Executive Director of Resetting the Table, an organization dedicated to building dialogue and deliberation across political divides. Melissa was also the founding director of Encounter, an organization dedicated to strengthening the capacity of the Jewish people to be agents of change in resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Melissa was awarded the Grinnell Young Innovator for Social Justice Prize, which honors demonstrated leadership and extraordinary accomplishment in effecting positive social change. Melissa has lectured and taught in hundreds of Jewish communal institutions, universities, and forums on four continents. She was ordained as a Conservative Rabbi at the Jewish Theological Seminary and graduated from Harvard University summa cum laude.

 

https://medium.com/@resetting/why-bother-talking-to-them-f5f2da4b0c65

https://www.facebook.com/Resettingthetable/

https://forward.com/shma-now/machlochet-lshem-shamayim/360531/listening-for-the-sake-of-heaven-post-election/

 

Midpoint Forum Featured Speaker: David Gergen

David Gergen, Political commentator and former Presidential advisor

 

David Gergen is a professor of public service and co-director of the Center for Public Leadership at the Harvard Kennedy

School, positions he has held for over a decade. In addition, he serves as a senior political analyst for CNN and works

actively with a rising generation of new leaders. In the past, he has served as a White House adviser to four U.S.

presidents of both parties: Nixon, Ford, Reagan and Clinton. He wrote about those experiences in his New York Times

best seller, Eyewitness to Power: The Essence of Leadership, Nixon to Clinton (Simon & Schuster, 2001).

In the 1980s, he began a career in journalism. Starting with The MacNeil-Lehrer NewsHour in 1984, he has been a

regular commentator on public affairs for some 30 years. Twice he has been a member of election coverage teams that

won Peabody awards, and he has contributed to two Emmy award-winning political analysis teams. In the late 1980s, he

was chief editor of U.S. News & World Report, working with publisher Mort Zuckerman to achieve record gains in

circulation and advertising.

Over the years, he has been active on many non-profit boards, serving in the past on the boards of both Yale and Duke

Universities. Among his current boards are Teach for America, The Mission Continues, The Trilateral Commission, and

Elon University’s School of Law.

Gergen’s work as co-director of the Center for Public Leadership at the Kennedy School has enabled him to work closely

with a rising generation of younger leaders, especially social entrepreneurs, military veterans and Young Global Leaders

chosen by the World Economic Forum. Through the generosity of outside donors, the Center helps to provide scholarships

to over 100 students a year, preparing them to serve as leaders for the common good. The Center also promotes

scholarship at the frontiers of leadership studies.

A native of North Carolina, Gergen is a member of the D.C. Bar, a veteran of the U.S. Navy, a member of the Council on

Foreign Relations and a member of the U.S. executive committee for the Trilateral Commission. He is an honors graduate

of Yale and the Harvard Law School. He has been awarded 27 honorary degrees.

Gergen has been married since 1967 to Anne Elizabeth Gergen of England, a family therapist. They have two children

and five grand-children. Son Christopher is a social entrepreneur in North Carolina as well as an author and member of

the Duke faculty. Daughter Katherine is a family doctor, working with the underserved population at the Boston Medical

Center.

 

https://www.aspenideas.org/speaker/david-gergen