Video Intro Maker: Jonathan Magnin https://yourecloser.co
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Teaching Conviction, Humility, and “the Facts” in the American Studies Classroom
We are excited that the project’s third summer institute for secondary school educators happens this month—and it couldn’t be more timely or necessary! Teaching Conviction, Humility, and “the Facts” in the American Studies Classroom will provide an opportunity for teachers of American Studies and affiliated disciplines to come together during the week of July 23-27, 2018, for intensive engagement with the concepts and practices of Intellectual Humility, to learn new methods for guiding students in productive and intellectually diverse dialogues about American culture, history & politics, and to examine a set of case studies and generate new possibilities for future lessons. While working with leading scholars of intellectual humility, truth & virtue in public life, and American Studies, this institute is also an opportunity for collaboration and community building among teachers from around the state.
In addition to the institute’s director, Micki McElya (Prof. of History, UConn), and co-convener, Sandra Sirota (HCPL Postdoctoral Researcher), our exciting lineup of scholars includes:
Heather Battaly, HCPL Advisory Board member and Professor of Philosophy, UConn, on teaching the epistemology and ethics of virtue.
Michael P. Lynch, HCPL Project Principal Investigator, Director of the UConn Humanities Institute, and Professor of Philosophy, on truth, democracy, and the state of public discourse in contemporary U.S. politics, culture, and classrooms.
Bonnie Miller, Associate Professor of American Studies, UMass Boston, on the longer histories of “fake news,” public opinion, the press, and the Spanish-American War of 1898.
Christopher Vials, Director of American Studies and Associate Professor of English, UConn, on the current state of the field and teaching about fascism through American Studies.
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.
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/
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.
Why We Argue
29th April Encounters series. Join community members in critical small group discussion about the U.S. Constitution.
National Issues Forum: Moderator Training Interested in supporting democratic dialogue and deliberation? Learn to be a National Issues Forum Moderator!
José Casanova on “Religious Conviction and Intellectual Humility in Public Life: Socio-Theological Reflections”, 4:00-5:30pm, April 21
Keynote Address
José Casanova, Georgetown University
Keynote address: 4:00-5:30pm, April 21st (reception to follow)
Religious Conviction and Intellectual Humility in Public Life: Socio-Theological Reflections
What does it mean to have a religious conviction in our global secular age? Why is it necessary that when we enter public life, even if motivated by deeply held religious convictions, our public interventions ought to be informed by intellectual humility? In addressing these questions I will proceed with the assumption that our age is characterized by profound religious, cultural and moral pluralism, that requires that we encounter the other with deep intellectual humility and respect. Precisely because not truths or convictions but persons have rights, each person has the inalienable right to seek the truth and to hold his/her convictions publicly. I will ground my reflections on the historical experiences of the Jesuits as pioneer globalizers in the early modern age, and on the deeds and words of the Jesuit Pope Francis. The Jesuits combined a deep religious conviction as global missionaries with a peculiar openness, controversial at their time, to accommodate other cultures and to enter into deep intercultural encounters, what Pope Francis calls the “culture of the encounter.”
José Casanova is Professor of Sociology, Theology and Senior Fellow at the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs at Georgetown University, where he heads the Program on Religion, Globalization, and the Secular. He is also a Professorial Fellow at Australian Catholic University, in Melbourne, where he directs a project on Asian/Pacific Catholicism and Globalization. Previously he served as Professor of Sociology at the New School for Social Research in New York and has held visiting appointments at numerous American and European universities. He has published widely in the areas of sociological theory, religion and politics, transnational migration, and globalization. His best-known work, Public Religions in the Modern World (Chicago, 1994) has become a modern classic in the field and has been translated into various languages, including Japanese, Arabic, and Turkish, and is forthcoming in Indonesian, Farsi, and Chinese. Presently he holds the Kluge Chair for Societies and Cultures of the Northern Hemisphere at the Library of Congress, where he is writing a book on “The Jesuits and Globalization.” He is also the recipient of the 2012 Salzburger Hochschulwochen Theological Prize.
TED 2017. Michael P. Lynch Director of the Humanities Institute and Philosopher. Wednesday, April 26.
TED2017: A week to explore the most pressing questions of our time. In these mainstage sessions (including one in Spanish) we’ll ask – and try to answer – the big questions of the moment.
Wednesday, April 26
8:30AM – 10:15AM PDT
See Complete program
Michael Patrick Lynch examines truth, democracy, public discourse and the ethics of technology in the age of big data.
Michael Patrick Lynch is a writer and professor of philosophy at the University of Connecticut, where he directs the Humanities Institute. His work concerns truth, democracy, public discourse and the ethics of technology. Lynch is the author or editor of seven books, including The Internet of Us: Knowing More and Understanding Less in the Age of Big Data, In Praise of Reason: Why Rationality Matters for Democracy, Truth as One and Many and the New York Times Sunday Book Review Editor’s pick, True to Life.
The recipient of the Medal for Research Excellence from the University of Connecticut’s College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, he is The Principal Investigator for Humility & Conviction in Public Life, a $7 million project aimed at understanding and encouraging meaningful public discourse funded by the John Templeton Foundation and the University of Connecticut. He’s a frequent contributor to the New York Times “The Stone” blog.
