Bryan Norton, professor of philosophy at Georgia Institute of Technology, will address “Evaluation and Species Preservation” at the third lecture on Monday, March 31. Norton specializes in the philosophy of science and conceptual change in, and across, scientific disciplines. He writes on inter-generational equity, sustainability theory, bio-diversity policy and valuation methods. In addition to his duties as a professor in the School of Public Policy, Norton is an associated scientist at Zoo Atlanta and the author of several books, including Sustainability: A Philosophy of Adaptive Ecosystem Management.
James Kennett, professor of geological science at The University of California, Santa Barbara, discussed “The Earth’s Turmoil of the Last Deglacial Period” on Thursday, March 6, at The College of Wooster. The presentation, which is free and open to the public, is part of The Consortium for Ocean Leadership Distinguished Lecturer Series. It began at 7 p.m. in Lean Lecture Room of Wishart Hall (303 E. University St.). A dessert reception followed the lecture.
Kennett’s research focuses on earth system history during the Cenozoic based on the analyses of the deep-sea sedimentary record and the uplifted marine record on land. One of his primary objectives is to help develop a better understanding of past global changes. He received a B.S. from the University of New Zealand and from Victoria University of Wellington, and a Ph.D. from Wellington as well as a D.Sc. degree. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and a fellow with the American Geophysical Union and Geological Society of America. He also serves on the editorial advisory boards of The Island Arc, Marine Micropaleontology, and Paleoceanography.
The Consortium for Ocean Leadership is a non-profit organization based in Washington, D.C., that represents 95 of the leading public and private ocean research education institutions, aquaria, and industry with the mission to advance research, education, and sound ocean policy. The series brings the scientific explorations and discoveries of the Integrated Ocean Drilling Program to students at both the undergraduate and graduate levels and to the geoscience community in general.
Jan Salick, curator of ethnobotany at Missouri Botanical Garden and professor of biology at Washington University in St. Louis and the University of Missouri-St. Louis, visited campus to present the second lecture, “Indigenous Peoples Creating, Managing and Conserving Biodiversity” on Wednesday, March 5. Salick’s research interests include ethnobotany, conservation biology, tropical ecology, and agroecology. She has published a number of articles, including “Tibetan Sacred Sites Conserve Old Growth Trees in the Eastern Himalayas” in Biodiversity and Conservation.
Paul E. Olsen, the Arthur D. Storke Memorial Professor of Earth and Environmental Sciences at Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University, presented “Mega Eruptions, Mega Impacts, Mass Extinctions, and the Shape of Life” at the 27th annual Richard G. Osgood, Jr., Memorial Lecture on Wednesday, Feb. 27, at The College of Wooster. The lecture, which is free and open to the public, was held in Lean Lecture Room of Wishart Hall (303 E. University St.), beginning at 7:30 p.m.
Olsen’s research focuses on the evolution of continental ecosystems, especially the pattern, causes and effects of climate change on geological time scales, mass extinctions, and the effects of evolutionary innovations on biogeochemical cycles. His projects include (1) drilling and studying 22,600 feet of core from 210 million-year-old lake beds to understand the influence of variations of the earth’s orbit on climate; (2) analysis of the mass extinction 201 million years ago that set up dinosaurian dominance; (3) excavations at major fossil vertebrate sites throughout North America and Morocco; and (4) the evolutionary events mediating the carbon cycle and climate change. Olsen, who has a B.A. in Geology and a Ph.D. in Biology (both from Yale University), is the author of more than 170 publications and has appeared in numerous documentaries on the history of life and climate.
The Richard G. Osgood, Jr., Memorial Lectureship in Geology was endowed in 1981 by his three sons in memory of their father, a paleontologist with an international reputation who taught at Wooster from 1967 until 1981. Funds from this endowment are used to bring a well-known scientist interested in paleontology and/or stratigraphy to campus each year to lecture and meet with students. The lecture is sponsored by the Department of Geology and the Richard G. Osgood, Jr., Memorial Lecture Endowed Fund.
Rodolfo Dirzo, professor of biology at Stanford University, opened the Environmental Analysis and Action Symposium series on Wednesday, Feb. 20, when he presented “Tropical Biodiversity: An Endangered Natural Treasure.” Dirzo studies plant-animal interactions in an effort to better understand how the ecology and evolution of plants are affected by their biotic environment. His work is focused on tropical forest ecosystems, and he has written extensively on the topic, including a book, titled Tropical Forests: Biodiversity and Ecosystem Functioning. In addition, he has received numerous honors, including the Presidential Award in Ecology from the Secretary of Environment of Mexico.
On Feb. 19, Catharine Bond Hill, President and Professor of Economics at Vassar College, examined “Democracy and Access to Higher Education.” Hill co-authored “Access to the Most Selective Private Colleges by High-Ability, Low-Income Students: Are They Out There?” in College Access: Opportunity or Privilege? and “Affordability: Family Incomes and Net Prices at Highly Selective Private Colleges and Universities” in the Journal of Human Resources. She has been selected for a number of scholarly awards, grants, and fellowships from such organizations as the American Council of Learned Societies, the Brookings Institution, the National Science Foundation, and the Social Science Research Council. She graduated summa cum laude from Williams College, and also earned B.A. and M.A. degrees at Brasenose College, Oxford University, with first-class honors in politics, philosophy and economics. She completed her Ph.D. in economics at Yale University.
On Feb. 5, Jorge Dominguez, professor of Mexican and Latin American Politics and Economics, and Vice Provost for International Affairs at Harvard University, will present “Free Market and Free Politics in Latin America, Past and Future.” Dominguez also serves as vice provost for international affairs in the Office of the Provost, senior advisor for international studies to the dean of the faculty of arts and sciences, and chairman of The Harvard Academy for International and Area Studies. In addition, he is a member of the executive committee of the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs and faculty associate of the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies. His research focuses on the domestic and international politics of Latin American countries. He received his B.A. from Yale and his M.A and Ph.D. from Harvard.
The series begins on Tuesday, Jan. 22, with a special lecture in celebration of the life of Martin Luther King, Jr. The event, which is co-sponsored with the Office of Interfaith Campus Ministries and The Office of Multi-ethnic Student Affairs, will feature Judith Green, associate professor of philosophy and co-director of women’s studies at Fordham University, who will address “Waging Peace, Deepening Democracy: The Transformative Potential of King’s Prophetic Philosophy in Twenty-First Century Global Contexts.” Green specializes in social and political philosophy, ethics and applied ethics, philosophy of economics, philosophy of religion, American philosophy, African American philosophy, Native American philosophy, critical theory, feminist theory, interdisciplinary women’s studies, urban studies, and urban and regional planning. She is the author of Pragmatism and Social Hope: Deepening Democracy in Global Contexts and Deep Democracy: Community, Diversity, and Transformation. She earned undergraduate degrees in English and philosophy from Michigan State University and an M.A. and Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Minnesota.
Welcome to The College of Wooster as we launch the new academic year. I’m the new guy. Welcome Trustees, alumni, members of the community, and guests. Welcome faculty and staff of the College. Welcome students.
One of the wonderful things about college life is that we get to begin anew each year. For some of us here today, this is our first beginning. For the seniors, this is the fourth and final beginning of your undergraduate career (assuming all goes well). For some faculty and staff, as it is for me, this is the first Convocation at Wooster. For others, it is their 10th, 20th, 30th, even their 43rd new beginning. For The College of Wooster it is the 138th new beginning.
What I want to do in my remarks today is talk about our mission. It is important at this time to reflect on our core purpose, our raison d’etre, our reason for being. What is it that calls us together, that warrants not just our attention, but our passionate commitment? What is it that justifies the significant investment of time and resources, not just from families, but also the resources donated to our mission from alumni, patrons, foundations, and the government?
The answer better be good. And it is. The first sentence of our mission statement reads:
The College of Wooster is an independent residential liberal arts college offering a rigorous and comprehensive education to students with the capacity and motivation to become educated leaders in a complex society.
This is why we are gathered here. It is why The College of Wooster was founded in 1866 and why it exists today. Though we have a variety of roles in this undertaking, we are each here to engage in this noble work.
What does this mean, “liberal education”? Today, I will draw upon two scholars whose thoughts on this topic have inspired my own. For John Dewey the mission of liberal education is nothing less than the reproduction of democratic society. Drawing on a long lineage of thinkers in some sense going back to the Greeks, Dewey acutely grasps that for democracy to flourish a society requires a citizenry that is first, sophisticated enough to be able to engage in deliberation about public policy formation, second, skilled in the arts of communicating across differences, since that is the very nature of democratic deliberation, and third, sufficiently equal in power and access to social goods that deliberation can be fully representative. For Dewey, the goal of liberal education is the preparation of a citizenry for democracy.
The philosopher and legal scholar, Martha Nussbaum, defines liberal education by reaching back to the Stoics. The project of liberal education is, as she says, the cultivation of humanity. In a book by that title and elsewhere, Nussbaum advocates an education designed to produce “citizens of the world,” people of cosmopolitan subjectivity, who see a world full of equally valuable human persons, all of whom have a claim on our sense of moral obligations.[1] Nussbaum believes that the task of liberal education is to enable us to imagine the realities of peoples distant in time and space, to understand both what humanity has in common but also the variety of ways in which it manifests itself. Through the reading of history, literature, and poetry, by the study of the social and natural sciences, liberally educated persons develop empathy without borders.
For these reasons Nussbaum believes our mission as a liberal arts college is to cultivate an ideal of cosmopolitanism and teach the critical reasoning skills that liberate one from ethnocentrism or from the kind of patriotism that says “My country, right or wrong.”
David Luban, the Frederick Haas Professor of Law and Philosophy at Georgetown University, will present “Torture and the Professions” at the 10th annual Bell Distinguished Lectureship in Law on Monday, April 23, at The College of Wooster. The lecture, which is free and open to the public, begins at 7:30 p.m. in Lean Lecture Room of Wishart Hall.
Luban’s talk will examine ethical problems when professionals become involved with torture. “Since Abu Ghraib, we have learned a great deal about the involvement of government lawyers in creating a policy approving harsh treatment of detainees in the War on Terror - treatment that many regard as torture,” he said. “But other professions have been involved with harsh interrogations as well, including physicians, psychologists, and even anthropologists (some of whom are consultants on cultural traits of detainees).”
An expert in legal ethics, Luban’s research interests include political and moral philosophy, the ethics of academia, white collar crime, jurisprudence, and organizational moral responsibility. He is noted for his numerous books on law and ethics: The Good Lawyer (1984), Lawyers and Justice (1989), and Legal Ethics: A Case Book (2004).
Luban joined the faculty of Georgetown University Law Center in 1997, coming from the University of Maryland’s Institute for Philosophy and Public Policy and its School of Law. He received his B.A. from the University of Chicago and his Ph.D. in philosophy from Yale University. He taught philosophy at Yale and Kent State Universities, before moving to Maryland. He has held visiting appointments in law at Harvard, Stanford, and Yale Law Schools, and visiting appointments in philosophy at Dartmouth College and the University of Melbourne. In addition, he has been a fellow of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and held a Guggenheim Fellowship. Other honors include the Keck Fellowship for distinguished scholarship in legal ethics, the Sanford D. Levy Award of the New York State Bar Association, and Georgetown’s Frank Flegal Teaching Award. Luban has published numerous books and articles, most recently Legal Ethics and Human Dignity (Cambridge UP, forthcoming in 2007).
The Bell Distinguished Lectureship in Law was endowed in 1999 by Jennie M. Bell and Samuel H. Bell, a 1947 College of Wooster graduate and a Federal Judge of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Ohio. The purpose is to engage students, faculty, members of the legal profession, and members of the community in a legal issue that has broad implications for society. The Bells hope, by way of this lectureship, to bring the best minds of the legal profession to Wooster students and the local community. This lectureship also joins their long-held affection for the law and faith in the values derived from a liberal arts education.