Lecture Series

Fall Lectures

Our fall lectures explore the theme of ethics in a damaged world.

September 3 – Is Capitalism the Best We Can Do? 

5:30-7, 1303 Dunbar Hall

Capitalism isn't working, but is there an alternative? In this lecture, WMU alum Ben Burgis will lay out the ethical and economic arguments for a socialism worthy of the 21st century. This is a socialism that has learned the lessons of the failures of both capitalism and Soviet-style central planning. In this more just but also efficient system, workers control every lever of production, and competitive markets and state planning coexist side by side.

Ben Burgis is a philosopher, columnist for Jacobin, and host of the podcast Give Them an Argument.

Advance copies of Ben's forthcoming book, The Blueprint: How Socialism Can Work in the Real World (with Mike Beggs and Bhaskar Sunkara), will be available for purchase. 

October 8 – In Praise of Addiction

5:30-7, 1303 Dunbar Hall

Are our addictions vices that we should work to free ourselves from? Drawing from her fieldwork on chemical exposure in Mexico City as well as from harm reduction activists, addiction researchers and other scholars, Roberts highlights the external forces that so often fuel the damage of addiction. As her neighbors in Mexico City suggest, the adverse health effects brought on by their dependencies on Coca-Cola, processed foods, drugs, and alcohol have more to do with the ongoing effects of the drug war and NAFTA than any personal failings. Guided by this thought, Roberts draws a line between vice that isolates and addiction that connects, making a case for sharing in the pleasures—and suffering—of dependency.

Elizabeth Roberts is a professor of anthropology at the University of Michigan. 

Advance copies of Elizabeth's new book, In Praise of Addiction: Or How We Can Learn to Love Dependency in a Damaged World, will be available for purchase.

November 5 – Making in a Time of Unmaking

5:30-7, 1303 Dunbar Hall

Making is always also an unmaking. Reflecting on the trees that surrounded him growing up in Western Pennsylvania and the history of the human transformation of the land that they embody, as well as on the trees he now relies on as a woodworker, Matt Shockey explores how we know and love the world by making things, but how destruction is the shadow that inevitably follows behind. Seeing no way to overcome the tension between action and destruction, he suggests how we might make objects that acknowledge that tension and help us live within it.

Matt Shockey is a Professor of Sustainability Studies at Indiana University South Bend. He earned a Professional Diploma in Wood Design from the Sam Beauford Woodworking Institute in Adrian, MI, in 2025. He works with both words and wood here in Kalamazoo.