Ethics Center lectures start in February
KALAMAZOO, Mich.—The Western Michigan University Center for the Study of Ethics in Society is hosting a series of talks during the spring 2025 semester. All events are free and open to the public.
On Wednesday, Feb. 26, a panel of local professionals in economics, health, education and law will discuss “The Ethical Imperatives of Solito” at 6 p.m. in the Van Deusen Room on the third floor of the Kalamazoo Public Library, 315 S Rose St. This panel, co-sponsored by the library, examines how global economic factors and national policies shape and impact the international journeys of unaccompanied migrant youth, drawing on the themes of Solito: A Memoir by Javier Zamora, the library’s pick for its 2025 Reading Together program. The panelists are: Susan Pozo, professor, Department of Economics; Kathy Purnell, instructor, Department of Political Science, and director/managing attorney, Human/Civil Rights Law Center; Abra Smith, co-executive director, KYDNet; and Pamela Wadsworth, associate professor, WMU Bronson School of Nursing. The author of Solito will give a talk at 3 p.m. Saturday, March 15, at Chenery Auditorium as part of Reading Together.
On March 15, there will be two events. Ami Harbin, associate professor of philosophy and women and gender studies at Oakland University, will give a talk titled “Feeling Formation in the Therapeutic Encounter” at 12:30 p.m. in 1302 Dunbar Hall as part of the Philosophy Department’s annual graduate student conference. In this lecture, she will consider the therapist-client relationship in therapeutic encounters, bringing insights from feminist relational philosophy of emotions to offer new directions for conceptualizing this relationship.
Next up is a talk on March 15 at 2 p.m. in 1303 Dunbar Hall by honorary speaker Sky Bergman, creator of the documentary "Lives Well Lived." It will be the final event of the 2024-25 A Life Well Lived–Kalamazoo event series organized in collaboration with the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute (OLLI at WMU) and the Kalamazoo Lyceum. The talk will be followed by a reception and two artistic student projects in the Richmond Center reflecting on the theme of the series. A photovoice exhibit curated by award-winning photographer Jeri Love will be on display in the Richmond Center lobby; it will feature work produced by students in her OLLI photovoice course. There will also be a screening in Room 1004 of short documentaries made by video production students under the supervision of Lusike Mukhongo, associate professor of communication, in collaboration with the WMU Office of Service Learning and the Public Media Network. This event is sponsored by the Kalamazoo Community Foundation.
“Toward Excellence: Moral Education in the Virtues” will be presented at 5:30 p.m. Wednesday, March 19, in 1028 Brown Hall by Michael S. Pritchard, professor emeritus of philosophy and former co-director of the Ethics Center, and Elaine E. Englehardt, professor emerita of philosophy at Utah Valley University. A focus of this presentation is explaining how a variety of scholars have made significant contributions to the study of virtue and education. Reasonableness is addressed throughout as an important moral virtue that should be developed early in one’s life and reinforced when facing daily choices and challenges. This event is co-sponsored by the Department of Philosophy. There will be a light reception after the event in honor of the Ethics Center’s 40th anniversary.
The Ethics Center’s 2025 Winnie Veenstra Peace Lecture is titled “Former Extremists in Preventing and Countering Violence.” The talk will be at 6 p.m. on Thursday, April 3, in 1028 Brown Hall. Ryan Scrivens, assistant professor in the School of Criminal Justice at Michigan State University, will discuss how researchers, practitioners and policymakers have utilized the insights and experiences of former extremists to prevent and counter violent extremism, highlighting the strengths, limitations and ethical concerns associated with such efforts. This talk is co-sponsored by the Department of Sociology and the Department of Political Science.
The center’s series ends on Monday, April 7, with “Minds, Mirrors and Gods: Decoding Our Humanity in the AI Revolution.” Shannon Vallor, Baillie Gifford Professor in the Ethics of Data and Artificial Intelligence and director of the Edinburgh Futures Institute’s Centre for Technomoral Futures at the University of Edinburgh, will present her talk at noon over Webex as part of WMUx’s AI@WMU event series. Vallor argues that the best way to think of AI is as a mirror, rather than a mind. When used responsibly, AI can reveal like a good mirror, finding patterns and magnifying data. But AI can also distort and deceive like a bad mirror, producing confident-sounding guesses based on thoughts we’ve already had, yet inviting us to think, mistakenly, that the image we see is other than a mere duplicate. This talk is co-sponsored by the Department of Philosophy and the WMUx Office of Faculty Development. Register for meeting link
All Ethics Center events are eligible for WMU Signature credit. Visit the Center for the Study of Ethics in Society webpage to learn more about its lecture series and find livestream links as they become available.
About the Center for the Study of Ethics in Society
In August 1985, the Center for the Study of Ethics in Society was created after WMU faculty across the curriculum met to discuss their common interests in studying and teaching ethics. Each academic year, the center sponsors 15 to 20 public presentations addressing a wide range of ethical issues. Originally sponsored by WMU’s Graduate College, the center is now housed in the College of Arts and Sciences.
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