German professor to discuss Mohammed caricatures in upcoming talk

KALAMAZOO, Mich.—Speaking this month at Western Michigan University, a professor from Germany will examine the ethical problems that arose several years ago from the publishing of controversial caricatures of the prophet Mohammed.

Dr. Oliver Hahn, professor of journalism at the University of Passau, will speak at 4 p.m. Tuesday, Sept. 16, in 211 Bernhard Center. His presentation, titled "Pictures Travel, Discourses Do Not: The Mohammed Cartoons Controversy, Global Media Communication and Ethics," is free and open to the public and will kick off the fall 2014 lecture series for the WMU Center for the Study of Ethics in Society.

The controversy

The Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten printed an original set of 12 cartoons and caricatures of Mohammed in fall 2005 that were subsequently republished by other media outlets across the world, resulting in protests and some violence in the Middle East in early 2006.

Hahn will discuss freedom of speech and freedom of the press on the macro level versus respect for other religions. On the meso level, many European outlets joined in denouncing theocratic censorship, while, on the micro level, the coverage of the controversy by different global media can be seen as a textbook example of both the international mobility of pictures and the immobility or delayed mobility of their accompanying discourses.

Hahn will examine the ethical problems caused by decontextualized and fragmented news photos in this controversy as well as post-9/11 coverage generally.

Hahn is currently visiting WMU as part of a faculty exchange between the two universities. As an international expert in journalism cultures and media systems, he does consulting for the German Federal Foreign Office in Berlin and for the Institute for Foreign Cultural Relations in Stuttgart, which is in charge of media dialogues with the Near and Middle East, the Arab and the Persian world.

Hahn's presentation is co-sponsored by the Haenicke Institute for Global Education and the School of Communication.

Upcoming presentations

Dates, speakers, times, locations and titles of other presentations in the series are:

• Sept. 18: Dr. Susan Goold, M.D., professor in the Internal Medicine and Health Management and Policy Center for Bioethics and Social Sciences in Medicine at the University of Michigan, 5:30 p.m., Fetzer Center Putney Auditorium, "Market Failures, Moral Failures and Health Reform."

• Sept. 30: Dr. James A. Henry, WMU professor of social work, 7 p.m., 209 Bernhard Center, "The Unseen Force: The Power of Traumatic Experiences in Changing the Course of Development Across the Lifespan."

• Oct. 28: Screening of the documentary, "A Fragile Trust," about the Jayson Blair plagiarism scandal at the New York Times, 6 p.m., 3025 Brown Hall.

• Dec. 4: Dr. Sarah McGrath, assistant professor of philosophy and the Laurance S. Rockefeller Preceptor at Princeton University, 5 p.m., 1121 Moore Hall, "Should We Believe in Moral Experts?"

• Dec. 6: Lindsay Rettler, graduate student and teaching associate, Ohio State University, 4 p.m., the Multicultural Center, Trimpe Building, "Doxastic Blame and Responsibility."

For more information, contact Dr. Sandra Borden at sandra.borden@wmich.edu or visit wmich.edu/ethics.