"Liberal Arts Education: What is it? What's it for? Is it worth preserving?"
In this public dialogue, Robert George and Cornel West will discuss the sustainability of a liberal arts education.
Cornel West is an anti-poverty and pro-justice and democracy activist, as well as a scholar and public intellectual. He is professor of philosophy and Christian practice at Union Theological Seminary in New York City and Class of 1943 Professor of African American Studies Emeritus at Princeton University, and was formerly a university professor at Harvard. He is the author of The American Evasion of Philosophy: A Genealogy of Pragmatism; The Ethical Dimensions of Marxist Thought; Race Matters; Democracy Matters; and the memoir Brother West: Living and Loving Out Loud.
West is honorary chairman of the Democratic Socialists of America and a founder of the Network of Spiritual Progressives. A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard, in 1980 he became the first African American to earn a Ph.D. in philosophy from Princeton. He has received numerous fellowships, prizes, and honors, including more than 20 honorary degrees.
West has appeared on MSNBC, PBS, CNN, and Fox News, and is often a guest on programs such as Real Time with Bill Maher, The Colbert Report, and The Late, Late Show with Craig Ferguson. He has been featured in several documentaries and made appearances in the Hollywood films The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions. He is also a performing artist, having made several spoken word and hip-hop albums, and has worked with such artists as Prince, Bootsy Collins, and Gerald Levert.
Robert P. George is McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence and director of the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions at Princeton University. He is also a visiting professor at Harvard Law School. He has served as chairman of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom and as a presidential appointee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, and has served on the President's Council on Bioethics and as the U.S. member of UNESCO's World Commission on the Ethics of Science and Technology. He was a judicial fellow at the U.S. Supreme Court, where he received the Justice Tom C. Clark Award. A Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Swarthmore College, he holds the degrees of J.D. and M.T.S. from Harvard University and the degrees of D.Phil., B.C.L., and D.C.L. from Oxford University, in addition to 19 honorary degrees. He is a recipient of the U.S. Presidential Citizens Medal and the Honorific Medal for the Defense of Human Rights of the Republic of Poland, and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Baylor University has named its new Washington, D.C.-based program the Robert P. George Initiative in Faith, Ethics, and Public Policy. George's most recent book is Conscience and Its Enemies.
This event will be held in the Science Center, room 277.
Image Caption: From Left to Right: Robert P. George and Cornel West
Time:
4:30 pm Thu, Mar 8, 2018
Venue:
106 Central Street, Wellesley, MA 02482