Upward mobility through the path of higher education has been an article of faith for generations of working-class, low-income, and immigrant college students. While we know this path usually entails financial sacrifices and hard work, very little attention has been paid to the deep personal compromises such students have to make as they enter worlds vastly different from their own. Measuring the true cost of higher education for those from disadvantaged backgrounds requires that we look at the ethical dilemmas of upward mobility—the broken ties with family and friends, the severed connections with former communities, and the loss of identity—faced by students as they strive to earn a successful place in society. Why are students from disadvantaged backgrounds disproportionately burdened with these costs? And how can institutions of higher education contend with them?
Brooklyn Public Philosophers is a forum for philosophers in the greater Brooklyn area to discuss their work with a general audience, hosted by the Brooklyn Public Library. Its goal is to raise awareness of the best work on philosophical questions of interest to Brooklynites, and to provide a civil space where Brooklynites can reason together about the philosophical questions that matter to them.
10/23 – Philosophy in the Library: Jennifer Morton on Education @ the Brooklyn Public Library’s Information Commons Lab // 7:30-9:00 PM
11/6 – Philosophy in the Library: Asia Ferrin on Mindfulness @ the Brooklyn Public Library’s Information Commons Lab // 7:30-9:00 PM
12/4 – Philosophy in the Library: Sebastian Purcell on Aztec Philosophy @ the Brooklyn Public Library’s Information Commons Lab // 7:30-9:00 PM
Sjoerd van Tuinen and Jürgen Schaflechner will present their film “Toxic Reigns of Resentment” featuring Wendy Brown, Grayson Hunt, Rahel Jaeggi, Alexander Nehamas, Robert Pfaller, Gyan Prakash, Peter Sloterdijk, and Sjoerd van Tuinen. NSSR philosopher Jay Bernstein will respond after the screening.
After the fall of the Soviet empire and the triumph of global capitalism, modernity appeared to keep its dual promise of liberty and equality. The spreading of human rights and democratic forms of government were intrinsically linked to free flows of global capital and free markets. Supported by technological developments and an ever-increasing digitalization of daily life, the future contained the promise of abundance and recognition for all.
Only a few decades later, however, we witness an oppositional trend: A revival of nationalism paired with xenophobia, an increasing tribalization of politics, a public sphere oscillating between cruelty and sentimentality, and a Left caught up in wounded attachments. Social media, once the promise to give voice to the disempowered, link cognitive capitalism with a culture of trolling and hyper moralization. Algorithms programmed to monetarize outrage feed isolated information bubbles and produce what many call the era of post-truth politics.
How did we enter this toxic climate? Are these developments a response to the ubiquity of neoliberal market structures eroding the basic solidarities in our society? Has the spread of social media limited our ability to soberly deal with conflicting life worlds? And have both the left and the right given in to a form of politics where moralization and cynical mockery outdo collective visions of the future?
The last Philosophy in the Library talk of 2019 is coming up on December 4th at 7:00 PM! Sebastian Purcell is talking about “Good Habits Aren’t Enough: The Aztec Conception of Shared Agency!” If you’re into indigenous philosophy, the history of philosophy, virtue ethics, or collective action, you should enjoy it.
Brooklyn Public Philosophers is a forum for philosophers in the greater Brooklyn area to discuss their work with a general audience, hosted by the Brooklyn Public Library. Its goal is to raise awareness of the best work on philosophical questions of interest to Brooklynites, and to provide a civil space where Brooklynites can reason together about the philosophical questions that matter to them.
10/23 – Philosophy in the Library: Jennifer Morton on Education @ the Brooklyn Public Library’s Information Commons Lab // 7:30-9:00 PM
11/6 – Philosophy in the Library: Asia Ferrin on Mindfulness @ the Brooklyn Public Library’s Information Commons Lab // 7:30-9:00 PM
12/4 – Philosophy in the Library: Sebastian Purcell on Aztec Philosophy @ the Brooklyn Public Library’s Information Commons Lab // 7:00-9:00 PM
We all find ourselves already subject to some educational program and routinely invited into learning and teaching relationships with one another. We are inviting papers that engage philosophy and education from a wide range of perspectives. We welcome both papers that focus on philosophies of education as well as projects which engage the practice of teaching philosophy. Our conference aims to bring together graduate students that work in different areas of philosophy in order to think together about teaching and learning in a warm and convivial environment.
Possible topics may include, but are in no way limited to:
o How views of education affect how we conceive of what philosophy is
o The relation between philosophical wonder and learning
o Normative questions of what role the teacher ought to play in the student’s education
o How to best approach teaching texts from in and outside the canon
o Innovative teaching ideas or activities you have used in the classroom
o Earnest convictions about why we should teach philosophy
Please send abstracts of no more than 300 words in a doc file with name and affiliation in the header to Fordhamgradconference@gmail.com no later than Monday, December 2, 2019. Authors of selected papers will be notified by Monday, December 30, 2019.
The workshop is funded by the National Science Foundation (SES-1921688) and is aimed at bringing together academics who study the notion of mathematical explanation from philosophical and from educational/psychological perspectives. The idea is to bring together philosophers of mathematics, epistemologists, psychologists, and mathematics educators, to discuss how developments in their own fields could meaningfully contribute to the work on mathematical explanation where their fields intersect. In particular, we want to explore the ways in which mathematical explanation engenders understanding, by focusing on (1) the relationship between different types of philosophical accounts of mathematical explanation, (2) educational approaches to the characterization of effective explanations in the mathematics classroom, and (3) work at the intersection of these two perspectives.
All speakers:
Mark Colyvan
University of Sydney
Matthew Inglis
Loughborough University
Marc Lange
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
Tania Lombrozo
Princeton University
Alexander Renkl
University of Freiburg
Keith Weber
Rutgers University – New Brunswick
Orit Zaslavsky
New York University
Rutgers Workshop on Chinese Philosophy (RWCP) was launched in 2012. Co-directed by Tao Jiang, Dean Zimmerman and Stephen Angle, RWCP is designed to build a bridge between Chinese philosophy and Western analytic philosophy and to promote critical engagement and constructive dialogue between the two sides, with the hope of bringing the study of Chinese philosophy into the mainstream of philosophical discourse within the Western academy. It is run every other year, usually in late spring.
5th Rutgers Workshop on Chinese Philosophy: Chinese Philosophy and Virtue Epistemology
The 5th RWCP will be held on Friday, April 17, 2020. In this one-day workshop, six scholars of Chinese philosophy will engage two leading virtue epistemologists, Ernest Sosa and Linda Zagzebski. The program and papers will be available in the spring of 2020, one month before the workshop. RSVP will become available at that time as well, and it is required for attendance. Please stay tuned.
FAQs
1. Where can I park?
Details will be provided as we get closer to the day of the workshop.
2. How can I get to the event on public transportation?
Take the NJ Transit Northeast Corridor Line to New Brunswick (njtransit.com). Make sure the train stops at New Brunswick as some might skip it during rush hours.
Co-sponsored by Rutgers Global-China Office and the Confucius Institute.
General Description:
This semester, the Philosophy Film Club at The New School is hosting a series of films to consider the notion of founding myths — the inspiring, frightening, and defining speculative fictions that ground our sense of belonging to place, community, and a way of life. Each screening will begin and conclude with a discussion facilitated by a member of the NSSR Philosophy Department. In the spirit of community, all are welcome!
Philosophy Film Club hosts a screening of the post-
apocalyptic drama Mad Max: Fury Road directed by George Miller. Join us for a screening and post-film discussion of this style-redefining vision of a future “in which men have become the pawns of insane leaders and women hold fiercely onto [while fighting fiercely for] the last vestiges of hope.”
Location: Bark Room (M104), Sheila C. Johnson Design Center (ground floor), 2 W. 13th Street at Fifth Avenue
For more information or to be added to the mailing list, email: veronica@newschool.edu
This event will feature a thought-provoking panel discussion with sexual and reproductive justice experts on the value of the sexual and reproductive justice framework and how it can be applied to diverse stakeholders, settings, and contexts. Panelists will also highlight examples from around the world of momentum towards sexual and reproductive justice.
Event Information
Free and open to the public; registration is required for both in-person and online attendance. For additional information, please visit the event webpage. Please email Malia Maier at mm5352@cumc.columbia.edu with any questions. All in-person attendees must follow Columbia’s COVID-19 policies.
Hosted by the Global Health Justice and Governance Program at Columbia University.
The Philosophy Film Club at The New School is hosting a screening of ‘The Banshees of Inisherin’ (dir. Martin McDonagh), with pre- and post-film discussion facilitated by James Trybendins, PhD Student in Philosophy.
In the spirit of community, all are invited to the Spring 2023 film screening series hosted by the Philosophy Film Club at The New School. Everyone — whether seasoned in philosophy or without any prior philosophical training — with an interest in philosophy, film, and/or conversation about the meaning of what we experience is welcome! Each screening will begin and conclude with a discussion facilitated by a member of the NSSR Philosophy Department. Snacks and beverages also provided.
For more information or to be added to the mailing list, email: veronica@newschool.edu
A conference hosted by the Motherhood and Technology Working Group at the Center for the Study of Social Difference on the theme of “Conception and Its Discontents.”
Medical technologies have radically transformed the biological and social experience of motherhood. Advances in genomic and reproductive care, the circulation of novel kinship structures, the entrenchment of existing global networks of power and privilege, and the politics of contested bodily sites mark this emerging constellation.
Technological advancements have in particular impacted not just the understanding of conception, but the very process by which a human embryo is created, implanted, and matured. Egg freezing, embryo storage, IVF, and surrogacy afford women new freedoms in choosing when and how to become mothers, while also raising troubling questions about the pressures of capitalism and the extension of worklife, as well as the global inequalities present in the experience of motherhood. In addition, technologies have arisen allowing for unprecedented control over not just who becomes a mother, but what kind of embryo is allowed to be implanted and to grow. Technologies such as CRISPR and NIPT have re-introduced the question of eugenics, radically shifting the very epistemology of motherhood and what it means to be “expecting.” And contemporary abortion debates draw on technology in order to make arguments both for and against access, with imaging technologies being instrumentalized in the building of a sympathetic case for the unborn, and the very notion of a “heartbeat bill” reliant on the misreading of technologies for measuring fetal activity.
While these problems are urgent today, questions of conception and technology are by no means recent developments. The 18th century saw a flourishing of philosophical and scientific theories regarding the start of human life and its formation within the womb. Such theories relied on modern technologies, such as autopsy, to atomize and visualize the body. In the 19th and 20th centuries, eugenic medical science produced theories of reproductive difference between differing racial and social groups, leading to forced sterilization laws in both the US and in Germany. This long history of racializing the rhetoric of fertility and motherhood continues to influence political debates on immigration and demographic changes in the present.
Full conference details and schedule to come.
Please email disability@columbia.edu to request disability accommodations. Advance notice is necessary to arrange for some accessibility needs