Lecturer: Susan Dwyer, Executive Director, Honors College and Associate Professor Department of Philosophy, University of Maryland A hallmark of liberal democracies is that government ought not legislate morality. But while genuine liberty requires that each of us determine our own conception of the good in accordance with our values, democracy itself cannot flourish without all of us […]
Lecturer: Shirley Logan, Professor, Department of English, and Trevor Parry-Giles, Professor, Department of Communication, University of Maryland Professors Shirley Logan and Trevor Parry-Giles discuss the influence of rhetoric and persuasion on the course of politics in the U.S. over the past two centuries. They will also consider rhetoric's role in the contemporary political campaign environment. Co-hosted by the […]
Guest Speaker: Amy Wan, Associate Professor and Co-Director of First Year Writing, Queens College, CUNY Respondent: Scott Wible, Associate Professor, Department of English, University of Maryland “Internationalizing U.S. Public Higher Education” considers what it means to cultivate the “global citizenship” of the student body and how rhetorical education can help manage this foundational shift. By contextualizing discourse about the […]
Guest Speaker: Frank LoMonte, Executive Director, Student Press Law Center The Supreme Court first explicitly recognized in 1943 that students have inalienable constitutional protections that public schools cannot take away, but since that time, student rights have been on an ideological roller-coaster depending on the tenor of the times. Why today's judicial deference to school disciplinary decisions -- […]
Lecturer: Holly Brewer, Burke Chair of American History and Associate Professor Department of History, University of Maryland The American Revolution led to the birth of public education as we know it because, as many founders argued, unlike aristocracy where a few men born to power ruled, democracy required an educated citizenry who could govern themselves. While educating the public […]
Lecturer: Thomas D. Cohen, Professor, Department of Physics, University of Maryland The philosophical movement known as the Enlightenment stressed the role of reason and in many deeps ways guided the development of modern science. In developing the political system of the United States, its founders were also profoundly influenced by the ideas of the Enlightenment. This talk explores […]
Lecturer: Cynthia R. Field, Adjunct Professor, and Isabelle J. Gournay, Associate Professor School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation, University of Maryland This talk will present an avenue into Thomas Jefferson’s ideals and actions through his architecture. Jefferson’s architecture reflects the influence of both Scottish philosophy and French Enlightenment. This combination was a well-established special relationship in Europe. It manifested […]
Lecturer: Robert Koulish, Director, MLAW Programs and Joel J. Feller Research Professor College of Behavioral and Social Sciences, University of Maryland Immigrants are not as different from citizens in terms of citizenship responsibilities and right as many have been led to believe. And quite frankly, depending on how citizenship is defined, immigrants-- even undocumented immigrants-- can have much […]
Guest Speaker: Bryan Stevenson, Author of Just Mercy, the 2016-17 First Year Book at UMD Bryan Stevenson will be on campus to discuss his book and speak on the public defense available to the poor and the wrongly condemned in the United States. His memoir compels readers to question what mercy is in America. Through the story of Walter McMillian, Just […]
Guest Speaker: Rhondda Thomas, Associate Professor Department of English, Clemson University This talk examines the unsettling of Clemson University’s sanitized approach to history through a scholar-activist’s recovery of the stories of enslaved and sharecropping African Americans who labored on the land—John C. Calhoun’s Fort Hill Plantation—upon which the institution was built by a predominately African American convict labor crew; Clemson […]