The selections from Team Kenan’s annual What is Good Art? competition will be in display in the halls of the West Duke Building beginning Wednesday, April 10th. The artwork is submitted by students and chosen by a faculty panel. The theme for this year’s competition is “Self + Other.”
Opening reception April 10
5:30-7:30
West Duke Building
On Monday April 8th, Habibi (2011) will be screened as part of the Ethics Film Series. Young lovers Qays and Layla are university students in the West Bank who are forced to return home to Khan Yunis, Gaza before completing their courses. In conservative Khan Yunis, their relationship can only be sustained through marriage, but Qays is too poor to convince Layla’s father that he can provide for his daughter. As the couple struggles to be together, Qays paints verses from the classical Sufi poem Majnun Layla all over Khan Yunis, a rebellious act that angers Layla’s father and the local self-appointed moral police. Lyrical and passionate, Habibi depicts a reality where personal happiness must be weighed against society’s opinions, and a choice sometimes made between one’s people and one’s heart.
The film will begin at 7:00pm in the Griffith Film Theater in Duke University’s Bryan Center, followed by a post-film discussion with faculty.
The screenings are free and open to the public. Refreshments and free parking passes provided.
The theme of the 2013 Ethics Film Series is “Love and Justice.” This year, the film series will be in collaboration with the Human Rights Watch Traveling Film Festival. Each spring, the Kenan Institute for Ethics sponsors a film series in collaboration with Duke’s Screen/Society, the Center for Documentary Studies, and the Arts of the Moving Image Program. The films provide popular and accessible vehicles for talking about ethics around a particular theme, and each series as a whole offers rich opportunities for debate and discussion on ethical issues for audiences from both the Duke and Durham communities.
“Public Health, Poverty, and Patristics”
Susan Holman, Senior Writer at the Harvard Global Health Institute, will be speaking Tuesday, April 9th as part of the Religions and Public Life speaker series.
Holman is engaged in projects at HGHI that range from curricular development to strategic planning, faculty leadership initiatives, and website news and stories. She has more than 10 years experience in research writing and editing in public and global health, with degrees from Brown University (PhD), Harvard Divinity School (MTS), and Tufts University’s Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy (MS). Prior to joining HGHI in 2011, Susan was consultant writer and editor for Partners In Health, academic writer and editor at the Harvard University FXB Center for Health and Human Rights at Harvard School of Public Health, and medical writer for Brigham and Women’s Hospital. Susan is an invited scholar internationally on faith-based responses to poverty and global health, and has taught maternal and child health as a public health nutritionist and registered dietitian (RD) at the South End Community Health Center and Joslin Diabetes Center.
The Religions and Public Life initiative is sponsored by the Kenan Institute for Ethics, the Divinity School, and Trinity College of Arts & Sciences.
April 9, 5:30 pm
Westbrook Building room 0014
KIE Graduate student William Wittels is organizing a conference March 28-29, “Machiavelli’s Modern Legacy: Machiavelli’s Principle Political Works at 500.”
All panels are in Breedlove room, which is in the Rubenstein Library.
Thursday, March 28th
10am-Noon: Panel 1 – Machiavelli and Radical Thought
Benedetto Fontana – CUNY Baruch
Rethinking the Relation between Gramsci and Machiavelli
Cary Nederman – Texas A&M
Machiavelli, the “Sciences” of Politics, and the Politics of Science
1pm-3pm: Panel 2 – The Unexpected Machiavelli
Catherine Zuckert – Notre Dame
Machiavelli’s Popular Prince.
Erica Benner – Yale University
Machiavelli’s Ironies: the language of praise and blame in the Prince
3.30pm-5.30pm: Keynote Presentation
John McCormick – University of Chicago
Machiavelli on Misawarded Glory: Agathocles, Scipio and ‘the Writers’
Friday, March 29th
10am-Noon: Panel 3 – Machiavelli and Empire
Vickie Sullivan – Tufts University
Alexander the Great as ‘Lord of Asia’ and Rome as His Successor in Machiavelli’s Prince.
William Wittels – Duke University
Machiavelli’s Citizen Militia
1pm-3pm: Panel 4 – Machiavelli and Class Conflict
Diego Von Vacano – Texas A&M
Liberty Loves Struggle: The Class Basis of Machiavelli’s Republicanism
Robyn Marasco – Hunter College
Passion and the Play of Politics: Reading Machiavelli at the Extremes
3.30 pm-5.30pm: Panel 5 – Politics and the Art of Compromise
A Q&A with professors and practitioners of politics on the tension between moralism and pragmatism in the political world.
This event is co-sponsored by KIE, Duke Political Science, the Duke Program in American Values and Institutions, the Center for European Studies at Duke, the Duke University American Grand Strategy, the Duke Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, and Political Science at UNC-Chapel Hill.
For more information, please contact William at william.wittels@duke.edu.
“The Spiritual, the Secular, and the Poor in India and China”
Peter van der Veer, Director of the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity at Göttingen, will be speaking March 26th at 5:30 pm as part of the Religions and Public Life speaker series.
Van der Veer works on religion and nationalism in Asia and Europe. He has just finished a monograph on the comparative study of religion and nationalism in India and China. He taught previously at the Free University in Amsterdam, at Utrecht University and at the University of Pennsylvania. In 1992 he was appointed as Professor of Comparative Religion and Founding Director of the Research Center in Religion and Society in the Social Science Faculty of the University of Amsterdam. He served as Dean of the Social Science Faculty and as Dean of the Amsterdam School for Social Science Research at Amsterdam, and as Director of the International Institute for the Study of Islam and Chairman of the Board of the International Institute for Asian Studies, both in Leiden. In 1994 he was appointed as University Professor at Large at Utrecht University, a position he continues to hold. He has held visiting positions at the London School of Economics, the University of Chicago, University of Michigan, the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in Paris, the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, the New School in New York, and the National University of Singapore.
The Religions and Public Life initiative is sponsored by the Kenan Institute for Ethics, the Divinity School, and Trinity College of Arts & Sciences.
March 26, 5:30 pm
Westbrook Building room 0014
For more than 30 years, James Nickel has provided a clear voice on human rights and mentored students in human rights law and theory, jurisprudence, and political philosophy. In honor of his distinguished career and work, KIE will be hosting a conference on March 22-23. Panel topics include Morality to Law, Human Rights and Democracy, Global Justice and the Resource Curse, Justifying Human Rights with Linkage Arguments, and Human Rights and Dignity.
The conference is free and open to the public. Panel sessions will be held in room 202 of the West Duke Building. For more information, contact Kelly Lipford, kelly.lipford@duke.edu.
Conference Schedule
12:30-2:00 pm: Lunch break
2:00 pm-3:40 pm: Human Rights and Democracy
Thomas Christiano, University of Arizona, Philosophy and Law
Kristen Hessler, SUNY-Albany, Philosophy (Commentator)
Julian Culp, Goethe University, Frankfurt, Philosophy (Moderator)
4:20 pm-6:00 pm: Global Justice and the Resource Curse
Leif Wenar, King’s College London, Law
Erika Weinthal, Duke, Nicholas School of the Environment and Duke Human Rights Center at the Franklin Humanities Institute (Commentator)
David Reidy, University of Tennessee, Philosophy (Moderator)
6:30pm-7:30 pm: Reception
11:00 am-12:30 pm: Human Rights and Dignity
Charles Beitz, Princeton, Political Science Theory
Bas Van der Vossen, University of North Carolina-Greensboro, Philosophy (Commentator)
David Wong, Duke, Philosophy (Moderator)
12:45-2:30 pm: Lunch with Panel Discussion on Future Directions for Human Rights Theory
Robin Kirk, Duke Human Rights Center at the Franklin Humanities Institute
Monica Hakimi, University of Michigan Law School, Philosophy
Kit Wellman, Washington University St. Louis, Philosophy
Rowan Cruft, University of Stirling, Philosophy
Kit Wellman, Washington University in St. Louis, Philosophy (Moderator and panelist)
The National Humanities Center is hosting the second annual conference on “Human Rights & The Humanities” March 21-22. Speakers at this year’s conference will focus on the state and its role in human rights discourse, action, and intervention.
7:00 p.m. Keynote Address
Michael Ignatieff, University of Toronto and Harvard Kennedy School
Response: Jean Bethke Elshtain, University of Chicago and Georgetown University
Friday, March 22, 2013
8:00 a.m. Registration and Continental Breakfast
9:00 a.m. “Is Democracy a Human Right?”
Panelists: Catherine Gallagher, University of California, Berkeley; Anat Biletzki, Quinnipiac University and Tel Aviv University; Daniel Bell, Tsinghua University
Moderator: James Dawes, Macalester College
10:45 a.m. “The History and Challenges of Accountability for Genocide and War Crimes”
Panelists: Ben Kiernan, Yale University; Christopher Browning, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; Richard Wilson, University of Connecticut
12:15 p.m. Lunch
1:30 p.m. “Tracing the Genealogy of Human Rights”
Panelists: Hans Joas, Freiburg Institute for Advanced Studies and University of Chicago; Tom Laqueur, University of California, Berkeley; Robert Post, Yale University
Moderator: Susan Wolf, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
3:15 p.m. Concluding Talk: “Rethinking Equality”
Wang Hui, Tsinghua University
Response: David Wong, Duke University
Moderator: Jonathan Ocko, North Carolina State University
5:00 p.m. Closing Reception
To register for the full conference, including the Thursday, March 21 opening event, please follow this link. Please note: conference registration fee of $20 ($10 for students with valid ID and senior citizens) includes all meals and sessions on Friday, March 22.
To reserve space for the Thurs., March 21 opening keynote address ONLY, please follow this link. This event is free and open to the public.
Human Rights and the Humanities is made possible through the generous support of the Research Triangle Foundation of North Carolina, Triangle Universities Center for Advanced Studies Inc., Duke University, North Carolina State University, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and the Carnegie Corporation of New York.
The first workshop of the DNA Applications in Human Rights and Human Trafficking initiative will be held Wednesday, March 20. This workshop will discuss the potential role of DNA in human trafficking victim identification and the historic uses of DNA for human rights and explore the ethical, privacy, political, and social implications of DNA collection of victims and family members.
This initiative represents a partnership of KIE, the Franklin Humanities Institute, and the Duke Institute for Genome Sciences and Policy, with funding from the Josiah Charles Trent Memorial Foundation.
March 20, 2013
9:00 am – 1:00 pm
Smith Warehouse, Garage C105 Bay 4
Lunch provided
Event flier available for download.
On Monday March 18th, Brother Number One (2011) will be screened as part of the Ethics Film Series. Through New Zealander Rob Hamill’s story of his brother’s death at the hands of the Khmer Rouge, Brother Number One explores how the regime and its followers killed nearly 2 million Cambodians between 1975 and 1979. Thirty years later, Rob has a rare chance to take the stand as a witness at the Cambodia War Crimes Tribunal. In this documentary, Rob retraces his brother’s final days, meeting survivors who tell the story of what countless families across Cambodia experienced at the hands of the Khmer Rouge.
The film will begin at 7:00pm in the Griffith Film Theater in Duke University’s Bryan Center, followed by a post-film discussion with faculty.
The screenings are free and open to the public. Refreshments and free parking passes provided.
The theme of the 2013 Ethics Film Series is “Love and Justice.” This year, the film series will be in collaboration with the Human Rights Watch Traveling Film Festival. Each spring, the Kenan Institute for Ethics sponsors a film series in collaboration with Duke’s Screen/Society, the Center for Documentary Studies, and the Arts of the Moving Image Program. The films provide popular and accessible vehicles for talking about ethics around a particular theme, and each series as a whole offers rich opportunities for debate and discussion on ethical issues for audiences from both the Duke and Durham communities.
“Religion and Development”
Katherine Marshall, senior fellow at Georgetown’s Berkley Center for Religion, Peace and World Affairs, will be speaking March 5th at 5:30 pm as part of the Religions and Public Life speaker series.
Marshall has worked for over three decades on international development, with a focus on issues facing the world’s poorest countries. She is also currently a Visiting Professor in the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. Her long career with the World Bank (1971-2006) involved a wide range of leadership assignments, many focused on Africa. From 2000-2006 her mandate covered ethics, values, and faith in development work, as counselor to the World Bank’s President. She led the Bank’s work on social policy and governance during the East Asia crisis years. Marshall has been closely engaged in the creation and development of the World Faiths Development Dialogue (WFDD) and is its Executive Director. She serves on the Boards of several NGOs and advisory groups, including AVINA Americas, the Niwano Peace Prize International Selection Committee, and the Opus Prize Foundation.
The Religions and Public Life initiative is sponsored by the Kenan Institute for Ethics, the Divinity School, and Trinity College of Arts & Sciences.
March 5, 5:30 pm
Westbrook Building room 0014