The Civility Trap: Citizen Engagement in Mediated Public Spheres

Andy Perrin, Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, will be speaking October 29^th as part of the Monday Seminar Series from 12:00-1:30 in room 101, West Duke Building.

Concern over incivility and truthfulness in political life have become commonplace. Meanwhile, audience segmentation and self-selection into homogeneous political networks mean that citizens have limited substantive engagement with disagreeing ideas. Using some data from letters to the editor and theory about public deliberation, Perrin considers whether these worries about incivility and truthfulness are misplaced and may exacerbate the dearth of substantive debate over political differences.

Perrin is a cultural and political sociologist. He both studies and teaches democratic citizenship in the United States, with a focus on the cultural and social underpinnings of democracy–what do people need to know, be, and do to make democracy work? His current research is on public opinion, letters to the editor, and democratic citizenship. He is a regular contributor to Scatterplot, the sociology blog.

As part of the Duke University Family Weekend 2012, KIE will be holding a reception for students and their families.

Saturday, October 22
11:00 am – 12:30 pm
Kenan Institute for Ethics
101 West Duke Building

There will be an information session for DukeEngage Dublin on Monday, Oct. 22 at 6:00 pm at the Smith Warehouse, Classroom B252 (Bay 7).

During their two months in Dublin students will work in organizations either directed by migrants to Ireland, focused on the needs of refugee and migrant communities, or involved in developing innovative community based educational and cultural programs that bring migrants and native born Irish together in meaningful ways. DukeEngage students will be placed with one of more than seven different NGOs engaged in this work. The objective in each placement is not just to serve but to undertake something that could not have happened without the Duke students’ leadership and participation.

Applications for the DukeEngage Dublin program need to be submitted by noon on Tuesday, November 6 at noon.

Author, filmmaker, humanitarian, and Duke alumna Tori Hogan returns to campus to discuss Beyond Good Intentions: A Journey Into the Realities of International Aid, a book based on her National Geographic Explorer film series of the same name.

Hogan, who went to work in international development after graduating from Duke in 2004, soon became uncomfortable with some of the challenges and failures she saw in refugee camps in Kenya, Uganda, and Rwanda. She first started Beyond Good Intentions as an educational organization in 2006, and has since gone on to direct her film series and write.

Hogan was most recently at Duke as a panelist in the KIE-sponsored 2012 Winter Forum, entitled Refugees, Rights, Resettlement. This book launch is being hosted by the Duke Human Rights Center at the Kenan Institute for Ethics.

Thursday, October 18, 7pm
101 West Duke Building
Reception to follow – refreshments will be served
Books will be available for purchase

A Plea for Humanism

Doug MacLean, Professor of Philosophy at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, will be speaking October 8^th as part of the Monday Seminar Series from 12:00-1:30 in room 101, West Duke Building.

MacLean’s talk will examine Peter Singer’s criticism of moral theories and moral practices that favor the interests of human beings over the like interests of non-human animals — “speciesism” — likened by Singer to racism and sexism.  MacLean will examine Singer’s argument, suggest that it rests on a naïve conception of our relation to animals, and argue that morality depends on assuming that human beings are uniquely important.

MacLean’s current research focuses on practical ethics and issues in moral and political theory that are particularly relevant to practical concerns. Most of his recent writing examines how values do and ought to influence decisions, both personal decisions and government policies. He has written more general survey articles on risk analysis, risk aversion, and environmental ethics.