Our contemporary moment is shaped by the pressures of multiple, simultaneous crises: between the COVID-19 pandemic, ongoing crises of political legitimacy, growing economic inequality, the onslaughts of white supremacy and xenophobia and the looming threat of irrevocable climate disaster, the future seems intractable and murky.
Longstanding questions about what the future holds are haunted by doubts and the scale of systemic issues. Fears about scarcity and the changing world seem to hamper opportunities for solidarity and coalition-building. At the same time, this juncture presents an opportunity to reimagine the futures we want and how we might get there. In thinking about the future as something speculative — and something we might speculate about — we might collectively resist fatalism and think instead about the world we hope to create. We might think about how art helps us envision alternative possibilities, how native and evolving technologies change the ways we relate to each other and the world, how philosophy hazards rearrangements that could unlock future ways of being and knowing and how shifts in forms of political engagement offer us new opportunities for resistance.
Center Director
Mark Stein, professor of history
Program Directors:
Archana Kaku, Consortium for Faculty Diversity Fellow, political science
Dawn Lonsinger, associate professor of English
Fall 2022 Center for Ethics Schedule of Events
"Binti and Africanfuturism: an Invitation to the Conversation”
7 p.m., Wednesday, September 7, 2022 at Miller Forum in Moyer Hall
Faculty panel participants: Emanuela Kucik (English & Africana Studies), Tiffany Montoya (Philosophy) and Sarah Runcie (History)
Faculty from across campus will discuss this year’s Common Read in the context of the Center theme. Nnedi Okorafor is a Nigerian-American author of African-based science fiction, fantasy, and magical realism. She coined the term “Africanfuturism," a sub category of science fiction that is "directly rooted in African culture, history, mythology, and point-of-view, and does not privilege or center the West,” and offers alternative visions of the future. Her works include Who Fears Death (currently being developed into an HBO TV series), the Binti novella trilogy, The Book of Phoenix, the Akata books and Lagoon. She is the winner of Hugo, Nebula, World Fantasy, Locus, and Lodestar Awards, an Eisner Award nominee, and her debut novel Zahrah the Windseeker won the prestigious Wole Soyinka Prize for Literature. Nnedi has also written comics for Marvel, including Black Panther: Long Live the King and Wakanda Forever and the Shuri series. Nnedi is also creating and co-writing the adaptation of Octavia Butler’s Wild Seed with Viola Davis and Kenyan film director Wanuri Kahiu.
Lehigh Valley Symposium on CRISPR Implementation and Ethics (LV SCIE)
Saturday, September 17, 2022, at 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. at Lafayette College
The Lehigh Valley Symposium on CRISPR Implementation and Ethics (LV-SCIE) is an interdisciplinary gathering of scientists, humanists, researchers, students, and the general public to discuss the implications of the CRISPR-Cas9 gene-editing technology. The Center for Ethics will help with transportation for students interested in attending the conference. Free transportation is available to and from the conference. For information on registration and transportation contact Dr. Bruce Wightman, [email protected].
Performances of “We Are Proud to Present a Presentation About the Herero of Namibia, Formerly Known as Southwest Africa, From the German Südwestafrika, Between the Years 1884–1915”
Thursday, September 29 & Sunday, October 2, 2022
Six actors gather to tackle the challenge of theatrically presenting the little-known story of the first genocide of the 20th century. Armed only with boxes of letters from German soldiers they sent home to their wives and families, our characters are maneuver how to tell the history of this Genocide when the only record that remains is of the perpetrators.' If that was not enough of a challenge, they must also maneuver how to talk to each other about racism, genocide, and systemic oppression.
Performance Schedule:
Thursday, Sept. 29, 8:00 pm
Friday, Sept. 30, 8:00 pm
Saturday, Oct. 1, 2:00 & 8:00 pm
Sunday, Oct. 2, 2:00 pm
Center for Ethics Workshop: Historical Constraints for Speculative Futures
Friday, September 30, 2022 at 2 p.m., at Miller Forum in Moyer Hall
How are the futures we can imagine constrained, produced, and shaped by history/histories? In We Are Proud to Present, we are presented with two different forms of discrimination and racial violence from different times and places. And yet, these two moments have real resonances and interconnections: examining the genocide of the Herero through the lens of racism, slavery, and the lynching of Black bodies in the American South, the actors find themselves haunted by traces of the past. What resources do these legacies of violence offer us for imagining a more liberated future?
Faculty participants: Cathy Oullette (History), Binta Bah (Education), Sahar Sadeghi (Sociology) and Emanuela Kucik (English & Africana Studies), Sarah Runcie (History), Nigel Semaj (Theatre & Dance)
"Notes on Dis place/meant" Public Talk by Fred Moten, Co-Sponsored with Art and Theatre & Dance
Tuesday, October 11, 2022, at 8 p.m. at the Recital Hall in the Baker Center for the Arts
Supported by the Charles A. and Leona K. Gruber Lectureship in the Arts. Moten is a leading American cultural theorist, poet, and scholar whose work explores critical theory, black studies, and performance studies.
In Conversation with Nnedi Okorafor, Co-Sponsored with Living Writers
Monday, November 7, 2022 at 7 p.m. in Moyer Hall's Miller Forum
Emanuela Kucik, assistant professor of English and Africana studies, speak with author Nnedi Okorafor about her novel Noor, an Africanfuturist solarpunk science fiction novel, which is a thoughtful rumination on biotechnology, tradition, destiny, and humanity in a near-future Nigeria. It’s a "searing techno-magical indictment of capitalism [that] exposes the cracks in this technology driven, highly surveilled society,” as well as a "critique of imperialism and capitalism’s ties to climate disaster."
"Ugly Freedoms," public talk by Elisabeth Anker, Co-Sponsored with the Political Science Election Series
Thursday, November 17, 2022, at 7 p.m. in Moyer Hall's Miller Forum
Freedom is the highest ideal in American politics, but its legacy is complex. Throughout American history, freedom has supported emancipation, personal rights, and individual liberty, but has also supported white supremacy, economic exploitation, and misogyny. These “ugly freedoms” legitimate the right to harm and subjugate others. This talk will examine the ugliness of freedom, from the history of slavery to the January 6 insurrection. But it will also highlight visions of freedom that emphasize the flourishing of all people, not just a privileged few.
Elisabeth Anker is Associate Professor of American Studies and Political Theory at George Washington University. An eminent scholar of critical theory and cultural analysis, Anker's most recent work reckons with the complex legacy of freedom offered by liberal American democracy. Drawing out the interlinkages between individual liberty and white supremacy, settler colonialism, climate destruction, economic exploitation and patriarchy, Anker offers new ways of thinking past our contemporary impasses and towards new practices of freedom.
Spring 2023 Center for Ethics Schedule of Events
"The Struggle for Urban Climate Justice” with Joan Fitzgerald, professor of Urban and Public Policy at Northeastern University
7 p.m., Monday, February 6, 2023 at Miller Forum in Moyer Hall
The legacy of racism and the pillaging of the natural environment are the twin catastrophes of our age. We have reached a point of no return where even if we do everything right, there will be permanent damage to the planet. Not surprisingly, Black and other poor communities of color have experienced environmental assaults more forcefully than white ones. The spatial isolation of Black communities in many cities has left them even more vulnerable to climate impacts than most white families.
The profession of urban planning bears some responsibility on both fronts. As a result of intentional urban planning and policy, our nation’s cities are deeply segregated, with huge disparities in wealth and access to opportunity. Even if there were no climate emergency, which has deepened societal divides, urban planning has a role to play in dismantling the legacy of racism. And even if there were no racism, urban planning needs to support radical changes to protect communities from the effects of worsening climate change and reduce carbon emissions. Because of the convergence of environmental assaults and racial ones, there are increasingly convergent movements and opportunities for remedy.
Viral Justice with Dr. Ruha Benjamin, associate professor of African American studies at Princeton University (co-sponsored by organizers for )
7 p.m. - 8:30 p.m., Thursday, February 16 at Miller Forum in Moyer Hall
"Socialism for a Skeptical Age" with Bhaskar Sunkara
7 p.m., Wednesday, March 22, 2023 at Miller Forum in Moyer Hall
A look at the past, present, and future of democratic socialism and why it deserves a new hearing amid social and economic turmoil in the 21st Century. Bhaskar Sunkara is an American political writer. He is the founding editor of Jacobin, the president of The Nation, and publisher of Catalyst: A Journal of Theory and Strategy and London's Tribune.
Campus visit by Mohsin Hamid, author of Exit West
7 p.m. Wednesday, April 11, at Miller Forum in Moyer Hall
British Pakistani novelist Mohsin Hamid will discuss his 2017 bestselling book Exit West. His other novels include Moth Smoke, The Reluctant Fundamentalist, How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia and The Last White Man -- and a book of essays, Discontent and Its Civilizations. His writing has been translated into over forty languages, featured on bestseller lists, and adapted for the cinema.
Film Series
February 22, March 7 and March 28
Bending the Arc
7:30 p.m., Wednesday, February 22 at the Recital Hall in the Baker Center for the Arts
Introduced by Kathleen Bachynski, assistant professor of public healthDecades before they joined the fight against COVID-19, and long before they helped battle Ebola in West Africa, Dr. Paul Farmer, Dr. Jim Yong Kim, and Ophelia Dahl—all barely out of their teens at the time—began a movement that would change global health forever by co-founding Partners In Health. Bending the Arc tells their story... PIH’s revolutionary model of training community members as health workers and treating all people, with dignity and world-class medicine, has forever changed public health.
Kedi
7:30 p.m. Tuesday, March 7 in the Great Room in Seegers Union
Introduced by Brian Mello, professor of political science
Hundreds of thousands of cats roam the metropolis of Istanbul freely. For thousands of years they’ve wandered in and out of people’s lives, becoming an essential part of the communities that make the city so rich. Claiming no owners, these animals live between two worlds, neither wild nor tame–and they bring joy and purpose to those people they choose to adopt. In Istanbul, cats are the mirrors to the people, allowing them to reflect on their lives in ways nothing else could.
Sleep Dealer
7:30 p.m. Tuesday, March 28 in the Great Room at Seegers Union
Introduced by Amy Corbin, associate professor of media & communications and film studies
Sleep Dealer is a Sundance award-winning sci-fi thriller packed with stunning visuals and strong social and political themes. Memo Cruz (Luis Fernando Peña) is a young man in near-future Mexico. When his family is victim of a misguided drone attack he finds himself with no option but to head north, towards the U.S./Mexico border. But migrant workers cannot cross this new world border – it's been sealed off. Instead, Memo ends up in a strange digital factory in Mexico where he connects his body to a robot in America. Memo's search for a better future leads him to love, loss, and a confrontation with a mysterious figure from his past.
