History Workshop presents “Troubling Monuments: Cultural Vandalism and Creative Practices of Dissent and Destruction” with Erika Doss, Chair of American Studies at the University of Notre Dame.
Cultural Vandalism
When memorials, monuments, and other forms of public art are deemed reprehensible, oppressive, or intolerable, they may become targets of “cultural vandalism.” This talk examines various materials used to deface and/or destroy public art, from red paint splashed on statues of Columbus to the tarring and feathering of Confederate monuments, and considers what these practices suggest about protest and dissent in contemporary America as well as legal theories regarding property and ownership.
About the Speaker
Erika Doss is a professor of American Studies and the Chair of her department at the University of Notre Dame. Her research focuses on 20th and 21st century American art, particularly public art and monuments. Her new book project is titled Troubling Memorials and Cultural Vandalism: Reckoning with Disgraced Monuments and Problematic Public Art in Contemporary America.
Free and open to the public. Sponsored by the University of Oregon’s Department of History, Political Science, Religious Studies, Art History, Anthropology, and Sociology.
Professor Klaus Mühlhahn from Freie Universität Berlin will be discussing his new book, Making China Modern. "Many commentators claim that China's ongoing global rise reflects a restoration of its earlier international prominence, while others highlight that China's emergence reflects distinctive characteristics of the country's current political leadership. In his new book, Making China Modern, Professor Mühlhahn of the Free University of Berlin provides a panoramic survey of China's rise and resilience through war and rebellion, disease and famine. At this event Professor Mühlhahn will focus on the lessons from history that provide insight into China's evolving international position and how the United States and others should respond."
Featuring Colin Koopman, associate professor of philosophy and director of the New Media and Culture Program at the University of Oregon. His books include: Pragmatism as Transition: Historicity and Hope in James, Dewey, and Rorty (2009); Genealogy as Critique: Foucault and the Problems of Modernity (2013); and How We Became Our Data: A Genealogy of the Informational Person (2019). His essays and articles have appeared in The New York Times and Aeon as well as in academic journals such as Critical Inquiry, Contemporary Political Theory, Diacritics, and New Media & Society.
Presented by the Wayne Morse Center’s Program for Democratic Governance. Cosponsored by the UO Department of Philosophy and Oregon Data Science.
Hosted by the Graduate School in collaboration with the Assistant Vice President and Advisor to the President on Sovereignty and Government-to-Government Relations, Native American Studies Program.
Refreshments will be provided. Students are welcome to drop in as their schedule allows.
With each record-breaking storm or flood it becomes clearer that climate change and rising seas are transforming the coastline of the United States. Writer Elizabeth Rush travelled from vanishing shorelines in New England to inundated bayous in Louisiana to chronicle the impact of sea level rise on vulnerable communities and ecosystems. She employed a literary approach for her recent book Rising: Dispatches from the New American Shore, a finalist for the 2019 Pulitzer Prize in General Nonfiction. “I believe that language can lessen the distance between humans and the world of which we are a part; I believe that it can foster interspecies intimacy and, as a result, care.”
Elizabeth Rush, the Oregon Humanities Center's 2019–20 Robert D. Clark Lecturer, will give a talk, “On Rising Together: Creative and Collective Responses to the Climate Crisis,” on Thursday, March 5, 2020 at 7:30 p.m. at the First United Methodist Church, 1376 Olive St. in Eugene.
What might we learn from the people living on climate change’s front lines about the future that we share? In her talk, Rush will speak about a small community on the eastern shore of Staten Island––a place that hurricane Sandy both undid and remade from the ground up––investigating the storm’s aftermath and the radical decisions residents made about how to overcome their shared vulnerability. She will give voice to those who have traditionally been left out of environmental discourse and how we might make the conversation more whole moving forward.
Elizabeth Rush is the author of Rising: Dispatches from the New American Shore and Still Lifes from a Vanishing City: Essays and Photographs from Yangon, Myanmar. Her writing has appeared or is forthcoming in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Gaurdian, Harper’s, The Atlantic, Pacific Standard, and the New Republic, among others. She is the recipient of fellowships and grants including the Howard Foundation Fellowship, awarded by Brown University; the Society for Environmental Journalism Grant; the Metcalf Institute Climate Change Adaptation Fellowship; and the Science in Society Award from the National Association of Science Writers. She received her MFA in nonfiction from Southern New Hampshire University, and teaches creative nonfiction at Brown University.
Congressman Blumenauer will discuss his vision for progressive reform of our food and farm system. His remarks will focus on policy changes needed to ensure access to healthy foods, encourage sustainable agriculture and redirect resources to those who need assistance the most, especially socially disadvantaged, beginning, and family farmers. As the author of the agriculture section of the Green New Deal, he will also speak about opportunities to work collaboratively with farmers and ranchers to address the climate emergency.
Sponsored by the Wayne Morse Center as part of its 2019-21 theme, Science, Policy, and the Public. Cosponsored by UO Food Studies. This event is part of the 2020 Public Interest Environmental Law Conference.
This town hall features a panel on local environmental equity issues, followed by breakout groups that focus on how climate activists can engage with local environmental justice issues. Together, we will share resources, identify and organize next steps to take together.
Childcare provided. If you need childcare, please email info@350eugene.org.
Made possible in part by a grant from the Wayne Morse Center for Law and Politics.
Donald Trump's 2016 victory in the Electoral College could not have occurred without 78,000 voters in three states. But were these voters affected by the Russian trolls and hackers? Trump denies it, as does Russian President Vladimir Putin, and many argue that we can never know. Drawing on earlier path-breaking work, Kathleen Hall Jamieson will argue that it’s likely the Russians did help to elect the 45th president of the United States, based on her research on unique polling data, analyses of how the press used hacked content, and synthesis of half a century of media-effects research.
Dr. Kathleen Hall Jamieson, National Academy of Sciences 2020 Public Welfare Award winner and co-founder of FactCheck.org, is a professor in the Annenberg School for Communication of the University of Pennsylvania and director of its Annenberg Public Policy Center. She has authored or co-authored 16 books, including Cyberwar: How Russian Hackers and Trolls Helped Elect a President, which won the 2019 R. R. Hawkins Award from the Association of American Publishers. Her paper “Implications of the Demise of ‘Fact’ in Political Discourse” received the American Philosophical Society’s 2016 Henry Allen Moe Prize. Jamieson is a co-founder of FactCheck.org and its subsidiary site, SciCheck, which monitors political speech for the misuse of science. She is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Philosophical Society, the American Academy of Political and Social Science, and the International Communication Association.
This talk is co-sponsored Center for Science Communication Research (SCR, formerly Media Center for Science and Technology) and the Wayne Morse Center for Law and Politics (WMC). The SCR, housed within the School of Journalism and Communication, works to advance research in science communication to connect science and society and facilitate research-based decision making. The WMC, part of the School of Law, encourages civic engagement and inspires enlightened dialogue by bringing students, scholars, activists, policymakers, and communities together to discuss issues affecting Oregon, our nation, and the world.
This talk was made possible by the Richard W. and Laurie Johnston Lecture Fund.
Refreshments will be served at 5 p.m.
Talk begins at 5:30 p.m.
The number of people who distrust scientists increased by over 50 percent between 2013 and 2017, according to a YouGov survey. What’s behind this decline in public trust, and what can be done to restore it?
Dr. Kathleen Hall Jamieson, National Academy of Sciences 2020 Public Welfare Award winner and co-founder of FactCheck.org, is visiting campus March 11 to deliver the annual Richard W. and Laurie Johnston Lecture. During the free public talk and audience Q&A, she will:
Examine the factors that influence the public’s perception of the trustworthiness of science
Present examples of various media narratives
Discuss ways to decrease the polarization of scientific findings
Jamieson is a professor in the Annenberg School for Communication of the University of Pennsylvania and director of its Annenberg Public Policy Center. She has authored or co-authored 16 books, including Cyberwar: How Russian Hackers and Trolls Helped Elect a President, which won the 2019 R. R. Hawkins Award from the Association of American Publishers. Her paper “Implications of the Demise of ‘Fact’ in Political Discourse” received the American Philosophical Society’s 2016 Henry Allen Moe Prize. Jamieson is a co-founder of FactCheck.org and its subsidiary site, SciCheck, which monitors political speech for the misuse of science. She is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Philosophical Society, the American Academy of Political and Social Science, and the International Communication Association.
Sponsored by the Center for Science and Communication Research (formerly Media Center for Science and Technology) and co-sponsored by the Phil and Penny Knight Campus for Accelerating Scientific Impact and Wayne Morse Center for Law and Politics, this lecture is part of the School of Journalism and Communication’s annual Robert W. and Laurie Johnston Lecture series. This series brings professionals to the SOJC for thought-provoking lectures, workshops, and discussions about the thorny issues today’s journalists face, and is made possible by generous gifts from the Johnston family, George E. Jones of U.S. News and World Report, and the Correspondents Fund.
David Shambaugh, Gaston Sigur Professor of Asian Studies, Political Science, and International Affairs, and Director of the China Policy Program at George Washington University, will be talking abou this new book, China and the World.
China is now a global power. It has traversed a great distance in its foreign relations over the past 70 years--from international isolation to integration in a wide range of international institutions, from being a disruptive regional actor in Asia to an international partner for many countries, but also to being a rising power of concern to many. But what about the future of China's place in the world? What principal challenges does it face? As China has grown stronger and more influential, its challenges increase. In this lecture, Professor Shambaugh will discuss his new book China and the World and describe a number of the key challenges China and the Xi Jinping-led regime will face in the future.
“Decolonizing the University: SHL and UO Library Faculty Bring Oregon Latinx History into the Classroom Through Exploration of the PCUN Archives”
Our presentation models one component of the RL SHL Critical Language Awareness curriculum. Classes held in the the Special Collections section of the Knight Library employ the Pineros y Campesinos Unidos (PCUN) Archive to decolonize academic language and space and serve as academic mentorship imbedded into the course curriculum. The content prioritizes Latinx communities in Oregon and teaches about a successful local resistance movement still active today.
Featuring musician and spoken word artist m5 vibe and NU-Intel, a conscious hip-hop band with an unique vibe and deep subject matter. Program is held in conjunction with Carrie Mae Weems: The Usual Suspects.
What are unique and location-relevant solutions for Oregon communities that can reshape the political-economic structure behind environmental injustices in Oregon? This summit will explore how and at what scale should we confront challenges specific to:
○ Climate Justice
○ Water Justice
○ The Right to Clean Air and Healthy Workplaces
○ Just Transition and Community Resilience and Adaptation
○ Role of Traditional Ecological Knowledge, Science and Data when crafting policy
Speakers will include:
DR. MUSTAFA ALI, Vice President of Environmental Justice, Climate & Community Revitalization for the National Wildlife Federation; founder & CEO of Revitalization Strategies
JO ANN HARDESTY, City of Portland Commissioner; Former NAACP Portland Branch President
ADRIENNE HOLLIS, VP of Environmental Justice, Union of Concerned Scientists
DON GENTRY, Chair of the Klamath Tribes
The EJPS is sponsored by: Wayne Morse Center for Law and Politics, Meyer Memorial Trust, The Spring Creek Project, Center For Environmental Futures, and the Oregon Humanities Center.
Leonard Mlodinow explores how the human mind handles change
We live in a time of great turmoil and change in personal, social, and business spheres. To thrive in such a time, we must adapt and exercise a particular kind of thinking. Elastic thinking is needed to assess new situations, and to form a framework for understanding and reacting to them. It is leads to innovation and creativity.
In his upcoming talk, “Elastic: Flexible Thinking for our Time of Change,” Leonard Mlodinow will explore the psychology and neuroscience behind elastic thinking, detail ways to evaluate our ability to think nimbly, and provide methods to help us improve our skills.
Leonard Mlodinow, theoretical physicist and best-selling literary science writer, will give the Oregon Humanities Center’s 2019–20 Kritikos Lecture.
Mlodinow’s lecture is based on his recent book Elastic: Flexible Thinking in a Constantly Changing World, an exploration of how elastic thinking works. He draws on cutting-edge neuroscience to show how, millennia ago, our brains developed an affinity for novelty, idea generation, and exploration. He discovers how flexible thinking enabled some of the greatest artists, writers, musicians, and innovators to create paradigm shifts. And he investigates the organizations that have demonstrated an elastic ability to adapt to new technologies.
Mlodinow’s parents were holocaust survivors. His father, Simon, was a leader in the Jewish underground in Czestochowa, Poland, until he was shipped to Buchenwald concentration camp in 1944. The Nazis slaughtered his wife and two young children. After he was liberated in 1945, Simon immigrated to New York City and met Mlodinow’s mother, Irene, who had also been in a labor camp in Poland. They raised Mlodinow and his two siblings in Chicago.
Mlodinow dropped out of Brandeis University in 1973 when the Yom Kippur War began and traveled to Israel to work on a kibbutz. While there he discovered physics after reading Richard Feynman’s books. He later completed his studies at Brandeis and earned his PhD in theoretical physics from UC Berkeley.
In addition to Elastic, Mlodinow has authored and co-authored many NYT bestsellers: Subliminal: How Your Unconscious Mind Rules Your Behavior, War of the Worldviews (with Deepak Chopra), The Grand Design (with Stephen Hawking), The Drunkard’s Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives, and A Briefer History of Time (with Stephen Hawking).
Mlodinow’s talk is free and open to the public. For disability accommodations (which must be requested by April 14), contact ohc@uoregon.edu or 541-346-3934.
Leonard Mlodinow explores how the human mind handles change
We live in a time of great turmoil and change in personal, social, and business spheres. To thrive in such a time, we must adapt and exercise a particular kind of thinking. Elastic thinking is needed to assess new situations, and to form a framework for understanding and reacting to them. It is leads to innovation and creativity.
In his upcoming talk, “Elastic: Flexible Thinking for our Time of Change,” Leonard Mlodinow will explore the psychology and neuroscience behind elastic thinking, detail ways to evaluate our ability to think nimbly, and provide methods to help us improve our skills.
Leonard Mlodinow, theoretical physicist and best-selling literary science writer, will give the Oregon Humanities Center’s 2019–20 Kritikos Lecture in Portland.
Mlodinow’s lecture is based on his recent book Elastic: Flexible Thinking in a Constantly Changing World, an exploration of how elastic thinking works. He draws on cutting-edge neuroscience to show how, millennia ago, our brains developed an affinity for novelty, idea generation, and exploration. He discovers how flexible thinking enabled some of the greatest artists, writers, musicians, and innovators to create paradigm shifts. And he investigates the organizations that have demonstrated an elastic ability to adapt to new technologies.
Mlodinow’s parents were holocaust survivors. His father, Simon, was a leader in the Jewish underground in Czestochowa, Poland, until he was shipped to Buchenwald concentration camp in 1944. The Nazis slaughtered his wife and two young children. After he was liberated in 1945, Simon immigrated to New York City and met Mlodinow’s mother, Irene, who had also been in a labor camp in Poland. They raised Mlodinow and his two siblings in Chicago.
Mlodinow dropped out of Brandeis University in 1973 when the Yom Kippur War began and traveled to Israel to work on a kibbutz. While there he discovered physics after reading Richard Feynman’s books. He later completed his studies at Brandeis and earned his PhD in theoretical physics from UC Berkeley.
In addition to Elastic, Mlodinow has authored and co-authored many NYT bestsellers: Subliminal: How Your Unconscious Mind Rules Your Behavior, War of the Worldviews (with Deepak Chopra), The Grand Design (with Stephen Hawking), The Drunkard’s Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives, and A Briefer History of Time (with Stephen Hawking).
Mlodinow’s talk is free and open to the public. Adult beverages will be available for purchase. For disability accommodations (which must be requested by April 14), contact ohc@uoregon.edu or 541-346-3934.
What is Information? (2020) will investigate conceptualizations and implementations of information via material, representational, and hybrid frames. The conference-experience will consider information and its transformational æffects—from documents to data; from facts and fictions to pattern recognition; from physical information to differential equations; and from volatility, uncertainty, and ambiguity to collective intelligence and wisdom.
The tenth annual What is…? examines tapestries, temperaments, and topologies of information lenses and practices—including—social and technical, mathematical and semantic, physical and biological, economic and political, cultural and environmental information. Thus, information can be understood as physical, for instruction, and about epistemic systems. Next year’s gathering expands on What is Technology? (2019), which explored technology as tools, processes, and moral knowledge, as well as problem-solving and intelligent inquiry.
Plenary participants to be announced.
Quench your thirst—for knowledge and for beer—at Ideas on Tap, the Museum of Natural and Cultural History's monthly pub talk. This month, join Courtney Cox, assistant professor of race and sport at the University of Oregon, for a look at the sports industry's use of quantitative data to predict and enhance athletic performance—and explore what it all means for athletes, from the weekend warrior to the Golden State Warriors.
Between 1949 and 1966, at least 4,713 Japanese students, of whom 651 were women, studied at American graduate schools. They were supported by the best-known fellowships at the time—the GARIOA (Government Account for Relief in Occupied Areas, 1949-1951), administered by the US Army, and Fulbright (in Japan since 1952). These young scholars were among the first people to travel abroad after World War II. They arrived bearing the burdens of the past, while possessing an openness to the future. They came to study in a land that had interned around 120,000 Japanese Americans during the war, but they persevered and were among the first women in the world who earned graduate degrees. At a time when being a housewife was held up as a middle-class ideal, many became professors, university chancellors, librarians, and translators. Others became leaders in medicine, journalism, athletics, and other male-dominated professions. Alisa Freedman recovers the forgotten history of mothers of academic fields in the humanities who transformed the roles women could play in education and the workforce.
Alisa Freedman is a Professor of Japanese Literature and Film at the University of Oregon. Much of her interdisciplinary work investigates how the modern urban experience has shaped human subjectivity, cultural production, and gender roles. She is a 2019–20 OHC Faculty Research Fellow.
Paul Root Wolpe asks, How do we teach morals to a machine?
Artificial intelligence has proven that machines are good at learning facts, strategies, tactics. But can they learn values, have empathy, develop intuitions, have compassion? Machines can clearly learn, but can they undergo moral development or make ethical decisions?
Jewish ethicist Paul Root Wolpe will give the Oregon Humanities Center’s 2019–20 Tzedek Lecture, titled “Deep Ethics in the Age of the Algorithm”.
Wolpe will discuss deep machine learning, deep surveillance, deep facial recognition. Thomas Friedman called “deep” the word of 2019. The word reveals the role of complexity in our modern technological understanding of the world; complexity used to be a problem, now it is a resource. And that complexity means that often we cannot wait for an outcome before we make an ethical judgement; ethics will have to be built into the complex algorithms that will decide who will get resources, who will get arrested, and, famously, who the automated car will crash into. In an age of deep machine learning we will need a deep ethics to keep pace. It is time to ask: what will that ethics look like?
Paul Root Wolpe is the Raymond F. Schinazi Distinguished Research Chair in Jewish Bioethics and the Director of the Center for Ethics at Emory University, where he is a Professor in the Departments of Medicine, Pediatrics, Psychiatry, and Sociology.
Wolpe’s work focuses on the social, religious, ethical, and ideological impact of medicine and technology on the human condition. His teaching and publications range across multiple fields of bioethics and sociology, including death and dying, genetics and eugenics, sexuality and gender, mental health and illness, alternative medicine, and bioethics in extreme environments such as space. He also writes and talks about the Jewish contribution to thinking about the ethical aspects of medicine and technology.
Wolpe, a member of Atlanta’s Congregation Shearith Israel, participates in Scientists in Synagogues—a program that explores interesting and pressing questions surrounding Judaism and science. He is the son of the late Rabbi Gerald I. Wolpe, one of the great figures in American Jewish life, and brother of Rabbi David Wolpe, the Max Webb Senior Rabbi of Sinai Temple in Los Angeles.
Wolpe spent 15 years as Senior Bioethicist for NASA, where he still serves as a bioethical consultant. He is the Editor-in-Chief of the American Journal of Bioethics Neuroscience. He is a past President of the American Society for Bioethics and Humanities; the current President of the Association of Bioethics Program Directors; and served as the first National Bioethics Advisor to Planned Parenthood Federation of America.
Wolpe’s talk is free and open the public. For disability accommodations (which must be requested by May 7), contact ohc@uoregon.edu or 541-346-3934.
Paul Root Wolpe asks, How do we teach morals to a machine?
Artificial intelligence has proven that machines are good at learning facts, strategies, tactics. But can they learn values, have empathy, develop intuitions, have compassion? Machines can clearly learn, but can they undergo moral development or make ethical decisions?
Jewish ethicist Paul Root Wolpe will give the Oregon Humanities Center’s 2019–20 Tzedek Lecture. His talk titled “Deep Ethics in the Age of the Algorithm” will take place in Portland.
Wolpe will discuss deep machine learning, deep surveillance, deep facial recognition. Thomas Friedman called “deep” the word of 2019. The word reveals the role of complexity in our modern technological understanding of the world; complexity used to be a problem, now it is a resource. And that complexity means that often we cannot wait for an outcome before we make an ethical judgement; ethics will have to be built into the complex algorithms that will decide who will get resources, who will get arrested, and, famously, who the automated car will crash into. In an age of deep machine learning we will need a deep ethics to keep pace. It is time to ask: what will that ethics look like?
Paul Root Wolpe is the Raymond F. Schinazi Distinguished Research Chair in Jewish Bioethics and the Director of the Center for Ethics at Emory University, where he is a Professor in the Departments of Medicine, Pediatrics, Psychiatry, and Sociology.
Wolpe’s work focuses on the social, religious, ethical, and ideological impact of medicine and technology on the human condition. His teaching and publications range across multiple fields of bioethics and sociology, including death and dying, genetics and eugenics, sexuality and gender, mental health and illness, alternative medicine, and bioethics in extreme environments such as space. He also writes and talks about the Jewish contribution to thinking about the ethical aspects of medicine and technology.
Wolpe, a member of Atlanta’s Congregation Shearith Israel, participates in Scientists in Synagogues—a program that explores interesting and pressing questions surrounding Judaism and science. He is the son of the late Rabbi Gerald I. Wolpe, one of the great figures in American Jewish life, and brother of Rabbi David Wolpe, the Max Webb Senior Rabbi of Sinai Temple in Los Angeles.
Wolpe spent 15 years as Senior Bioethicist for NASA, where he still serves as a bioethical consultant. He is the Editor-in-Chief of the American Journal of Bioethics Neuroscience. He is a past President of the American Society for Bioethics and Humanities; the current President of the Association of Bioethics Program Directors; and served as the first National Bioethics Advisor to Planned Parenthood Federation of America.
Wolpe’s talk is free and open the public. Adult beverages will be available for purchase. For disability accommodations (which must be requested by May 7), contact ohc@uoregon.edu or 541-346-3934.