“Serving the public good” is the motto and a strategic goal of many an American research university. In this lecture, Joy asks: what public do humanistic scholars serve, how do we define the public and its good, and how does and how might our study contribute to this project? Thinking critically about the tradition of research on the ancient Mediterranean, Joy’s own field, she makes the case for a planetary frame for humanistic study whose fields of activity are the global and the local. This frame resolves an intractable tension in academia today, where institutions proudly recruit students and faculty from all over the world but retain disciplinary divisions that reflect the national borders and imperial power map of two centuries ago.

In-person attendance
The lecture will begin promptly at 4:00 p.m. and will be followed by a question and answer session and a reception in the Rotunda. Doors will open at 3:30 p.m

Virtual attendance

Joy Connolly began her service as President of the American Council of Learned Societies on July 1, 2019. Previously, she served as provost and interim president of The Graduate Center at the City University of New York, where she was also Distinguished Professor of Classics. She has held faculty appointments at New York University, where she served as Dean for the Humanities from 2012-16, Stanford University, and the University of Washington. Committed to broadening scholars’ impact on the world, as provost at the Graduate Center Joy secured generous support from the Mellon Foundation to foster public-facing scholarship through innovative experiments in doctoral training. She has published two books with Princeton University Press and over seventy articles, reviews, and short essays. Connolly earned a BA from Princeton University in 1991 and a PhD in classical studies from the University of Pennsylvania in 1997. She was elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2021.

The Peggy Downes Baskin Ethics Lecture Series is a lively forum for the discussion and exploration of ethics-related challenges in human endeavors. The Ethics Lecture is made possible by the Peggy Downes Baskin Humanities Endowment for Interdisciplinary Ethics which enables the Humanities Division to promote a dialogue about ethics and ethics related challenges in an interdisciplinary setting. The endowment was established in honor of Peggy Downes Baskin’s longtime interest in ethical issues across the academic spectrum.

This event is presented by the Humanities Division and co-sponsored by the Humanities Institute.