On February 13, 2023, Joy Connolly gave the annual Peggy Downes Baskin Ethics Lecture entitled, “A Connected Planet: Scholarship for the Global Good.”
“Serving the public good” is the motto and a strategic goal of many an American research university. In this lecture, Joy asked: 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 made 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.
If you missed Joy Connolly’s lecture, a recording of the event can be viewed below:
Event photos:
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.