You are invited to the next in our Autumn 2021 Provost’s Lecture Series on Academic Freedom, on November 4, 2021, with Professor Akeel Bilgrami.
For those unable to attend, this lecture will be recorded and archived at https://academic.ubc.ca/academic-freedom.
About the Event:
Diversity and Freedom of Inquiry in Academia
Lecture by Akeel Bilgrami, Professor of Philosophy, Columbia University
Organizer and Moderator: Professor Margaret Schabas, Senior Advisor to the Provost, Academic Freedom
November 4, 2021
5:00 – 6:30 p.m., Sage East, University Centre (6331 Crescent Road)
RSVP by November 3 to provost.office@ubc.ca (note that in-person capacity is limited)
Synopsis
This lecture will offer a genealogy of current disputes on campus that confront the trade-offs between commitments to greater diversity and commitments to freedom of inquiry. It will identify some of the effects of diversity on academic inquiry, exploring in particular whether the demands of diversity are bringing about a fundamental shift in the very idea of inquiry and pedagogy in the Humanities and the Social Sciences.
View the recording of the lecture.
About Professor Bilgrami
Akeel Bilgrami received a B.A in English Literature from Elphinstone College, Bombay University and went to Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar where he read Philosophy, Politics, and Economics. He has a Ph.D in Philosophy from the University of Chicago. He is the Sidney Morgenbesser Professor of Philosophy at Columbia University, where he is also a Professor on the Committee on Global Thought. He has been the Director of the Heyman Centre for the Humanities as well as the South Asian Institute at Columbia. His publications include the books Belief and Meaning (1992), Self-Knowledge and Resentment (2006), and Secularism, Identity and Enchantment (2014). He also co-edited and contributed to Who’s Afraid of Academic Freedom? (2015). He is due to publish two books in the near future: What is a Muslim? (Princeton University Press) and Gandhi's Integrity (Columbia University Press), and is currently writing a book on the relations between agency, value, and practical reason.
Note: Physical distancing and COVID-19 protocols will be in place. Due to space capacity, registration is required.