April 26, 2021

The Steamboat Institute, in collaboration with the Benson Center for the Study of Western Civilization, University of ŷ���ڱ���Ƶ Boulder, presented “Liberty and Justice for All: A Conversation on Social Justice and Identity Politics,” featuring Jason Riley, member of The Wall Street Journal editorial board, and Donna Brazile, veteran Democratic political strategist, adjunct professor, author, and syndicated columnist. The debate was moderated by Patrice Onwuka. Ms. Onwuka is Director, Center for Economic Opportunity at Independent Women’s Forum, and Tony Blankley Senior Fellow with the Steamboat Institute.

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April 19, 2021, 6 PM.

Part of the Benson Center's 2020-21 "The Canceled" lecture series.

ŷ���ڱ���Ƶ the Lecture 

For generations, progressives understood their movement to be, among other things, a check on corporate power. But that has changed as progressives have attained positions of power — often monopoly positions of power — in the commanding heights of American corporate life, from Wall Street to Silicon Valley. Rather than counterbalancing the power of business, modern progressives seek to create the “disciplinary corporation,” an arrangement in which employment, education, and access to technology are made contingent upon political conformism. The template is not George Orwell’s 1984 but the “Lavender Scare,” which sought to exclude homosexuals from economic and cultural life, especially in Hollywood and in government employment: a kind of all-volunteer police regime enforcing cultural, sexual, and political homogeneity.  

ŷ���ڱ���Ƶ the Speaker

Kevin D. Williamson is the roving correspondent for National Review and the author of several books, including his most recent, Big White Ghetto. He worked as a newspaper editor in India and the United States, served as the theater critic for The New Criterion, and taught at The King’s College, New York. His work has appeared everywhere from The Washington Post to Playboy. 

ŷ���ڱ���Ƶ the Series

In recent months, social coercion has become a more effective means of restricting political speech than legal coercion. Opinions that were once common are now anathema, and campaigns to de-platform or even “cancel” proponents of these opinions are increasingly frequent. These attempts at "cancellation" are not merely fair-minded criticism. Rather, they involve efforts to punish those with heterodox views by banishing them from social media, pressuring their employers to fire them, harassing them in public, or threatening their families. These new methods of social coercion have curtailed the range political views that can be expressed publicly without fear of social sanction. This series considers the implications of the new cancel culture, the norms it imposes on thought and expression, and the conformism it attempts to compel.

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April 13, 2021, 6 p.m. 

Part of the Benson Center's 2020-21 "The Canceled" lecture series.

ŷ���ڱ���Ƶ the Webinar

This webinar explores how what Roger Scruton so suggestively called “the culture of repudiation," the willful and indiscriminate rejection of the Western intellectual, moral, and civic inheritance,in the form of pathological self-loathing, has led to a “cancel culture"  where the wisdom of the past is dismissed out of hand, where liberal education gives way to censorious repression, and where whole groups of people are judged guilty not because of what they have done but because of who they are. Mahoney will call for authentic liberals and conservatives, and of all men and women of good will, to reaffirm what is valuable in our civilizational inheritance and to resist efforts to silence the life of the mind and free pursuit of truth. 

ŷ���ڱ���Ƶ the Speaker

Daniel J. Mahoney holds the Augustine Chair in Distinguished Scholarship at Assumption University and is, for the 2020-2021 academic year, the Garwood Visiting Fellow at the James Madison Program at Princeton  University. He has written and edited fourteen books, the latest of which is The Idol of Our Age: How the Religion of Humanity Subverts Christianity (Encounter Books, 2018). He is presently completing a book entitled The Statesman as Thinker: Ten Portraits of Greatness, Courage, and Moderation. 

ŷ���ڱ���Ƶ the Series

In recent months, social coercion has become a more effective means of restricting political speech than legal coercion. Opinions that were once common are now anathema, and campaigns to de-platform or even “cancel” proponents of these opinions are increasingly frequent. These attempts at "cancellation" are not merely fair-minded criticism. Rather, they involve efforts to punish those with heterodox views by banishing them from social media, pressuring their employers to fire them, harassing them in public, or threatening their families. These new methods of social coercion have curtailed the range political views that can be expressed publicly without fear of social sanction. This series considers the implications of the new cancel culture, the norms it imposes on thought and expression, and the conformism it attempts to compel.

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April 6, 2021, 6 p.m. Online only. Free and open to the public. Part of the Benson Center's 2020-21 "Community or Disunity" lecture series.

ŷ���ڱ���Ƶ the Webinar:

The Holocaust was both the greatest mass murder and the greatest theft in history. This lecture will discuss how America’s civil justice system provided a measure of long overdue justice to Holocaust victims and heirs. We examine claims for return of Nazi looted art, stolen Jewish real property in Europe, Holocaust-era insurance policies, slave labor and bank deposits held by Swiss banks. Our focus will be on both past and ongoing litigation, including two Holocaust restitution cases  before the U.S. Supreme Court (Simon v. Hungary; Phillip v. Germany), for which the speaker co-authored amicus briefs. 

ŷ���ڱ���Ƶ the Speaker:

Michael Bazyler is professor of law and the 1939 Law Scholar in Holocaust and Human Rights Studies at Chapman University. He is holder of previous fellowships at Harvard Law School, the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. and Yad Vashem in Jerusalem (The Holocaust Remembrance Authority of Israel), where he was the holder of the Baron Oppenheim Chair for the Study of Racism, Antisemitism and the Holocaust. 

Professor Bazyler is the author of seven books and more than two dozen law review articles, book chapters and essays on subjects covering Law and the Holocaust and restitution following genocide and other mass atrocities. His book, Holocaust, Genocide and the Law: A Quest for Justice in a Post-Holocaust World (Oxford University Press) is a winner of the 2016 National Jewish Book Award. His writings have been cited by the U.S. Supreme Court, and he has testified in Congress on the subject of Holocaust restitution. 

Part of the Benson Center’s “Community or Disunity?” Series

The 2020-21 lecture series invites speakers, students, faculty, and community members to reflect upon questions related to the communities that we build and the challenges that may contribute to their disintegration.

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March 22, 2021

This event has taken place and no recording is available.

ŷ���ڱ���Ƶ the Lecture:

How do different understandings of science influence our expectations for scientific experimentation, technological innovation, and the possibility of establishing scientific laws and enduring truths about the universe, the natural world, and human beings? As the complexity of scientific information increases and the rate and scope of information dissemination also increase, scientists and non-scientists are often asked to evaluate scientific information in real-time with significant and immediate social and political effects, not only for us as individuals, but also for our families, communities, and countries.

In many instances, evaluating the legitimacy, credibility, and applicability of scientific information has become a political question, not simply a question of experimental veracity and consistent replicability. The Covid-19 Global Pandemic has brought these concerns to the forefront of public discussions.

This talk examines different approaches to and understandings of modern science, what science means, what it promises, how it is practiced, and what it can reasonably prove. 

ŷ���ڱ���Ƶ the Speaker:

Erin A. Dolgoy is Assistant Professor in Political Science at Rhodes College in Memphis, TN. She teaches in the Political Science Department, the Search Program, and has contributed to the Program in Political Economy. This past semester she taught in Rhodes' Liberal Arts in Prison Program. Her research in political theory and the politics of the United States examines questions that concern knowledge, science, government, and society. Dolgoy holds a PHD and MA from Michigan State University in Political Science, an MA from the University of Alberta, and an HBA from the University of Toronto.  

ŷ���ڱ���Ƶ the Series: 

Part of the ŷ���ڱ���Ƶ Engineering Leadership Program 2021-22 Lecture Series: The New STEM Enlightenment: Political Promises and Perils of Science and Technology 

This lecture series examines how America’s zealous promotion of science, technology, and scientific education affects American democracy. How does our reverence for science and technology alter the soul of our nation and its people? Can a citizenry educated under the auspices of modern science and charmed by the marvels of technology maintain the institutions and behaviors necessary for the survival of liberal government? Are our prospects for fostering human flourishing, for reclaiming a more nuanced civic discourse, and for producing citizen-leaders of prudence and character enriched or diminished by the habits of heart and mind cultivated by science education and technological dependence? Presented by the Engineering Leadership Program, which gratefully acknowledges the support of the and the Benson Center for the Study of Western Civilization. Photo credits: Erin Dolgoy: Jack Miller Center; Engraving: 'Monster Soup..." by William Heath, Wellcome Images, L00065 CC BY 4.0.

Additional spring 2021 speakers in this series: 

Bernhardt L. Trout: Thermodynamics, Atoms, and Citizenship, Feb. 5, 2021. 

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March 16, 2021, 6 p.m. Online event. Free admission; registration required.

ŷ���ڱ���Ƶ the Webinar

What is American pluralism based upon? E pluribus unum is our motto, but what makes the many one? Force can attempt to forge one out of many, but the United States attempted this through the exercise of reason, i.e., that is the principle of equality. Only equality allows for voluntary diversity. Contrary to it in the ancient world was tribalism. We will examine its features and how it was eventually overcome. However, in the 20^th century, the very existence of the United States was contested by totalitarian ideologies that explicitly denied the principle of equality and the pluralism it allows. We will briefly examine them and what is meant by ideology in the first place. Diversity must be distinguished from disintegration. Today, threats come from both religious and secular ideologies. We will examine what they are in the form of neo-tribalism.   

ŷ���ڱ���Ƶ the Speaker

Robert R. Reilly is director of the Westminster Institute. He has taught at National Defense University (2007), and served as a Special Assistant to the President and in the Office of The Secretary of Defense, where he was Senior Advisor for Information Strategy (2002-2006). He participated in Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2003 as Senior Advisor to the Iraqi Ministry of information. Before that, he was director of the Voice of America. He is the author of The Closing of the Muslim Mind: How Intellectual Suicide Created the Modern Islamist Crisis (ISI Books, 2010), The Prospects and Perils of Catholic-Muslim Dialogue (Isaac Publishing, 2013), and America on Trial: A Defense of the Founding (Ignatius Press, 20202), among other works.

Part of the Benson Center’s “Community or Disunity?” Series

The 2020-21 lecture series invites speakers, students, faculty, and community members to reflect upon questions related to the communities that we build and the challenges that may contribute to their disintegration.

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March 11, 2021, 6 p.m. Online only. Free and open to the public.

ŷ���ڱ���Ƶ the Lecture 

Why were restrictions on religious liberty so pervasive in the past? Why did states persecute religious dissent? And how did religious freedom first emerge? These questions are of seminal importance for understanding the rise of modern states, liberalism, and the rule of law.  In this talk, Dr. Johnson explains how the relationship between religion and state evolved over time in Western Europe. In the Middle Ages, the most common rules were identity rules—rules that treated individuals differently based on their identity. These identity rules facilitated the persecution of Europe’s Jewish communities. One of the unintended consequences of state building during the early-modern period was that rulers gradually abandoned identity rules in favor more general rules. This shift played a critical role in the development of liberal states, rule of law, and free and flourishing markets.

ŷ���ڱ���Ƶ the Speaker

Noel Johnson is Associate Professor in the Economics Department at George Mason University. He is also a member of the Center for the Study of Public Choice and a Research Fellow at the Mercatus Center. He earned his PhD at Washington University in St. Louis. His interests lie at the intersection of economic history, development, and the new institutional economics.

Dr. Johnson's recent research has explored how states build administrative and fiscal capacity; the relationship between state capacity and growth enhancing economic and social outcomes such as religious tolerance or free trade; and how the disease environment has affected economic and social outcomes.

ŷ���ڱ���Ƶ the Moderator

Taylor Jaworski is Assistant Professor in the Economics Department at ŷ���ڱ���Ƶ Boulder.  His current research interests are U.S. economic history focused on regional development and transportation infrastructure, market power and innovation at Bell Laboratories, regional cultures, and U.S. economic and political development. Dr. Jaworski is a Benson Center faculty affiliate. 

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March 1, 2021, 6 p.m. Online only. Free and open to the public. Registration required.

You'll want to be "in the room" for a live, multidisciplinary ŷ���ڱ���Ƶ faculty panel discussion on Alexander Hamilton in the context of Lin-Manuel Miranda's hit original Broadway production Hamilton. 

Panelists

  Markas Henry, Associate Professor of Theatre

  Elizabeth Eastman, Political Scientist, Benson Center Senior Scholar in Residence

  Taylor Jaworski, Assistant Professor of Economics

  Shilo Brooks, Moderator, Engineering Leadership Program Faculty Director and Benson Center Associate Faculty Director

All who register and attend will be eligible to win a Hamilton original cast recording CD autographed by Lin-Manuel Miranda. 

History has its eyes on him!

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Feb. 8, 2021, 6 p.m. Online only. Free and open to the public. Registration required. Part of the Benson Center's 2020-21 "The Canceled" lecture series.

ŷ���ڱ���Ƶ the Webinar:

Perhaps more insidious than the outright prohibition of expressing contrary opinions are the myriad ways in which, fearing social disapprobation, we elect to censor ourselves. Drawing on classical and contemporary texts, this lecture explores the logic of tacitly coerced conformity, and applies that logic to a number of currently relevant cases.

ŷ���ڱ���Ƶ the Speaker:

Glenn C. Loury is Merton P. Stoltz Professor of Economics at Brown University. He holds the BA in Mathematics (Northwestern) and the PhD in Economics (M.I.T). As an economic theorist he has published widely and lectured throughout the world on his research.  He is also among America’s leading critics writing on racial inequality. He has been elected as a Distinguished Fellow of the American Economics Association, as a Member of the American Philosophical Society and of the U.S. Council on Foreign Relations, and as a Fellow of the Econometric Society and of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. 

ŷ���ڱ���Ƶ the Series

In recent months, social coercion has become a more effective means of restricting political speech than legal coercion. Opinions that were once common are now anathema, and campaigns to de-platform or even “cancel” proponents of these opinions are increasingly frequent. These attempts at "cancellation" are not merely fair-minded criticism. Rather, they involve efforts to punish those with heterodox views by banishing them from social media, pressuring their employers to fire them, harassing them in public, or threatening their families. These new methods of social coercion have curtailed the range political views that can be expressed publicly without fear of social sanction. This series considers the implications of the new cancel culture, the norms it imposes on thought and expression, and the conformism it attempts to compel.

Off

This event took place Feb. 5, 2021

ŷ���ڱ���Ƶ the Lecture:

We will discuss the particular way in which pursuing STEM forms the mind. That way has benefits to mastering nature but limits understanding nature. Such limits in turn have particular effects on citizenship, which we elaborate. Concepts and equations from thermodynamics and quantum mechanics are used, but no prior studies in those areas is assumed.

ŷ���ڱ���Ƶ the Speaker:

Bernhardt L. Trout is the Raymond F. Baddour, ScD, (1949) Professor of Chemical Engineering and Director of the MIT Society, Engineering, and Ethics Program. He received his S.B. and S.M. degrees from MIT and his Ph.D. from the University of California at Berkeley. In addition, he performed post-doctoral research at the Max-Planck Institute.

After having integrated humanities in engineering courses for over a decade, in 2009, with several colleagues, Trout started the MIT Society, Engineering, and Ethics Program. Its aim is to broaden and deepen the understanding of MIT engineering students, focusing on the societal and ethical implications of engineering. His scientific research focuses on applications of machine learning together with quantum mechanics and statistical mechanics in addition to experiments to develop pharmaceutical products and processes. In 2007, together with colleagues, he started the Novartis-MIT Center for Continuous Manufacturing, a $85 million initiative to transform pharmaceutical manufacturing. He also leads a public outreach initiative to promote advanced pharmaceutical and vaccine manufacturing. He is co-editor of the 2016 volume Mastery of Nature and has published over 200 technical papers with 19 patents issued or pending

ŷ���ڱ���Ƶ the Series: 

Part of the ŷ���ڱ���Ƶ Engineering Leadership Program 2021-22 Lecture Series: The New STEM Enlightenment: Political Promises and Perils of Science and Technology. This lecture series examines how America’s zealous promotion of science, technology, and scientific education affects American democracy. How does our reverence for science and technology alter the soul of our nation and its people? Can a citizenry educated under the auspices of modern science and charmed by the marvels of technology maintain the institutions and behaviors necessary for the survival of liberal government? Are our prospects for fostering human flourishing, for reclaiming a more nuanced civic discourse, and for producing citizen-leaders of prudence and character enriched or diminished by the habits of heart and mind cultivated by science education and technological dependence? Presented by the Engineering Leadership Program, which gratefully acknowledges the support of the and the Benson Center for the Study of Western Civilization.

Additional spring 2021 speakers in this series: 

Erin Dolgoy: Between Certainty and Disbelief: How Different Understandings of Science Influence Expectations, March 22, 2021, 12 p.m. 

Engraving: 'Monster Soup..." by William Heath, Wellcome Images, L00065 CC BY 4.0

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