2019–2020 Convergence

The Oregon Humanities Center presents its 2019-20 lecture series centered on the theme, Convergence: intersections between the sciences and the humanities.  

The Convergence lecture series will highlight key areas of human experience where science and the humanities intersect as well as areas of divergence where science and the humanities could be brought into more productive relation. Our speakers will discuss a range of topics and perspectives relating to bioethics, health and justice, climate change and human adaptation, and neuroscience and the human brain. 

As scientific research opportunities expand, urgent questions concerning the impact of these discoveries on the human experience are coming to the forefront of the public debate: How is the research being done? What ethical practices and guidelines are being adopted to ensure that human rights and biological diversity are protected? Who is funding the research and why? How are the innovations being used – or misused? What are the impacts to individuals, communities, countries, and our planet? When is the right moment to pivot and change directions if these questions cannot be answered? When do we forge ahead quickly for the benefit of all? 

Ruha Benjamin, African American Studies, Princeton University; author of Race After Technology (2019). “Beyond Buzzwords: Reimagining the Default Settings of Technology and Society.”

Elizabeth Rush, Creative Nonfiction, Brown University; author of Rising: Dispatches from the New American Shore (2018). “On Rising Together: Creative and Collective Responses to the Climate Crisis.”

Leonard Mlodinow, theoretical physicist and best-selling literary science writer. “Elastic: Flexible Thinking for our Time of Change.”

Paul Root Wolpe, Raymond F. Schinazi Distinguished Research Chair in Jewish Bioethics and the director of the Center for Ethics at Emory University. “Ethical Challenges of the COVID Pandemic”