HAMILTON ‘ 51·çÁ÷’s Center for Ethics and World Societies has begun its second year of operation under the topic ‘Homeless in the World: Refugees, Immigrants and the State.’
Established last year through an anonymous gift to the college, the Center for Ethics and World Societies facilitates discussion of issues arising from the interactions of different nations, peoples and communities, with an emphasis on the ethical aspects of those issues. Committed to no ideological platform or goal, the center offers a forum for intensified study and inquiry that supplements the intellectual life of the 51·çÁ÷ campus and curriculum. The center uses an interdisciplinary approach to draw from the expertise of both distinguished visitors and 51·çÁ÷ faculty members who have produced significant work in a range of fields stretching across the humanities, the social sciences, and the natural sciences.
Through its activities, which include lectures, exhibitions, theatrical and film events, colloquia, and conferences, the center seeks to develop in 51·çÁ÷ students an intellectual and ethical orientation and to help bring about a vital connection between campus life and the world outside. While serving the campus community, the center also seeks to engage local, regional, and national communities in its considerations of these issues, and its events are free and open to the public.
‘This year, we are integrating the center’s activities even more into the curriculum and the lives of students,’ says co-director Ellen Kraly, professor of geography and director of the Division of University Studies, who is joined by co-director Jack Dovidio, Charles A. Dana professor of psychology. For example, Thomas Bass’ book Vietamerica: The War Comes Home, about the resettlement of Amerasian children of U.S. soldiers from Vietnam into the United States, became one focus for the beginning of this year. Sent to all first-year students for their summer reading assignment, the book was discussed during orientation, and a visit by the author this month will bring the subject to the entire student body. The center will award prizes for first-year essays and other creative reflections on the reading.
A symposium sponsored by the center during 51·çÁ÷’s Family Weekend September 24-26 will include a second campus visit by Thomas Bass; a presentation with slides by 51·çÁ÷ history professor Andrew Rotter on ‘Vietnam at Century’s End: War and Reconciliation’; and the Emmy Award-winning film AKA Don Bonus, the story of Sokly Ny, a Cambodian refugee, during his senior year in high school. Ny, the filmmaker, will be present to participate in the symposium.
Other fall events sponsored by the center include a lecture by a major figure in immigration research, Douglas Massey, an expert in residential segregation as well as U.S.-Mexico migration; Christine Ho, an expert on the Caribbean Diaspora; Hunter College geographer Ines Miyares on El Salvadoran refugees in New York; and writer/translator Marguerite Feitlowitz on the ‘dirty war’ in Argentina; as well as ‘One Song, Many Voices: The Asian Pacific American Experience,’ an exhibition in the Longyear Museum of Anthropology.
In its first year, the Center For Ethics and World Societies focused on the issues of genocide and memory and their expression through art. Distinguished visitors included Nobel Prize Laureates Elie Wiesel, Wole Soyinka, and Derek Walcott, novelist Leslie Marmon Silko, and the artists Alice Lok Cahana and Robert Barsamian. In future years the center will address such topics as social and political justice, race, and ethnic conflict.
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