Public Scholar Lecture

Museum Neutrality in an Age of Discontent

The role of museums as impartial arbiters is being challenged, in an increasingly political and polarized age, through social media and stakeholder activism. What does the concept of museum neutrality actually mean? How can this concept be applied to the vast variety of museums, an estimated 35,000 in the US alone, that run the gamut from fine arts, historical places, science, archaeology, sports, religion, entertainment, and even highly specialized thematic displays? How can museums negotiate the ethical challenges that result from widely disparate expectations as they consider their fundamental duty to serve the Public Good?

P. Gregory Warden, Ph.D., is the Mark A. Roglán Director of the Custard Institute for Spanish Art and Culture and Professor of Art History Emeritus at SMU. He is President Emeritus of Franklin University Switzerland. Author or co-author of six books and over 100 publications, Warden’s research interests are Mediterranean archaeology, architectural conservation, and Digital Heritage. He has organized museum exhibitions in the US and Europe and has given keynote lectures at numerous universities and museums, including the Getty and the British Museum. His work has been supported by the Kress Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Warden is currently co-Director of the Potentino Exploration Project, which aims to connect environmental science and archaeology with the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals. In 2012 the Republic of Italy awarded him the title of Cavaliere in the Order of the Star of Italy for his contributions to Italian culture and archaeology.

Are Vaccine Mandates a Matter of Conscience?

Dr. Liberman's lecture addressed whether exemptions to COVID-19 vaccine mandates (e.g., from an employer or university) should be accommodated as conscientious objections, understood as penalty-free exemptions to a law or policy based on moral or religious disagreement with the policy. Liberman developed a framework for assessing the legitimacy of conscientious objection claims by determining whether they violate the basic competencies needed to be a minimally decent member of a profession or community. In the case of vaccine mandates, these include epistemic competencies (such as avoiding relying on factual misunderstandings when making community-impacting decisions), relational competencies (such as avoiding free-riding and refraining from harming others in the exercise of your liberties), and normative competencies (which require having an accurate understanding of what you are responsible for and how your actions affect others). Liberman argued many vaccine refusals violate one or more of these competencies, and accordingly should not be permitted as a matter of conscientious objection.

Great Equalizer: Education Policy, Geography and Equality of Opportunity

Dr. Richards is an Assistant Professor of Education Policy and Leadership in the Simmons School of Education and Human Development. She received her Ph.D. in Educational Policy from the University of Texas at Austin and was an IES Post-doctoral Fellow in Education Policy and Methods at the University of Pennsylvania. At SMU, she is responsible for teaching doctoral coursework in educational research methods.

Dr. Richards’ research seeks to understand the underlying causes of educational inequities and explore the effects of a wide range of educational policies—such as school choice, accountability, and student assignment policies—on equity and stratification in schools. In particular, her work situates policies in their metropolitan and geographic contexts, focusing on the role that educational boundaries play in facilitating social stratification and segregation. In addressing these substantive issues, she seeks to develop and apply diverse quantitative methods to the study of education. Beyond documenting the consequences of educational policies, Dr. Richards seeks to provide actionable research that helps policymakers design effective policies, particularly those that balance the imperative for equity in schools with other educational demands.

Don’t Call King a ‘Civil Rights’ Leader: Toward Abolishing Poverty and War by Correcting our Fatally Inadequate Remembering of MLK Jr.

Remembering Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.—primarily as a domestic “civil rights” leader—is inadequate, and sometimes harmful. The term “civil rights” fails to embrace King’s abolitionist movements toward the global abolition of poverty and war. King was a Baptist preacher. He advanced an optimistic realism (including a "realistic pacifism") that improves upon pessimistic-cynical versions of political realism. And King went beyond advancing “civil rights” to advancing economic rights and human rights. He prescribed adding an economic bill of rights to the US Constitution, plus full-employment supplemented by “guaranteed income,” and US-supported international efforts to achieve the total “abolition of poverty” and war throughout “the world house” (King 1967).

Listen to the lecture on our podcast SoundEthics here.

Will the Truth Set You Free in a Post-Truth Political World?

Veritas liberabit vos – “the truth will set you free.” Southern Methodist University’s motto relates freedom to truth. If you want to be free, truth is one of its conditions. Is that assumption warranted? Not only recent political events that speak of “alternative facts” question it, but ancient and modern philosophers, rulers and poets were likewise suspicious. “What is truth?” said Pilate, and Francis Bacon reminds us, “he would not stay for an answer.” Is truth a source of political and ethical freedom, or is it freedom’s enemy?

This lecture will argue that speaking the truth is the most urgent political and ethical task in late modernity if we are to have a politics that is something other than a contest of wills. Achieving such a politics requires shifting the formation and education of moral agency away from preparation primarily for state and market life to virtuous communities and/or communities of care.

The Irrelevance of Death

"Medical scholars and practitioners agree that “death” is real: it happens. Increasingly, however, there is disagreement over when death occurs and whether the two prevailing standards for the determination of death (cardio-pulmonary and neurological criteria) provide meaningful guidance. At the same time, developments in the field of organ transplantation have led some medical ethicists to call for the abandonment of the “Dead Donor Rule” as a useless relic of a bygone era. This lecture will explore whether we are approaching a time when it may be legal and ethical to kill patients for their organs (and whether we have been at that point for decades without realizing it)."

Google Morals

If I lose my way when going from SMU to the Meyerson, I'm not terribly worried. I simply pull out my phone and use Google Maps. Wondrous technology aside, no one thinks that is a particularly strange way to come to know locations and distances. Suppose, though, that I found myself in doubt about whether or not abortion was wrong, or whether eating meat was permissible. Well, I can just pull out my phone and use Google Morals! It will tell me the truth about the issues, and then I can go about my merry way voting and eating in accordance with my new beliefs.

Watch full lecture on YouTube

The Evolution of the Universe - Higgs and Beyond

"We teach students about science as an unchanging set of basic rules that govern our physical world as we see it today. We justify them by quoting selected historical developments of our understanding creating an impression that science changes in a logical, linear fashion. Such a picture is not quite right. In our lifetime, many fields of science have undergone major revolutions of thought and paradigm changes."

Watch full lecture on YouTube

The Politics of Memory and the Legacy of the Civil Rights Movement

“We are in the midst of a 50th Anniversary Season in which we commemorate a number of landmark events in the Civil Rights Movement. This talk will examine those events, highlight the major legacies of the civil rights movement, and consider the role of race and the memory of the movement in contemporary American Politics.”

Watch full lecture on YouTube

Haunted Memories and Complex Loyalties

"All of us have our own memories of the events of 9/11. My own are haunted by memories of terrorism in Ireland. Yet there are crucial general issues raised by the arrival of international terrorism that cry out for attention. What exactly is terrorism and why do we think terrorism is intrinsically evil? Is there a real connection to religion or is this a smokescreen for other causal agents? What changes in our research programs about our history, our religion and culture are mandated by terrorism? This lecture will identify such issues and provide initial suggestions on how to proceed (and not to proceed) in answering them."

Lecture available on YouTube

Lone Star Tarnished: A Critique of Texas Public Policy

As California goes in eclipse, Texas is widely touted as the ascendant model for the nation of limited government, economic growth, and personal freedom. While there is some merit to this view, it is at best a partial picture. The Texas model works well for the haves, but it leaves many public services – including education, health care, food security, transportation, the environment, and more – at best only partially addressed. Today’s have-nots, or have-lesses, depend on the delivery of high quality public services, most prominently public education, for their future prospects. Today, those prospects seem bleak. In this lecture, entitled "Lone Star Tarnished: Texas Public Policy and Its Deficiencies," we assess the strengths and weaknesses of the Texas model, look ahead to ask whether current problems are likely to shrink or grow, and we close by asking whether alternative pathways into the future are available to us.

Lecture now available on iTunesU.