“Can This Add Up to an Education?”
A Conference of the Berkeley Institute
February 8th & 9th, 2013
315 and 330 Wheeler Hall | UC Berkeley
College students often experience their education as an incoherent jumble of requirements unrelated to each other or to any larger purpose, or, at best, as a course of specialized technical training punctuated by such inexplicable requirements. They are left to make what coherence they can of it; universities do not tell them, or even claim to tell them, how. So it is no surprise that many wonder what their education is for, beyond its economic payoff, and why they would bother if the payoff did not materialize. Meanwhile, the national conversation about higher education seems to focus on nothing but that payoff. What is plainly lost in both the students’ experience and in our national conversation is why and how intellectual training is worthwhile: what it is, how it hangs together, how people can shape it and how it can shape them, how it can prepare them for a life that is properly human and that is ordered toward pursuit of the good.
This conference will explore the real value of education, and suggest to students how they can begin to find coherence among the fragmentary, specialized, and sometimes partial view of their several courses. What are the principles that underlie intellectual inquiry? What is intellectual integrity? What demands are made by intellectual commitment and consistency, and how can these cohere with the demands of moral commitments and commitments of faith? Students should find some resources for making sense of their education and of their own lived experience.
Conference Agenda
Friday, February 8th
4:00 Coffee & Registration
5:00 Welcome & Introductory Panel
5:30 Plenary Lecture: “Three Ways of Thinking about Your Education, Your Beliefs, and What They Have to Do with Each Other”
Steven Justice, Professor of English, UC Berkeley
6:30 Dinner
Saturday, February 9th
9:00 Breakfast
10:00 Plenary Lecture: “Religious Commitments and Academic Knowledge”
Lara Buchak, Assistant Professor of Philosophy, UC Berkeley
11:00 Coffee
11:30 Discussion Panel: Practical Approaches
Moderator: Dena Fehrenbacher, PhD Candidate in English, Harvard University
Chiyuma Elliott, Stegner Fellow in Poetry, Stanford University
Cassandra Sciortino, Visiting Scholar in Art History, UC Berkeley
Keith Bouma-Gregson, PhD Candidate in Integrative Biology, UC Berkeley
Chad Hegelmeyer, Assistant Director for Programs, The Berkeley Institute
Tina Torrance, PhD Candidate in Religion, Harvard University
12:45pm Lunch
2:00pm Workshops
1. “On Speaking Up and Not Speaking Up”
Professor Steven Justice and Abram Coetsee, Junior Fellow of The Berkeley Institute
2. “Naturalism, Materialism, and Reductionism in Philosophy and the Social Sciences”
Professor Robert Koons, Professor of Philosophy, University of Texas
3. “Art’s Objects: A Writing Workshop”
Chiyuma Elliott & Nicholas Mueller, Seminarian at Holy Cross Greek Orthodox School of Theology
3:30pm Coffee
3:45pm Discussion Panel: Intellectual Approaches
Moderator: Dena Fehrenbacher
Charity Ketz, PhD Candidate in English, UC Berkeley
Stephen Thompson, PhD Candidate in English, Cornell University
Michael Spicher, PhD Candidate in Philosophy, University of South Carolina
Nuri Kim, Biomedical Research Associate, UCSF
5:00pm Coffee
5:15pm Plenary Lecture: “Restoring the Fragmented Image: Successful Models, Potential Allies”
Professor Robert Koons