Keynote Speakers

Professor, Dr. Arne Grøn
University of Copenhagen &
Danish National Research Foundation: Center for Subjectivity Research
Købmagergade 44-46, DK-1150 Copenhagen K
Email: ag@cfs.ku.dk
Website: www.cfs.ku.dk

Dr. Grøn is a full professor of Ethics and Philosophy of Religion with the University of Copenhagen in Denmark. He is also a co-founder and Professor, Danish National Research Foundation: Center for Subjectivity Research. In addition, Dr. Grøn is a member of the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters and the former co-editor of Kierkegaardiana, Studia Theologica and Danish Yearbook of Philosophy.
Dr. Grøn has numerous publications on topics of philosophy of religion, ethics, theory of subjectivity, hermeneutics, and history of philosophy, including Kierkegaard, German Idealism (Schelling, Hegel), Nietzsche, Heidegger, and modern French philosophy.

Please visit www.cfs.ku.dk for more information on his current research.

Conference Abstract: Religion and (In)humanity
Recently, religion has entered the public agenda in Western countries to such a degree and in such ways that the very conditions for public discussions have once more become an issue of critical importance. Taking my point of departure in the so-called cartoon-crisis, I will like to address, in a philosophical approach to religion, the question: what is at stake in this situation? The questions imposing themselves upon us point back to fundamental issues in philosophy of religion, issues that we should be challenged to rethink. One such example is the question: how is re-introducing taboos in a public discussion possible? This leads back to the question: what does it mean that something is holy? On closer reflection, our response should take into account that a religion is not something monolithic: how the holy is to be understood is at issue in religion itself. Thus, the question is not simply how to deal with religion in public discussions, but also how religions themselves deal with the world which we as humans share, more or less. In the optics of religion, how do we as humans come to see the world of humans? The main part of my paper will discuss the issue of religion and humanity, arguing that religion testifies to human ambiguities, but also that in religion, human ambiguities can be articulated and interpreted.

Gary Pavela, J.D.

Gary Pavela teaches in the honors program at the University of Maryland and writes law and policy newsletters to which over 1,000 colleges and universities in the United States and Canada subscribe. He was a law clerk to Judge Alfred P. Murrah of the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit, a faculty member for the Federal Judicial Center in Washington, D.C (the training arm of the United States Courts), and a staff attorney for the State University of New York, Central Administration. He has been a Fellow at the University of Wisconsin Center for Behavioral Science and law, taught at Colgate University, and served on the Board of the Kenan Institute for Ethics at Duke University.

Identified by the New York Times as an "authority on academic ethics," Gary Pavela has been a consultant on law and policy issues at many leading universities, including Stanford University, the University of Michigan, The University of California at San Diego, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Rutgers University, Georgetown University, The United States Naval Academy, Lehigh University, Brown University, Colgate University, and Smith College, among many others.

In 2002 Gary was designated a "Fellow" of the National Association of College and University Attorneys. Fellows of the Association are identified as individuals who have "brought distinction to higher education and to the practice of law on behalf of colleges and universities across the nation." He is the 2005 recipient of the National Association of Student Personnel Administrators' "Outstanding Contribution to Literature and Research" award.

Presentation Title: Defining the Scope of Student and Faculty Academic Freedom

Lorraine Code , Ph.D.

   Lorraine Code, is Distinguished Research Professor in the Department of Philosophy at York University in Toronto, cross-appointed to the Graduate Programs in Social and Political Thought, and in Women's Studies. In addition to articles in such journals as "The American Philosophical Quarterly", "Hypatia", "Radical Philosophy", and "The Monist", numerous chapters in books, and four co-edited books, she has published the following books.

With Kathryn Hamer, she has published an English translation of Michèle Le Doeuff's "Le Sexe du savoir", English title: "The Sex of Knowing" (New York: Routledge 2003).

Her current book-in-progress, begun while she held a Canada Council Killam Research Fellowship, will published by Oxford University Press USA in 2004. Its working title is "Responsible knowings, ecological imaginings and the politics of epistemic location".

 

Selected Publications:

• Epistemic Responsibility (UPNE, 1987)
• What Can She Know? Feminist Theory and the Construction of Knowledge (Ithaca, London: Cornell University Press 1991)
• Rhetorical Spaces: Essays on (Gendered) Locations (New York: Routledge 1995)
• (Ed.): Routledge Encyclopedia of Feminist Theories (New York: Routledge 2000)
• (Ed.): Feminist Interpretations of Hans-Georg Gadamer (University Park, Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State University Press 2003)

Conference Abstract: Images of Expertise: Women, Science and the Politics of Representation

Taking its point of departure from a specific example of the suppression of research findings by a Canadian drug company with a vested interest in keeping them from the public eye, this paper examines the - ambiguously - gendered implications of the positioning of a female scientist and doctor as the principal player in the story. Issues of credibility, answerability, academic freedom, and the role of trust in knowledge figure centrally in the discussion. The analysis shows how what I call "ecological thinking" allows for the development of a productive reading of responsibility, rooted neither in individualism nor in an implausible voluntarism; and attentive to the climatic conditions in which much scientific research in the twenty-first century takes place. It engages with issues of collective responsibility to raise questions about ecologically sound research practices, justice, and citizenship.