News

Scholar to Urge Xavier Audience to “See Our Common Humanity”

02/27/08

Kwame Anthony Appiah will speak at Xavier University on Sunday, March 30 at 7:00 p.m. in the Schiff Banquet and Conference Center on the University campus. This event is free and open to the public. On March 31, from 1:30-2:30, he will hold an informal discussion with students and faculty in the Conaton Board Room in Schmidt Hall.

 

Appiah will speak on “Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers.” His presentation is part of Xavier’s 2007-2008 Ethics/Religion & Society (E/RS) lecture series.

 

Appiah is one of America’s leading public intellectuals. As a person of mixed-race ancestry and a scholar of African and African-American Studies, he probes questions of identity and ethical behavior in a world where race, ethnicity, religion and nationalism remain strong dividers. In his newest book, Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers (2006), Appiah challenges readers to look beyond the boundaries – real and imagined – that divide us, to see our common humanity. His earlier works include In My Father’s House, on African struggles for self-determination, and Africana: The Encyclopedia of African and African-American Experience (with Henry Louis gates, Jr.). In January 2008, Harvard University Press published his Experiments in Ethics, based on his 2005 Flexner lectures at Bryn Mawr.

 

The purpose of the Ethics/Religion and Society program is to encourage ethical and/or religious analysis of socially significant issues.