Month: October 2015

Laura Fiss (Hu) will present “Feelings About Reading” at 6:30 p.m. next Thursday at the Portage Lake District Library. The event kicks off the Great Michigan Read program by exploring some of the assumptions behind a community reading program: What does it mean to read as a community? In what communities do we read? And, how do programs such as these speak to the cultural value of reading? Fiss will invite discussion from the audience and provide a historical perspective. All programs at the PLDL are free and open to the public.

(This article originally appeared in Tech Today.)

Come listen to music in the Humanities Digital Media Zone (120C Walker) from 12:30 to 2 p.m. today. This month we present Levi Schubert from 12:30 to 1 p.m. and Savanna Curtis and Mike Lemmier from 1 to 2 p.m.

L. Syd Johnson (HU) published “Is Football Safe for Brains?” on The Neuroethics Blog.

HOUGHTON, MARQUETTE — Just a few weeks before renewed violence between Palestinians and Israelis hit the news this month, audiences at Michigan Tech and Northern Michigan universities heard stories about this long conflict from the perspective of an Israeli-American peace activist and author, Miko Peled, whose dream is not the often cited “two-state solution” but a more optimistic solution that would accept Palestine/Israel as one country — cured of its current apartheid-like colonial occupation.

At the invitation of Miguel Levy, Michigan Tech professor of physics and materials science and engineering, Peled visited Marquette and Houghton on Sept. 16 and 17, respectively, and gave two presentations open to university and community audiences. The events were sponsored by Michigan Tech’s Center for Diversity and Inclusion and departments of Humanities, Social Sciences and Physics; the Michigan Tech Indigenous Issues Discussion Group; and Northern Michigan University’s Center for Native American Studies.

Read more at Keweenaw Now, by Michele Bourdieu.

The Department of Humanities’ French Program, in collaboration with the University of Chicago, present a webinar called “Inequality and Capital in the 21st Century” with Thomas Picketty, Friday, November 6 at 7-8:30 pm in Walker 120A.

Picketty is a French economist and professor at the Paris School of Economics whose work focuses on wealth and income inequality. He is the author of the best-selling book, Capital in the Twenty-First Century. Focusing on wealth concentration and distribution over the past 250 years, he argues that the rate of capital return in developed countries is persistently greater than the rate of economic growth, and that this will cause wealth inequality to increase in the future. Picketty considers this to be a problem, and in order to address it, he proposes redistribution through a progressive global tax on wealth.

This program is possible thanks to our Marianne Midwest partners: the Cultural Service of the Consulate General of France in Chicago, the France-Chicago Center and the French Club of the University of Chicago. The Marianne Midwest’s series Live broadcast debates on contemporary topics bring together American and French points of view to a network of Midwest partners.

L. Syd Johnson (HU) published a paper, “Pigs as Spare (Human) Parts” in Impact Ethics.

(This article originally appeared in Tech Today.)

L. Syd Johnson (HU) presented a paper, “The Vulnerability of Non-human Animals Used in Research” as part of the “Minding Animals: Ethical Implications for Research” panel session at The American Society For Bioethics and Humanities Annual Meeting, in Houston Texas last Thursday, and last Saturday she led the Neuroethics Affinity Group Meeting at ASBH.

(This article originally appeared in Tech Today.)

Last Friday, three Michigan Tech faculty attended TeachingWorks, sponsored by the University of Michigan. Shari Stockero (CLS), Amy Lark (CLS) and Evelyn Johnson (HU) represented Michigan Tech’s Teacher Preparation program. These convenings will continue for three years and are aimed at developing 19 high leverage teaching techniques practiced across the curriculum. TeachingWorks aims to raise the quality of beginning teaching through partnering with teacher preparation programs.

(This article originally appeared in TechToday.)

L. Syd Johnson (HU) was in Chicago for the International Neuroethics Society Annual Meeting, last week. She presented a poster, “What can neuroscience contribute to the problem of neonatal pain?” co-authored with Adam Shriver (Penn).

(This article originally appeared in Tech Today.)