Talking with Michael Sandel on Justice: What’s the Right Thing to Do?

Date and Time: November 3, 2009, 5:00 p.m.
Location: Fleishman Commons, Sanford Building (map)
Cost: Free
Parking: Science Drive Visitor Lot (map)

Harvard professor and political philosopher Michael Sandel will deliver a lecture at Duke University on the moral and ethical dilemmas embedded in contemporary issues such as income inequality, affirmative action, same-sex marriage, torture and terrorism.

The author of a new book, “Justice – What’s the Right Thing to Do?,” Sandel will speak at 5 p.m. on Tuesday, Nov. 3, at Duke’s Sanford School of Public Policy.

The lecture and book signing in the Sanford Building’s Fleishman Commons are free and open to the public. Paid parking for the event will be available in the Bryan Center lot and garage.

Sandel aims to show “how contemporary public debate can be deepened and enriched by an engagement with some of the big ideas of political philosophy.”

His undergraduate course, "Justice," has enrolled more than 14,000 students, making it one of the most highly attended courses in Harvard's history. The course is available in a 12-part series broadcast on public television. Episodes, discussion guides and readings are also available online at www.justiceharvard.org.

“Conjuring contemporary culture in his arguments, Sandel places Oprah, the Simpsons, Wal-Mart, and Barack Obama side by side with figureheads Aristotle, John Rawls and Immanuel Kant,” the Harvard Gazette reported.

The Anne T. and Robert M. Bass Professor of Government at Harvard, Sandel has lectured in Europe, Japan, India, Korea, Australia and New Zealand. He was a visiting professor at the Sorbonne (Paris) in 2001, and delivered the Tanner Lectures on Human Values at Oxford University in 1998. He served on the President's Council on Bioethics from 2002 to 2005.

Sandel’s previous books include “Liberalism and the Limits of Justice” and “The Case Against Perfection: Ethics in the Age of Genetic Engineering.” His commentaries have appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, The New Republic and The New York Times.

 

For more information about these special events, contact the Sanford School Special Event Planner Mary Lindsley at (919) 613-7312 or email her.

 

Michael J. Sandel

Michael J. Sandel
Anne T. and Robert M. Bass Professor of Government , Harvard University