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JMU COLLABORATIVE STUDIES HUMANISM

Posted: November 14, 2014 By AMELIA BRUST

HARRISONBURG — Thanks to a $500,000 contribution, James Madison University’s Cohen Center for the Study of Technological Humanism is in its first semester of collaboration. With a committee of graduate students and faculty, the center discusses research and hosts speakers on humanist philosophy.

Last year, 98-year-old Ralph Cohen, the university provost’s distinguished professor, earmarked the contribution to the JMU Foundation to create the center in his name and that of his late wife, Libby. Located in Wilson Hall, the center meets every other week to decide what direction the group should take.

The Oxford American English and Merriam- Webster dictionaries define humanism as a belief system concentrating on both individual and common human needs, often rejecting divine or supernatural explanations and interpretations of human behavior. University Cohen Center for the Study of Technological Humanism on Thursday. This is the Cohen designed the center to study the role of first semester for the center, which was created with a $500,000 contribution from its namesake. technology in the human experience. One of its (Photos by Michael Reilly / DN-R) central functions is to encourage interdisciplinary study among faculty and students while serving as a model for future research groups, he said.

“It has a vision of an intellectual enterprise that can involve education for the future,” Cohen said.

The center includes graduate students from nursing, biology, corporate communication, English, psychology and public affairs, among

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other academic disciplines. Cohen and center Humanism advocate Philip Kitcher speaks at the James Madison University Cohen Center for the Director Larry Burton hope the center will one Study of Technological Humanism. day have enough students to represent all graduate departments.

Burton said students have discussed such topics as the long-term impact of cellphone usage on their lives and the experiences of couples pursuing graduate degrees simultaneously.

With its five-year charter, Burton said the center has an “experimental character.” Cohen did not know of any technological humanist groups at the university level when he and Burton designed JMU’s center.

Cohen previously ran the Commonwealth Center for Literary and Cultural Change at University for Virginia, which operated from 1990 to 1996. Cohen has taught around the world and came to JMU in 2010 at the request of the university’s president and provost.

While Burton and Cohen work together to manage the center, Burton said the benefactor leads decisions on which speakers are invited to campus and what research goals the center pursues.

As part of its lecture series this fall, the center hosted Philip Kitcher, a Columbia University John Dewey professor of philosophy, on Thursday to share from his work “Ethics as Human Project.” Kitcher described ethics as a “social technology” to help humans improve their ability to respond to one another.

“You may still not want to share with your neighbor, but now there’s a little voice that says, ‘Sharing is probably a good idea,’” Kitcher said in his lecture.

Kitcher has written on humanist ideas in subjects from opera to human biology, and Cohen described his interdisciplinary work as an ideal for the center’s students

Burton said he hopes to have four speakers per semester.

The first one scheduled for this year, by professor Martha Nussbaum of the University of Chicago, will take place today after she had to reschedule her original Oct. 23 lecture date.

Nussbaum will speak in Room 2301 of the Health and Human Services building from her work “Injustice and the Dubious Value of Anger.” An Ernst Freund Distinguished Service professor of law and ethics at the University of Chicago, she will share what she considers to be the flaws of using anger in a pursuit for justice.

The event is open to the public and will last from 4 to 5:30 p.m.

Contact Amelia Brust at 574-6293 or [email protected].

http://www.dnronline.com/articles/print_preview/jmu_collaborative_studies_humanism 11/14/2014