The second of a three-lecture series at Vanderbilt University will feature author Leif Wenar speaking about how tyrants get funding through the purchases of ordinary Americans.
Wenar speaks at 7 p.m. Friday, March 25, in Room 114 of Furman Hall on the Vanderbilt campus. The lecture—part of the Berry Lectures in Public Philosophy series this year—is free and open to the public.
Wenar is the author of Blood Oil: Tyrants, Violence, and the Rules that Run the World, in which he makes the case that the natural-resource trade runs on the same “might makes right” rules that once made the slave trade, colonialism, apartheid and genocide legal. Wenar goes on to describe his vision of how this situation can be addressed and turned around.
The Berry Lecture Series in Public Philosophy began in in 1988, funded by John and Shirley Lachs, Alan Berry and Kendall Berry. This year’s theme is examining how technology influences morality.
The final 2016 Berry lecture will take place at 7 p.m. Thursday, April 7. It will feature Cheryl Misak, professor of philosophy at the University of Toronto, and James Jackson, assistant professor of medicine at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, leading “Delirium in the ICU: A Discussion.”
For more information contact Robert Talisse, the W. Alton Jones Professor of Philosophy and chair of the department, by email.