Speakers & Topics
Feburary 17 – Dr. Sarah Pfatteicher
Who: Dr. Sarah Pfatteicher, Sr. Assistant Dean, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Where: Glavin Chapel, Babson College
When: February 17, 2011; 6:00-7:00 pm (iCal)
What: Finding Hope in the Ruins: Journeys in Leadership & Ethics After Disaster
On the second Tuesday of September 2001 the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center returned to dust, taking with them some 2700 souls. A disaster of such magnitude asks us to explore our beliefs -- about religion, surely, but also about politics and social systems, and even about technology. The designers of the towers and the teams of forensic engineers who investigated the collapse faced special challenges as they struggled to come to terms with the unprecedented destruction of these two engineering marvels. Should the towers be praised for how long they remained standing or should the focus be on the fact of their ultimate demise? Did it matter that the tower builders and the tower destroyers both drew on their training in architecture and engineering? Would it be more appropriate and constructive to view the towers’ collapse as an unpredictable calamity or as a preventable outcome? The struggle to find answers to such questions provides a means for exploring the purposes, goals, and responsibilities of what Twin Towers engineer Leslie Robertson called the “very imperfect process” of engineering practice.
February 24 – Carolyn Hotchkiss, J.D.
Who: Carolyn Hotchkiss, J.D., Dean of Faculty and Professor of Law, Babson College
Where: Glavin Chapel, Babson College
When: February 24, 2011; 6:00-7:00 pm (iCal)
What: Leadership, Ethics and Entrepreneurs
April 7 – Professor Wade Robinson
Who: Wade Robinson, Professor and Ezra A. Hale Chair in Applied Ethics, Rochester Institute of Technology
Where: Reynold Campus Center, Rm 241 Babson College
When: April 7, 2011; 6:00-7:00 pm (iCal)
What: Embedded Values and Virgin Eyes
We find values embedded everywhere, from ordinary objects such as toothpicks and toasters to ourselves and the forms of our lives. In becoming engineers, physicians, lawyers, business people -- whatever, we come into forms of thought, for example, that are anything but value neutral. Engineers are risk-averse while managers decide on the basis of cost-benefit analyses. Thinking of everything as a cost or a benefit is not value-neutral any more than acting always to minimize risk is value-neutral. We find ourselves with forms of thought so embedded we can readily be blinded-sided as we try to understand the values that define and demarcate our lives. We cannot see ourselves with virgin eyes, that is, and when we do examine our selves, with whatever form of thought, we will discover a self value-laden, always in the making, and always in tension. Coherence is an ideal, and integrity comes from the procedure we use to approach our lives as a life-long project, constantly querying the value of our values and the character of our character.