Upcoming Roundtables
—Upcoming Event—
NOT upcoming but RECENTLY on Nov 28 2023 our Science and the Origin of Life Roundtable featured Chemistry Profs James Tour (Rice) and Lee Cronin (Glasgow). Let's do it again!
February 14, 2025
“The central conundrum about the origin of life - that, as an accidental event, it seems so very improbable - is not one that science has yet resolved. Claiming credit prematurely - claiming, in effect, that current science holds all the answers - may stunt the growth of the new ideas that a resolution may require.” -Fitness of the Cosmos for Life, Cambridge University Press, 2007, from the Forward: The improbability of Life by George Whitesides, Woodford L. and Ann A. Flowers University Research Professor, Harvard University -What did faculty say about this Roundtable? And how are these evenings conducted at The Harvard Faculty Club? Click again to read more!
Past Roundtables
—Past Event—
Saints, Sex, and Society
November 16, 2011
Sarah Ruden
Wesleyan University, Classics
Sarah Ruden received a B.A. (summa cum laude) in Classical studies from the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, and a doctorate in Classical Philology from Harvard. She has taught at Harvard, the University of Cape Town, and Yale, and is currently a visiting scholar at Wesleyan University.
Ruden is the first woman to translate Vergil’s great epic The Aeneid, rendering the poem in the same number of lines as the original work: a rare feat of maintaining technical fidelity to the original without diminishing its emotional drive. "The translation is alive in every part. . . . [T]he first translation since Dryden’s that can be read as a great English poem in itself." — Garry Wills, New York Review of Books
Sarah has published an award-winning volume of poetry and four books of Classical literary translation, and a fifth will appear in January from Yale University Press. She received a Guggenheim fellowship for her work and translates for the Landmark series of ancient historians. Her poems, essays, and reviews have appeared in a variety of journals, including The New Criterion, The Wall Street Journal, The Christian Century, and Salon.
—Past Event—
What do Scientists Really Think about Religion?
April 04, 2011
Rice University Professor of Sociology Elaine Howard Ecklund, author of Science vs. Religion; What Scientists Really Think (Oxford University Press, May 2010).
—Past Event—
Seven Mini-Roundtables
January 27, 2011
March 10, 2011:Should Ethics Be Taught in the Classroom?J. Mark RamseyerHarvard University, Law
March 2, 2011:Can atheists and theists agree on what constitutes a meaningful life?Ned HallHarvard University, PhilosophyDavid EllisFormer Director, Boston Museum of Science
February 24, 2011:Trauma, Spirituality and FantasySusan NapierTufts University, Japanese Culture
February 16, 2011:What Does Our Experience of Emptiness Mean?John PeteetHarvard University, Psychiatry
February 10, 2011:The Anthropic Principle – a message from religion or science?Howard SmithHarvard-Smithsonian CfA, Senior Astrophysicist
February 2, 2011:Is Nature Enough?Owen GingerichHarvard University, Astronomy (Emeritus)
January 27, 2011:The Role of Qualia in the Science vs. Religion DebateGeorge SiscoeBoston University, Astronomy
—Past Event—
Political Power and Persuasive Presence
October 28, 2010
James Davison Hunter, LaBrosse-Levinson Distinguished Professor of Religion, Culture and Social Theory at the University of Virginia, and Robert M. Randolph, Chaplain to the Institute at MIT
—Past Event—
Can We Be Good Without God? and Does the Universe Suggest Evidence for God?
March 10, 2010
William Lane Craig is Research Professor of Philosophy at Talbot School of Theology. Trinity Evangelical Divinity School (M.A. 1974; M.A. 1975), the University of Birmingham (England) (Ph.D. 1977), and the University of Munich (Germany) (D.Theol. 1984). He has authored or edited over thirty books, including The Kalam Cosmological Argument; Assessing the New Testament Evidence for the Historicity of the Resurrection of Jesus; Divine Foreknowledge and Human Freedom; Theism, Atheism and Big Bang Cosmology; and God, Time and Eternity, as well as over a hundred articles in professional journals of philosophy and theology, including The Journal of Philosophy, New Testament Studies, Journal for the Study of the New Testament, American Philosophical Quarterly, Philosophical Studies, Philosophy, and British Journal for Philosophy of Science. In 2016 Dr. Craig was named by The Best Schools as one of the fifty most influential living philosophers.
—Past Event—
Biotechnology, Embodiment and Human Dignity
February 18, 2010
William Hurlbut is a physician and Consulting Professor at the Neuroscience Institute, Stanford University. His primary areas of interest involve the ethical issues associated with advancing biomedical technology, the biological basis of moral awareness, and studies in the integration of theology and philosophy of biology. He is the author of numerous publications on science and ethics including the co-edited volume Altruism and Altruistic Love: Science, Philosophy and Religion in Dialogue (2002, Oxford University Press). Hurlbut has worked with the Center for International Security and Cooperation on formulating policy on Chemical and Biological Warfare and with NASA on projects in astrobiology.
—Past Event—
Answering the New Atheists
November 17, 2009
Florida International Law Professor Stanley Fish and Harvard Law Professor Mark Ramseyer
Stanley E. Fish is the Davidson-Kahn Distinguished University Professor and a professor of law at Florida International University, in Miami, and dean emeritus of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He has also taught at the University of California at Berkeley, Johns Hopkins and Duke University. He is the author of 11 books, including most recently Save the World On Your Own Time, on faculty leadership and higher education.
Mitsubishi Professor of Japanese Legal Studies J. Mark Ramseyer has often been a participant at The Roundtable. He has taught at UCLA and the University of Chicago, and he came to Harvard in 1998. He has also taught or co-taught courses at several Japanese universities (in Japanese). In his research, Ramseyer primarily studies Japanese law, and primarily from a law & economics perspective.