STRENGTHENING THE MODERN UNIVERSITY
Danilo Petranovich
In the last half-century, the modern research university has enjoyed an unparalleled success in producing and refining new knowledge. This enormous development both in the quantity and depth of knowledge challenges the university’s ability to show both students and faculty how this knowledge can be integrated into a coherent whole – one that can inform an understanding of the relationship between disciplines and their relevance to society and to our own self-understanding. Both students and faculty can become intellectually isolated by the very success of their disciplines, which threatens to deprive them of the capacity to make important judgments about the larger social order and the contours of a life worth living. In this intellectual atmosphere the Abigail Adams Institute (www.aaicambridge.org) seeks to make a modest contribution to inquiry into the distinctive constitution of the human person, the nature and limits of our powers and faculties, and the ends to which we are drawn as we live out our lives.
ABOUT THE SPEAKER:
Danilo Petranovich has been the Director of the Abigail Adams Institute (www.aaicambridge.org) since June 2016. For four years he was the Executive Director of the Yale Center for Representative Institutions (within the Political Science Department). He taught for four years at Yale, for two years at Duke, and was at the Witherspoon Institute for one year as a Visiting Fellow. His research and teaching interests are in political theory and, more broadly, in the great books of the Western tradition. He has written peer-reviewed articles on the subject of antebellum North, including Lincoln’s statesmanship. A book on the Lincoln-Douglas debates is under contract with the Yale University Press. He spent a year as an amanuensis to William F. Buckley, Jr., assisting with his final book project (The Reagan I Knew), a memoir about his relationship with President Reagan.
ABOUT THE EVENT:
WHEN: Wednesday, June 20, 2018 7:30AM TO 8:50AM
WHERE: One Post Office Square, Second Floor
COST: $10. Includes Continental Breakfast