Denver Harper Lecture: Becoming Civic Leaders: Education for a Global Democratic State

Traditionally, the role of American liberal education, including education about the traditions of religion, has been to create civic leaders prepared to take on local and national leadership of churches, schools, and government. Today, Americans face an increasingly complex world, a competitive global economy, and the challenge of a changing climate. How can a liberal education help shape citizens capable of understanding and addressing new problems with so much at stake? How can the core values carried by religious and philosophical traditions—justice, mercy, prudence, courage, love—shape our curriculum and inspire our students? What is the duty of the University to our society and civic leaders and vice versa? Join UChicago’s Laurie Zoloth and the University of Denver’s Rebecca Chopp for a conversation about the future of education.

To register or find out more information, please click here.

Featured Faculty

Laurie Zoloth is dean of the Divinity School at the University of Chicago. She has published more than 300 articles and six books, including Health Care and the Ethics of Encounter: A Jewish Discussion of Social Justice (University of North Carolina Press, 1999); Notes from a Narrow Ridge: Religion and Bioethics (University Publishing Group, 1999), coedited with Dena Davis; and Jews and Genes: The Genetic Future in Contemporary Jewish Thought (Jewish Publication Society, 2015), coedited with Elliot Dorff. Zoloth is cofounder of the Ethics Practice, a bioethics consultancy; a member of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute National Bioethics Advisory Board; a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science’s Dialogue on Science, Ethics, and Religion; an elected member of the Hastings Center; a life member of Clare Hall, Cambridge; and a founding board member of the Society for Scriptural Reasoning. She has been president of the American Academy of Religion and the American Society for Bioethics and Humanities, and she received the National Distinguished Service Award after six years of service on the NASA National Advisory Board. Before joining UChicago, Zoloth was jointly professor of medical humanities and bioethics in the Feinberg School of Medicine and professor of religious studies in the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences at Northwestern University, prior to which she was professor of social ethics and Jewish philosophy at San Francisco State University. Since 2005 she has also been an affiliated professor at the University of Haifa. She began her career as a neonatal nurse working in impoverished communities.

Rebecca Chopp has been chancellor of the University of Denver since September 2014. There she has developed the DU IMPACT 2025 strategic plan in consultation with thousands of community members, focusing on the 21st-century transformation of knowledge, the holistic education of students, and the university’s engagement in local and global organizations and communities. Before joining the University of Denver, she was president of Swarthmore College and Colgate University. She also served as provost and executive vice president for academic affairs at Emory University and as a dean at Yale University. Chopp has published more than 50 articles and six books, including Remaking College: Innovation and the Liberal Arts (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2013), coedited with Haverford College president Dan Weiss; The Praxis of Suffering: An Interpretation of Liberation and Political Theologies (Wipf & Stock, 1986); and The Power to Speak: Feminism, Language, God (Wipf & Stock, 1989). She serves on the governing board of the Association of American Colleges and Universities. Previously, she was on the board of the National Survey of Student Engagement, the executive committee of the Annapolis Group, and the board of the Carnegie Foundation for Teaching, as well as serving as the president of the American Academy of Religion. She received a PhD from the University of Chicago, an MDiv from Saint Paul School of Theology, and a BA from Kansas Wesleyan University.

To learn more about the entire Harper Lecture Series, please visit the UChicago Alumni Association's page.

Questions? Contact alumniassociation@uchicago.edu or 773.702.2150.