Superheroes and Moral Leadership: What Costumed Avengers Can Teach Us About Power and Responsibility
Date: July 23, 2020
Time: 4:00-5:00 p.m. AZ Time
Location: Virtual Event
Contact: Harvard Alumni Education | haa_alumnieducation@harvard.edu | 617-495-1920
Attendance Policy: Open to students | Open to alumni | Registration required
About the speaker:
Join the alumni YouTube livestream with Chris Robichaud, Senior Lecturer in Ethics and Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government and Director of Pedagogical Innovation at the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics. This session will use superhero narratives to explore some positive and negative lessons in moral leadership that these stories offer us. It will also examine several broad topics in ethics through a superhero lens. For instance, was the Joker correct in The Dark Knight when he claims that our morals are really just "a bad joke dropped at the first sign of trouble"? In the last panel of Amazing Fantasy 15, which introduces us to Spider-Man, Stan Lee writes that "in this world, with great power there must also come--great responsibility!" What is the exact link between the two? These questions and more will be interrogated, demonstrating how superhero stories provide us with many opportunities for productive moral reflection.
Christopher Robichaud received his doctorate in philosophy from MIT. His interests surround ethics, political philosophy, and social epistemology, with a focus on examining the role of truth and knowledge in well-functioning democracies, and on understanding what the post-truth age of politics.
Register Here:
https://harvard.az1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_d5WqyjGxG8Fxlcx
Join the Harvard Club of Phoenix here: https://hcphoenix.clubs.harvard.edu/memsub.html