Witherspoon Forum
About
The Witherspoon Forum provides a space for high school students who are serious about their studies to discuss foundational questions of human existence and contemporary cultural issues in dialogue with their peers and Witherspoon’s seminar leaders.
Each academic year, the Forum features five three-part virtual seminars that explore a common theme through interdisciplinary approaches, including philosophy, theology, political theory, and history. No subject matter expertise is expected, and no grades are assigned. Instead, the Forum seeks to foster rigorous conversation, meaningful reflection on fundamental questions, and intellectual friendship.
Open to students in grades ten, eleven, and twelve, applicants are invited to specify which seminars they plan to attend. If accepted, students commit to attending these seminars. Those who attend three or more seminars throughout the year will be recognized as Witherspoon Scholars. They will also receive priority consideration for the Witherspoon Institute’s week-long, summer seminar in Princeton, Moral Life and the Classical Tradition.
Minds and Machines
Applications are open! Apply here to join the seminars this year. Apply by October 1st to join the first seminar on “AI and Religious Belief.”
The Forum’s 2024-2025 theme is “Minds and Machines.” Throughout the academic year, we will reflect on the most pressing philosophical and theological questions arising from life in a technological society. We will explore how new technologies are reshaping our ideas about God, humanity, and the cosmos, and what a humanistic response might look like. We will bring key thinkers and ideas from philosophical and religious traditions into dialogue with contemporary debates in ethics, politics, and culture. What does it mean to be human in a scientific and technological age? How might we order our souls and organize our society?
Fall 2024
A.I. and Religious Belief
October 8th, 15th, and 22nd — 7:00PM EST
Led by Dr. Joseph Vukov
What are the differences between human intelligence and artificial intelligence? To what extent should religious believers engage with A.I.? How might such engagement impact religious belief and practice?
About Dr. Joseph Vukov:
Joseph Vukov is Associate Professor in the Philosophy Department at Loyola University Chicago. He is also Associate Director of the Hank Center for the Catholic Intellectual Heritage at Loyola, and an Affiliate Faculty Member in Catholic Studies and Psychology. Nationally, Vukov also serves as the Vice President of Philosophers in Jesuit Education.
Vukov’s research explores questions at the intersection of ethics, neuroscience, and the philosophy of mind, as well as at the intersection of science and religion. In 2022, he published Navigating Faith and Science, and in 2023, he published The Perils of Perfection. His most recent book, Staying Human in an Era of Artificial Intelligence, grapples with questions arising from new forms of Artificial Intelligence. In 2020, he was named a Sujack Master Teacher and in 2019, was awarded the Provost’s Award for Excellence in Teaching Freshmen.
Technology and Human Agency
November 4th (Monday), 12th and 19th (Tuesdays) — 7:00PM EST
Led by Dr. Landon Hobbs
What attitude should we have toward recent developments in digital technology? Are these developments providing new tools to enhance human flourishing—or are they undercutting our ability to cultivate intellectual and moral virtues? Are they an aid or a hindrance to collectively building up and maintaining robust and meaningful communities and polities? We will consider these questions in the light of both classical philosophical reflections on technological revolution and contemporary social commentary.
About Dr. Landon Hobbs:
Landon Hobbs is the Director of Academic Programs and a research fellow at the Zephyr Institue. His research focuses on Ancient Greek philosophy, especially the theoretical philosophy of Aristotle. He received his PhD from Stanford University in 2023 and is currently pursuing a research project on the content, justification, and use of the ancient metaphysical principle that the cause must precontain its effect.
Spring 2025
“Are My Genes Too Tight?” An Exploration of Genetic Engineering and Human Freedom
TUESDAYS January 21st, 28th, and February 4th — 7:00PM EST
Led by Dr. Janet Madigan
Ever since the Enlightenment, modern man has looked to science to help unravel the mysteries of human existence. While science has opened innumerable vistas for exploring the nature of reality, untethered from its grounding in objective truth, it leads to scientific materialism, or the notion that all things can be explained as a product of physical and chemical processes. The result, ironically, is not an expanded view of reality, but a cramped one, since the human soul cannot be understood in the same way as the material world. The field of genetic engineering provides an illuminating look at the role of science at the juncture of human possibilities and limitations. Have scientific advances helped us to better understand human nature? Can we as human beings reconfigure our bodily reality without affecting our souls in the process? Are humans inherently autonomous or social? If the latter, would our ability to manipulate our genetic identities change the relationship between science and politics? If so, how?
About Dr. Janet Madigan:
Janet Madigan is an Upper School Humanities teacher at The Wilberforce School, which provides a distinctively Christian education within a classical framework. She has also been a lecturer in Politics at Princeton University since 2008, and has taught in the Political Science Departments at Northeastern and the United States Naval Academy. Her book Truth, Politics, and Universal Human Rights uses the concept of universal human rights to explore the relationship between the individual, society, and truth.
The Surveillance State and Society
WEDNESDAYS February 19th, 26th, and March 5th — 7:00PM EST
Led by Dr. Luke Foster
How do we retain our humanity in the Information Age? What practices and institutions from the pre-computing world can guide us when social media proposes to replace socializing? All three of our authors in this series—Vonnegut, Hayek, and Lewis—lived through the civilizational cataclysm of World War II, and all of them took seriously the possibility that vast computing power would be used in an attempt to rationally organize entire societies. Today their worries seem to have been realized by the capacity of Big Tech to aggregate the data of billions of people, in collaboration with governments. Drawing on these texts, we will discuss how to master our tools rather than be mastered by them.
About Dr. Luke Foster:
Luke Foster is Assistant Professor of Government at Hillsdale College in Washington, D.C. From 2022-24 he was a Postdoctoral Research Scholar at the Center for Citizenship and Constitutional Government at the University of Notre Dame, and from 2020-22 he was a Visiting Research Fellow at Sciences Po Paris. His research and teaching concerns American and French political thought on aristocracy, democracy, and the role of the university in elite formation. He has a particular interest in the power of ideas to form culture and souls.
He is completing a book manuscript entitled Beyond Meritocracy: The Pursuit of Excellence in America. His work has appeared in The Tocqueville Review, American Political Thought, the Political Science Reviewer, and Laws. He holds a BA in English and History from Columbia University and an MA and PhD from the University of Chicago with the Committee on Social Thought.
Transhumanism and Death
TUESDAYS March 18th, 25th, and April 1st — 7:00PM EST
Led by Dr. Charles Rubin
A longing for immortality is a widespread human trait, but today’s transhumanists have transformed it into what they claim is a practical program for (at least) radical extension of the human lifespan. How would putting off death into an indefinite future reshape how we live and understand our lives? Would freedom from death be the greatest of liberations, or would it compromise the possibility of human happiness?
About Dr. Charles Rubin:
Charles T. Rubin is Professor Emeritus of Political Science at Duquesne University, Pittsburgh. His recent publications focus on converging technologies, and those who believe they should be used to redesign humanity, a topic he discusses in his book Eclipse of Man: Human Extinction and the Meaning of Progress. Dr. Rubin is also author of The Green Crusade: Rethinking the Roots of Environmentalism and editor of Conservation Reconsidered: Nature, Virtue and American Liberal Democracy.
In 2017-18 he was a visiting Fellow in the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions at Princeton University, working on a book exploring what classic stories about human-created monsters tell us about the coming age of biotechnology. His other works in the fields of literature and politics include studies of Henry Adams, Flannery O’Connor, H.G. Wells, and contemporary author Neal Stephenson.
