Seemingly everywhere we look these days, disagreement leads to estrangement and sometimes even to violence against those with a different opinion or personal identity. Increasingly in North America and around the world, we see this destructive pattern in the realms of politics, religion, healthcare, climate activism, civil society and more. Democracies seem to be wilting from lack of genuine interchange and compromise. How can educators support explorations of controversial subjects in ways that engage people’s hearts as well as minds? What tools of critique build connections rather than obstacles between people?
Legal scholar Martha Minow and choreographer, educator and writer Liz Lerman discussed such questions and offered examples that show how developing our capacities to find new routes and pathways to each other can be taken from classrooms and seminar rooms into the wider world. Moderated by Professor Irene Kacandes, Dartmouth College.
In partnership with the Walter de Gruyter Foundation
Biographies
Martha Minow has taught at Harvard Law School since 1981, where she served as dean for eight years, and also serves as chair of the board of directors for the MacArthur Foundation and co-chair of the Access to Justice project of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. An expert on constitutional law, human rights, and legal advocacy for marginalized individuals and groups, Minow’s many books include Saving the News: Why The Constitution Calls for Government Action to Preserve the Freedom of Speech (2021); When Should Law Forgive? (2019); In Brown’s Wake: Legacies of America’s Constitutional Landmark (2010); Partners, Not Rivals: Privatization and the Public Good (2002); and Between Vengeance and Forgiveness: Facing History After Genocide and Mass Violence (1998).
Minow’s five-year partnership with the federal Department of Education and the Center for Applied Special Technology worked to increase access to the curriculum with digital resources for students with disabilities and resulted in legislative initiatives and a voluntary national standard opening access to curricular materials for individuals with disabilities.
Photo: Christine Johnson
Liz Lerman is a choreographer, writer, and educator, and the recipient of a 2023 Guggenheim Fellowship, the 2017 Jacob’s Pillow Dance Award, and the 2002 MacArthur “Genius Grant” Award. Current projects include building the Atlas of Creative Tools, an online resource, her touring production of Wicked Bodies, and a new project, Legacy Unboxed, that includes a series of research performance events called My Body is a Library. Also coming soon is a collection of essays to be published by Wesleyan University Press. Liz founded and led Dance Exchange from 1976 until 2011. She is the author of Teaching Dance to Senior Adults, Hiking the Horizontal, and Critique is Creative, co-authored with John Borstel. Liz’s retrospective titled Brett Cook & Liz Lerman: Reflection & Action was featured at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts from October 2022 until June 2023. She is currently an Institute Professor at ASU’s Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts and a fellow at the Center for the Study of Race and Democracy. Liz Lerman and Martha Minow have worked together on several projects including, Small Dances About Big Ideas, commissioned by Harvard Law School in honor of a symposium on the 60th anniversary of the Nuremberg trials.
Irene Kacandes was educated at Harvard University, Aristotle University (Thessaloniki) and the Freie Universität (Berlin). Kacandes holds the Dartmouth Professorship #2 at Dartmouth College, where she teaches in the fields of German Studies, Comparative Literature, Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies, and Jewish Studies. Author or editor of nine books, her most recent publications include Let’s Talk About Death (Prometheus, 2015) and Eastern Europe Unmapped (Berghahn, 2017). Her reflection on her paternal family’s fate in Occupied Greece, Daddy’s War (Nebraska, 2009, 2012), proposed a new genre, the paramemoir, for the study of personal material. Just released is the edited volume On Being Adjacent to Historical Violence (De Gruyter 2022). Kacandes has held a number of top positions in international professional organizations, including the presidency of the German Studies Association and of the International Society for the Study of Narrative. She also runs a book series on “Interdisciplinary German Cultural Studies” at De Gruyter, Germany.
This event is part of a series called “Humanities for Humans”, presented in partnership with the Walter de Gruyter Foundation (Berlin). Across eight sessions — four in-person and four virtual — the series brings people together to help generate a better understanding of what the humanities are and what role they can play in today’s complex world.