Environmental Ethics in Dialogue
September 18-19, 2025听| 245 Beacon and Devlin Hall |
The conference goals are to explore how different theoretical approaches within environmental philosophy, especially when placed in dialogue with the natural sciences and other disciplines, can offer practical solutions to pressing environmental problems.听 The event will emphasize the critical role that dialogue between philosophy and science can play in creating robust, ethical responses to the current environmental crisis. Our planet is facing a crisis across multiple areas, such as climate change, pollution, and biodiversity loss. In recent years, we have seen unprecedented global warming and widespread calls for radical changes in public policy, as well as public resistance to these changes. While these crises are global in scale, they disproportionately impact the poor and historically marginalized populations, raising increasing concerns about justice and inequality.听 Our conference aims to create a forum to help students and the university community better understand and think through these complex moral, political, and scientific challenges. This conference is paired with the Lowell Lecture series talk by Prof Melissa Lane, "Plato's Republic on Motivating Ecological Guardianship.
The Philosophy Department, Schiller Institute for Integrated Science and Society, and Environmental Studies Program are co-sponsoring this event.
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Schedule and Registration
Thursday, September 18, 2025听| 245 Beacon (Schiller)听| | |
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12 -1:15 PM | Opening Lecture |听245 Beacon Street, Rm 501Prof. Patrick Byrne (Emeritus Professor of Philosophy, md传媒国产剧 College) "Toward Environmental Wholeness: Method in Environmental Ethics and Science," in dialogue with Prof. Avneet Hira (Assistant Professor of Engineering, Sabet Family Dean鈥檚 Faculty Fellow, md传媒国产剧 College).听听 Lunch provided.听 |
1:30-2:45 PM | Lecture |听245 Beacon Street, Rm 501Johanna Oksala (Professor, Arthur J Schmitt Endowed Chair, Loyola Chicago), Title TBA. |
3-4:15 PM | Lecture |听听245 Beacon Street, Rm 501Ron Sandler (Northeastern University), 鈥Environmental Virtue Ethics and Conservation Biotechnology鈥. |
7 PM | Lowell Lecture |听Devlin 110Prof. Melissa Lane (Class of 1943, Professor of Politics at Princeton University), 鈥To Know is to Act; to Act is to Know: Plato鈥檚听Republic听on Motivating Ecological Guardianship". . |
Friday, September 19, 2025听| 245 Beacon Street |听 | |
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10-10:45 AM | Lecture听|听245 Beacon Street, Rm 501Romy Opperman听(Assistant Professor of Philosophy, New School), 鈥淟iberating Futures". |
11-11:45 AM | Lecture听|听245 Beacon Street, Rm 501Marion Hourdequin (Colorado College), "Environmental Ethics and Confucian views of nature". |
12-1:30 PM | Lecture听|听245 Beacon Street, Rm 501Andrew Light,听(Distinguished University Professor of Public Policy, Philosophy, and Atmospheric Sciences at George Mason University &听Distinguished Senior Fellow at the Institute for Climate and Sustainable Growth, University of Chicago, former US听Assistant Secretary of Energy for International Affairs),听in dialogue with听Prof. Yi Ming (Professor, Earth and Environmental Sciences, md传媒国产剧 College). Lunch provided. |
1:30-2 PM | Break听 |
2 PM | Lecture听| Zoom Talk听|听245 Beacon Street, Rm 501Matthias Fritsch (Concordia), Zoom talk, in conversation with Richard Kearney, 鈥淎 Conversation about Phenomenology and the environment鈥. |
Speakers

Patrick Byrne
Patrick H. Byrne is Professor emeritus of Philosophy and Former Director of the Lonergan Institute at md传媒国产剧 College. His research/publication interests include the relationships between science, evolution and religion; ethics and environmental ethics; philosophy of service learning and social justice; the thought of Bernard Lonergan, Albert Einstein, and Aristotle. His book publications include Toward Environmental Wholeness: Method in Environmental Ethics and Science (2024), The Ethics of Discernment: Lonergan鈥檚 Foundations for Ethics (2016) and Analysis and Science in Aristotle (1997). He is also author of 鈥淏ernard Lonergan,鈥 Oxford Bibliographies (2019) and 鈥淭he Integral Visions of Teilhard and Lonergan: Science, the Universe, Humanity and God,鈥 From Teilhard to Omega: Co-creating an Unfinished Universe (2014). He is editor of The Dialogue Between Science and Religion: What We Have Learned from Each Other. (2005). He is the founder and long-time teacher in the md传媒国产剧 College PULSE Program for Service Learning.

Marion Hourdequin
Marion Hourdequin is a Professor of Philosophy at Colorado College.听 She specializes in environmental philosophy, with interests in climate ethics, intergenerational ethics, relational approaches to ethics, and comparative philosophy.听 She is the author of Environmental Ethics: From Theory to Practice (Bloomsbury, second edition 2024), What Should Individuals Do About Climate Change? A Debate (Routledge 2025, with Dan Shahar), and editor, with David Havlick, of Restoring Layered Landscapes (Oxford, 2016). Professor Hourdequin served as President of the International Society for Environmental Ethics from 2022-2024.

Matthias Fritsch
Matthias Fritsch is Professor of Philosophy at Concordia University, Montr茅al. In addition to many articles and chapters, he has published: The Promise of Memory: History and Politics in Marx, Benjamin, and Derrida (SUNY Press, 2005); Taking Turns with the Earth: Phenomenology, Deconstruction, and Intergenerational Justice (Stanford UP, 2018); Intercultural Philosophy and Environmental Justice between Generations (Cambridge UP, 2024, co-editor); Phenomenology and Future Generations (SUNY Press, 2024, co-editor); Environmental Philosophy and East Asia (Routledge 2022, co-editor); Eco-Deconstruction (Fordham UP, 2018, co-editor); Reason and Emancipation (Humanity Press, 2007, co-editor). He has been a Humboldt Fellow in Frankfurt and Berlin and Visiting Research Professor at Kyoto University and Western Sydney University.

Melissa Lane
Melissa Lane is the Class of 1943 Professor of Politics at Princeton University, where she is also Associated Faculty in Classics and in Philosophy, and has received the Phi Beta Kappa Teaching Prize, the Stanley J. Kelley Teaching Award of the Department of Politics, and the Faculty Community Engagement Award of the Pace Center for Civic Engagement. She currently also holds a three-year appointment dedicated to delivering periodic public lectures in London as the fiftieth Professor of Rhetoric at Gresham College.听 She has held a Guggenheim Fellowship in the field of Classics, as well as fellowships and visiting professorships at a number of institutions including the ANU, Auckland, Harvard, Oxford, Stanford, the American Academy in Rome, and the 脡cole Normale Sup茅rieure.
Lane was educated in Californian public schools, then at Harvard University and the University of Cambridge, where she received an MPhil and PhD in Philosophy and then taught for fifteen years before moving to Princeton in 2009. Her most recent monograph, titled Of Rule and Office: Plato's Ideas of the Political and published in 2023 by Princeton University Press, was awarded the 2024 Book Prize of the Journal of the History of Philosophy; her 2012 book Eco-Republic continues to be widely discussed. Lane has appeared multiple times on 鈥業n Our Time鈥 on BBC Radio Four, and been published in periodicals in the US, UK, Italy and Germany.听authored over 20 major policy reports.

Andrew Light
Andrew Light is Distinguished University Professor of Public Policy, Philosophy, and Atmospheric Sciences at George Mason University, and Distinguished Senior Fellow at the Institute for Climate and Sustainable Growth at The University of Chicago. He has served in a variety of senior positions in government and NGOs, most recently as U.S.Assistant Secretary of Energy for International Affairs in the Biden-Harris administration from 2021-2025, leading a mission of putting the U.S. back in a leadership position on the global clean energy transition while ensuring energy security. From 2013-2016, he served as Senior Adviser and India Counselor to the U.S. Special Envoy on Climate Change in the Department of State, and Staff Climate Advisor in the Secretary of State鈥檚 Office of Policy Planning, working on the U.S. team that negotiated the Paris Agreement, and an array of other climate compacts.
In the NGO community, Andrew has been Distinguished Senior Fellow at the World Resources Institute and Senior Fellow and Director of International Climate Policy at the Center for American Progress. In his academic work Andrew is the author of over 100 articles and book chapters on climate change, restoration ecology, and urban sustainability, has authored and edited 19 books, and co-authored over 20 major policy reports.

Yi Ming
Yi Ming is the Institute Professor of Climate Science and Society and Professor of Earth and Environmental Sciences at md传媒国产剧 College. Dr. Ming uses climate models, observations and theories to elucidate the physical mechanisms governing Earth鈥檚 climate system and applies the fundamental understanding to practical issues of societal and policy importance. He has authored more than 130 peer-reviewed papers, and mentored a number of Ph.D. students and postdocs.
His honors include the U.S. Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE), the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) Norbert Gerbier-Mumm International Award, the American Meteorological Society (AMS) Henry G. Houghton Award and the American Geophysical Union (AGU) Ascent Award. Previously, Dr. Ming was a Senior Scientist and Divisional Leader at the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory (GFDL). He was also a faculty member of the Program in Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences (AOS) at Princeton University.听
Dr. Ming holds a B.E. in Chemical Engineering (with a second B.E. in Environmental Engineering) from Tsinghua University (1998) and a Ph.D. in Civil and Environmental Engineering from Princeton University (2003).听

Johanna Oksala
Dr. Johanna Oksala is Arthur J. Schmitt Professor of Philosophy in the Department of Philosophy at Loyola University Chicago. Her areas of expertise are political philosophy, feminist philosophy, environmental philosophy, Foucault, Marxist theory, and phenomenology. Her books include Foucault on Freedom (2005), How to Read Foucault (2007), Foucault Politics, and Violence (2012), Political Philosophy: All That Matters (2013), Feminist Experiences (2016), and Feminism, Capitalism, and Ecology (2023).

Romy Opperman
Romy Opperman (she/her) is currently Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the New School, NYC. Romy鈥檚 research is at the intersection of environmental philosophy, Critical Philosophy of Race, Feminist Africana, Indigenous, Decolonial philosophy, Black Studies, Environmental Justice, critical theory, and Continental philosophy. Romy is presently working on a book manuscript focused on practices and theorizations of freedom grounded in Black ecologies and the ways that they trouble theories of environmental racism and climate ethics inherited from liberal political philosophy. Recent publications include: 鈥淧rotocols for a Grounding Philosophy,鈥 in As for Protocols, 鈥淐harles Mills鈥檚 鈥楤lack Trash鈥: Reproducing Race, Pig Waste, and Ecological Resistance,鈥 in Critical Philosophy of Race, and 鈥淪ylvia Wynter鈥檚 Caribbean Critical Theory,鈥 in Creolizing Critical Theory: New Voices in Caribbean Philosophy.

Ronald Sandler
Ronald Sandler is a professor of philosophy and Director of the Ethics Institute at Northeastern University. His areas of research are environmental ethics, ethics of emerging technologies, ethical theory, and Spinoza. He is author of Character and Environment; The Ethics of Species; Environmental Ethics: Theory in Practice; and Food Ethics. He is editor or co-editor of Environmental Virtue Ethics; Environmental Justice and Environmentalism; and Ethics and Emerging Technologies. Sandler鈥檚 research has been supported by NSF, NEH, and the Woodrow Wilson Center, among others.
Campus Map and Parking
Campus Map and Parking:
Parking is available at the nearby Beacon Street and Commonwealth Avenue Garages.
md传媒国产剧 College is also accessible via public transportation (MBTA B Line - md传媒国产剧 College).