The PPE Reading Group will meet every other Wednesday from 12-1:30pm, starting on September 11, 2024, during the semester for a Lunch & Learn to jointly read and discuss a book that deals with a current topic from a PPE perspective.

The Kellogg Center will provide free copies of the book. Participation is open to all VT students and faculty.

To receive your free book please sign up with Gil Hersch (hersch@nullvt.edu) by September 9, 2024. Please join us for a good discussion.

Professor Edward Weisband, PPE affiliate and Edward S. Diggs Endowed Chair in the Social Sciences in Political Science, will give a talk with the title “Ethical Virtuosity: Is Virtue Ever Virtuous?”

The talk will take place on December 4, 2024, from 12:15-1:30pm, in the conference room of the Kellogg Center (820 University City Blvd).

The PPE Working Paper series offers a friendly and constructive intellectual environment for sharing and advancing preliminary research in PPE. Please see here for more information.

All faculty and students are welcome to attend. Lunch will be served! Please RSVP (strongly recommended).

If you are an individual with a disability and desire an accommodation, please contact ppe@nullvt.edu at least ten business days before the event.

The PPE Cinema, organized by the Kellogg Center for Philosophy, Politics, and Economics, welcomes faculty and students from across campus who are interested in watching and discussing great films.

Together we watch movies on the big screen and discuss the questions in philosophy, politics, and economics that they raise. Food and beverages are provided.

Film title: Aguirre, the Wrath of God. An epic historical drama starring Klaus Kinski as a ruthless and obsessed Spanish conquistador in search of El Dorado, the city of gold. Directed by legendary German filmmaker Werner Herzog (1972).

If you are an individual with a disability and desire an accommodation, please contact ppe@nullvt.edu at least ten business days before the event.

Wayne Moore, a PPE affiliate and a faculty member in Political Science, will give a talk with the title “The Unofficial Constitution.”

The talk will take place on February 5, 2025, from 12:15-1:30pm, in the conference room of the Kellogg Center (820 University City Blvd).

The PPE Working Paper series offers a friendly and constructive intellectual environment for sharing and advancing preliminary research in PPE. Please see here for more information.

All faculty and students are welcome to attend. Lunch will be served! Please RSVP (strongly recommended).

If you are an individual with a disability and desire an accommodation, please contact ppe@nullvt.edu at least ten business days before the event.

Alex Motchoulski, Assistant Professor in the Corcoran Department of Philosophy at the University of Virginia, will give a talk with the title “Reparations, Recognition, and the Restoration of Relational Equality.”

The talk will take place on February 12, 2025, from 4-5:30pm in the Multipurpose Room of the Graduate Life Center.

The talk is tailored to appeal to both faculty and students, with plenty of time for discussion and interaction with the guest speaker. The talk will be followed by a public reception.

All faculty and students are welcome to attend. Please see here for more information.

If you are an individual with a disability and desire an accommodation, please contact ppe@nullvt.edu at least ten business days before the event.

The PPE Cinema, organized by the Kellogg Center for Philosophy, Politics, and Economics, welcomes faculty and students from across campus who are interested in watching and discussing great films.

Together we watch movies on the big screen and discuss the questions in philosophy, politics, and economics that they raise. Food and beverages are provided.

Film title: About Elly. On a vacation by the Caspian Sea in Northern Iran, a young woman goes missing. Widely acclaimed Iranian director Asghar Farhadi won the Silver Berlin Bear for Best Director (2009) for this multi-layered, suspenseful film.

If you are an individual with a disability and desire an accommodation, please contact ppe@nullvt.edu at least ten business days before the event.

Brianna Felegi, a faculty member in Economics, will give a talk with the title “Evaluating the Impact of the Indiana Choice Scholarship on Students in Participating Private Schools: A Mixed Methodology Approach.”

The talk will take place on March 4, 2025, from 12:15-1:30pm, in the conference room of the Kellogg Center (820 University City Blvd).

The PPE Working Paper series offers a friendly and constructive intellectual environment for sharing and advancing preliminary research in PPE. Please see here for more information.

All faculty and students are welcome to attend. Lunch will be served! Please RSVP (strongly recommended).

If you are an individual with a disability and desire an accommodation, please contact ppe@nullvt.edu at least ten business days before the event.

The PPE Cinema, organized by the Kellogg Center for Philosophy, Politics, and Economics, welcomes faculty and students from across campus who are interested in watching and discussing great films.

Together we watch movies on the big screen and discuss the questions in philosophy, politics, and economics that they raise. Food and beverages are provided.

Film title: The Hunt. In a small Danish village, a kindergarten teacher is wrongly accused of sexual abuse and becomes a social outcast. The jury at the Cannes Film Festival awarded the powerful psychological drama by Thomas Vinterberg a “Special Palme d’Or” for the first time ever (2012).

If you are an individual with a disability and desire an accommodation, please contact ppe@nullvt.edu at least ten business days before the event.

American Legal Scholar Bruce Ackerman will deliver the 2025 PPE Distinguished Public Lecture at Virginia Tech.

Bruce Ackerman has served as the Sterling Professor of Law and Political Science at Yale University. He is the author of nineteen books in political philosophy, constitutional law, and public policy.

Professor Ackerman is a Commander of the French Order of Merit, a member of the American Law Institute, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. The American Philosophical Society has awarded him the Henry Phillips Prize for lifetime achievement in Jurisprudence, especially noting his exploration of the great turning points in American constitutional history in his three-volume series, We the People. The book considers today’s U.S. constitution as the product of three great exercises in popular sovereignty, led by the Founding Federalists in the 1780s, the Reconstruction Republicans in the 1860s, and the New Deal Democrats in the 1930s.

Professor Ackerman’s scholarship has had a global impact. He has been named a Leading Global Thinker by Foreign Policy magazine. His book, Before the Next Attack (2006), served as a basis for the reform of the French constitution dealing with emergency powers. The Stakeholder Society (with Anne Alstott) has served as the basis for reform initiatives in Brazil, Britain, and elsewhere.

His most recent book, Revolutionary Constitutions (2019), puts the world-wide constitutional crisis in historical perspective and discusses the current assault on checks-and-balances. The book offers a robust defense of democratic populism, considering it not necessarily as a threat to the democratic world.

At Virginia Tech, Professor Ackerman will speak about “Rebuilding Our Shattered Democracy: The Race Against Time.”

The lecture will take place on March 26, 2025, from 5-6:30pm in the Anne and Ellen Fife Theatre of the Moss Arts Center. No tickets are required. The lecture will be followed by a public reception.

All faculty, students, and members of the public are cordially invited to attend this event.

If you are an individual with a disability and desire an accommodation, please contact ppe@nullvt.edu at least ten business days before the event.

At this panel discussion, current PPE Research Fellows Ariel Ahram, Clara Suong, and Xu Lin will discuss their work on governance, secrecy, and social networks.

Dr. Ahram’s work explores the role of non-state actors and social institutions in governance, using the Iraq as a test site. Dr. Suong’s work, using a combination of formal and empirical methods, focuses on government secrecy about politics and its implications. Dr. Lin’s work analyzes how real-life network structures shape social interaction, with the goal of developing a unified modeling framework.

Join this informal, yet intellectually rich discussion. All faculty and students are welcome to attend. Please see here for more information.

If you are an individual with a disability and desire an accommodation, please contact ppe@nullvt.edu at least ten business days before the event.