Academics | Lawrence Hall, The Robert Ho Lecture Room, Lawrence 105
This talk concerns the role of faith in what you do and what you believe.Lara Buchak, a philosophy professor at Princeton University, argues that having faith in a claim means acting on that claim without further evidence, and remaining committed to acting on that claim even in the face of evidence against it. Buchak shows that having faith can be rational in certain circumstances, and that those who lack faith stand to miss out on important goods. Buchak then applies this view of faith to two puzzles about belief. The first is how to explain the phenomenon of traditions or paradigms in scientific, religious, and moral life, and the phenomenon of conversion from one tradition to another. The second is whether it can ever be rational to defer to an authority rather than our own reason.Buchak's research interests include decision theory, social choice theory, epistemology, ethics, and the philosophy of religion. Her book Risk and Rationality (2013) concerns how an individual ought to take risk into account when making decisions. It vindicates the ordinary decision-maker from the point of view of even ideal rationality. A significant upshot of her view is that individuals with different attitudes toward risk—considered as different ways to weigh worse scenarios against better ones—can all be rational.Her research following the book has focused on applications of her view to ethics, arguing that we ought to defer to individuals’ risk-attitudes in biomedical research; that we ought to weigh worse scenarios very heavily in setting climate policy; and that we ought to care a great deal about the interests of the worse-off when acting ethically.Another ongoing project is on the nature and rationality of faith, both in the religious and mundane sense. She argues that faith requires stopping one's search for evidence and making a commitment -- and maintaining one's commitment in the face of counterevidence. She details when such faith is rational, and how it is beneficial to human life.Other topics Buchak has written on include group decision-making; the relationship between assigning probability to a hypothesis and believing that hypothesis outright; and the nature of free will.This lecture is sponsored by The M. Holmes Hartshorne Memorial Lecture Fund.

Academics | Persson Hall, Auditorium
Jasmine V. Bailey is the author of Alexandria, winner of the Central New York Book Award, Disappeared, and That Salt on the Tongue to Say Mangrove, a translation of Silvina López Medin’s Esa sal en la lengua para decir manglar. She is the winner of Michigan Quarterly Review’s Lawrence Goldstein Prize, New Ohio Review’s NORward Prize, Ruminate Magazine’s VanderMey Nonfiction Prize, and the Longleaf Press Chapbook Prize. She has been a Fulbright fellow in Argentina, an Olive B. O’Connor fellow at Colgate University, and a fellow at the Vermont Studio Center.Matthew Cooperman is a poet, educator, editor and ecocritic, Matthew Cooperman is the author of, most recently, the atmosphere is not a perfume it is odorless (Free Verse Editions/Parlor Press, 2024) and Wonder About The, winner of the Halcyon Prize (Middle Creek, 2023) as well as NOS (disorder, not otherwise specified), w/Aby Kaupang, (Futurepoem, 2018), Spool, winner of the New Measure Prize (Free Verse Editions/Parlor Press, 2016), and other books. His ninth book, Time, & Its Monument, is forthcoming from Station Hill Press. A Founding Editor of the exploratory prose journal Quarter After Eight, Cooperman received his PhD in English from Ohio University. He is Co-Poetry Editor for Colorado Review, and Professor of English at Colorado State University. He lives in Fort Collins with his wife, the poet Aby Kaupang, and their children.Vivek Narayanan is the author of the poetry collection: After (New York Review Books/HarperCollins India, 2022) and The Kuruntokai and its Mirror (Hanuman Editions, 2024). His work has appeared in Poetry, The Paris Review, The Penguin Book of the Prose Poem and The Bloodaxe Book of Contemporary Indian Poetry. He has held fellowships at the Radcliffe Institute and at the New York Public Library and teaches in the MFA Poetry program at George Mason University.Support for this event, which will be hosted by Peter Balakian, is provided by the Parshley Christ Endowment for Living Writers. The course and program are led by faculty in the Department of English and Creative Writing with generous support from the Olive B. O'Connor Fund as well as the President and the Provost/Dean of the Faculty. A signature program of Colgate University since 1980, Living Writers is a master class in how works of literature come to be.

Academics | 101, Ho Science Center
Benjamin Nathans, University of Pennsylvania

Academics | Olin Hall, Love Auditorium
Soldiers and Kings: Survival, Hope, and Empathy in the World of Human Smuggling Over the last decade, many places in the Global South that people once called home have grown inhospitable because of poverty, violence, corruption, and climate change. In response to the out-migration of millions of desperate people seeking refuge, countries like the United States and Mexico have attempted to harden their borders through various security measures. In response, migrants have turned to transnational gangs such as MS-13 who have become involved in the human smuggling industry. In 2015, Jason De Leon began a long-term ethnographic project focused on understanding the daily lives of Honduran smugglers who profit from transporting migrants across the length of Mexico. In this talk, De Leon presents stories from his recent book and examines the complicated relationship among transnational gangs, the human smuggling industry, and migrant desires for safety and well-being.This event is part of the Fall 2025 event series "Undocumented Migration into a Hostile America."Presented by the Peace & Conflict Studies Program and Longyear Museum of Anthropology. This event is generously supported by a Colgate Arts Council grant and co-sponsored by: ALANA Cultural Center, Africana and Latin American Studies Program, Department of Economics, Department of Educational Studies, Environmental Studies Program, Department of Geography, Department of History, Lampert Institute for Civic and Global Affairs (Schaehrer lecture), Museum Studies Program, Department of Political Science, Department of Romance Languages and Literatures, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies.

Academics | Olin Hall, Love Auditorium
The annual Peter C Schaehrer Memorial Lecture in Peace and Conflict Studies will feature Jason De León (UCLA) speaking about his book Soldiers and Kings: Survival and Hope in the World of Human Smuggling, winner of the National Book Award for Nonfiction.About the Lecture Over the last decade, many places in the Global South that people once called home have grown inhospitable because of poverty, violence, corruption, and climate change. In response to the out-migration of millions of desperate people seeking refuge, countries like the United States and Mexico have attempted to harden their borders through various security measures. In response, migrants have turned to transnational gangs such as MS13 who have become involved in the human smuggling industry. In 2015, De León began a long-term ethnographic project focused on understanding the daily lives of Honduran smugglers who profit from transporting migrants across the length of Mexico. In this talk, De León will present stories from my recent book and examine the complicated relationship among transnational gangs, the human smuggling industry, and migrant desires for safety and well-being.

Academics | Dana Arts Center, Picker Art Gallery, 2nd Floor
Hundreds of bills targeting trans* individuals are currently making their way through state legislative bodies. These range from bathroom bans to expulsion from sports teams to the denial of healthcare. Amid the increasingly hostile rhetoric and attempts to erase trans* and queer lives, the artists in this exhibition use a variety of media to tell powerful counternarratives about perseverance, vulnerability, and kinship among trans* and queer communities.The exhibition opens with a new live performance connecting art and athletics by Nicki Duval (they/them) and Robbie Trocchia (he/they), featuring figure skater Milk. Films exploring themes of transgender identity, visibility, bodies, and politics by multidisciplinary artist Cassils (he/they) are joined by an installation of exquisite cut-paper portraits by Antonius-Tín Bui (they/them). The works by these leading contemporary artists are complemented by a selection from the Picker collection that underlines the past, present, and future existence and vitality of trans* and queer artists.