The NEIU Philosophy Colloquium Series began in 2014 and has been a regular department-sponsored event since Spring 2018. Its purpose is to give the Northeastern community access to all of the richness and diversity of contemporary professional philosophy. The Colloquium Series also provides professional philosophers with the opportunity to experience Northeastern firsthand and meet our students and faculty in an academic setting. All of the talks are free and open to the public.
Fall 2023
Takunda Matose, Ph.d., Loyola University chicago: "Justice and The Monty Hall Problem of Public Health"
3:05-4:15 pm Thursday, Nov. 16
Main Campus, Bernard J. Brommel Hall 102
"Public Health experts sometimes take the view that we should suspend social justice during public health emergencies like spikes in the recent COVID-19 pandemic. During these emergencies, the assumption is that we should use limited resources like hospital beds and ventilators as efficiently as possible, which often means prioritizing helping people who have the best prospects for quick recovery and long-term survival. One problem with this view is that it ignores a standard view about justice shared by philosophers like Aristotle and David Hume that justice is most needed when resources are limited. More importantly, however, I argue that this common approach to public health commits what I call the “Monty Hall” error of public health by failing to properly consider the role that background social injustice leads to disparities in health outcomes during these emergencies, particularly for racially marginalized populations. The result is that the standard approach is unlikely to be the most efficient way to handle public health emergencies."
Dr. Takunda Matose is a philosopher and bioethicist who researches the intersection of political philosophy, bioethics, and philosophy of race. He is interested in racial health justice and has written about the racial dimension of pandemics, maternal health disparities, health care in carceral complexes, and public health in Africa.
Past Talks
2023-2024
- Will Behun, McHenry County Community College, "Not so much heretical as insane: myth in classical Gnosticism"
- Tom Carson, Loyola University Chicago, "The Problem of Misplaced Trust and Distrust"
2022-2023
- David Hilbert, University of Illinois at Chicago, "Berkeley's Political Metaphysics."
- Blake Dutton, Loyola University Chicago, "Extracting Gold from the Counterfeiter’s Bag: al-Ghazālī on the Tradition of Philosophy in Islam."
- Sophia Mihic, Northeastern Illinois University, "Freedom, Property, and Privacy: The Political Economy of Abortion and Reproduction After Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization."
- Raff Donelson, Chicago-Kent College of Law, "The Inherent Problem with Mass Incarceration."
- Tyler Zimmer, University of Chicago, "Do Billionaires Deserve Their Wealth?"
- Shireen Roshanravan, Northeastern Illinois University, "Pretending-to-be and Masterful Political Performance."
2019-2020
- B.R. George, Carnegie Mellon University, "Painfully Literal Dudes."
- Thirza Lagewaard, Free University, Amsterdam, “How Epistemic Injustice Can Deepen Disagreement.”
- Agnes Callard, University of Chicago, “Is There Such a Thing as being Good or Bad at Philosophy?"
- David Vessey, Grand Valley State University, "Collapsing Life and Art."
- Alex Adamson, Northeastern Illinois University, “Against a Single History: Luxemburg and a Decolonial Critique of Political Economy.”
2018-2019
- Jessica Gordon Roth, University of Minnesota, “Recovering Early Modern Women Writers: Some Tensions.”
- Jorge Montiel*, Marquette University, “ A Relational Analysis of Oppression: Group Injustice and Institutional Mediation.”
- Megan Hyska, Northwestern University, “Propaganda for Realists.”
- William Paris, Northwestern University, “What does it Mean to Have a Revolution in Culture? Frantz Fanon’s Speculative Method of Critique.”
- Seth Mayer, Manchester University, “Philosophy, Democracy, and Mass Incarceration.”
- David Godden, Michigan State University, “Theorizing Testimony in Argumentative Contexts.”
2017-2018
- Scott Aikin, Vanderbilt University, “The Antinomies of Metaphilosophy.”
- Desmond Jagmohan*, University of California, Berkeley, “Dominus before Domination: Harriet Jacobs and the Meaning of Slavery.”
2016-2017
- John Casey, Northeastern Illinois University, "Argument Pacifism."
2015-2016
- Morganna Lambeth, Northwestern University, "Does Everything have a Cause?"
- Raff Donelson, Northwestern University, "What is Punishment?"
2014-2015
- Scott Aikin, Vanderbilt University, "Why We Argue: A Deliberative Democratic Reply to Plato.”
*Denotes scholar as a graduate of Northeastern Illinois University
