Past Center Events

The McDevitt Center's initiative devoted to Sustaining Earth is motivated by our sense of the urgency of the growing threats to our environment and by our conviction that a full understanding of these threats and effective responses to them must draw upon both scientific and broadly religious insights and perspectives. Through the public events in this initiative, we aim to provide a wide audience of students, faculty, and members of the regional community with accurate and up-to-date information about the threats, their causes, and measures to meet these threats.

In light of ecological crisis, rapid technological change, and widespread social alienation, what is the future of being human? Inaugurated in Spring 2015 and continuing through Spring 2017, this lecture series fostered a multidisciplinary conversation about what it means to be human in the 21st century

During the 2016-2017 academic year, the McDevitt Center and the McDevitt chair in Religious Philosophy sponsored Vulnerable Life, a series of public lectures at Le Moyne College engaging the theme of our human vulnerability to suffering and how we can cope with it. The central question orienting the initiative was: Should we seek to overcome our vulnerability, as some philosophies and spiritual practices counsel, or find ways to live with it?

This initiative brought eminent scholars from the sciences and humanities to Le Moyne College to share their reflections on relationships between science and religion with the campus community, members of other regional academic and religious institutions, and the public. By embodying Le Moyne's Catholic and Jesuit belief in the unity of all knowledge, "Science and Religion in Modern America" provided a compelling example of informed and respectful conversation about these vital issues.

The following five videos are of each keynote speaker during The Return of the Text: A Conference on the Cultural Value of Close Reading that was held in Syracuse, New York from September 26th through September 28th, 2013.