This roundtable examines the human experience of migration and displacement, both historically and in the present day, in the context of large-scale global crises affecting refugees and displaced populations. It considers the social, ethical, and psychological dimensions of how individuals and societies respond to forced movement, exploring questions of compassion, responsibility, identity, and the conditions that foster either empathy or detachment in the face of human vulnerability and instability.
Generationally and historically, our species has moved through great migrations, across seas, continents, and borders. Some have been journeys infused with hope for the better, or impelled by longing for the unknown, the foreign, the other. Others have been forced.
Today, with more than 65 million refugees and displaced persons around the globe, we are bearing witness to flights of desperation, escaping threats of extinction or submission, environmental disaster, religious and tribal conflict, slavery, and war. How and why do we respond with creativity and compassion rather than detachment and fear to those in troubled movement? The reality of those without shelter, safety, or security unsettles us all.
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Roundtables are streamed live our website and the recording remains available after the event events.
This is a past event that happened on Saturday, February 25th, 2017 at 2:30pm.
Participants
Lisa DeBenedittis is an Assistant Professor of Design Research at Parsons School of Design, and most recently has served as Vice Provost of The New School, and Associate Dean at Parsons. She completed her Ph.D. (NYU) in 2005, writing on the aesthetics of subjectivity, and completed her analytic training at the Jungian Psychoanalytic Association, now...
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Simon Aban Deng is a human rights activist living in the United States. A native of the Shilluk Kingdom in southern Sudan, he spent several years as a child slave until escaping and thereafter applying for asylum in the U.S. and taking U.S. citizenship. Among his many human rights activities, Deng launched the Sudan Freedom...
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Professor, Neuroscience & Psychology, Princeton University
Uri Hasson is a distinguished Professor of Neuroscience and Psychology at Princeton University. He was raised in Jerusalem and earned his bachelor’s degree in Philosophy from the Hebrew University. Dr. Hasson obtained his Ph.D. in Neurobiology from the Weizmann Institute in Israel and later served as a postdoctoral fellow at New York University before joining...
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Psychosocial Care Specialist at MSF/Doctors without Borders USA
Athena Viscusi is currently the Psychosocial Care Specialist at MSF/Doctors without Borders USA, providing support to field workers before, after, and during deployment abroad. As a Mental Health Officer with MSF, she directed mental health and psychosocial programs for MSF in Haiti, South Sudan, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Myanmar, and Palestine. In that capacity she hired,...
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President, the Tenement Museum
Morris J. Vogel has been president of New York’s Lower East Side Tenement Museum since 2008. He trained as an American social and urban historian at Brandeis University (B.A. 1967) and the University of Chicago (Ph.D. 1974), before joining the faculty of Temple University in Philadelphia in 1973, where he was promoted to professor in...
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Yes, it will be.