(New York, NY - March 3, 2005) Senator John Edwards, 2004 Vice Presidential Candidate and Former U. S. Senator from North Carolina, will deliver the keynote address at “Fairness: Its Role in our Lives,” the latest in the Social Research conference series at New School University. Senator Edwards, the newly appointed director of the Center on Poverty, Work, and Opportunity at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, will speak on Thursday, April 14, 2005 at 6:00 p.m., at the John L. Tishman Auditorium, 66 West 12th Street, NYC. New School University President Bob Kerrey will introduce Senator Edwards and lead a Q&A session following the keynote address.
Senator Edwards joins twenty other renowned policy makers, scientists, historians, philosophers, and economists participating in the conference in examining the role of fairness in our lives. Behind the current debates about tax cuts, health insurance, the death penalty, affirmative action, and immigration policy are questions of fairness.
John Edwards, 2004 Vice Presidential Candidate, became a United States Senator in 1998. In Congress, he quickly emerged as a champion for the issues that make a difference to American families: quality health care, better schools, protecting civil liberties, preserving the environment, saving Social Security and Medicare, and reforming the ways campaigns are financed.
In his career as a lawyer, John Edwards dedicated his career to representing families and children hurt by the negligence of others. Standing up against the powerful insurance industry and their armies of lawyers, John helped these families through the darkest moments of their lives to overcome tremendous challenges.
The two-day conference on April 14 and 15, 2005 will take a close look at what drives our perceptions of fairness and how those perceptions transform political or social problems into issues of equality and social justice. Conference talks will examine why we feel the way we do—indignant, angry, or satisfied—about the distribution of resources, power, access, and attention.
Topics to be discussed include: “Science Looks at Fairness” on Thursday, April 14, from 2:00 - 5:00 p.m.; Senator Edwards’ Keynote Address from 6:00 - 7:30 p.m; “When Does Fairness Become An Issue? General Conditions That Give Rise to a Sense of Unfairness” on Friday, April 15, from 10:00 a.m. - 1:00 p.m.; “Reasoning About Fairness and Unfairness in Law, Philosophy, and Political Theory” from 2:00 - 5:00 p.m.; and “Fairness and Social Justice” from 6:00 - 9:00 p.m.
Among the guest speakers will be the Honorable Cristina Fernández de Kirschner, the first lady of Argentina and National Senator of the southern Province of Santa Cruz.
Tickets are $12 per session or $35 for the entire conference. For additional information, contact (212) 229-2488, [email protected] or visit www.socres.org/fairness.
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About John EdwardsAbout Social Research
Social Research, an international quarterly of the social sciences, has been published continuously since its founding in 1934 by the University in Exile, now the Graduate Faculty of Political and Social Sciences at New School University. The conference series, launched in 1988, extends from print to a live public forum the cross-disciplinary exploration of critical and contested issues that not only are central to the time and place in which they arise, but that also transcend those particularities. “Fairness” is the journal’s 14th conference. Recent conferences include “Their America: The U.S. in the Eyes of the Rest of the World,” “Fear: Its Political Uses and Abuses,” and “International Justice, War Crimes, and Terrorism: The U.S. Record.” Social Research: We make it an issue.
About New School University
New School University, with 8,000 matriculated students and 15,000 continuing education students, is a New York City University committed to critical scholarship, artistic integrity and ethical responsibility in the social sciences, humanities, the arts and design. It is comprised of a liberal arts foundation of three schools: The New School, Eugene Lang College, and the Graduate Faculty of Political and Social Science. The five professional schools are the Parsons School of Design, Mannes College of Music, Actors Studio Drama School, Milano Graduate School of Management and Urban Policy and New School University jazz. New School Online University offers one of the largest selections of online courses in the nation. For further information visit www.newschool.edu.