Professor of Philosophy Scott Sehon said he is looking forward to Bowdoin's first-ever Veritas Forum because he thinks "it's a good thing for there to be more dialogue between religious perspectives and secular perspectives." But one might ask Professor Sehon for a more precise definition of the word "good"—exactly the question he is going to have to answer during next Thursday's forum.
Sehon and fellow philosopher Greg Ganssle of the Rivendell Institute at Yale University will explore the question "What does it mean to be good?" in Kresge Auditorium, beginning at 7:30 p.m.
The evening will open with remarks from Senior Faculty Fellow Craig McEwen from the McKeen Center for the Common Good. The two presenters will then have the floor for 15 minutes each, with Sehon offering the secular perspective and Ganssle the Christian. A question and answer session following the presentations will be moderated by Professor of Social Sciences Jean Yarbrough.
Yarbrough was pleased that the forum would be framed around the question of "good."
"I think that the question of how it is that we come to know good and bad, right and wrong, is probably one of the most important questions that anybody can or should think about," she said. "It's a question between reason and revelation."
The Veritas Forum is an organization founded at Harvard in 1992 that holds forums which examine, according to its website, "life's hardest questions." Forums have been held at over 60 of the most prestigious universities in North America and Europe, but this will be the first forum to be held at Bowdoin and in the state of Maine.
The event has been in the works since The Veritas Forum, headquartered in Cambridge, Mass., approached the Bowdoin Christian Fellowship (BCF) last spring.
"They wanted to branch out and we were honored by them asking us because it meant that Bowdoin was a well-recognized school," said Micah Ludwig '13, one of the student organizers.
According to Ludwig, the "lion's share of the planning" took place last semester when BCF decided on the two presenters and narrowed their ideas into the one question about goodness which will serve as the forum's central theme. Though BCF received help from The Veritas Forum, especially in finding Ganssle, the choice of the discussion question and the presenters was left entirely up to them.
"I would say that once we actually nailed down the question, deciding on speakers was easy," said Ludwig. The group knew from the beginning that it wanted a Bowdoin professor to be among the two presenters.
Sehon spoke to the importance of hosting events like the Veritas Forum, with its inclusion of Christian perspective, on a campus such as Bowdoin's.
"The secular tends to dominate in academia," he said, "and...that seems to be kind of artificial construct in some ways because it's a very religious country."
"Certainly many, many of our students are religious," Sehon added.
Ludwig said that he hoped that the forum would be more of a discussion than a traditional debate.
"We really would just like it to serve as a way to have these dialogues about questions regarding faith," he said. "And for the campus to sort of see that, as Christians, we can engage in an academic conversation regarding our faith."
Ludwig felt fortunate for the feeling of support and enthusiasm surrounding the forum so far. Along with BCF and The Veritas Forum, the event is being co-sponsored by a multitude of campus organizations. The long list includes the philosophy department, the government and legal studies department, the McKeen Center, the Office of Residential Life, the Office of the Dean of Multicultural Student Affairs and the Catholic Students Union.
"My friends that I've talked to, they seem to think, 'Oh yeah, it's a really cool event.' I guess we'll see if that turns into attendance or if it's just polite conversation," said Ludwig with a laugh.
Sehon said that he is not making the forum a requirement for the students in his Philosophy of Religion class, but he "imagine[s] a number of them will attend."
The Veritas Forum encourages long-standing relationships with its partner institutions in order to propogate the program's reach.
"We really would like this to be a well-established event," said Ludwig, speculating that next year's forum might explore the relationship between Christianity and science. "We'd like to have a forum next year and for many years after."