The Eudaimonia Institute hosted its second Noesis Lecture speaker on Tuesday, April 23, 2019, with the distinguished Professor Steven Pinker of Harvard University.
Noesis Lecture Series
Steven Pinker
“Enlightenment Now”
Tuesday, April 23, 2019, 7:00 pm
Wait Chapel
Steven Pinker is an experimental psychologist who conducts research in visual cognition, psycholinguistics, and social relations. He grew up in Montreal and earned his BA from McGill and PhD from Harvard. Currently the Johnstone Professor of Psychology at Harvard, he has also taught at Stanford and MIT. He has won numerous prizes for his research, his teaching, and his nine books, including The Language Instinct, How the Mind Works, The Blank State, The Better Angels of Our Nature, and The Sense of Style. He is an elected member of the National Academy of Sciences, a two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist, a Humanist of the Year, a recipient of nine honorary doctorates, and one of Foreign Policy’s “World Top 100 Public Intellectuals” and Time’s “100 Most Influential People in the World Today.” He is Chair of the Usage Panel of the American Heritage Dictionary, and writes frequently for the New York Times, The Guardian, and other publications. His tenth book, to be published in February 2018, is called Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress.
April 19, 2019
By John Hinton
Psychologist Steven Pinker to Speak at WFU
Steven Pinker, a renowned psychologist, will be the guest speaker at the Wake Forest University’s Eudaimonia Institute Second Annual Noesis Lecture, WFU said in a statement.
The event will take place at 7 p.m. Tuesday in Wait Chapel. The talk is free and open to the public.
Pinker has been named one of Foreign Policy’s “World’s Top 100 Public Intellectuals” and Time’s “100 Most Influential People in the World Today.” He writes frequently for The New York Times, The Guardian and other publications.
Steven Pinker, a renowned psychologist who has taught at Stanford, MIT and Harvard, will be the guest speaker at Wake Forest University’s Eudaimonia Institute Second Annual Noesis Lecture.
The event will take place Tuesday, April 23, from 7 to 8:30 p.m. in Wait Chapel. The talk is free and open to the public. No videography is permitted.
Pinker is a two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist, a Humanist of the Year, and an elected member of the National Academy of Sciences. In February 2018, Pinker published his tenth book, “Enlightenment Now: The Cause for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress.”
An experimental psychologist who conducts research in visual cognition, psycholinguistics, and social relations, Pinker grew up in Montreal and earned his BA from McGill and his PhD from Harvard. He is currently Johnstone Professor of Psychology at Harvard,
Pinker has been named one of Foreign Policy’s “World’s Top 100 Public Intellectuals” and Time’s “100 Most Influential People in the World Today.” He writes frequently for The New York Times, The Guardian, and other publications.
Rawabi Founder Visits Eudaimonia Institute at Wake Forest University
Rawabi Newsletter, Spring Edition 2019
Wake Forest Professors Lecture at Rawabi
What a pleasure it was to have Muhammad Yunus speak at Wake Forest. An inspiring man with an inspiring vision. If you were unable to attend last night’s Noesis Lecture, watch the replay here:
Higher Education Notebook: Nobel Peace Prize winner to speak at WFU
Nov 25, 2017
Muhammad Yunus, an economist who won the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize for founding the global microfinance movement, will discuss his life’s work and his vision for “A World of Zero Poverty on Dec. 6 at Wake Forest University.
Yunus will give the inaugural Noesis Lecture at 4 p.m. in Wait Chapel. The event is free and open to the public.
Often called the “banker of the poor” and the father of social business, Yunus founded the Grameen Bank as a nonprofit in Bangladesh to provide small, collateral-free loans to the poor, mostly women, to start their own businesses. The bank became a model for combating poverty through micro-lending.
“We are incredibly excited to launch the Noesis Lecture Series by bringing a Nobel laureate like Professor Yunus to Wake Forest,” said Adam Hyde, assistant director of the Eudaimonia Institute.
Muhammad Yunus, an economist who won the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize for founding the global microfinance movement, will discuss his life’s work and his vision for “A World of Zero Poverty” at Wake Forest University on Dec. 6.
Muhammad Yunus
Yunus will give the inaugural Noesis Lecture at 4 p.m. in Wait Chapel. The event is free and open to the public.
Often called the “banker of the poor” and the father of social business, Yunus founded Grameen Bank as a non-profit in Bangladesh to provide small, collateral-free loans to the poor, mostly women, to start their own businesses. The bank became a model for combatting poverty through microlending.
“We are incredibly excited to launch the Noesis Lecture Series by bringing a Nobel laureate like Professor Yunus to Wake Forest,” said Adam Hyde, Assistant Director of the Eudaimonia Institute.
“His inspirational work continues to have a tremendous impact by reducing poverty and empowering women across the globe.”Adam Hyde, Assistant Director of the Eudaimonia Institute
For his constant innovation and enterprise, Fortune Magazine named Yunus as “one of 12 greatest entrepreneurs of our time.” He has also received the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the Congressional Gold Medal. In 2006, Yunus and Grameen Bank were jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
In his acceptance speech, Yunus said “Peace is inextricably linked to poverty. Poverty is a threat to peace.”
Yunus studied economics at Vanderbilt University as a Fulbright Scholar and received his PhD in economics in 1969. Returning to Bangladesh in 1972, he joined the University of Chittagong as head of the economics department. In 1976 Yunus started to experiment with providing microloans to the poor. Grameen Bank now has over 8.4 million borrowers, 97% of whom are women, and disburses over one and a half billion U.S. dollars each year.
Yunus is the author of the 2017 book “A World of Three Zeros: The New Economics of Zero Poverty, Zero Unemployment and Zero Net Carbon Emissions” and other books, including “Banker to the Poor: Microlending and the Battle against World Poverty” and “Creating a World without Poverty: Social Business and the Future of Capitalism.”
Yunus is also a founding board member of Grameen America, a microfinance nonprofit organization that provides loans, savings programs, credit establishment and other financial services to entrepreneurs living below the poverty line in the United States. He is a founding board member of Grameen Foundation, which works to reduce poverty in Sub-Saharan Africa, Asia, the Arab world and the Americas.
Yunus has served on the International Advisory Group for the Fourth World Conference on Women, the Global Commission of Women’s Health, the Advisory Council for Sustainable Economic Development. and the U.N. Expert Group on Women and Finance.
The lecture is sponsored by Wake Forest’s Eudaimonia Institute, the Center for Bioethics, Health and Society, the School of Business, the Graduate Programs in Sustainability, the Center for Energy, Environment, and Sustainability and the Department of Economics.
Rethinking Community Conference, October 19-21, 2017
Wake Forest University leads the way in Rethinking Community. Hosted by the Eudaimonia Institite and the Pro Humanitate Institute on October 19-21, 2017.
The Eudaimonia conference, Eudaimonia: What Is It and How Can It Be Assessed? brought together distinguished scholars in philosophy, economics, psychology, public health, and business. Attendees hailed from Wake Forest, Stanford, Brookings, University of Wisconsin, University of Arizona, Duke, Indiana University, University of Southern California, and others. They discussed Aristotle’s word for well-being, happiness, or human flourishing with spirited debates about virtue, purpose, productivity, subjectivity, and measurement. The event was sponsored by the Eudaimonia Institute, and co-sponsored by the BB&T Center for the Study of Capitalism, the Center for Bioethics, Health, and Society, Thrive, and the School of Business. The opening dinner and keynote address by Dr. Deirdre McCloskey in Farrell Hall drew about 200 faculty, staff, students, community members, and the media.
Conference Webpage
What constitutes a life well lived? Wake Forest University professors are addressing this age-old question with the support of nearly $4.2 million in new research funding to study eudaimonia (yoo-dye-mo-NEE-uh)—Aristotle’s term for “flourishing.”
The mission of Wake Forest’s Eudaimonia Institute is to study the nature of human flourishing—as well as the institutions, attitudes and cultural practices that encourage it. An interdisciplinary intellectual community of scholars will explore the concept beyond the typical scope of how happiness is understood or used in everyday conversation.
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