Weber Scholars Summer Program
Any effective teacher will have to try first of all to get his [sic] students to recognize uncomfortable facts [unbequeme Tatsachen]–facts, I mean, that go against their own partisan opinions.Max Weber’s Lectures on Vocation
The Weber Seminar: Confronting Uncomfortable Moral, Political, and Social Ideas
The great social theorist Max Weber (1864-1920) offered these words above during the second of two lectures he delivered to a group of students in Munich on January 28, 1919. For Weber an untrammeled investigation of truth required openness to entertaining propositions, proposals, theories, ideas that might be inconvenient, unpleasant, or unpopular. This seminar, led by Morrison Family Director of the Institute for Freedom and Community, is designed to acquaint students with moral, political and social ideas that challenge comfortable partisan opinions or reigning orthodoxies in the academy.
The public affairs conversation
The Public Affairs Conversation, which is fully supported by the Institute for Freedom and Community, is modeled on the other signature Conversation programs at St. Olaf. Students undertake an interdisciplinary journey through influential texts and ideas that have shaped civil discourse in the past and will guide its future.
This yearlong program for sophomores, juniors and seniors consists of two courses (fall and spring) and a funded internship opportunity (during interim, spring or summer). The courses focus on contested ideals and contemporary controversies in American public affairs. The first course looks at the evolution of contested ideals in American politics as they develop in the founding period and throughout the history of the republic. The course also engages a range of contemporary normative perspectives that are the foundation of the contemporary debate. The second course blends normative and empirical analysis of contemporary public policy. Both courses will be supplemented by co-curricular activities and events.
For more information contact: Jason Marsh