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Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at theUniversity of Michigan If this is your first time viewing us, welcome! You can explore our offeringsvia the cards below to learn more about us. Select theSign In button above to log into your account. If you would liketo join OLLI to participate inour programming, please create an account. You must be a minimum of 50 years of age to become an OLLI member. Require assistance? Please email olli.info@umich.edu or call 734-998-9351. > Conversations

Conversations   

Conversations aims to provide OLLI-UM members with a reprieve from digital devices and the outside world, offering opportunities to explore edgy and occasionally controversial topics that broaden our horizons and deepen our understanding. We’ll interview distinguished faculty members who are captivating and sometimes controversial. They are all helping shape the future through their interaction with students, our future leaders. Through interview-style discussions, we will feature a diverse array of guests, including individuals with real-world expertise, who delve into subjects and issues that have a personal impact on us. The interview will be one hour long with 30 minutes for audience Q & A.

Programs take place in-person only.

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  • Conversations: (3/28) Gods, Bots, and Beasts: Where is Our Moral Frontier?
  • Fee: $12.00
    Dates: 3/28/2025 - 3/28/2025
    Times: 10:00 AM - 11:30 AM
    Days: F
    Sessions: 1
    Building: Morris Lawrence Building- Washtenaw Community Coll
    Room: The Pond Room
    Instructor:

    New technologies like AI and robots seem to pose utterly unfamiliar questions: if they interact with us like humans, can we also expect them to be moral? Should we feel ethical duties towards them in turn? In fact, the human record suggests some of these problems are quite old. Humans have long treated some non-humans as intelligent or even moral beings in all sorts of ways. What can we learn from this history? What insights into the challenges of new technology does the record offer us?

     

    Webb Keane is a socio-cultural and linguistic anthropologist, who has carried out extensive research in Southeast Asia and elsewhere. His books include Christian Moderns: Freedom and Fetish in the Mission Encounter and Ethical Life: Its Social and Natural Histories. His newest book, published in 2024, is Animals, Robots, Gods: Adventures in the Moral Imagination.



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  • Conversations: (4/15) Epidemic Diseases and their Impact on Civilizations throughout History
  • Fee: $12.00
    Dates: 4/15/2025 - 4/15/2025
    Times: 10:00 AM - 11:30 AM
    Days: Tu
    Sessions: 1
    Building: Morris Lawrence Building- Washtenaw Community Coll
    Room: The Pond Room
    Instructor:

    From antiquity to today, epidemic diseases have devastated nations and their populations. Repeatedly, they have triggered broad ranging consequences for societies—in the economic, social, cultural, religious, and governmental realms. We will use selected epidemics throughout history to illustrate the extent of this epidemic impact and reveal how civilizations not only become vulnerable to epidemics, but also refractory to human efforts to eradicate them.

     

    Powel Kazanjian is an infectious diseases doctor and medical historian. He has degrees from the University of Pennsylvania, Harvard, Tufts, and at the University of Michigan, where he is Professor and Chief of the Division of Infectious Diseases and Professor in the Department of History. His medical background and historical training have provided a multidisciplinary approach to his teaching and scholarship. His courses on the “History of Epidemics” and “Sexually Transmitted Diseases” offer students a comprehensive lens to view the impact that infectious diseases have had on societies throughout history.



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