[INES Announce] NIEE/HEE Seminar - Albert Dzur - Tues., May 20, 3:30-5 PM EDT

[Jesiek, Brent K]

Hi all, sorry for the short notice - but this seminar may be of interest to some of you. Please pass along as appropriate!

Thanks,
Brent

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Horizons of Engineering Ethics (HEE) Seminar
Organized by the National Institute for Engineering Ethics (NIEE, niee.org), Purdue University

Tuesday, May 20, 3:30-5 PM EDT
Wang Hall 3501, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN
Zoom: https://purdue-edu.zoom.us/j/96432572147

“Professionals, Organization, and Democracy"
Dr. Albert Dzur, Distinguished Research Professor, Bowling Green State University

ABSTRACT: This talk aims to spark reflection on tensions between democracy and organization that arise in professionalized institutions. These tensions include the apparent conflict between participation and effectiveness, the ways that built institutions hide their subjective origins, the friction of private interests and public purposes, the seemingly inextricable connection between empowering and disempowering aspects, and the difficulty of being fixed and supportive while also fluid and dynamic. The goal of the talk is to open a discussion of current trends of distrust, reaction, and radical critique by examining institutional contexts. By recognizing and grappling with these tensions, democracy-minded professionals in engineering and technology can re-shape institutions so they support citizen agency and caring, nonviolent relations. They can offer vibrant, shared spaces of mutual support that value knowledge production and social problem-solving at a time of heightened skepticism about the democratic project.

BIO: Albert Dzur is a democratic theorist interested in citizen participation and power-sharing innovations in public and private sector organizations. His most recent book is Democracy in Action: Collective Problem Solving in Citizens’ Governance Spaces, co-authored with Carolyn Hendriks (Oxford, 2025). Other publications include Democracy Inside: Participatory Innovation in Unlikely Places (Oxford, 2019); Rebuilding Public Institutions Together: Professionals and Citizens in a Participatory Democracy (Cornell, 2017); Punishment, Participatory Democracy, and the Jury (Oxford, 2012); Democratic Professionalism: Citizen Participation and the Reconstruction of Professional Ethics, Identity, and Practice (Penn State, 2008); and, co-edited with Ian Loader and Richard Sparks, Democratic Theory and Mass Incarceration (Oxford, 2016). His interviews with innovative professionals appear in Boston Review, The Good Society, International Journal of Restorative Justice, where he is an associate editor, and National Civic Review, where he is a contributing editor. He also serves on the editorial boards of the Howard Journal of Crime and Justice, and Democratic Theory. He is a Distinguished Research Professor in political science and philosophy at Bowling Green State University.

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Brent K. Jesiek, Ph.D. (he/him/his)
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