Professor Derk Pereboom works in free will and moral responsibility, philosophy of mind, history of modern philosophy, and philosophy of religion, and has published articles in each of these areas. In his book on free will and moral responsibility, Living Without Free Will, Professor Pereboom argues that we human beings do not have the sort of free will required for praiseworthiness and blameworthiness, but conceiving ourselves as lacking this sort of free will does not undermine what is important for morality and meaning in life. He joined the Sage School in 2007, moving here from the University of Vermont.
Money, Morale, and Mayhem
Event Overview
This talk will discuss the immensely complex and ambiguous political atmosphere in the period leading up to 1949 and suggest that while the forces behind revolution were powerful, they contained the seeds of their own contradictions as well.
Photo credit: "China’s Chairman Builds a Cult of Personality" Courtesy of TIME. Photo © Tim O'Brien.
What You'll Learn
- How the Chinese Civil War was shaped by a nuanced interplay of economic crisis, political disillusionment, and the complex revolutionary identity, as well as what led to the events of 1949
- How history and analytical perspective can enhance your understanding of current political and social issues in China
- How current trends in contemporary Chinese historical research at Cornell are situated in the broader mainstream of academia
Speakers
Rana Mitter is ST Lee Chair in US-Asia Relations at the Harvard Kennedy School. Professor Mitter is the author of several books, including “Forgotten Ally: China’s World War II” (2013), which won the 2014 RUSI/Duke of Westminster’s Medal for Military Literature and was named a Book of the Year in the Financial Times and Economist. His latest book is “China’s Good War: How World War II is Shaping a New Nationalism” (Harvard, 2020).
Professor Mitter’s writing on contemporary China has appeared recently in Foreign Affairs, Harvard Business Review, The Spectator, The Critic, and The Guardian. He has commented regularly on China in media and forums around the world, including at the World Economic Forum at Davos.
Professor Mitter’s recent documentary on contemporary Chinese politics, “Meanwhile in Beijing,” is available on BBC Sounds. He is co-author, with Sophia Gaston, of the report “Conceptualizing a UK-China Engagement Strategy” (British Foreign Policy Group, 2020). Professor Mitter won the 2020 Medlicott Medal for Service to History, awarded by the UK Historical Association. He previously taught at Oxford and is a Fellow of the British Academy.
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