Is democracy dying, in America and abroad? Pundits say so, and polls show that most Americans believe that their country’s system of governance is being “tested” or is “under attack.” But is the future of democracy necessarily so dire? In The Civic Bargain, Brook Manville and Josiah Ober push back against the prevailing pessimism about the fate of democracy around the world. Instead of an epitaph for democracy, they offer a guide for democratic renewal, calling on citizens of democracies to recommit to a “civic bargain” with one another that guarantees political rights of freedom, equality, and dignity, but requires them to fulfill the duties of democratic citizenship.The talk will center on the key ideas raised in The Civic Bargain, specifically the long progression toward self-government through four key moments in democracy’s history: Classical Athens, Republican Rome, Great Britain’s constitutional monarchy, and America’s founding. Democracy isn’t about getting everything we want; it’s about having no “boss” other than our fellow citizens, and agreeing on a shared framework for pursuing our often conflicting aims. Crucially, citizens need to be able to compromise, and to treat one another not as political enemies but as civic friends. And we must accept imperfection; democracy is never perfect and never finished. If the civic bargain is maintained—through deliberation, bargaining, and compromise—democracy will survive and thrive. This lecture will be delivered by Josh Ober, the Constantine Mitsotakis Chair in the School of Humanities and Sciences at Stanford University. Ober specializes in the areas of ancient and modern political theory and historical institutionalism. His primary appointment is in Political Science; he holds a secondary appointment in Classics and courtesy appointments in Philosophy and the Hoover Institution. His most recent books are The Greeks and the Rational: The discovery of practical reason (University of California Press 2022) and Demopolis: Democracy before liberalism in theory and practice (Cambridge University Press 2017). The lecture is free and open to the public. Lunch will be provided beginning at noon.   Join us via our livestream on YouTube. Originally published at constudies.nd.edu.

PLEASE NOTE: Due to the passing of Pope Francis, this event will be postponed; however, no date has yet been set. This event will no longer be taking place on this date, April 24, 2025. In September 2024, the Pontifical Academy of Sciences hosted a conference at the Vatican on the theme of “Sciences for a Sustainable Anthropocene: Opportunities, Challenges, and Risks of Innovations.” Invited scientists, scholars, and Church leaders delivered presentations and held discussions that considered the abundant scientific evidence for the human-caused alterations to Earth’s natural systems in tandem with the Catholic Church’s commitment to stewardship for God’s creation as exemplified in Pope Francis’s encyclical, Laudato Si’ (2015). Among the participants were geologist Francine McCarthy, historian of science Jürgen Renn, and Cardinal Peter Turkson, the Chancellor of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences. Notre Dame is pleased to continue the conversation with these three major contributors to the Vatican conference at this Keeley Vatican Symposium hosted in partnership with the Nanovic Institute for European Studies. History professors Julia Adeney Thomas and Brad Gregory will join and help lead this conversation at Notre Dame along with:Cardinal Peter Turkson, Chancellor of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences and the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences;Francine McCarthy, Geologist at Brock University, Canada, whose work is the foundation for the proposed Anthropocene “golden spike”; Jürgen Renn, Director of the Max Planck Institute of Geoanthropology in Jena, Germany.Clemens Sedmak, professor of social ethics and director of the Nanovic Institute, will serve as the event's host and moderator. A brief reception will follow. All are invited to attend. This event is part of the Anthropocene ND conference (April 23-25, 2025); other events include:"10 Years After Laudato si’: Faith, Anthropocene, and Justice in the Global South" (Friday, April 25, 11:30 a.m. - 1:00 p.m.), hosted by the Notre Dame Forum 2024-25 "What do we owe each other?" in the Smith Ballroom of the Morris Inn"Africa and the Anthropocene" (Friday, April 25, 9:00 - 10:30 a.m.), held in C103 Hesburgh CenterThe Anthropocene The Anthropocene refers to the newly destabilized and still evolving state of our planet which is threatening the survival of many species, including our own. The concept arose in Earth System Science as a means of summing up Earth’s rapid mid- 20th-century lurch away from the relatively stable Holocene epoch of the past 11,700 years to today’s unpredictable planetary condition. Our dangerous predicament is not just a scientific and technological problem — it poses unprecedented political, economic, cultural, and ethical challenges. SpeakersCardinal Peter TurksonCardinal Archbishop of Ghana Since 2022, Cardinal Peter Turkson has been the chancellor of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences and the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences. He was ordained a priest in 1975 and consecrated as Archbishop of Cape Coast in 1992 by Pope John Paul II, who also made him the first Cardinal Archbishop of Ghana in 2003. He has been a member of multiple pontifical councils, including president of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace (2009-2017) and prefect of the Dicastery for Promoting Human Development (2017-2021). He has served as a mediator in numerous politically volatile situations on the African continent and been a tireless champion of human rights and sustainable human development. In addition to his knowledge of Latin and Greek, he speaks six languages.Brad GregoryProfessor of History at Notre Dame Brad Gregory, professor of history at Notre Dame, specializes in Western Europe in the Reformation era. His scholarship has analyzed the effects of early modern religious disagreement and religio-political conflict, not only in the 16th and 17th centuries, but also in the long-term shaping of Western modernity down to the present. In recent years, the scope of his work has further expanded and takes the Anthropocene as its point of departure, while retaining an emphasis on the assumptions, ambitions, practices, and institutions of premodern Western Europeans that antedated the Industrial Revolution while fostering the anthropogenic trajectories that led our planet out of the Holocene. He is currently at work on a major project about the relationship between Western Christianity and the long-term formation of our current global environmental realities, the working title of which is "The Way of the World: Power, Wealth, and Civilization from the Last Ice Age to the Anthropocene."Francine McCarthyGeologist at Brock University, Canada Francine McCarthy is a micropaleontologist who is interested in paleoenvironmental reconstruction, primarily using acid-resistant organic-walled microfossils, including pollen and non-pollen palynomorphs. Her research has spanned small lake to abyssal marine environments and everything in between, primarily at mid-latitudes in the Northern Hemisphere. Her interdisciplinary research has been conducted in collaboration with several geologists, biologists, geographers, and archaeologists from government, university, and private sectors. She has been on the boards of several organizations, including current membership on the board of the International Association for Great Lakes Research. A leading member of the Anthropocene Working Group, her work on Crawford Lake served as the proposed “golden spike” of the new epoch.Jürgen RennFounding Director, Max Planck Institute for Geo-Anthropology, Jena, Germany Jürgen Renn’s research focuses on the long-term evolution of knowledge in consideration of the historical dynamics that led to the global changes encapsulated by the concept of the Anthropocene. In almost three decades as director at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, his numerous research projects have opened up new approaches, especially in the digital humanities. As founding director of the Max Planck Institute of Geoanthropology, he investigates, together with his team, the structural changes in the technosphere that have given rise to the Anthropocene. His central research topics include the history of science from antiquity to the 21st century, the history of the globalization of knowledge, the role of knowledge in global change processes, and the recent history of scientific institutions, particularly the Max Planck Society from its foundation to the present day.Julia Adeney ThomasProfessor of History at Notre Dame Julia Adeney Thomas is professor of history at Notre Dame and a member of the Anthropocene Working Group. She is an intellectual historian of Japan, photography as a political practice, and the Anthropocene. Her books include "Reconfiguring Modernity: Concepts of Nature in Japanese Political Ideology" (winner of the AHA John K. Fairbank Prize), "Japan at Nature’s Edge: The Environmental Context of a Global Power," "Rethinking Historical Distance, and Visualizing Fascism: The Twentieth-Century Rise of the Global Right." Her recent work on the Anthropocene includes "Altered Earth: Getting the Anthropocene Right" (Cambridge University Press, 2022); "The Anthropocene: A Multidisciplinary Approach," co-authored with geologists Jan Zalasiewicz and Mark Williams (Polity, 2020); and, with Jan Zalasiewicz, "Strata and Three Stories" (Rachel Carson Center, Munich, 2020). She’s currently at work on "The Historian’s Task in the Anthropocene," which will explore the experiences, limitations, and breakthroughs of historical practice on our transformed planet.About the Keeley Vatican Lecture series The Keeley Vatican Lecture, facilitated annually by the Nanovic Institute, provides a way to deepen Notre Dame’s connection to the Holy See by bringing distinguished representatives from the Vatican to explore questions surrounding the University’s Catholic mission. Established in 2005 through the generous support of alumnus Terrence R. Keeley ’81, lecturers typically spend several days on campus, joining classes, celebrating Mass with students, and conversing with faculty members. Past Keeley Vatican Lectures have included Sister Raffaella Petrini (secretary-general of the Vatican City State), Rev. Fr. Hans Zollner, Dr. Barbara Jatta, Archbishop Paul Richard Gallagher, and Ukrainian Metropolitan Archbishop Borys Gudziak. This year, the Keeley Vatican Lecture series has also manifested as the Keeley Vatican Symposium to provide a space for reflections upon the Catholic Church's understanding and actions surrounding the Anthropocene. Earlier this year, the series also welcomed Rev. Msgr. Anthony Onyemuche Ekpo, Undersecretary of the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development, for a lecture in February titled "The Reform of the Roman Curia and the Promotion of Integral Human Development." Originally published at nanovic.nd.edu.

Panelists will explore what drives migration at the southern border, the social and legal realities migrants encounter, and the theological foundations required to recognize that responding to migration is essential to building an integral culture of life. Learn More and Register Originally published at mcgrath.nd.edu.

Professor Cecilia TrifogliJoin the Medieval Institute for its final lecture of the semester, with Cecilia Trifogli, professor of Medieval philosophy at the University of Oxford, speaking on "Medieval Views on the Subject of Thought and the Intellectual Soul." About the Talk The general issue addressed in my talk is how deep the difference between human beings as rational animals and the other kinds of animals is. Are human beings fundamentally unlike the other animals or are they nothing more than the most complex animals? In the Aristotelian tradition, there are two major topics relevant to this issue: (i) the subject of thought and (ii) the nature of the intellectual soul. My main focus will be Aquinas's view on these topics. This is arguably Aquinas's most sophisticated contribution to the Aristotelian theory of human nature and was highly influential. It did not meet, however, universal consent. Remarkable objections were raised even by one of Aquinas’s closest followers, Giles of Rome, and later on, in the third decade of the 14th century by Thomas Wylton. These are the two opponents to Aquinas I shall consider in this talk. About the Speaker Professor of Medieval Philosophy at the University of Oxford (2008–present) and Fellow of All Souls College (1999–present), Professor Trifogli holds degrees from the Universities of Pisa (M.A. Philosophy, M.A. Mathematics) and Milan (Ph.D. Mathematics). A Fellow of the British Academy since 2014, her research centers on medieval Aristotelian philosophy, metaphysics, and epistemology. Recent work includes editing Questions on Aristotle's Physics by Geoffrey of Aspall and a forthcoming co-edited volume on medieval conceptions of space and time. Originally published at medieval.nd.edu.

All are invited to join the Notre Dame community for this Memorial Mass as we mourn the passing of His Holiness Pope Francis, give thanks for his extraordinary life and legacy, and ask God to receive him into His loving embrace.University President Rev. Robert A. Dowd, C.S.C., presider and homilist The Holy Father will continue to be remembered at all Basilica Masses during the traditional nine-day period of mourning, also known as the Novemdiales, beginning on Saturday, April 26, after Pope Francis' funeral Mass. Review the Basilica Mass schedule here.

ND students, drop by to crochet, knit, or embroider and enjoy conversation and community at the McDonald Center. B.Y.O. yarn and supplies or choose from available supplies. All experience levels are welcome. Originally published at mcwell.nd.edu.