SUNY Oneonta Philosophy Conference to feature speakers

Vicky Klukkert, The Daily Star, Oneonta, N.Y.
·2 min read

Apr. 19—Talks on medical ethics and the war in Ukraine will highlight the SUNY Oneonta Undergraduate Philosophy Conference Friday and Saturday.

The conference, in its 27th year, is organized by undergraduate philosophy students, Dan Patrone, faculty advisor said. "It's one of the oldest philosophy conferences in the nation," he said. "It's a real tradition that the college is proud of." Students attended a philosophy conference and came back to campus and asked why there wasn't one at SUNY Oneonta, so students decided to start one, he said.

Patrone said the students solicit papers from other college students and invite students to talk at the conference and also select the keynote speakers. This year, students from Simmons University, Columbia University, West Point, University of Virginia, Binghamton University, Iona University, SUNY Buffalo, Stony Brook University, Cornell University, University of Colorado, SUNY Potsdam and the University of Guelph, Ontario, Canada, will speak at the university's Morris Conference Center, a media release said.

"We have a great lineup of students speaking this year," Patrone said.

The keynote speakers are Dr. Carl Elliott, director of the Bioethics Center at the University of Minnesota, and Dmitry Bykov, a leading dissident and public intellectual in Russia, currently working in exile as a visiting critic at Cornell University, the release said.

Elliott, known for his work in research ethics and medical ethics, will present a lecture titled "Why They Blow the Whistle" at the Distinguished Keynote Address at 7 p.m. Friday, April 21, in Lecture Hall 1 of the Instructional Resources Center on campus.

Bykov will present the second keynote lecture, "The Fight of Myths: Putin vs. Zelensky," at 10:30 a.m. April 22, in the Craven Lounge of the Morris Conference Center on campus.

"To get keynote speakers of this caliber is amazing," Patrone said. Both speakers have a shared theme of standing up for what is right in the world even as they suffered consequences for those actions, he said.

Both lectures are free and open to members of the community.

The conference is organized by students on the Undergraduate Philosophy Conference committee, with support from the university's Philosophy Club, Student Association, Philosophy Department, Senate Committee on Public Events and Office of Global Education, the release said.