Presenters

Twenty-Ninth Annual National Conference:
The Character of the University

Baylor University
Friday, October 18-Sunday, October 20

Featured Speakers

Talbot Brewer is professor of philosophy at the University of Virginia. He specializes in ethics and political philosophy, with particular attention to moral psychology and Aristotelian ethics. He has been a visiting professor in the Harvard University Philosophy Department and has been invited to present his work to audiences at a number of universities and professional conferences in North America, South America, Europe, China, and the Middle East. He is the author of numerous essays, including “Virtues We Can Share: A Reading of Aristotle’s Ethics” (Ethics), “Savoring Time: Desire, Pleasure and Wholehearted Activity” (Ethical Theory and Moral Practice), “Two Kinds of Commitments (And Two Kinds of Social Groups)” (Philosophy and Phenomenological Research), and “Maxims and Virtues” (The Philosophical Review). He has authored two books, the most recent of which is The Retrieval of Ethics (2009).

Thomas Hibbs is president and professor of philosophy at the University of Dallas. Hibbs has spent most of his career writing, teaching, and designing and implementing academic programs. From 2003–2019, President Hibbs served as dean of the Honors College and distinguished professor of ethics and culture at Baylor University. Previously, he was a tutor at Thomas Aquinas College for three years before moving to Boston College, where he taught for thirteen years as full professor and chair of the philosophy department. In addition to two books on film and a book co-authored with contemporary painter Makoto Fujimura, President Hibbs has written three books on Thomas Aquinas: Dialectic and Narrative in Aquinas: An Interpretation of the Summa Contra Gentiles (1995); Virtue’s Splendor: Wisdom, Prudence, and the Human Good (2001); and Aquinas, Ethics, and Philosophy of Religion: Metaphysics and Practice (2007). He has over thirty published academic articles and has written dozens of essays for publications such as National Review, First Things, The Chronicle of Higher Education, and The Weekly Standard.

Elizabeth Newman was professor of theology and ethics at the Baptist Theological Seminary at Richmond (2002-2019) after serving on the faculty at Saint Mary’s College, Notre Dame, Indiana, for twelve years. She is the author of Untamed Hospitality: Welcoming God and Other Strangers (2007); Attending the Wounds on Christ’s Body: Teresa’s Scriptural Vision (2012); and Divine Abundance: Leisure, the Basis of Academic Culture (2018). She is co-chair for the Baptist World Alliance Commission on Doctrine and Christian Unity and a participant in the Baptist World Alliance Conversations with the Pontifical Council for Christian Unity (2017-2022). She is an associate member of Epworth UMC, where her husband pastors.

Francis Edward Su is the Benediktsson-Karwa Professor of Mathematics at Harvey Mudd College, and past president of the Mathematical Association of America. He received his B.S. in Mathematics from the University of Texas at Austin and his Ph.D. from Harvard University. His research is in geometric combinatorics and applications to the social sciences and he has co-authored numerous papers with undergraduates. He also has a passion for teaching and popularizing mathematics. From the Mathematical Association of America, he received the 2018 Halmos-Ford award for writing, and the 2013 Haimo Award for distinguished teaching. He authors the popular Math Fun Facts website and is creator of "MathFeed," the math news app. His hobbies include songwriting, gardening, photography, and theology. Just like mathematics, these are modes of creative expression that blend structure and freedom, truth and beauty, reflection and action. His book Mathematics for Human Flourishing will be published by Yale University Press in 2019.

Candace Vogler is the David B. and Clara E. Stern Professor of Philosophy at the University of Chicago. She also currently serves as the Chair of Virtue Theory for the Jubilee Center for Character and Virtues at the University of Birmingham in the United Kingdom and was named a Fellow of the Royal Institute of Philosophy (May 2018–May 2021). From 2000–2007, she served as co-director of the Master of Arts Program in the Humanities. Her research interests include virtue ethics, social and political philosophy, cultural studies, and philosophy and literature. In 2015, she received a major Templeton Foundation grant for her project, “Virtue, Happiness, and the Meaning of Life.” The project brings together philosophers, social scientists, and religious thinkers to examine the role of self-transcendence and self-transcendent goods in meaningful lives. Her books include John Stuart Mill’s Deliberative Landscape: An Essay in Moral Psychology (2001), a co-edited volume The Critical Limits of Embodiment: Reflections on Disability Criticism (2001), and Reasonably Vicious (2002). She presently is writing a book on the philosophy of G. E. M. Anscombe.