Quench your thirst—for knowledge and for beer—at Ideas on Tap, the Museum of Natural and Cultural History's monthly pub talk. This month, join Courtney Cox, assistant professor of race and sport at the University of Oregon, for a look at the sports industry's use of quantitative data to predict and enhance athletic performance—and explore what it all means for athletes, from the weekend warrior to the Golden State Warriors. 

Between 1949 and 1966, at least 4,713 Japanese students, of whom 651 were women, studied at American graduate schools. They were supported by the best-known fellowships at the time—the GARIOA (Government Account for Relief in Occupied Areas, 1949-1951), administered by the US Army, and Fulbright (in Japan since 1952). These young scholars were among the first people to travel abroad after World War II. They arrived bearing the burdens of the past, while possessing an openness to the future. They came to study in a land that had interned around 120,000 Japanese Americans during the war, but they persevered and were among the first women in the world who earned graduate degrees. At a time when being a housewife was held up as a middle-class ideal, many became professors, university chancellors, librarians, and translators. Others became leaders in medicine, journalism, athletics, and other male-dominated professions. Alisa Freedman recovers the forgotten history of mothers of academic fields in the humanities who transformed the roles women could play in education and the workforce.

Alisa Freedman is a Professor of Japanese Literature and Film at the University of Oregon. Much of her interdisciplinary work investigates how the modern urban experience has shaped human subjectivity, cultural production, and gender roles. She is a 2019–20 OHC Faculty Research Fellow.

Paul Root Wolpe asks, How do we teach morals to a machine? 

Artificial intelligence has proven that machines are good at learning facts, strategies, tactics. But can they learn values, have empathy, develop intuitions, have compassion? Machines can clearly learn, but can they undergo moral development or make ethical decisions?

Jewish ethicist Paul Root Wolpe will give the Oregon Humanities Center’s 2019–20 Tzedek Lecture, titled “Deep Ethics in the Age of the Algorithm”.

Wolpe will discuss deep machine learning, deep surveillance, deep facial recognition. Thomas Friedman called “deep” the word of 2019. The word reveals the role of complexity in our modern technological understanding of the world; complexity used to be a problem, now it is a resource. And that complexity means that often we cannot wait for an outcome before we make an ethical judgement; ethics will have to be built into the complex algorithms that will decide who will get resources, who will get arrested, and, famously, who the automated car will crash into. In an age of deep machine learning we will need a deep ethics to keep pace. It is time to ask: what will that ethics look like?

Paul Root Wolpe is the Raymond F. Schinazi Distinguished Research Chair in Jewish Bioethics and the Director of the Center for Ethics at Emory University, where he is a Professor in the Departments of Medicine, Pediatrics, Psychiatry, and Sociology. 

Wolpe’s work focuses on the social, religious, ethical, and ideological impact of medicine and technology on the human condition. His teaching and publications range across multiple fields of bioethics and sociology, including death and dying, genetics and eugenics, sexuality and gender, mental health and illness, alternative medicine, and bioethics in extreme environments such as space. He also writes and talks about the Jewish contribution to thinking about the ethical aspects of medicine and technology.

Wolpe, a member of Atlanta’s Congregation Shearith Israel, participates in Scientists in Synagogues—a program that explores interesting and pressing questions surrounding Judaism and science. He is the son of the late Rabbi Gerald I. Wolpe, one of the great figures in American Jewish life, and brother of Rabbi David Wolpe, the Max Webb Senior Rabbi of Sinai Temple in Los Angeles.

Wolpe spent 15 years as Senior Bioethicist for NASA, where he still serves as a bioethical consultant. He is the Editor-in-Chief of the American Journal of Bioethics Neuroscience. He is a past President of the American Society for Bioethics and Humanities; the current President of the Association of Bioethics Program Directors; and served as the first National Bioethics Advisor to Planned Parenthood Federation of America.

Wolpe’s talk is free and open the public. For disability accommodations (which must be requested by May 7), contact ohc@uoregon.edu or 541-346-3934.

The Tenth Annual Undergraduate Research Symposium will be held on Thursday, May 21, 2020.

The University of Oregon defines undergraduate research broadly and includes students from all disciplines. Undergraduate students all over campus are engaged in original projects, mentored research, creative work, entrepreneurial presentations, consulting pitches, portfolios, and community-based projects. UO students have big questions and are working on finding and making answers.

Whether you are presenting, attending, mentoring, or supporting your peers, we look forward to seeing you at the symposium.

Last year over 75 majors, 21 minors, and eight colleges were represented by students from every undergraduate class in the Erb Memorial Union and Science Library Visualization Lab for a day of oral and poster presentations, performance art, Academic Residential Community presentations and quick chats telling the stories behind the data students are gathering and working with. This year will welcome new presenters and mentors for the biggest symposium yet.