The Center for Ethics and Human Values' Conversations on Morality, Politics, and Society (COMPAS) will focus its 2013-14 program on the distinction between Public/Private. This yearlong program will reach across a range of academic disciplines at Ohio State and will include conferences, seminars, colloquia, and community events.

“How we define what is private and what is public raises fascinating questions—about the meaning and value of privacy, the individual’s responsibility to others in the community and the community’s responsibilities to the individual,” said Don Hubin, faculty emeritus, philosophy and director of COMPAS. “But these are not merely ‘academic’ issues. How we answer these questions affects the nature of our lives and how we experience our relationship to others.”

The yearlong Public/Private program will reach across a range of academic disciplines at Ohio State and will include conferences, a film series, author and visiting scholars, seminars, and community events.

The Public/Private Fall Conference takes place October 3 and 4 and features keynote speaker Cass Sunstein, the Robert Walmsley University Professor and the Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law at Harvard Law School and former administrator for the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs.

Sunstein is author of numerous articles and books, including Republic.com (2001), Risk and Reason (2002), Laws of Fear: Beyond the Precautionary Principle (2005), Worst-Case Scenarios (2007), Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth, and Happiness (with Richard H. Thaler, 2008), and Simpler: the Future of Government (2013).

Sunstein's talk will take place on October 4 at 2 pm in the US Bank Theatre, Ohio Union. His talk is supported in part by the Moritz College of Law.

As part of the autumn conference, the Humanities Institute is presenting Ezekiel Emanuel, vice provost for global initiatives and chair of the Department of Medical Ethics and Health Policy at the University of Pennsylvania and former special advisor on health policy and the Affordable Care Act for the director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, for a discussion on health care reform and the future of American medicine.

From 2009 to 2011, Emanuel was a special advisor for health policy to the White House Office of Management and Budget. As one of the most prominent voices advising the White House about healthcare, he had a signifi­cant impact on federal healthcare budgets and the Affordable Care Act. Professor Emanuel is the author of Healthcare, Guaranteed: A Simple, Secure Solution for America (Public Affairs 2008) and The Brothers Emanuel (Random House 2013), a memoir about brothers Rahm, mayor of Chicago and former White House Chief of Staff, and Ari, a Hollywood superagent.

Emanuel will talk on October 3 at 6 pm in 106 Meiling Hall, 370 West 9th Avenue.

“The Public/Private program will bring together many of Ohio State’s best scholars engaging related topics in their fields but the goal is for them to present their ideas in a way that folks outside of the academic area can understand,” said Mike Neblo, associate professor of political science and COMPAS organizer.

A multidisciplinary conference on the possibilities for new enterprises grounded on “big data” to improve economic, social, and political life is planned for March 2014.

Subscribe to the 2013-14 Public/Private Newsletter

For a complete schedule of events and more information visit the COMPAS website.