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K-State Today

October 3, 2018

Philosophy department to host CUNY's Jennifer Morton for diversity lecture series

Submitted by Teresa Zerbe

The philosophy department will host Jennifer Morton, City University of New York, as part of this year's diversity lecture series.

Morton will present "The Ethical Costs of Upward Mobility" from 5:30-7 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 18, in Town Hall at the Leadership Studies Building. 

The department encourages majors, particularly those who are first-generation students or interested in upward mobility, to attend. 

In the talk, Morton will argue that there are ethical costs upwardly mobile students must bear if they are to dramatically transform their life circumstances. These costs affect their relationships with family and friends, their sense of cultural identity, and their place in their community and they are ethical in so far as they concern those aspects of life that give it value and meaning. Using social science evidence, Morton shows how these costs are the result of a complex tangle of economic, cultural, and structural factors that unjustly and disproportionately affect disadvantaged students and their communities. Morton suggests that we need to offer students a new ethical narrative of upward mobility that recognizes and acknowledges these ethical costs.