Heather Cowherd
Videos
Freedom in Education: A Philosophical Critique of Current Educational Policies
Video, 1 hr & 6 mins
This video is a recording of the presentation I gave in Middle Tennessee State University’s Applied Philosophy Lyceum speakers series on November 17, 2023, in Murfreesboro, TN.
The talk is titled, “Freedom in Education: A Philosophical Critique of Current Educational Policies,” and the abstract for the presentation reads as follows:
Parents and guardians are naturally concerned about what their children are taught in schools. Some lament what they feel is a lack of control over curricula and what are thought to be forces or agendas that they believe are not in kids’ best interests. The arguments advanced in recent conflicts take two main forms. The first, advanced in similar fashion on opposing sides of issues concerning gender and early education, takes the form of arguments to “protect” children. The second, typically arising in discourse about desire for exclusion or selection of curricular messages or content, typically focuses on parents’ rights, in particular, to freedom of choice, whether regarding selection of schools, book banning, or inclusion or exclusion of desired or undesirable subject matters from curricula. In this talk, Dr. Weber will defend the importance of students’ and teachers’ freedom and challenge the overreach of dominant parental views that seek to silence the lived experiences and concerns of marginalized groups.
NOTE: At one point, I accidentally said “Transylvania State University,” which was intended to refer to Transylvania University, which is a private institution. This was an accidental case of misspeaking. The point was to contrast with state institutions, which was on my mind, and probably led me to use that word, “state,” resulting in the opposite of my intended meaning… My mistake!
Philosophical Research Methods: This talk was delivered in fall 2023, when I was teaching a course on Philosophical Research Methods in the University of Kentucky’s College of Education. I mention this because in this talk, I describe my methodology explicitly for the project beginning at minute 14 until minute 19. For those interested in that portion of the talk, you can jump to those minutes.
Dr. Phil Oliver
Thanks again! I am most grateful to Dr. Phil Oliver for organizing a wonderfully welcoming event, which featured a great turn out on a rainy Friday evening. I’m also grateful to the members of the MTSU department of Philosophy and Religion, as well as to Heather Gibbs, who kindly coordinated the details of my visit.
VIDEO: Freedom in Education for Diversity of Flourishing
This video was recorded at Vanderbilt University on October 15th, 2022, at the John and Shirley Lachs Conference on American Philosophy. My presentation was titled “Freedom in Education for Diversity of Flourishing.” Here’s the program for the conference. I am grateful to Vanderbilt University’s Philosophy Department for support for my participation in the conference and for permission to post the video.
Check out the nice promotional video that the local public television station made in Little Rock (UALR TV) for the recording of my talk at the Clinton School, which they aired. They added music and edited bits down into some representative moments. How cool? The music is great.
Of course the funny thing about sound bites is in examples in which an idea or a contrast is cut in half — when you explain what’s “on the one hand,” and then we don’t hear what’s “on the other hand.” I don’t think the edit misrepresented what I was talking about, fortunately. The promo still got to the heart of what I’m up to in Uniting Mississippi.
I’m learning the importance of planning a few key short statements of my points, which get called “soundbites.” That’s not foolish or superficial to think about, however. Plato’s Socrates often had long definitions of concepts, which he then boiled down into more succinct restatements. I see that. I also make an effort of that kind for my definition of good democratic leadership in the oh-so-cleverly titled Democracy and Leadership.
Anyway, check out this short, 1 min+ promo video. I’m new to this, so it’s still cool and exciting to me. The video of my full talk is here. Soon I’ll also have the audio from my local Little Rock NPR interview. Coming Soon…
If you want to know what a symbol means, you can learn a lot from who fights for it.
Students today called for taking down the Mississippi state flag from the center of campus at the University of Mississippi. In counter-protest, members of the League of the South came to defend the flag, with the emblem of the Confederate Battle Flag in its canton. The League of the South has been labelled a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. Six of the protesters also wore shirts with the logo of the International Keystone Knights of the Ku Klux Klan.
The silver lining of this protest is the fact that members of the campus community can see what is at stake and what priorities most strongly motivate defenders of the flag.
The saddest part to me today was the presence of their young children.
Orson Welles circa 1975.
Update: I had to link to another video on YouTube. The good news is that this one is captioned properly.
Philosopher Vince Evans today shared with me (and others on FB) this great video illustration of Plato’s allegory of the cave. It’s from 1973 and was narrated by Orson Welles, which is already very cool. It was illustrated with artwork by Dick Oden, according to the description posted on YouTube. If you’ve got 8 minutes, check it out.
This is perhaps the most influential allegory in the history of philosophy. You can read the original text of the allegory on the Internet Classics Archive. Book VII of the Republic opens with the allegory.
My Philosophy of Leadership course at the University of Mississippi focuses extensively on Plato’s Republic for the first third of the class. Plato had a great deal to say about the virtues of the soul, of the city, and of the kinds of people that his Socrates believed we need if we are to have a just society. For those who think that Plato is not the right thinker to inspire leaders in a democratic society, I suggest you read the interview that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. gave, in which he said that, not counting Scripture, his “desert island book” would be the Republic.
When is it my turn?!
In August of 2013, I participated in an interview with Swedish National TV News service, SVT Nyheter, on the subject of corporal punishment in Mississippi schools. If you click on the video here above, you’ll see their piece from the start. You can also jump to my interview, 2 min’s in (the rest of the piece is in Swedish). SVT’s news article is online in Swedish here. I’ve made an imperfect Google Translate version in English, which you can open as a PDF file here.
Extended version of ESPN’s 2010 Ole Miss Star Wars commercial
I’m finally getting around to posting videos that I’ve done or been in. This one is mainly cute, not a contribution to public philosophy…
It was fun to do. I come in around 3 minutes in, for the extended version of the ad, but my soundbite didn’t make the shorter version that aired on TV.
This commercial was of interest to ESPN, as they were covering the issue of sports fandom. At the University of Mississippi, we had not had a mascot for years, since the prior one was removed from the field, given his allusion to the plantation-owning Colonel in the Rebel army.
Presentation “On Culture and Self-Respect”
2013 Philosophy Born of Struggle conference, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN
This is the video of a short talk I gave at the 2013 Philosophy Born of Struggle conference at Purdue University in West LaFayette, IN. The talk is called “On Culture and Self-Respect,” and it represents an early stage in the development of my book in progress, called A Culture of Justice. I got some invaluable feedback at that conference that has helped to sharpen my thesis for this paper and for the book.
If you’re interested in having me come speak with your group, visit my Speaking page.