Being Responsible and Making Reparations: A Path to Repair of the Past

Our worlds, from global systems to the smallest details of our everyday lives, are shaped by events and systems of the past. Genocides, the transatlantic slave trade, longstanding discrimination and oppressions (targeting LGBTQIAP2+ people, disabled people, native and Indigenous peoples, and people of color in the United States) touch every aspect of life. These injustices influence national and international economic and government systems, transportation, housing, education, health care, farming, food production and distribution, as well as transforming the individual psychologies of wronged individuals and wrongdoers alike. Addressing the issues currently facing the United States and the world and healing the humans in this world requires repair of the past for its own sake as well as transformation of the present. In this talk, Prof. Susan Stark argues that the two dominant philosophical approaches to reparations — the backward-looking and the forward-looking approaches — each have important insights, but neither is sufficient on its own to explain why repair is required and how to accomplish it. A newer, structural, approach offers important advantages, but is also insufficient. In this talk, she argues that a hybrid of these three approaches is necessary. This talk also defends a new approach to addressing the temporal problem — the problem that for wrongs committed many generations ago, there appears to be no one in the present who either owes repair or is owed repair. Finally, the talk argues that the first step in making repair is to center the experiences of wronged and harmed individuals and communities, using examples of what this might mean. Susan Stark is Professor of Philosophy at Bates College. She researches and teaches in ethics and social philosophy, especially on issues related to gender and race. Her current project is focused on defending the possibility and moral necessity of making reparations for historic injustices. She also works on current issues in reproductive injustice, focusing on addressing the childbirth outcomes emergency facing Black and brown birth givers and all people who give birth in the United States.Lunch will be provided. Please RSVP to indicate your interest in attending the event. Seats are limited and will be given to the first guests to arrive.