International Center for Ethics, Justice and Public Life

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View upcoming and past events from the Program in Creativity, the Arts, and Social Transformation (CAST). CAST is administered by the Ethics Center.

April 26, 2022

Present and Defend – Brandeis ENACT students advocate for Massachusetts legislation - Join us Tuesday, April 26, 2022 from 2:00-3:15 PM at Alumni Lounge in the Usdan Student Center at Brandeis University for “Present and Defend” and exercise your right to influence public policy! (This event will be in-person only.)

The students of the Brandeis University ENACT course “Advocacy for Policy Change” (LGLS 161b), will try to persuade you to vote for their bills, which are currently being considered by the Massachusetts State Legislature. Bill topics include sex education, drug policy, healthcare, access to menstrual products, plastic bag use, gender identity, universal school meals, immigrant rights, juvenile justice, homelessness, and mental health crisis care. "Advocacy for Policy Change" is a part of ENACT: The Educational Network for Active Civic Transformation, a national non-partisan program based at Brandeis.

Across the United States undergraduates in ENACT courses engage directly with their state legislatures. In 2022 ENACT completed its expansion to all 50 U.S. states:

For more information, email enact@brandeis.edu.

Richman Distinguished Fellowship Award Ceremony and Lecture
Wednesday, March 30, 2022
4 p.m., Rapaporte Treasure Hall, Goldfarb Library

Event Will be Livestreamed

Peter C. Frumhoff has been selected as the 2022 Richman Distinguished Fellow in Public Life. He will be in residence at Brandeis March 29 - 31, 2022. His award ceremony and lecture, hosted by Provost Carol Fierke, is open to all.

Despite decades of scientific evidence, increasing extreme weather and growing public concern over the climate crisis, global emissions of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases continue to rise. Will the 2020’s prove to be a decade of decisive and just climate action, or will further obstruction and delay consign future generations to an increasingly inhospitable climate future? This talk will discuss key opportunities for science-based advocacy and public engagement to drive policies needed to bend the arc of further emissions swiftly and equitably toward zero.

Frumhoff served through 2021 as the longtime chief climate scientist and the director of science and policy at the Union of Concerned Scientists. At UCS, he led strategies and initiatives to bring robust scientific expertise to bear on informing public understanding and motivating public policies; guided science, equity and innovation post-doctoral fellowships and served as senior liaison with the scientific community, policymakers and the media.

Frumhoff is currently on sabbatical at the Harvard University Center for the Environment where he is researching the scientific basis for climate litigation against fossil fuel companies and governments.

The Richman Fellowship is hosted by the Ethics Center on behalf of the Office of the President and Office of the Provost.

Additional open events during Dr. Frumhoff's residency at Brandeis

Monday, March 28
3:30-4:50 p.m., online "pre-event" - Zoom registration

Prof. Kristen Lucken's Sociology of Religion class will host Indigenous environmental activist, ethnobotanist and writer Rosalyn LaPier to speak on  "Indigenous Spiritual Landscapes and The Natural World."

Tuesday, March 29
12:30-1:50 p.m., Schwartz 112: Conservation Biology

Dr. Frumhoff visits Prof. Colleen Hitchcock's open class session. In this course, students are introduced to contemporary topics in the scientific study of the phenomena that affect the maintenance, loss, and restoration of biological diversity. Join us in person!

3:30-4:50 p.m., Mandel G-12: Atmospheric Civics and Diplomacy

Dr. Frumhoff visits Prof. Charles Chester's open class session. This course examines international approaches to the challenges of transboundary air pollution, stratospheric ozone depletion, and climate change. Join us in person!

5-6:20 p.m., Schiffman 217: Performing Climate Justice

Dr. Frumhoff visits Prof. Tom King's open class session. This course explores the capacity of performance to imagine alternative ways of being in relation to others and to our planet; to offer critique; to enable hope and inspire joy; to create home and community; and to offer an embodied ethics of care, compassion, and repair in a world that can seem increasingly uninhabitable. Join us in person!

Thursday, March 31
12:15-1:45 p.m., Heller G-002: Workshop and lunch with Dr. Frumhoff

Join students at the Heller School as they begin to construct and explore the Tree of Hope, a student-directed installation. During this workshop, they will explore the idea of maintaining hope in the face of climate change.

2-3:20 p.m., Olin-Sang 116: Advocacy for Policy Change

Dr. Frumhoff visits Prof. Melissa Stimell's open class session. This course teaches students about our democracy through active engagement in the state-level legislative process.  Students focus on a variety of topics, including the environment, health-care equity, homelessness, and immigration.

Join us in person or via Zoom: https://brandeis.zoom.us/j/92969022593

November 9, 2021- February 25, 2022
Kniznick Gallery

Curated by Dr. Toni Shapiro-Phim

• Artist, curator, and event participant bios
• Events - Upcoming January 24: Discussion with Polly Walker
• Resources
• The REDress Project at Brandeis

Water. Stone. Twigs. Bodies. The color red. These elements appear throughout Jaime Black’s exhibition, between us, honoring the interdependence between humankind and the natural and spiritual worlds. The artist, of mixed Anishinaabe and Finnish descent, focuses special attention on Indigenous women’s potency in all these realms as nurturers, as trust-builders, as knowledge-holders and knowledge-givers.

The photographs, video and poems on display tell stories alongside empty red dresses, which hang facing the four cardinal directions, dresses that, with their absence of bodies, allude to the thousands of Indigenous women and girls who have been missing or murdered across North America. Elsewhere on campus, clusters of such dresses will appear, a re-creation of Black’s renowned REDress Project, reminding us of the gendered and racialized violence experienced by Indigenous peoples in Canada and the United States. These dresses, along with Black's other work in the exhibition, ask us to consider ways to confront such injustice, while celebrating beauty, and reverencing women as the weavers of, as Black says, “the threads that bind and sustain us.”

Students in CAST 150b: Introduction to Creativity, the Arts, and Social Transformation have collaborated with Jaime Black, situating and contextualizing red dresses in specific campus locations. Read more about the REDress Project at Brandeis.

See all events associated with the exhibition.

Brandeis University is located on territories originally inhabited and stewarded by Indigenous Nipmuc, Pawtucket, and Massachusett peoples.

Kniznick Gallery exhibitions are made possible thanks to the generous support of Rosalie & Jim Shane, the Marcus Arts Endowment and the Rosenberg Arts Endowment. between us is sponsored by the Creativity, the Arts, and Social Transformation Program (CAST) and the Program in Peacebuilding and the Arts. Additional gratitude is offered to Dr. Elaine Reuben ’63, for her generous support, and to the Departments of Fine Arts and of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies for their co-sponsorship.