Video / Audio  Max Hayward

Max Hayward is a PhD student in Philosophy at Columbia University and the Public Humanities Fellow at the Heyman Center for the Humanities. Having seen first-hand the transformational power of education, and of philosophy in particular, he is committed to bringing the humanities to as wide an audience as possible. To this end, he has helped to found a project that runs discussion groups on philosophy that bring together Columbia graduate students with young parolees in Harlem, in co-operation with the Harlem Justice Community Program. During the Fellowship, Max worked on expanding this project.

Max Hayward, Public Humanities Fellow at the Heyman Center for the Humanities, will present a discussion on the conception and implementation of Rethink, a philosophy community outreach program that runs philosophical talks with court-involved youth in Harlem. Hayward's focus is two-fold: First, he seeks to explore what it is that philosophical thinking has to offer a wider public, and what role philosophy as a discipline has to play in pressing issues such as those that confront participants in Rethink. Secondly, Hayward aims to suggest ways in which public engagement can be an enriching resource for philosophy, and present a particular conception of one subfield of philosophy--ethics--according to which public engagement is an indispensable epistemological tool.