Menard Family George Washington Forum hosts ‘The Culture Wars: A Discussion’ on Oct. 20 – Ohio University

The Menard Family George Washington Forum will host “The Culture Wars: A Discussion” at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 20, in Galbreath Chapel on College Green.

“Abortion, funding for the arts, women’s rights, gay rights, court-packing – the list of controversies that divide our nation runs long and each one cuts deep.” These words from James Davison Hunter‘s website for his 1991 book Culture Wars: The Struggle to Define America still describe an ever-deepening cultural divide in America, notes Robert Ingram, director of the forum and professor of history in the College of Arts and Sciences at Ohio University.

In his latest book, Science and the Good: The Tragic Quest for the Foundations of Morality, Hunter examines the movement to create a scientific basis for morality. “These are questions of science and morality that philosophers have been asking since at least the 16th century to try to explain how scientific knowledge, morality, and religious belief coexist,” Ingram said.

Hunter is LaBrosse-Levinson Distinguished Professor of Religion, Culture and Social Theory at the University of Virginia and executive director of the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture. He also served on the National Council of the National Endowment for the Humanities. He is the author of nine dozen books, including The Death of Character: Moral Character in an Age without Good or Evil (2000).

“Our other speaker, Wesley Yang uses a podcast and essays to ‘describe the ideological fever that overtook the governing and chattering classes in America during the Trump years,’ as he describes his substack,” Ingram said. “He uses his platform as a cultural critic to explore the history of the social justice movement as well as possible consequences of its implementation.”

Yang’s most recent book, The Souls of Yellow Folk (2018), takes aim at race and politics. He has written extensively about identity politics and the “successor ideology.” Yang writes a regular column for Tablet magazine and is a contributor editor to Esquire.