Personal Responsibility & The Common Good: Our Liberal Arts Education and the Social
Teaching of the Church
Consider personal responsibility and the common good alongside professors from various disciplines
at the Braniff Graduate School as they comment on and then lead a discussion of how
their disciplines help us to understand this important topic.
About the Salon
As a point of departure in discussing the relationship of our liberal arts education
to personal responsibility and the common good, we will consider the social teaching
of the Catholic Church, for, as is manifest in its Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church, published in 2005, no other institution has as comprehensive an approach to personal
responsibility and the common good. Such teaching is, indeed, only a point of departure,
for one can question its sufficiency and must question how it is best put into practice.
With this in mind, each professor is asked to consider the question of personal responsibility
and the common good from the vantage point of what she or he has learned from her
or his own discipline so that in our discussion their insights may be placed in dialogue
with the Christian teaching.
Friday, November 4, 2016 Location: University of Dallas Art History Auditorium
6:00 p.m. | Reception
Socialize with Braniff Graduate School faculty, staff, students and alumni. Light
appetizers and drinks will be served prior to the panel discussion.
7:00 p.m. | Panel Discussion
Discuss with a panel of Braniff Graduate School faculty the relationship of our liberal
arts education to Catholic social teaching.
8:30 p.m. | Continued Conversation
Stay to enjoy coffee, dessert and discussion as long as drinks and social energy last.
The Panelists:
Jonathan J. Sanford, Ph.D., Dean of Constantin College
Irene Alexander, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Theology
Aida Ramos, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Economics
Richard Dougherty, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Politics
Gregory Roper, Ph.D., Associate Professor of EnglishChair, English Department
In our current condition, with most of the U.S. sheltering in place and/or learning and working from our homes, it's hard to imagine that just 20 days ago, teachers and those aspiring to be teachers gathered together for the fourth annual Excellence in Education conference at the University of Dallas, organized, run and sponsored by UD's Education Department, but so they did, and so we will all do -- gather together, that is -- some day again.
Many of you have reached out to ask what you can do to help, and I am grateful for your generosity. In response, I have created the COVID-19 Emergency Relief Fund to immediately help UD students in this rapidly evolving situation.
As we find ourselves deprived of many things that we had taken for granted, we turn to Christ, who was stripped of everything: physical safety, companionship, worldly honor, even his clothing, and ultimately of life itself.
