Plenaries and KML for AME2024
Interpretation, Imagination, and Moral Education
Michelle Moody-Adams
kohlberg memorial lecturer
Friday, October 25, 9:00-10:30am
Michele Moody-Adams is Joseph Straus Professor of Political Philosophy and Legal Theory at Columbia University, where she served as Dean of Columbia College and Vice President for Undergraduate Education from 2009-2011. Before Columbia, she taught at Cornell University, where she was Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education and Director of the Program on Ethics and Public Life. She has also taught at Wellesley College, the University of Rochester, and Indiana University, where she served as Associate Dean for Undergraduate Education.
She has published on equality and social justice, moral psychology and the virtues, moral objectivity and moral relativism, and the philosophical implications of gender and race. She is the author of Making Space for Justice: Social Movements, Collective Imagination and Political Hope, published in 2022. She is also the author of a widely cited book on moral relativism, Fieldwork in Familiar Places: Morality, Culture and Philosophy, and a co-author on the multi-author work Against Happiness (May 2023). Her current work also includes articles on academic freedom, equal educational opportunity, democratic disagreement, and what constitutes an epistemically and morally defensible understanding of history. She is currently working on a book length-project on Reclaiming the Idea of ‘the Human,’ and book entitled Renewing Democracy. A special focus of her work on democracy is the connection between democracy and the civic art and architecture of remembrance.
Moody-Adams has a B.A. from Wellesley College, a second B.A. from Oxford University, and earned the M.A. and Ph.D. in Philosophy from Harvard University. She has been a British Marshall Scholar, a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellow, and is a lifetime Honorary Fellow of Somerville College, Oxford. She is also a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
What Boys and Young Men Teach us about the Cultural Roots of Depression, Loneliness, Suicide, and Violence and How to Prevent Them.
Niobe Way
keynote address
Thursday, October 24, 9:00-10:30AM
Niobe Way is Professor of Developmental Psychology at NYU, the founder of the Project for the Advancement of Our Common Humanity (PACH; pach.org), creative advisor of agapi and the PI on the Listening Project. She was the President of the Society for Research on Adolescence, received her B.A. from U.C. Berkeley, and her doctoral degree from Harvard, and was an NIMH postdoctoral fellow at Yale in the psychology department.
Her work focuses on social and emotional development, how cultural ideologies shape families and child development in the U.S. and China, and how to build a more just and humane world. The Listening Project (LP) is a school-based curriculum that was created to address the global crisis of connection (i.e., loneliness, depression, anxiety, suicide, hate crimes, mass violence) by fostering the practice of listening with curiosity in schools, workplaces, and homes. As a professor, she teaches the "The Science of Human Connection,” "Transformative Interviewing," and "Culture, Context, and Psychology." Her work integrates her theoretical, empirical, and applied work developed over three decades on the intersections of culture, context, human development, and well-being.
Niobe is the author or co-author of nearly a hundred journal articles and books. Her co-edited book is The Crisis of Connection: Its Roots, Consequences, and Solution (NYU Press). She also wrote Deep Secrets: Boys’ Friendships and the Crisis of Connection (Harvard University Press), which was the inspiration for "Close", a movie that won the Grand Prix Award at Cannes Film Festival and was nominated for an Oscar for best foreign film. She authored Rebels with a Cause: Reimagining Boys, Ourselves, and Our Culture and has a new book in progress with Harvard University Press titled The Culture/Nature Clash and Its Violent Consequences.
Real Children, Real Issues: Sesame Street on Supporting Children in Migrant and Refugee Communities, and Racial Justice Education
Kimberly Foulds
Featured panel speaker
Saturday, October 26, 8:30-10:00AM
Kim Foulds is the Vice President, Content Research & Evaluation at Sesame Workshop, the media and education nonprofit organization behind Sesame Street. She oversees research and evaluation on Sesame Workshop’s co-productions and community engagement interventions around the world. Embedding research activities throughout the lifecycle of Sesame’s projects and working with research institutions to evaluate efficacy, Kim uses learning science to translate data and provide guidance to maximize the impact of Sesame’s global programming.
In addition to overseeing the research that informs Sesame Street and Sesame Street in Communities resources for parents and providers in the United States, Kim has led in developing and managing the research agenda for Sesame’s initiatives to support children affected by the Syrian refugee crisis in the Middle East and the Rohingya crisis in Bangladesh. Kim holds a Ph.D. in Education and M.A. in African Studies from UCLA and a B.A. in Diplomacy and World Affairs from Occidental College.
Antonio Freitas
featured panel speaker
saturday, October 26, 8:30-10:00AM
Antonio Freitas is the Senior Director of Educational Experiences within the Research, Education, Data and Impact team for the Sesame Workshop. Here, he works to build content for Sesame Street in Communities and Sesame Street for Military Families and professionally trains caregivers and providers on ways to implement these resources in their work with children. Antonio has worked to create, implement, and refine professional development programs for Early Childhood educators at national, city, and organizational levels for over 20 years as a classroom teacher, program director, and company deputy. He also works as an adjunct professor within the Teacher Education Department of the Borough of Manhattan Community College. Antonio holds a Bachelors of Social Work from Seattle University and a Master’s in the Science of Teaching from Pace University.