Summer Seminars

2025 Faculty Summer Seminars: Teaching Civil Discourse in a Polarized Time

Instructors: John Rose (UNC-Chapel Hill), Abdullah Antepli (Duke), and Simon Greer (Bridging the Gap)

Dates: July 15th-16th and August 5th-6th

Call for Applications

We are pleased to announce a call for applications for the fourth annual faculty summer seminar, “Teaching Civil Discourse in the Classroom,” made possible by a generous grant from The Arthur Vining Davis Foundations, and co-sponsored by UNC’s Program for Public Discourse and Duke’s Civil Discourse Project. The 2023 seminar was a great success and the 2022 seminar was featured in The Chronicle of Higher Education.

Each seminar will be comprised of a group of 20 faculty from a variety of schools and backgrounds. The seminar will be led by Prof. John Rose (UNC-Chapel Hill), Abdullah Antepli (Duke), and Simon Greer (Bridging the Gap), and John Rose. It will cover topics including potential course content and best practices for effectively promoting civil discussion over sensitive topics in the classroom and will help prepare professors to teach a course based on Dr. Rose’s own popular class at Duke/UNC, “How to Think in an Age of Political Polarization” (HTAPP). Special attention will be paid to the case study of facilitating civil discourse on the subject of the Israel-Palestine conflict, a topic on which the facilitators have experience.

The seminar will be free of charge with food, lodging, and flights covered. Participants will stay at the beautiful Carolina Inn on UNC’s campus. In addition, participants will receive a stipend of $3,000 ($2,000 upon completion of the seminar and $1,000 upon teaching a class with a civil discourse component at their own institution).

In order to participate, applicants must agree to teach a course similar to HTAPP, or a course with a significant civil discourse component, within three semesters of finishing the seminar. Successful applicants will need to acquire written approval from their department chair or dean allowing them to teach such a course within that timeframe.

Applications will be handled on a rolling basis, with preference given to applications received before June 15th. Materials can be emailed to Prof. Nora Hanagan (hanagan@email.unc.edu) or to john.rose2@unc.edu. You should include the following attachments.

1) CV/Resume

2) 1-2 page statement explaining one’s interest in the seminar

3) Any other relevant documentation, including relevant course syllabi, publications, etc.

In your application, please indicate whether you are applying to the July or August seminar. If you have any questions, feel free to email Prof. Hanagan or Prof. Rose.

Medical Ethics Summer Seminar

Instructors: Farr Curlin, MD (Duke) and Christopher Tollefsen, PhD (University of South Carolina)

Dates: June 10–13, 2025

Applications are no longer being accepted 

Apply now to participate in the 2025 Medical Ethics Summer Seminar sponsored by the Civil Discourse Project at Duke University. This seminar is designed for physicians-in-training and is open also to nurses and other health professions students.

The seminar invites students to examine the central ethical questions that arise in the everyday practice of medicine and to interpret those questions through a moral framework drawing from both natural law and medicine’s traditional orientation toward the patient’s health. This framework will be contrasted with principlism and consequentialism as participants consider what sort of practice medicine is, whether it has a rational end or goal, and how medicine contributes to human flourishing.

The seminar also will consider clinical cases to examine ethical concerns that arise perennially in the practice of medicine, including: the nature of the clinician-patient relationship; the limits of medicine, the meaning of autonomy, the place of conscience in the physician’s work, the difference between an intended effect and a side effect, proportionality, human dignity, sexuality and reproduction, the beginning of life, disability, end-of-life care, and death. The seminar aims to equip participants with intellectual tools that can help them discern how to practice medicine well in the face of medicine’s clinical challenges and moral complexities.

Participants’ only cost is getting themselves to Durham, NC, arriving by the end of the day on June 10 to check in to housing provided in the Duke dormitories. The seminars run over two full days, from the morning of June 11 through the afternoon of June 13. Participants will check out on the morning of June 13. All other costs of the seminar are covered by the Civil Discourse Project through the generosity of its supporters.

Schedule:

June 10 – Arrive to Duke
June 11 – All-Day Seminar
June 12 – All-Day Seminar
June 13 – Half-Day Seminar (ending at noon); depart Duke

This seminar is open to rising and current medical students or residents, as well as other health professions students. We encourage those interested to apply early, as applications are accepted on a rolling basis, and the seminar is limited to 22 participants.

All applicants must submit the following via e-mail to Troy Kassien at troy.kassien@duke.edu with the subject line “Application – 2025 Medical Ethics Summer Seminar”:

1) CV or resume, including your nationality

2) A one-page cover letter discussing the reasons for your interest in the seminar and an overview of any relevant experience in the seminar’s topic. Please tell us how you found out about the seminar.