Three Keynote speakers have been confirmed for the conference:

• Harry Brighouse (Professor of Philosophy, University of Wisconsin-Madison) (Presenting in person)

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• Harry Brighouse is a philosopher whose work focuses on justice, education, and the ethical purposes of social institutions. He is currently Professor of Philosophy at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and a leading figure in contemporary philosophy of education.

  Brighouse is the author or co‑author of numerous influential books on education and justice, including On Education (2006), Educational Equality (2006, with Adam Swift), School Choice and Social Justice (2000), and Family Values (2014, with Adam Swift). He co-edited The Aims of Higher Education: Problems of Morality and Justice (University of Chicago Press, 2015) with Michael McPherson, which won the 2017 Federic W Ness Award for the book contributing to our understanding of liberal education from the Association of American Colleges and Universities.  His work examines the moral aims of education, the responsibilities of educational institutions, and the balance between individual freedom, equality, and the public good. Across his scholarship, Brighouse argues that questions about schooling and higher education cannot be separated from broader ethical questions about justice, citizenship, and human flourishing.

  Based on our email exchange, Brighouse is planning to speak on the purposes of the university.

• Liz Jackson (Professor of Education at the University of Hong Kong) (Presenting by Zoom)

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• Liz Jackson is a philosopher of education whose research addresses ethics, moral formation, and higher education as an institutional and cultural practice. She is Associate Professor in the Faculty of Education at the University of Hong Kong.

  Jackson’s work explores how universities shape moral agency, emotions, and ethical reasoning in increasingly pluralistic and global contexts. She is the author of Beyond Virtue: The Politics of Educating Emotions (2020), which examines the ethical and political dimensions of moral education, and a co‑editor of The Ethical Academy: The University as an Ethical System (2022), an edited volume that conceptualizes universities as complex moral institutions rather than value‑neutral knowledge factories. She also wrote ““Beyond Western Ideals: Academic freedom, capabilities, and social knowledge,” published in Academic Freedom in Higher Education: Core Value or Elite Privilege? (2024).  Her scholarship brings together ethical theory, philosophy of education, and international perspectives on higher education, making her work especially relevant to questions about the moral purposes and responsibilities of universities today.

  Based on our email exchange, Jackson is planning to speak on a blending of the topic of academic freedom with how professors are considered as moral actors in non-western contexts more often than in western contexts.

• Danielle Allen (Professor at Harvard University) (Presenting by Zoom)

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• Danielle Allen is a political philosopher and classicist whose work centers on democracy, citizenship, and the role of civic and educational institutions in sustaining democratic life. She is the James Bryant Conant University Professor at Harvard University and a former Director of Harvard’s Edmond & Lily Safra Center for Ethics.

  Allen is the author of several landmark books, including Talking to Strangers (2004), Our Declaration (2014), Education and Equality (2016), and Democracy in the Time of Coronavirus (2022). Her work examines how trust, political equality, and moral commitment are cultivated—or undermined—through institutions such as schools and universities. Allen has written extensively on the ethical role of higher education in democratic societies, arguing that universities are central sites for civic formation, shared inquiry, and the development of democratic competence. Her scholarship bridges political philosophy, ethics, and public policy, with sustained attention to the moral responsibilities of educational institutions.