Paul Hammond Memorial Lecture
The Paul Hammond Memorial Lecture, in honor of the late Paul Hammond, brings a speaker for a talk at the Jesup that explores philosophy for a lay audience. Hammond, the son of Debby and Scott Hammond, grew up on MDI and was a professor of philosophy who passed away in 2015. He was passionate about discussing ideas and current events, as well as promoting well-reasoned and logical arguments and debate.
2023 —“The Thought of Paul Hammond” with Dr. Mary Beth Mader, PhD — See a Recording Here
Dr. Mary Beth Mader, PhD, is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Memphis and had the honor of directing Paul Hammond’s 2014 doctoral dissertation. She is a specialist in contemporary European philosophy.
2022—“From a Smarter Planet to a Wiser Earth: A Quaker Philosopher’s Experiments in Moving Out of the Ivory Tower” —See a Recording Here
Gray Cox teaches in philosophy, peace studies, language learning and artificial intelligence as part of College of the Atlantic’s program in Human Ecology. He has been long involved in the development of international studies and languages at COA and led a number of study abroad programs in Mexico and France. He has written a wide variety of papers and three books: The Ways of Peace: A Philosophy of Peace as Action (1986); The Will at the Crossroads: A Reconstruction of Kant’s Moral Philosophy (1983); A Quaker Approach to Research: Collaborative Practice and Communal Discernment (2014. A fourth, From a Smarter Planet to a Wiser Earth: Artificial Intelligence and Collaborative Wisdom will be published in 2022. He was Principal Investigator on an NSF funded project in sustainability studies dealing with: “Modern Consumer Families and Self-Reliant, Maine Yankees: Two Cultures of Residential Heating”. In recent years his research and conference presentations have focused on the intersections between trends in artificial intelligence, the Singularity, Gandhian satyagraha, national security, and developments in conflict resolution approaches to ethics and social change. He is a long term member of Acadia Friends Meeting and is also a cofounder and the current Clerk of the Quaker Institute for the Future. He is a singer/songwriter who plays guitar, bones a little clarinet and has done several albums of original music in English, Spanish and French (https://graycox.bandcamp.com). His studies included a B.A. at Wesleyan University, 1974, and an M. A. and Ph.D. in Philosophy, at Vanderbilt University, 1981. He grew up in Bar Harbor and got his start in philosophy as a member of the Philosophy of Education Committee for the newly formed Mount Desert Island Regional High School in 1968-1970.
2021—Paul Hammond Memorial Lecture "How To Do Philosophy Right Now" with James Gilmore —See a Recording Here
James Gilmore is a Mt. Desert Island native. He earned a PhD in Philosophy from The Johns Hopkins University in 2013 for his dissertation entitled ‘Intrinsic Goods and Their Role in The Good Life in Plato’, and a BA in Philosophy and Comparative Literature from St. John’s College, Annapolis in 2002. In 2007 Dr. Gilmore was a Summer Member at The American School of Classical Studies at Athens, where he was a Leon Gilbert Barnhart Fellow. Since 2013 Dr. Gilmore has worked as a professional musician in North Carolina, where he leads a jazz trio under his own name. Their debut recording Decorating Time was released in September 2021 on Ears & Eyes Records.
2019 – Dr. Joshua Schwartz: Philosophy’s Division within Itself: Analytic and Interpretive Traditions”
2018 – Jasmine Wallace: “How’s Your Momma?: How Kinship Shapes Identity”
2017 – Dr. Michael D. Burroughs: “Paul, Pluralism, and Public Philosophy: Reflecting on Philosophical Possibilities”
