Skip to main content

Lecture Opportunity: “The Ethical Costs of Upward Mobility”

By October 15, 2018News, Inspiration

The philosophy department is hosting Jennifer Morton, of CUNY, as part of this year’s diversity lecture series. She is scheduled to give her talk on October 18, 5:30-7 pm in Town Hall, Leadership Studies.

Her talk will be of great interest to K-State First students and faculty. Here is the title and description of her talk:

“The Ethical Costs of Upward Mobility”

In this talk, I argue that there are ethical costs upwardly mobile students must bear if they are to dramatically transform their life circumstances. These costs affect their relationships with family and friends, their sense of cultural identity, and their place in their community and they are ethical in so far as they concern those aspects of life that give it value and meaning. Using social science evidence, I show how these costs are the result of a complex tangle of economic, cultural, and structural factors that unjustly and disproportionately affect disadvantaged students and their communities.  I suggest that we need to offer students a new ethical narrative of upward mobility that recognizes and acknowledges these ethical costs.

Best wishes,

Greg Eiselein

K-State First