At its meeting this year at Oberlin College (July 13-17), the Society for Values in Higher Education will be hosting the International Young Philosophers Roundtable—an organization recently created by the School of Philosophy at Wuhan University (China). The roundtable will be composed of 4-6 Chinese scholars and 4-6 Western scholars writing on the following topics in the broader area of Public Discourse:

1. Public Discourse and Civil Society

2. Disagreement

3. Relativism

4. Pluralism

5. Culture and Public Discourse

6. Religion and Public Discourse

7. Public Discourse in Chinese Philosophy

8. Public Discourse Across Cultures

9. Public Discourse and Cultural Psychology 

Scholars chosen for this symposium will submit papers by JUNE 1, allowing other participants to read them well in advance of the meeting. At the meeting, papers will be discussed and revised in order to prepare them for possible publication in a special issue of Soundings: An Interdisciplinary Journal. All participants are responsible for travel to Oberlin and room and board (costs approximately $550-650 for room and three meals per day). The registration fee for the conference ($200+), however, will be waived.

The topics listed were chosen to fit with the theme of this year’s SVHE meeting (The Politics of Dissent: Satire, Sarcasm, and Spite in Civil Society). If you know of anyone who might be interested in this symposium, please forward this e-mail to them. Inquiries should be directed to Eric Bain-Selbo (bain-selbo@svhe.org). There is no formal application process. Interested scholars simply need to contact Eric Bain-Selbo and provide a brief abstract of the paper they would submit.