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Overpopulation, climate change, water pollution, habitat destruction – these are among the greatest challenges we face today. All cause significant harm to our world, but no one person is doing much damage on their own. The most effective way to mitigate these harms, however, may be through limiting the personal liberty individuals currently enjoy.

So will argue scholar Sarah Conly in an upcoming lecture at the University of New England’s Center for Global Humanities titled “Personal Liberty in the Contemporary World.” The lecture will take place on Monday, January 28 at 6:00 p.m. at the WCHP Lecture Hall in Parker Pavilion on the ɫ����Ƶ Portland Campus.       

Conly will argue that our ideas about personal liberty need to change as we confront a world where circumstances have changed, even when it comes to essential things like unlimited childbearing. She will focus on the specific case of overpopulation and on how limiting couples to one child would help alleviate the problem, but her reasoning will also apply to many other global challenges.

Conly, who chairs the Philosophy Department at Bowdoin College, will draw from her 2015 book One Child: Do We Have a Right to More? She is also the author of the 2012 book Against Autonomy: Justifying Coercive Paternalism, and of articles that have appeared in the New York Times, the Boston Globe, and other popular and scholarly publications. She earned her B.A. in philosophy at Princeton University and her M.A. and Ph.D. at Cornell University.

This will be the seventh lecture of the 2018-2019 series at the Center for Global Humanities, where events are always free, open to the public, and streamed live online. For more information, please visit: /calendar/2019/personal-liberty-contemporary-world