Kwame Appiah Delivers Jacobs Residency Lecture
On Monday, December 10, Kwame A. Appiah delivered the Jacobs Residency Lecture in the Burgin Center's Simon Theatre. As a person of mixed-race ancestry,  Appiah addresses the issues of identity, ethics, and cosmopolitanism. He was born in London to a Ghanian father who was a statesman, and a white mother from a prominent family. Currently the Laurance S. Rockefeller University Professor of Philosophy at Princeton University, he was educated at Cambridge University, where he earned both a bachelor's and doctorate degrees in philosophy.

Appiah said his father, a Ghanaian politician, always told his children to remember they were citizens of the world. He quoted from Diogenes and Marcus Aurelius, and spoke about the idea of cosmopolitanism (the subject of his 2006 book, Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers).

Appiah said that cosmopolitanism, the idea that the entire world population belongs to a single global community, has been made relevant by globalization. "We have to know about the lives of others, because we are able to affect them," Appiah said. "We can give people elsewhere in the world new technology, anti-retroviral drugs, and other good ideas, or things that cause harm - viruses or airborne pollutants."

As a small step to accelerate the building of a common community, Appiah offered students a simple suggestion: "Do what people around the world are already doing with American movies: see at least one movie with subtitles per month."

Appiah's early work was in the specialized field of language and logic, but it was as a scholar of African and African-American studies that he became widely known. His book In My Father’s House became an instant classic and placed him in the forefront of the study of African struggles for self-determination. His other books include: Thinking it Through: An Introduction to Contemporary Philosophy, The Ethics of Identity, and most recently, Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers.

The Jacobs Residency is endowed in memory of John Alfred Morefield (1901–1964), in recognition of Wilmarth I. Jacobs ’61, the school’s former assistant headmaster and director of admission (1915–1962), who personified a strong quality of non-elitism.

Upcoming events in Mercersburg's 2007–2008 Monday Evening Lecture Series include the Ammerman Family Lecture March 31 (Tim Flannery, an Australian scientist, author, and climate-change activist) and the Class of '48 Lecture April 14 (Marcelo M. Suarez-Orozco, an author and expert on immigration and human migration).