Harvard professor, psychologist and co-founder of the GoodWork Project, Howard Gardner will give the 2011 Crown Lecture in Ethics on Thursday, Feb. 24 at Duke University's Sanford School of Public Policy.
Gardner's talk, "Good Persons, Good Workers, Good Citizens: What they are; how they can be nurtured," begins at 5:30 p.m. in Sanford's Fleishman Commons. It is free and open to the public. Paid parking is available at the Science Drive visitor lot or Bryan Center parking garage.
The Hobbs Professor of Cognition and Education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, Gardner will discuss the challenges in a competitive America of doing "good work" -- that which is socially responsible, meaningful and of high quality. His GoodWork Project, co-founded with fellow psychologists Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and William Damon, is a large-scale effort to increase the incidence of good work in our society.
In 2010, the project published "GoodWork: Theory and Practice," a book edited by Gardner that includes essays on the origins of the GoodWork project, ideas that have developed as a result of the project, critiques of its key concepts and applications of the project's major themes. The book can be downloaded for free at www.goodworkproject.org.
In 2005 and again in 2008, Foreign Policy and Prospect magazines named Gardner among the world's 100 most influential public intellectuals. The Wall Street Journal named him one of the top five influential business thinkers.
Gardner is best known for his theory of multiple intelligences, an assertion that all human beings possess different types of intelligences that aren't well measured by standardized tests. He's also known for his role as senior director of Harvard Project Zero, a research group that has been studying the development of learning processes in children, adults and organizations since 1967. He is the author of 25 books translated into 28 languages.
The Crown Lecture in Ethics is named for benefactor Lester Crown, and brings speakers to Duke to explore ethical issues in the arts, sciences, medicine, business and other fields. Previous Crown lecturers include Rwandan Paul Rusesabagina, Pulitzer Prize-winning author and conservationist Jared Diamond, Nobel Peace Prize-winner Jody Williams, and U.S. Sen. Bill Bradley.