- Date
- 8 November 2024 / 5-6pm
- Venue
- Riverside Pavilion and Terrace
- Attendees
- All welcome
Sages from Cicero to Oprah have told us that forgiveness requires us to let go of negative emotions and that it has a unique power to heal our wounds. Dr. Misha Cherry argues that these beliefs couldn’t be more wrong—and that the ways we think about and use forgiveness, personally and as a society, can often do more harm than good. In this lecture, Dr. Cherry presents a new and healthier understanding of forgiveness—one that will give us a better chance to recover from wrongdoing and move toward “radical repair.”
Joyce Mitchell Cook
Dr Joyce Mitchell Cook (PPP, 1955) was a pioneering alumna of St Hilda’s College. The first Black American woman to earn a doctorate in Philosophy in the USA, Joyce became a guide and mentor to generations of women who followed in her path.
After graduating with distinction from Bryn Mawr, Joyce came to St Hilda’s in 1955 to read for a second degree in Psychology, Philosophy and Physiology – a course that was one of the first to include Psychology at Oxford. Fresh from her tutorials with Miss Sybil Crowe at St Hilda’s, Joyce went on to Yale where she achieved her PhD in Philosophy in 1965.
Joyce was known for breaking down other barriers too, becoming the first female teaching assistant at Yale for any non-language class (September 1959 to June 1961) and the first African American woman to teach in the Philosophy department at Howard University (September 1970 to June 1976). After Yale, Joyce had appointments as an analyst for African affairs in the State Department in Washington, as an editor in New York and for several years in the Office of Economic Opportunity. Her academic appointments included posts at Wellesley University, Howard University and Connecticut College.
Myisha Cherry
Myisha is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of California, Riverside. She is also the Director of the Emotion and Society Lab. Her research is primarily concerned with the role of emotions and attitudes in public life. Cherry’s books include UnMuted: Conversations on Prejudice, Oppression, and Social Justice (Oxford University Press) and, co-edited with Owen Flanagan, The Moral Psychology of Anger (Rowman & Littlefield), and The Case for Rage: Why Anger is Essential to Anti-racist Struggle published by Oxford University Press. Her latest book, Failures of Forgiveness: What We Get Wrong and How to Do Better was released by Princeton University Press in 2023. Her work on emotions and race has appeared in The Atlantic, Boston Review, Los Angeles Times, Salon, Huffington Post, WomanKind, and New Philosopher Magazine. Cherry is also the host of the UnMute Podcast, where she interviews philosophers about the social and political issues of our day.
