1:00 Keynote: Akeel Bilgrami, “Populism and Democracy”

• Akeel Bilgrami is the Sidney Morgenbesser Professor of Philosophy at Columbia University. Professor Bilgrami pursues research in two areas: 1) the philosophy of mind and language, and 2) political philosophy and moral psychology, especially in relation to politics, political economy, history and culture. His book Secularism, Identity, and Enchantment was published by Harvard University Press in 2014.  He is contracted to publish two small books in the very near future, one called What is a Muslim? (Princeton University Press) and another on Gandhi's philosophy, situating Gandhi's thought in seventeenth century dissent in England and Europe and more broadly within the Radical Enlightenment and the radical strand in the Romantic tradition (Columbia University Press). He is the editor of the books Democratic Culture (2011), Who’s Afraid of Academic Freedom? – with Jonathan Cole (2014), Marx, Gandhi, and Modernity (2014), and Beyond the Secular West (2016).

Andree Hahmann, “Some Historical Notes on the Term ‘Populism’ and Its Application"

• Andree Hahmann is a DAAD visiting Professor of German and Philosophy at the University of Pennsylvania. He received his Dr. Phil. from the Philipps-Universität Marburg in 2007, and his Dr. habil. from the Georg-August-Universität Göttingen in 2015. Before coming to Philadelphia, he was a Fedor Lynen Fellow at the University of Oxford. His research focuses on the history of ancient and modern philosophy. Recent publications are Christian August Crusius (1715–1775). Philosophy between Reason and Revelation, Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter (forthcoming 2019) Impressions and Truth in Epicurean Epistemology, in: The Routledge Handbook of Hellenistic Philosophy (forthcoming 2019); “The Stoic Definition of Chance”, in: Ancient Philosophy 2019; Kant’s Critical Argument(s) for Immortality Reassessed, in: Kant Yearbook 2018.

Abdul-Karim Mustapha, “Etienne Balibar's Spinoza”

• Abdul-Karim Mustapha, formerly of Wofford College, is editorial board member of Multitudes (a French periodical of philosophy and the arts).  He served on the editorial board of Rethinking Marxism from 2001-12.  He is editor of “Dossier on Empire,” a special double issue devoted to the publication and debate of Hardt and Negri’s Empire (2000) and co-editor of The Philosophy of Antonio Negri: Volume I (2005) and Volume II (2007).  He has published essays in Boundary 2, The South Atlantic Quarterly, African Arts, Lugar Comum.  He has written on topics ranging from geopolitics in WEB DuBois, psychoanalysis, subaltern studies, and the idea of the frontier in the creation of Brazilian slave economy.  He is currently writing a book on sovereignty and jurisdiction in contemporary Africa.

Guido Vanheeswijck, "Populism and the cultural heritage of Christianity"

• Guido Vanheeswijck is Professor of Philosophy at the University Antwerp and affiliated with the Institute of Philosophy of Catholic University Louvain. His central domains of scholarly research are philosophy of culture, philosophy of religion, metaphysics and the relation between literature and philosophy. From 2006 till 2012, he was chairman of the Centre Pieter Gillis, the centre for active pluralism of University Antwerp. He is a member of the editorial board of ANTW, Streven, Collingwood and British Idealism Studies. He wrote and edited more than 20 monographs in Dutch and English. He published articles in different journals, among them Tijdschrift voor Filosofie, Journal of the History of Ideas, Journal of the History of Philosophy, Review of Metaphysics, History and Theory, International Philosophical Quarterly. He is currently Brueghel Chair Visiting Professor at the University of Pennsylvania. 

Liliane Weissberg, "Hannah Arendt: Between Germany and South Africa"

• Liliane Weissberg is the Christopher H. Browne Distinguished Professor in the School of Arts & Sciences at the University of Pennsylvania. Among her more recent book publications are: Affinität wider Willen? Hannah Arendt, Theodor W. Adorno und die Frankfurter Schule (2011); Über Haschisch und Kabbalah. Gershom Scholem, Siegfried Unseld und das Werk von Walter Benjamin (2012); (with Karen Beckman), On Writing With Photography (2013); Juden. Geld. Eine Vorstellung. Frankfurt/M: Campus Verlag (2013); Münzen, Hände, Noten, Finger: Berliner Hofjuden und die Erfindung einer deutschen Musikkultur (2018); (with Andreas Kilcher), Nachträglich, grundlegend? Der Kommentar als Denkform in der jüdischen Moderne von Hermann Cohen bis Jacques Derrida (2018).