Date:
Location:
Title: “Restorative Justice”
Abstract: Restorative justice brings to life the radical idea that injured persons can heal together with the persons who have injured them. The theory is that healing is achieved through a cultivation of empathy and understanding between the parties most directly impacted by a crime. Important here is the idea that not only the affected party (victim), but also the responsible party (perpetrator), is injured by the criminal act. More specifically, in Professor Kelly's analysis, the injury suffered by the responsible party is a moral injury. In the lecture, she will elaborate the concept of restorative justice and the moral injuries it addresses. She will argue that understanding the potential of restorative justice to address moral injury should lead to appreciating the potential restorative justice has to effect broader cultural and political change.
Professor Erin I. Kelly is the Fletcher Professor of Philosophy at Tufts University. She is currently the Charles Stebbins Fairchild Visiting Professor of Law at the Harvard Law School. Kelly received a Ph.D. in philosophy from Harvard University and a B.A. degree in philosophy from Stanford University. Her research areas are in philosophy of law and in moral and political philosophy, with a focus on criminal law and criminal justice. She has written about standards of individual accountability and philosophies of punishment. She is working to develop alternatives to retributive thinking about criminal justice, including restorative notions of justice. More broadly, she is interested in philosophical questions related to historical injustice, social inequality, and civil society.
In 2022, Kelly won a Pulitzer Prize in biography for a memoir she co-authored with artist Winfred Rembert, Chasing Me to My Grave: An Artist’s Memoir of the Jim Crow South (Bloomsbury Press, 2021). Kelly is also author of The Limits of Blame: Rethinking Punishment and Responsibility (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2018), which criticizes the role of blame in popular theories of criminal justice.
Register Here for the In Person Lecture
Register Here for the Online Lecture
About the Lecture
The Annual Lester Kissel Lecture in Ethics is named for the late Lester Kissel, a graduate of Harvard Law School and longtime benefactor of Harvard University's ethics programs and activities.
The Edmond & Lily Safra Center welcomes individuals with disabilities to participate in its activities and events. Live Closed Captioning will be provided for the Zoom webinar. If you would like to request additional accommodations or have questions about those provided, please reply to this email or contact Alex Ostrowski Schillingin advance of the event. Please note that the Center will make every effort to secure services, but that these are subject to availability.