For instructions on how to view the seminar remotely on ZOOM, contact admin@niee.org.

Abstract:

This talk aims to spark reflection on tensions between democracy and organization that arise in professionalized institutions. These tensions include the apparent conflict between participation and e;ectiveness, the ways that built institutions hide their subjective origins, the friction of private interests and public purposes, the seemingly inextricable connection between empowering and disempowering aspects, and the difficulty of being fixed and supportive while also fluid and dynamic. The goal of the talk is to open a discussion of current trends of distrust, reaction, and radical critique by examining institutional contexts. By recognizing and grappling with these tensions, democracy-minded professionals in engineering and technology can reshape institutions so they support citizen agency and caring, nonviolent relations. They can o;er vibrant, shared spaces of mutual support that value knowledge production and social problemsolving at a time of heightened skepticism about the democratic project.

Bio:

Albert Dzur is a democratic theorist interested in citizen participation and power-sharing innovations in public and private sector organizations. His most recent book is Democracy in Action: Collective Problem Solving in Citizens’ Governance Spaces, co-authored with Carolyn Hendriks (Oxford, 2025). Other publications include Democracy Inside: Participatory Innovation in Unlikely Places (Oxford, 2019); Rebuilding Public Institutions Together: Professionals and Citizens in a Participatory Democracy (Cornell, 2017); Punishment, Participatory Democracy, and the Jury (Oxford, 2012); Democratic Professionalism: Citizen Participation and the Reconstruction of Professional Ethics, Identity, and Practice (Penn State, 2008); and, co-edited with Ian Loader and Richard Sparks, Democratic Theory and Mass Incarceration (Oxford, 2016). His interviews with innovative professionals appear in Boston Review, The Good Society, International Journal of Restorative Justice, where he is an associate editor, and National Civic Review, where he is a contributing editor. He also serves on the editorial boards of the Howard Journal of Crime and Justice, and Democratic Theory. He is a Distinguished Research Professor in political science and philosophy at Bowling Green State University.

Organized by the National Institute for Engineering Ethics (NIEE) with support from the Purdue School of Engineering Education (ENE), Purdue College of Liberal Arts, Governance and Responsible AI Lab (GRAIL), and the Purdue Program on American Institutional Renewal (PAIR).