Great Talk Inc and The Alexander Grass Humanities Institute JHU present How Do Knowledge & Flawed Reasoning Influence The Public And Our Leaders? Irrationality, Power, and Privilege. This panel discussion will take place on Wednesday, April 23, 2025 at 7pm, University of Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law, 500 W Baltimore St, Baltimore, MD 21201. Registration is free for both in-person or livestream.
PANEL OF EXPERTS
ELISABETH BUMILLER, writer-at-large for The New York Times and former NYTimes DC Bureau Chief.
Elisabeth Bumiller is a writer-at-large for The New York Times. She was most recently Washington bureau chief. Previously, she held the position of Washington editor and before that, deputy Washington bureau chief, overseeing White House and domestic policy reporting.
She covered the Pentagon, John McCain’s 2008 campaign and, from 2001 to 2006, she was a White House correspondent.
Before moving to Washington, Ms. Bumiller was the Times’s City Hall bureau chief, responsible for covering Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani and his Senate race against Hillary Rodham Clinton from 1999 to 2001. Before that, Ms. Bumiller worked on the Times’s Metropolitan staff in New York as a general assignment reporter and as one of the writers of the Public Lives column. She has also written for The New York Times Magazine and the Culture and Travel pages.
From 1979 to 1985, Ms. Bumiller worked for The Washington Post in Washington, New Delhi, Tokyo and New York. Her first job in journalism was in the Naples bureau of The Miami Herald.
Ms. Bumiller is the author of three books: “Condoleezza Rice: An American Life”; “May You Be the Mother of a Hundred Sons: A Journey Among the Women of India”; and “The Secrets of Mariko: A Year in the Life of a Japanese Woman and Her Family.”
In 2006 and 2007, Ms. Bumiller was a public policy scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center and a Transatlantic fellow at the German Marshall Fund of the United States.
NYT pieces by Elizabeth Bumiller
JAMES M. MATTINGLY, Philosophy Professor, Georgetown University.
Originally from the Silicon Valley in California, Mattingly studied Great Books at St. John’s in Annapolis and Physics at UC Santa Cruz. He then returned to a study of the History and Philosophy of Science at Indiana University where he received a Ph. D. in 2002. Shortly before that Mattingly was appointed Assistant Professor in the Georgetown University Philosophy Department.
His research is primarily in Philosophy of Science. Mattingly spends his efforts there about equally between general issues involving conceptual change in the sciences, the epistemology of science, the nature of scientific theories, and scientific explanation on the one hand, and issues more specific to philosophy of physics on the other including quantum gravity, general relativity, black holes and singularities, gauge theories, thermodynamics, electrodynamics. He also has research interests in early modern philosophy, the foundations of logic and mathematics, and the history of logical empiricism and other movements that attempted to come to grips with the profound conceptual reorientation made necessary by the revolutionary changes in science at the turn of the 20th century. More recently he has been trying to understand in what sense we can call any machines “agents” and what that entails going forward as AI appears to progress rapidly.
Mattingly is the author of Information and Experimental Knowledge, University of Chicago Press 2021, the editor of the Sage Encyclopedia of Theory in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics 2022, and co-author (with Beba Cibralic) of Machine Agency, MIT Press 2025.
Georgetown University profile page.
YITZHAK Y. MELAMED, Charlotte Bloomberg Professor of Philosophy, Johns Hopkins University.
Melamed is a professor in the Department of Philosophy at Johns Hopkins University. He holds an MA in philosophy and the history of science and logic from Tel Aviv University, and a PhD in philosophy from Yale University (2005). He has been awarded the Fulbright, Mellon, and American Academy for Jewish Research Fellowships. Recently, he has also won the ACLS Burkhardt (2011), NEH (2010), and Humboldt (2011) fellowships for his forthcoming book on Spinoza and German Idealism.
Melamed works at the intersection of philosophy (primarily metaphysics), Jewish and religious studies, the history of science, and the humanities in general. He focuses on foundational questions, which he aspires to approach with both philosophical and historical rigor. In particular, Melamed is interested in well-argued views that are commonly treated as “counter-intuitive”; such views, he thinks, may help us challenge our own well-fortified beliefs, force us to motivate what we deem to be obvious, and reveal our conceptual blind spots. To that end, he studies bold past philosophers (e.g., Spinoza), and less familiar theoretical analyses (e.g., Rabbinic thought), which may not only expand our philosophical imagination, but also help us develop a more inclusive attitude to philosophy and its history. He has written a brief manifesto outlining his philosophy for the history of philosophy (“Charitable Interpretations and the Political Domestication of Spinoza, or, Benedict in the Land of the Secular Imagination”).
Johns Hopkins University profile page.
IAN OLASOV, Adjunct Lecturer, New York University; and Public Philosopher.
Ian Olasov is an adjunct lecturer at NYU’s Center for Bioethics. He is the author of Ask a Philosopher: Answers to Your Most Important and Most Unexpected Questions (St. Martin’s: 2020) and a co-editor of A Companion to Public Philosophy (Wiley: 2022). He is also the President of the Public Philosophy Network, an organization that advocates and develops resources for philosophers working with communities outside of academia, from prisons to policymakers. For several years Ian Olasov set up ‘Ask-a-Philosopher’ booths around New York City, answering questions from passersby.
He holds a Ph.D. in philosophy from the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. His research interests are broad, but revolve around questions about speech in the public interest, from the philosophy of journalism, to public philosophy, to philosophy of moral and political language. He lives in Brooklyn with his excellent partner and their two dogs, Patty and Scrapple.
Ian Olasov’s website
“Public”: An Essay by Ian Olasov
MODERATOR: KATIE CURRAN O’MALLEY, Executive Director, Women’s Law Center of Maryland.
Katie Curran O’Malley was born and raised in Baltimore, Maryland, where she attended Towson University and the University of Baltimore School of Law. Katie began her legal career over thirty years ago as a prosecutor in the Baltimore County State’s Attorney’s office. In her role as a prosecutor, she presented hundreds of criminal cases before judges and juries in the District and Circuit Courts of Baltimore County. In 2001, Katie was appointed to the District Court of Maryland for Baltimore City, where she presided over thousands of criminal and civil cases, including domestic violence cases.
Over the course of her career, Katie has become an expert in handling cases involving domestic violence. Having worked with victims of intimate partner violence (IPV), she discovered the challenges faced by many victims who attempt to seek help through the judicial system. Too often, the brave individuals who do come forward are often left disappointed by the judicial outcome and are sometimes placed in further danger. Katie saw firsthand how important it is for victims of IPV to have economic security, autonomy, and physical safety so they can leave a physically abusive relationship. As a result of her many years of experience working with IPV victims, the District Court of Maryland tasked her with training newly appointed judges on how to effectively handle IPV cases. She was also an instructor with the National Council of Juvenile and family Court Judges.
In January 2024, the Women’s Law Center of Maryland (WLC) named Katie as their new Executive Director. In this role, she continues to advocate for those experiencing domestic violence, family law, employment law, and sexual assault. The WLC provides legal services for these individuals and actively advocates for laws to better protect Marylanders in the areas of criminal law, civil rights, employment, and family law.
Katie serves on the Maryland Commission on Hate Crime Response and Prevention and Baltimore County Domestic Violence Coordinating Committee and the Governor’s Family Violence Council. Katie and her husband, Martin have four adult children, Grace, Tara, William, and Jack. She and Martin live in the Homeland neighborhood of Baltimore City,with their chihuahua rescue, Max.
