On June 17, 2015, Dylann Roof entered the Emanuel
A.M.E. Church in Charleston, South Carolina, sat quietly during their Bible
study, and then pulled out a gun and opened fire, killing nine of the
congregants. Within 48 hours, several family members of the victims made
personal offers of forgiveness to Dylann Roof. The flood of editorials and
opinion pieces commenting on this offer of forgiveness revealed a deep division
in public attitudes towards forgiveness, particularly in the context of
racially-motivated crimes. In this talk, I will explore the ethics of
forgiveness, raising questions about the limits and possibilities of
forgiveness in the broader context of social injustice.
Professor Larry Jorgensen, from the Philosophy Department will have a workshop discussing "Forgiveness After Charleston: The Ethics of an Unlikely Act".