Keynote Speaker: Dr. Michael Pakaluk

Join us for a ​keynote by Dr. Michael Pakaluk, January 30th at 7pm in the Oceti Sakowin Ballroom (NDSU Memorial Union). Dr. Pakaluk will be sharing about the ​Importance of Friendship. ​All are invited to attend!


Michael Pakaluk, educated at Harvard (A.B., Ph.D.) and, as a Marshall Scholar, at the University of Edinburgh (M.Litt.), wrote his dissertation on Aristotle’s theory of friendship under John Rawls, and has since played a leading role in the important revival of interest among philosophers in the topic of friendship. Formerly at the Institute for the Psychological Sciences and Clark University, where he had a long and distinguished tenure as Director of the Boston Area Colloquium in Ancient Philosophy, Dr. Pakaluk has been a visiting scholar or visiting professor at Brown, Cambridge, Catholic University, Harvard, St. Andrews (Scotland) and Santa Croce (Rome). Widely published in academic journals on a wide range of topics in ethics, political philosophy, and the history of philosophy, his books include Other Selves: Philosophers on Friendship (Hackett Publishers, 1991); Nicomachean Ethics, Books VIII and IX, Translation with Commentary (Oxford University Press, 1998);Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, An Introduction (Cambridge University Press, 2005); and Moral Psychology and Human Action in Aristotle (with Giles Pearson, Oxford University Press, 2011). His technical philosophical papers, spanning nearly all areas and time periods in philosophy, make important and creative contributions to philosophy and the history of ideas.  Dr. Pakaluk’s side-interest in professional ethics has led him to author, with Mark Cheffers, two widely-used textbooks in accounting ethics, Understanding Accounting Ethics  (Allen David Press, 2007), and Accounting Ethics  (Allen David Press, 2011). Dr. Pakaluk’s expertise in accounting ethics, in conjunction with his work as Senior Research Analyst and Public Policy Consultant with the Ives Group, Inc., led to an invitation to present a seminar on accounting professionalism and IFRS convergence for the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) in 2009.  Dr. Pakaluk has been Dean of the Faculty of the Neuwaldegg Institute in Vienna, a faculty member at the Korcula Institute of the Center for Cultural Renewal in Croatia, a Director of the Worcester Public Library, and a Founding Trustee of the Abby Kelley Foster Regional Charter School in Worcester, MA.  An accomplished French hornist, Dr. Pakaluk is also an avid golfer, tennis player, and hiker.