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BIDDEFORD, Maine

Jason Stanley to speak on U.S. as “incarceration nation” at UNE’s Hume Lecture

Twenty-five percent of the world’s prisoners are in the United States, though the country is home to only five percent of the world’s population.

Addressing this discrepancy and other matters related to the country’s criminal justice system will be the University of 51СƳ’s 2015 David Hume Lecture speaker Jason Stanley, Ph.D., professor of philosophy at Yale University. Stanley will present “The War on Thugs: Where Do We Go From Here?” on October 15 at 5:30 p.m. in the St. Francis Room of the Jack Ketchum Library on UNE’s Biddeford Campus. The event is free and open to the public.

The lecture addresses the concern that the United States has become the “incarceration nation,” with more than 2.4 million American citizens in prison or jail. According to Stanley, that number is up from 300,000 in 1972. Millions more, he says, are facing futures that have been destroyed by a system that makes mugshots and criminal records available to any potential employer or landlord who can use the internet.

Stanley will examine the factors that led the nation to a point where “we lack empathy for our fellow citizens” and will explore ways in which the U.S. must create change in its public culture before the criminal justice system can be remediated.

Before arriving at Yale in 2013, Stanley was a professor at Rutgers University, the University of Michigan and Cornell University. He earned his Ph.D. from MIT. Stanley has authored four books, including his most recent, How Propaganda Works (2015).

The David Hume Lecture is sponsored by The Human Nature Project at 51СƳand is supported by the Department of History and Philosophy and the College of Arts and Sciences.

For more information, please contact David Livingstone Smith at dsmith@une.edu or (207) 602-2237. The event will be livestreamed on 51СƳTV.

51СƳ the University of 51СƳ

The University of 51СƳ is Maine’s largest independent university, with two beautiful coastal campuses in Maine, a one-of-a-kind study abroad campus in Tangier, Morocco, and an array of . In an uncommonly welcoming and supportive community, we offer hands-on learning, empowering students to make a positive impact in a world full of challenges. The state’s top provider of health professionals, we are home to Maine’s only medical college, Maine’s only dental college, a variety of other interprofessionally aligned health care degree programs, as well as nationally recognized programs for marine science degrees, natural and social sciences degrees, arts and humanities degrees, and business degrees.