Strangers Drowning: A Lecture and Conversation with Larissa MacFarquhar

SOCIAL INNOVATION invites you to meet Larissa MacFarquhar on April 19th, 6 PM-7:30 PM at Freeman Hall, Fordham Rose Hill.

Charity may begin at home, but where should it end? Should we help the worst off, wherever they may be, or should we take care of our family and our own people first? Is need more vital than loyalty? How important are the ties of place and community? Should we help strangers even at the expense of people we love? Larissa MacFarquhar will consider these questions by telling the stories of people who live lives of extraordinary moral commitment—for whom these issues are not theoretical but acutely real.

Larissa MacFarquhar is the author of Strangers Drowning: Impossible Idealism, Drastic Choices, and the Urge to Help, which came out in paperback last year. Since 1998 she has been a staff writer at The New Yorker magazine, where her profile subjects have included Barack Obama, Noam Chomsky, Derek Parfit, and Hillary Mantel.