The annual Van Hasselt Lecture addresses topics around ethics, peace and justice in our technological age. The lecture was named after Frans van Hasselt, a student in Delft, who denounced the firing of Jewish professors at the university in a public speech on the 23rd of November 1940. He was arrested by the occupying forces and perished at Buchenwald concentration camp two years later.

The Van Hasselt lecture is organised jointly by the department Values, Technology and Innovation of the Faculty of Technology, Policy & Management and Studium Generale TU Delft.

Samuel Scheffler | Existential catastrophe: a multigenerational view (2023)

Samuel Ira Scheffler is a moral and political philosopher and University Professor of Philosophy and Law in the Department of Philosophy and the School of Law at New York University. He is the author of several books published by Oxford University Press, most recently Why Worry About Future Generations? (2018). Recording

Ingrid Robeyns | The purpose of the university in democratic societies (2019)

Ingrid Robeyns works on issues in contemporary political philosophy and applied ethics, and holds the Chair in Ethics of Institutions at the Ethics Institute of Utrecht University. She is  especially interested in applied and non-ideal philosophy and in interdisciplinary research, as well as in the development of normative theories and methods that are needed to support this kind of research. Recording | Full text (PDF)

Philip Kitcher | What do we owe to the future? (2018)

Philip Kitcher is the John Dewey Professor of Philosophy at Columbia University and holds an honorary doctorate from the Erasmus University Rotterdam. Previously, he has taught at the University of California, San Diego, and before that at the University of Minnesota. He is the author of Science in a Democratic Society, and most recently The Seasons Alter: How to Save Our Planet in Six Acts. Recording

Annelien Bredenoord | Editing society: the ethics of gene editing (2017)

Annelien Bredenoord is Professor of Ethics of Biomedical Innovation and a Member of the Dutch Senate for D66. Recording

John Tasioulas | The dynamics of big data and human rights (2016)

John Tasioulas is the Director of the Yeoh Tiong Lay Centre for Politics, Philosophy and Law at King’s College, London. Recording | Full text

Mary Ellen O’Connell | The future of peace, war and weapons (2015)

Mary Ellen O’Connell is the Robert and Marion Short Professor of Law at the University of Notre Dame Law School and a research professor of international dispute resolution at Notre Dame’s Kroc Institute for International Peace in Studies. She is the author of The Art of Law in the International Community. Full text