In 1919, the text of Max Weber’s famous lecture “Wissenschaft als Beruf” (“Science as a Vocation”) was published. Weber debates the advantages and disadvantages of choosing a career in academia and, more importantly, discusses in politically turbulent times the role and ethical value of scholarship/science. 

Can Max Weber’s text, now 100 years old, still tell us something? The Orient-Institut Beirut invites you to a panel discussion with Sociologist Sari Hanafi (AUB), Political Scientists Tamirace Fakhoury (LAU) and Martin Beck (University of Southern Denmark), and Historian Birgit Schäbler, the director of the OIB. On the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the publication, questions of gender, of changed and changing disciplines, of Western disciplinary discourses and those in other parts of the world, of Weber’s conception of the state versus the conception of the state in the Global South/Middle East, of the translation of the text into Arabic and English, and also, of course, the tension between passion, politics and scholarship/science will be discussed by the panelists and with the audience.