A Fall 2020 webinar series sponsored by the Moral Injury Project of Hendricks Chapel will focus on veterans, student veterans, and military personnel “finding true north” in the midst of transitional times.  

The first program in the series, “Finding True North in the Midst of Change: Veteran Transition from Military to College and College to Work,” is Friday, Oct. 16, 12 – 1:30 p.m. on Zoom. Registration is open now. 

“This first event is an opportunity to discuss the challenge of transitioning from military service to higher education and then the workplace. Our panelists will share advice, strategies, and stories that will be helpful to veterans, veterans service coordinators, higher education faculty, and future employers,” said Eileen Schell, coordinator of the Moral Injury Project and Professor of Writing and Rhetoric at Syracuse University. 

The program panel will feature Jennifer Reddy, associate director of continuing education at Le Moyne College and Moral Injury Project member since 2015, and Syracuse University alumna Jennifer Jeffery ’14 G’17, an academic librarian from SUNY Potsdam and veteran of the U.S Coast Guard, where she served for seven years. Both have experience working in academic and career services for veterans that help reintegrate them into their communities and discover a sense of belonging outside of the military culture. Michael Venditte, Army veteran and Le Moyne College graduate, will also serve on the panel. Venditte served as president of the Le Moyne College Student Veterans Association as a student, and since his graduation has continued to work with the Moral Injury Project.

In addition to presenting on the challenges of veteran transition, the panel will address how colleges and universities, employers, and the public at large can educate themselves and support successful transitions. 

The fall Moral Injury Project series is built around two key terms: transition and moral injury. The first term – transition- involves undergoing a period of change and re-direction that affects a person’s identity and self-development. The second key term is moral injury, which refers to the damage done to one’s conscience or moral compass when that person perpetrates, witnesses, or fails to prevent acts that transgress one’s own moral beliefs, values, or ethical codes of conduct. 

The Nov. 11 program,  “Finding True North through Writing: Veterans Sharing Their Stories on Veteran’s Day” will run 7 – 8:30 p.m. on Zoom and will be moderated by group leaders and Syracuse University faculty Eileen Schell and Ivy Kleinbart and will feature readings by members of  the Syracuse Veterans’ Writing Group.  

The third program, “Finding True North Through Building Trauma Resiliency,” will be held Nov. 20, 12 – 1:30 p.m. on Zoom.  The program will feature Dr. Bill Cross, PhD, a Vietnam Veteran and practicing psychotherapist in Syracuse who has worked with military veterans and their families for over 35 years. He will discuss his work with Trauma Resiliency as well as his own story as a Vietnam Veteran and veteran advocate.

Registration for all programs is free and required. Attendees will be invited to participate in a question and answer session during each program. Please register through Zoom here:  Oct. 16;  Nov. 11, and Nov. 20.

Communication Access Realtime Transcription (CART) services will provide captioning for each program and American Sign Language (ASL) interpretation will be provided.  For questions or to request additional accommodations, contact Hendricks Chapel at chapel@syr.edu or 315.443.2901. For more information please visit moralinjuryproject.syr.edu. 

The Moral Injury Project is pleased to announce our upcoming event  “Moral Injury: A Spiritual Journey” hosted at Le Moyne College on Saturday, June 9^th from 10:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. in the Reilley Room on the 4th floor of Reilly Hall, Le Moyne College, Syracuse, NY. See https://www.lemoyne.edu/Visit/Getting-Here. Parking directions and location directions are at the end of this message and attached. Please join us as we explore, listen, and reflect on the spiritual journeys and personal stories of veterans who have grappled with moral injury.

This event features Daniel Piňa, a retired Infantryman and military pastor who provides intensive support through ministry to veterans, service members, and their families at New Life Christian Church in Watertown, New York. His unwavering dedication to the veteran community extends beyond the boundaries of the local parish to networks of mutually supportive partnerships within clergy, chaplains, police, fire departments, family members, and caregivers from a variety of disciplines. As a dual Master’s student in trauma counseling and industrial/organizational psychology with 16 years of active duty service, Daniel’s firsthand experience offers a unique and valuable perspective on resilience and healing.

Veteran Barry Belles and active duty service member Daniel Bryan will also offer remarks.  Barry Belles is a 21 year Army Combat Veteran who completed three combat tours in Iraq with the Army’s 10^th Mountain Division in 2004-2005, 2006-2007, and 2009-2010. He also deployed to Bosnia Herzegovina in 1999. First Sergeant Daniel Bryan is a 34 year old Combat veteran from the State of New Mexico. He enlisted in the U.S. Army in August 2002 as an Infantrymen and has witnessed combat over the course of 5 deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan.

The panel will be followed by time for questions and a break-out group session for further discussion.

Light breakfast items, coffee, water, and a lunch will be available as part of the event.  Registration for the event is needed so we can estimate numbers for food/refreshments.   You can register via this google form:

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfUN6VBWMZlbh_fz-dl4ihwLbCOkjiaH9LfIvB4wZBkYmBVBQ/viewform

For questions about the event, please email Eileen E. Schell at eeschell@syr.edu

Directions to Le Moyne  https://www.lemoyne.edu/Visit/Getting-Here

Parking is available in Lots F and B (see attached pdf.) If parking in Lot F, enter the doors at the end of Reilly Hall; you will be between the second and third floors. The Reilley Room (yes, the spelling is different) is at the top of the stairs on the fourth floor. Better accessible parking is available in Lot B.  From Lot B, enter the door beneath the glassed walkways between Reilly and Grewen Halls. An elevator is a bit to the left by the stairs. Take the elevator to the fourth floor, walk straight ahead through the windowed hallway, and turn right at the end.

MI Poster Rocks

A Reading and Discussion with Nancy Sherman

October 14
2:30-4:00
207 Hall of Languages

Please join the Nonfiction Reading Series and the Moral Injury Project of Syracuse University for a reading and discussion by Dr. Nancy Sherman, author of Afterwar and the Untold War on Friday, October 14th, from 2:30-4:00 p.m. in 207 Hall of Languages. Following her reading, there will be a reception and book signing.  This reading is free and open to the public. 

“Trained in both ancient ethics and psychoanalysis, and with twenty years of experience working with the military, Sherman draws on in-depth interviews with servicemen and women to paint a richly textured and compassionate picture of the moral and psychological aftermath of America’s longest wars. . . .  2.6 million soldiers are currently returning home from war, the greatest number since Vietnam. Facing an increase in suicides and post-traumatic stress, the military has embraced measures such as resilience training and positive psychology to heal mind as well as body. Sherman argues that some psychological wounds of war need a kind of healing through moral understanding that is the special province of philosophical engagement and listening.”

Professor Sherman is University Professor at Georgetown and Professor of Philosophy. She has a University Affiliate appointment at Georgetown Law’s Center on National Security and the Law and is a Faculty Affiliate at the Kennedy Institute of Ethics. 

Nancy Sherman received her BA from Bryn Mawr College and her PhD from Harvard. She received her MLitt from the University of Edinburgh. From 1997 to 1999 Ms Sherman served as the first Distinguished Chair in Ethics at the US Naval Academy, designing the brigade-wide required military ethics course as well as laying the groundwork for the new Stockdale Ethics Center. She has taught at Yale, Johns Hopkins, and the University of Maryland and has trained in psychoanalysis at the Washington Psychoanalytic Institute. Since 1995, she has consulted for the U.S. Armed Forces on issues of ethics, resilience, and posttraumatic stress, lecturing at the Uniformed Services University, Walter Reed Army Hospital, the National Defense University, and many other military academies, bases, and veterans groups throughout the U. S. as well as abroad. In October 2005, Ms Sherman visited Guantanamo Bay Detention Center as part of an independent observer team, assessing the medical and mental health care of detainees. She has served on the Board of Directors for the Carnegie Council on Ethics and International Affairs. 

Professor Sherman has received fellowships for her work from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Council for Learned Societies, the Mellon Foundation, the Yale Whitney Humanities Center, the American Philosophical Society, and the Newcombe Fellowship of the Woodrow Wilson Foundation. Sherman is a New York Times Notable Author. At Harvard she was awarded the George Plympton Adam Prize for the most distinguished dissertation in the area of history of philosophy, 1982. She received the Washington Psychoanalytic Institute’s Gary O. Morris Award for her psychoanalytic writing in 1999. 

Professor Sherman has served on the National Board of Officers of the American Philosophical Association, elected as Representative of the Association’s Eastern Division, 2007-2010. She has been a frequent contributor in the media, appearing, among other places, on the Diane Rehm Show, the Kojo Namdi Show, PBS’s Religion and Ethics Newsweekly, BBC, Australian, Broadcasting System, Canadian Broadcasting System, MSNBC, FOX News, CNN, WABC, This American Life, The Leonard Lopate Show, Here and Now, and many NPR affiliates. Her articles, opinion pieces, and reviews of her work have appeared widely in the press, including in The New York Times, The LA Times, The Wall Street Journal, TIME Magazine, Newsweek, Huffington Post, The Chronicle Review, The San Diego Tribune, The Denver Post, The Boston Globe, The Baltimore Sun, The Dallas Morning News, The Atlanta Journal and Constitution, the Pittsburgh Gazette, the Hartford Courant, the Providence Journal, the Post and Courier, Dissent, and the Philosophers’ Magazine among other venues. She is a contributor to the New York Time’s Stone and Psychology Today. 

Her publications include Afterwar: Healing the Moral Wounds of our Soldiers (Oxford, 2015); The Untold War: Inside the Hearts, Minds, and Souls of our Soldiers (W.W. Norton, 2010); Stoic Warriors: The Ancient Philosophy Behind the Military Mind (Oxford, 2005); Making a Necessity of Virtue: Aristotle and Kant on Virtue (Cambridge, 1997); The Fabric of Character: Aristotle’s Theory of Virtue, (Oxford 1989, translated in Spanish, 1998); Critical Essays on the Classics: Aristotle’s Ethics, Ed. (Rowman and Littlefield, 1999). She has written over 60 articles in the area of ethics, military ethics, the history of moral philosophy, ancient ethics, the emotions, moral psychology, and psychoanalysis.

War Wounds That Time Alone Can’t Heal

 

 

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No doubt in the course of your life, you did something, or failed to do something, that left you feeling guilty or ashamed. What if that something was in such violation of your moral compass that you felt unable to forgive yourself, undeserving of happiness, perhaps even unfit to live?…

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A complete guide to an innovative, research-based brief treatment specifically developed for service members and veterans, this book combines clinical wisdom and in-depth knowledge of military culture. Adaptive disclosure is designed to help those struggling in the aftermath of traumatic war-zone experiences, including life threat, traumatic loss, and moral injury, the violation of closely held beliefs or codes. Detailed guidelines are provided for assessing clients and delivering individualized interventions that integrate emotion-focused experiential strategies with elements of cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT). Reproducible handouts can be downloaded and printed in a convenient 8½” x 11″ size.

Monday, Feb. 15, 3:45 pm – 5:05 pm
School of Management, 001
Corner of University Ave. & Marshall St.

Attend a film screening and Q&A session with filmmaker Cynthia Kao this coming Monday, Feb. 15 at 3:45 pm.  Ms. Kao will screen her 30-minute documentary, Resilient, about PTSD, and conduct a Q&A session afterwards with viewers.  The event is being held in the School of Management, SOM 001; it is free and open to the public.
Click here for a map of this building.

Syracuse University Hosts Veterans Day Reading Program Nov. 11

Members of Syracuse Veterans’ Writing Group to present original poetry, nonfiction…

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Continue Reading

Coverage here:

And at Syracuse University, The Moral Injury Project is an interdisciplinary organization that connects local veterans, faculty, chaplains, researchers, and community members through events like academic panels, art exhibits, and literary readings. “It’s incredible to have these men and women in the same room, approaching moral injury from different angles,” says Andrew Miller, the project coordinator and a United States Army veteran.

http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2015/07/healing-a-wounded-sense-of-morality/396770/

WERW’s Jeremiah Thompson interviewed Moral Injury Project committee members Jennifer Jeffery and Andrew Miller on the radio show The Forum.

Listen to the interview from April 10th, 2015.

WERW: http://www.werwradio.com/

A combat photojournalist fears conflict. From the streets of Afghanistan he tells his story of unwinnable war and moral injury. Another soldier avoids being the last casualty of a forgotten war. He decides whether he must get out of his current life of revolving battles or go back home, where everything is foreign.

Listen: http://www.kpbs.org/audioclips/24546/