Lectures - 2008 Overview In Search of Truth

Susan Tweit (Thursday, June 5 at 7:00 pm and Friday, June 7 at 7:00 pm)

Award winning author, teacher and wildscape/xeriscape designer. Her column on the nature in the Mountain Mail is in its eleventh year. Her "Nature of Life" commentaries are also heard on KHEN-FM, Salida's community radio station.

Susan J. Tweit is an award-winning author who began her career as a plant ecologist studying grizzly bear habitat and wildfires. She turned to writing when she realized she loved the stories in the data more than collecting the data. Her passionate articulation of humans' relationship with the "community of the land" - nature and the landscapes we love - has earned her accolades including a Silver Eddie, the Oscar of magazine awards, for "The Last Refuge" in National Parks magazine and a spot on the Denver Post's "Colorado Voices" panel - twice. Her ten books include Colorado Less Traveled, a finalist for the Colorado Book Awards, and The San Luis Valley: Sand Dunes and Sandhill Cranes, hailed as "a joy to read" by High Country News. Her hundreds of articles and commentaries have been published in media as diverse as Audubon, Popular Mechanics, and the Los Angeles Times, and heard on the Martha Stewart Living Radio Network.

Thursday's lecture, “Does the Earth need People,” No-unless . . . we learn to live more generously. Looking at Earth as a natural system, no species is indispensable, even humans. (Turns out it isn't all about us!) If we aren't essential to life on this unique blue planet—the only home we've ever known, who is? And where do we fit? The pluses and minuses of Homo sapiens as members of this complex global system.

Friday’s lecture, “Does the Earth need People,” Getting to Yes. What do we do that no other species does? How can our lives contribute to life on Earth so that we belong in what Aldo Leopold called the "community of the land"? A personal look at an "accidental" land restoration project and what it teaches about staying connected and having a positive impact on the planet we share.

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Dr. Lynn Japinga (Thursday, July 31 at 7:00 pm and Friday, August 1 at 7:00 pm)

Dr. Japinga is an Associate Professor of religion at Hope College, where she has taught since 1992.

Dr. Lynn Japinga specializes in the history of American religion and feminist theology. She has written over 70 published works. She has been honored with numerous awards such as Van Raalte Institute Fellow, General Grant, Louisville Institute of American Protestantism, and Samuel Robinson Prize, Princeton Seminary awards. Hillary Clinton’s run for the presidential nomination has kept bloggers and journalists busy analyzing her clothes, her laugh, her eyes, and her family. It has also raised questions about whether women should be leaders. These lectures will examine the mixed messages from the Christian tradition about women in leadership.

Thursday's lecture, traces the many ways in which the Christian tradition has been used to deny women positions of power and authority in both church and society. The first woman, Eve, brought sin into the world when she gave Adam the forbidden fruit. Therefore women should not be allowed to lead. In the nineteenth century they were considered too virtuous to lead.

Their sphere was the home and family and religion and with those things they should be content. It might be argued that this is all history, and thus irrelevant to the current discussion, but many of these assumptions and anxieties and fears continue to shape the way people in the 21st century think about women in leadership.

Friday’s lecture, will explore the lives of several women who were rooted in the Christian tradition and exercised significant leadership in both church and society. Catherine of Siena advised the pope in the 14th century. Elizabeth I reigned in England for 45 years, despite her father’s fears that the country would collapse under a woman’s rule. In the 19th century Sarah Grimke lectured in public against slavery and for women’s rights and was taken to task by the local clergy for endangering womanhood. Elizabeth Cady Stanton led the fight for women’s rights. What enabled women to defy convention? They often lacked formal education and family support, but they found resources in the Christian tradition that empowered them not only to argue that women could lead but to actually exercise significant leadership.

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Dr. Peter Vitousek (Monday, August 11 at 7:00 pm)

Dr. Vitousek is Clifford G. Morrison Professor of Population and Resource Studies in the Dept. of Biological Sciences at Stanford University, where he has taught since 1984.

Dr. Peter Vitousek is Clifford G. Morrison Professor of Population and Resource Studies in the Department of Biological Sciences at Stanford University, where he has taught since 1984. His research interests include understanding the cycles of nitrogen and phosphorus, on scales from local to global; analyzing human-land interactions; and evaluating biological invasions by exotic species. Much of his work is based in the Hawaiian Islands. He is a Fellow of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

In Dr. Peter Vitousek’s lecture on Monday, “Global Environmental Change: Certainties and Uncertainties” he will address that our activities are changing the world to such an extent that many scientists refer to the present as the Anthropocene, the geologic epoch in which humanity’s effects are paramount.

While climate change – global warming – is the most discussed and debated of these changes, human influences on the composition of the atmosphere, the land surface, the dynamics of marine populations, and the distributions of species may be equally important.

Dr. Vitousek will discuss these changes – what we know of them and how we know it – not from the perspective of environmental disaster stories, but from a perspective that emphasizes the certainty of change and the necessity of both managing and adapting to change.

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Dr. Pam Matson (Tuesday, August 12 at 7:00 pm)

Dr. Matson is a Professor and Dean, School of Earth Sciences at Stanford University. Dr. Matson is the author of over 160 scientific publications and four books.

Dr. Pamela Matson, Chester Naramore Dean of the School of Earth Sciences; Richard and Rhoda Goldman Professor of Environmental Studies; and Senior Fellow at the Woods Institute for the Environment.Pamela Matson is a biogeochemist who works with multi-disciplinary teams of researchers and decision makers to develop land management approaches that make sense economically and environmentally. Working mostly in the tropics, she and her colleagues have identified the negative consequences of deforestation and intensive agriculture for the global and local atmosphere and water systems, and are working to develop new approaches that reduce those impacts while maintaining human livelihoods.

Dr. Matson is a MacArthur Fellow and a Fellow of the National Academy of Sciences as well as the American Academy of Arts and Science, she is the founding co-chair of the National Academies Roundtable on Science and Technology for Sustainability, a past president of the Ecological Society of America, and serves on Board of the World Wildlife Fund. At Stanford, she co-leads the Initiative on Environment and

Sustainability, an effort that brings together faculty from around the university to help solve critical resource and environment challenges of the century. She joined the Stanford faculty in 1997 following positions as professor at UC Berkeley and research scientist at NASA. She earned her B.S. at the University of Wisconsin - Eau Claire, M.S. at Indiana University, and Ph.D. at Oregon State University.

In Tuesday’s lecture, “A Transition to Sustainability: Reconciling the Needs of People and the Planet in the 21st Century” Dr. Matson will discuss that the world is undergoing rapid changes in human population growth, urbanization, industrial growth, the consumption of natural resources, and also in global and regional environment. How can we meet the needs of the human population of this century while at the same time sustaining the ecosystems, air, water and climate systems that we rely on for our survival? In this talk, she will explore new approaches that integrate science, technology, and policy for the solution of critical problems, focusing specifically on the areas of energy resources and sustainable land use and drawing on examples of research being done by researchers at Stanford University and elsewhere.

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Dr. Walid Phares (Thursday, August 28 at 7:00 pm and Friday, August 29 at 7:00 pm)

Professor Phares is a Senior Fellow and the director for Future Terrorism Project at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies in Washington (2001-2007).

Professor Walid Phares is a Senior Fellow and the director for Future Terrorism Project at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies in Washington (2001-2007). He is also a Visiting Fellow with the European Foundation for Democracies in Brussels (2006-2007). He has been a Professor of Middle East Studies, Ethnic and Religious Conflict at the Department of Political Science at Florida Atlantic University (FAU) from 1993 to 2006. He is a senior lecturer on the War on Terror at the LLS Program of FAU.

Dr. Phares lectures on US campuses, nationwide, and internationally including in London, Stockholm, Brussels, Strasbourg, Mexico, Geneva, Paris, Lisbon, Sao Paolo, Montreal, Rome, Madrid, Nicosia and Beirut. He published several books and articles including in the Middle East Quarterly, Global Affairs, Journal of Middle East and South Asian Studies, Journal of International Security Affairs, Journal of Intelligence and Counter Intelligence, Homeland Security Today, and other specialized journals. Dr. Phares’s field covers comparative politics, conflict analysis, and policy planning. His current research interest focuses on the Jihadist movements and strategies worldwide, Arab-Israeli Conflict, Human Rights under Islamist regimes, ethnic minorities, women, and democratic processes within the

Greater Middle East and the Muslim world, Terrorism, as well as the international relations of Civilizations.

In Thursday’s lecture: “Future Jihad and The War of Ideas” and Friday’s lecture: “Jihad in America” Dr. Phares will speak about his recent book, "Future Jihad: Terrorist Strategies against America," From the editor's review Palgrave/St. Martin says, “This book presents a frightening new picture of what we can expect from terrorists in the future. Phares shows that there has been a fundamental misunderstanding about al Qaeda's ultimate goal in the West and what victory means to jihadists. Called by the press, 'the only person who really can read the minds of terrorists,’ Phares is uniquely qualified to identify the aims and strategies of the organizations waging war on the West. He answers such critical questions as: How long will this war last? Is the United States secure on the inside? Will it have to engage the jihadists worldwide in multiple campaigns and where? Future Jihad points the way for America to win the ideological war at the heart of jihad.”

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