Post by Mark Gonnerman
Check out this TED Talk by Jill Bolte Taylor, a neuroanatomist who had a stroke and lived to tell her story. To see this riveting 18 minute presentation on the mind, brain, and how we are connected to the world and one another, please click here.
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Post by Mark Gonnerman
The Tibetan Freedom Torch will be handed off to Tibetan cyclists on April 9th in San Francisco, who will relay it to Los Angeles over the next six days. It is scheduled to pass through White Plaza on the Stanford campus on Thursday, April 10 at noon. Click here for more information.
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Post by Mark Gonnerman
A new policy magazine, Pathways, is available from the Stanford Center for the Study of Poverty and Inequality. The inaugural issue takes on of the most basic policy questions of our time: How, if at all, might a new war on poverty be fought? Featuring essays by Hillary Clinton, John Edwards, and Barack Obama. Click here for an online copy, read it, and plan to attend our April 5 conference, “Global Solidarity, Human Rights, and the End of Poverty.”
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Post by Mark Gonnerman
Iraq Veterans Against the War will sponsor Winter Soldier 2008 from Friday, March 14 through Sunday, March 16. This event, which takes place just outside Washington, D.C., features testimony from veterans and service members who served in Iraq and Afghanistan. These eyewitness reports of the occupations will be broadcast live on KPFA (94.1 FM). For further information and a webcast, click here.
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Post by Mark Gonnerman
Click here for a Stanford Report interview with Lawrence Krauss in anticipation of his participation in our conversation with him and Richard Dawkins on Sunday, March 9, "Against Ignorance: Science Education in the 21st Century."
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Post by Mark Gonnerman
On Tuesday, March 4, from 1:00 to 4:00 in Memorial Auditorium, the Woods Institute for the Environment will celebrate the opening of the Yang and Yamazaki Environment and Energy Building (Y2E2) with a symposium, "Sustainable Places: Leadershp in the Public and Private Sectors." The public is invited. Click here for details.
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Post by Mark Gonnerman
The Islamic Society of Stanford University is hosting a weekly lecture series, “Our Jihad to Reform: The Struggle to Define Our Faith,” from January 31 to February 24. The series will focus on the struggle to define and understand Islam in ways that face up to modern challenges. Click here for detailed information.
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Post by Mark Gonnerman
"A Conversation with Julian Bond" will be held 7:30-9:30 p.m. on Thursday, January 31, at McCaw Hall, Arrillaga Alumni Center. The conversation between Julian Bond, long-time civil rights activist and current chairman of the board of the NAACP, and LaDoris Cordell, special counsel to the president for campus relations, promises to be lively and engaging. Students can follow the conversation with an interactive YouTube question-and-answer session. This event, which is free and open to the public, is sponsored by the Black Community Services Center.
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Post by Mark Gonnerman
Click here for a listing of events for this year's King Holiday celebrations at Stanford.
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Post by Mark Gonnerman
The Missing Peace: Artists Consider the Dalai Lama, a multi-media art exhibition that brings together 88 respected artists representing 30 countries, is open at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco through March 16. Using the life of the H.H. the Dalai Lama as inspiration, this project aims to shift the world's attention towards peace. In his preface to the exhibition catalogue, the Dalai Lama writes, “I am happy and honored that this project is now complete, not because I want people to know more about me personally, but because it draws attention to a cause I hold dear, the achievement of genuine lasting world peace….These works of art collectively seek to create zones of peace, and are intended to inspire others to generate compassion, love and patience, which are essential if human beings are to achieve happiness.” If you are unable to see The Missing Peace at Yerba Buena Center, a virtual tour is available here.
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Post by Mark Gonnerman
You are welcome to attend the opening reception of Moments from 20th Century Iraqi Art and Al Dar Al Iraqi [Iraqi House], a sculpture on the grounds of Montalvo Arts Center, on Saturday, November 3 from 3:00–5:00pm. Moments is an exhibition of rarely viewed works from leading Iraqi artists from the 40s, 50s and 60s. This is the first exhibition of its kind in the US, and the curator, Nada Shabout, who will be our guest at the January 28 Aurora Forum, will be present to give a talk on the loss of modern Iraqi art and its implications. This is one of many IRAQ: REFRAME events.
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Post by Mark Gonnerman
On Monday, October 22, Orhan Pamuk, the 2006 Nobel laureate in literature, will speak at Memorial Auditorium at 6:00pm. This free and open public talk is hosted by Stanford’s Mediterranean Studies Forum. Pico Iyer, our Aurora Forum guest next April 24, recently reviewed Pamuk’s new collection of essays, Other Colors, for The New York Times.
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Post by Mark Gonnerman
I’ve been asked to begin this talk [to students assembled in White Plaza in solidarity with the monks, nuns, and citizens of Burma] by taking us into silence.
[two minutes of silence]
It is important to go into silence. It's not often that we do that here at Stanford, and it's rare that we do it together. But it's important to go into silence.
Why? What becomes evident there?
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Post by Mark Gonnerman
On 10 May 2008—Pangea Day—sites in New York City, Rio, London, Dharamsala, Cairo, Jerusalem, and Kigali will be videoconferenced live to produce a 4-hour program of powerful films, visionary speakers, and uplifting music. The program will be broadcast live to the world through the internet, television, digital cinemas, and mobile phones. You are invited to submit an up-to-five-minute-long film that may be included in this celebration of "films made by the world for the world." For more information, including a compelling trailer that promotes this project, click here.
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Post by Mark Gonnerman
Few doubt that we have reached a critical time in our planet's history, a moment that challenges all citizens, schools, businesses, and governments to reexamine their priorities. Our time demands interdisciplinary thinking and strategic partnerships between research institutions, government regulators, and industries that take seriously the "triple bottom line" of social change, environmental sustainability, and economic justice. We face a Herculean task, and a big part of the work is to consolidate political will and generate reasons for hope.
In recent years, I have often asked friends and colleagues to imagine Earth without human inhabitants and consider what would be lacking if our species ceased to exist. . . .
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Post by Mark Gonnerman
The iconoclastic philosopher, Richard Rorty, a presence at Stanford for the past ten years, died at his on-campus home on Friday, June 8 at the age of 75. Professor Rorty’s book, Achieving our Country: Leftist Thought in Twentieth-Century America (1998), and a collection of his philosophical, political and cultural writings, Philosophy and Social Hope (1999), were an important part of the constellation of ideas and interests that gave birth to the Aurora Forum’s emphasis on conversations that explore democratic ideals and inspire social hope. . . .
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Post by Mark Gonnerman
In the May/June 2007 issue of Orion magazine, Paul Hawken writes about the emergence of an undefined social movement that is unprecedented in its breadth and depth: "The promise of this unnamed movement is to offer solutions to what appear to be insoluble dilemmas: poverty, global climate change, terrorism, ecological degradation, polarization of income, loss of culture. It is not burdened with a syndrome of trying to save the world; it is trying to remake the world." Go here for the complete essay. And be involved.
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Post by Mark Gonnerman
The latest issue of Greater Good Magazine features an article coauthored by Zeno Franco and Philip Zimbardo, a professor emeritus of psychology here at Stanford, on “The Banality of Heroism.” “We are,” say the authors, “all potential heroes waiting for a moment in life to perform a heroic deed. The decision to act heroically is a choice that many of us will be called upon to make at some point in time....
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Post by Mark Gonnerman
- 1/3 of high school graduates never read another book for the rest of their lives.
- 42 percent of college graduates never read another book after college.
- 80 percent of U.S. families did not buy or read a book last year.
- 70 percent of U.S. adults have not been in a bookstore in the last five years.
- About 120,000 books are published each year in the U.S. . . . .
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Post by Mark Gonnerman
Ideal Paradise Heaven
A mountain range, glaciers,
snowfields, meadows, talus, benches,
—wind and sleet sometimes blow—
and every few hundred yards
a door
that leads into a vast Library within
with reading rooms
&
coffee.
—Gary Snyder’s Journal, 27 April 1988
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Post by Mark Gonnerman
Stanford Report has published an article introducing Advocate of the Social Gospel, September 1948-March 1963, the King Institute's sixth volume of The Papers of Martin Luther King, Jr. King's sermons and papers provide the starting point for our interfaith roundtable on "Spirituality and Social Change" at Kresge on the evening of Thursday, January 25. The article also lists on-campus events celebrating King's legacy from January 11-31. We hope to see you at these public programs. You can read the Stanford Report article by going here.
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Post by Mark Gonnerman
Rebecca Solnit, Aurora Forum presenter and author of Hope in the Dark: Untold Histories, Wild Possibilities, has posted her end-of-year essay for 2006, "The Age of Mammals: Looking Back on the First Quarter of the Twenty-First Century." It is available via Tomdispatch.com, and you can go to it directly by clicking here. This essay ends with a great quote from Mas Kodani of the Senshin
Buddhist Temple in Los Angeles: "One does not stand still looking for a path. One walks; and as one walks, a path comes into being."
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Post by Mark Gonnerman
Earlier this fall I had the good fortune to hear Yvon Chouinard, founder and owner of Patagonia, Inc. at the Graduate School of Business. He appeared in conversation with Professor Erica Plambeck for this year's Conradin von Gugelberg Memorial Lecture on the Environment, and the event was heartening. When Chouinard said "I'm in business to lead an examined life," I decided to read his book, Let My People Go Surfing: The Education of a Reluctant Businessman (Penguin Press, 2005). Jared Diamond calls it "a detailed blueprint for hope," and this is true on a number of levels:...
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Post by Mark Gonnerman
Jonathan Lear’s Radical Hope: Ethics in the Face of Cultural Devastation (Harvard, 2006) is a profound meditation on hope with reference to the life and character of Plenty Coups (1848-1932), the last great chief of the Crow nation who guided his people through the collapse and revival of their traditional way of life. In this original and engaging exploration of history, anthropology, ethics, and the virtue of hope-filled courage, Lear aims “to establish what we might legitimately hope at a time when the sense of purpose and meaning that has been bequeathed to us by our culture has collapsed.”. . .
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Post by Mark Gonnerman
The Aurora Forum at Stanford University is a place where people regularly gather to make connections with each other and with socially engaged thinkers adept at turning whole-earth vision into effective action for progressive social change. Through public conversations we explore ideas that remind us of democratic ideals, deepen civic understanding and inspire social hope. The essay by Wade Davis, our guest on October 2, linked below urges us to move toward more ethically responsible global citizenship by declaring our awareness of interdependence ...
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Post by Mark Gonnerman
Aurora Forum presenter Michael Nagler has just published Hope or Terror? Gandhi and the Other 9/11. In the introduction he writes: "By a strange coincidence it was exactly a century ago, on September 11th, 1906, that Mahatma Gandhi launched a new way of waging conflict ...
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Post by Mark Gonnerman
Stanford alumnus David Korten has just published The Great Turning: From Empire to Earth Community. He writes that “a turn from Empire to Earth Community might seem a hopeless fantasy if not for the evidence from values surveys that a global awakening to the higher levels of human consciousness is already underway. . . ."
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Post by Mark Gonnerman
Vartan Gregorian offered this reminder to students who earned advanced degrees at Stanford's 115th commencement ceremony on the morning of June 17: "In this difficult time when many of us worry about our country and its direction, about its values, its promise and its future, I'm still convinced that while America is not perfect, it is still perfectible."
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Post by Mark Gonnerman
Davis Guggenheim’s just-released film, An Inconvenient Truth, is a good follow-up to our May 13 workshop, “Bioregionalism with Peter Berg and David Room: Responses to Peak Oil.”
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Post by Mark Gonnerman
Last week I joined with Stanford's Lively Arts Residency Program Manger, Michelle Nicole Lee, to host a conversation with poet Sekou Sundiata and philosopher Jacob Needleman at Lively Arts' new Arts & Ideas Lab at the Elliot Program Center.
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Post by Mark Gonnerman
I published the following announcement in the printed program for last night’s “An Evening with Calvin Trillin”:
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Post by Mark Gonnerman
Barbara Palmer of Stanford Report provides an excellent summary of David Brion Davis' recent Tanner Lectures on Human Values, "Exodus, Exiles and Promised Lands."
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Post by Mark Gonnerman
I open an old message and am struck by the following:
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Post by Mark Gonnerman
In the wake of a conversation with a friend about the growing prevalence of video games in the lives of undergraduate students, I pull Eric Hoffer’s The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements (1951) off the shelf and read:
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Post by Mark Gonnerman
Here's a gem from Jane Hirschfield’s After (this in “Seventeen Pebbles”):
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Post by Mark Gonnerman
My wife, Meri, recently gave me Jane Hirshfield’s After, a new collection of poetry just off the press from HarperCollins. I find the following:
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Post by Mark Gonnerman
The March 2006 Harper’s Magazine arrived in my mailbox yesterday. Editor Lewis Lapham—an Aurora Forum presenter on September 22, 2004—has authored “The Case for Impeachment: Why We Can No Longer Afford George W. Bush” (pp. 27-35). In the final paragraph he writes:
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Post by Mark Gonnerman
Today the Aurora Forum hosted a workshop presented by philosopher Jacob Needleman and music educator Gail Needleman, “Words and Music: The Challenge and Mystery of Human Communication.” The presentations and discussions were rich and rewarding. At one point we considered the relation of music and community building, and Gail referred to an interview on this theme with Bernice Johnson Reagon on the Veterans of Hope Project website. Here’s an excerpt:
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Post by Mark Gonnerman
While reading Catherine Humble’s brief, positive note about The Believer Book of Writers Talking to Writers in the 27 January 2006 TLS, I come across the following:
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Post by Mark Gonnerman
The Aurora Forum hosts public conversations that are intended to stimulate genuine conversations among listeners. Here’s what philosopher Hans-Georg Gadamer (1900–2002) says about conversation in Truth and Method, the great book he published in 1960:
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