[Alumni-chat] From an Antioch Professor

[Robert Devine]

This comes from faculty member Julie Galagher, forwarded here by Trustee
Barbara Winslow.  

Barbara,

Would you share this with the people on your list and with the Board of
Trustees as well.  For some reason, I can't hit reply all.

I had the honor of being elected by my colleagues to deliver the 45th
Annual Faculty Lecture at Antioch College this past April.  I am attaching
that lecture so that people who are not aware of all the tremendous
efforts and talents of my colleagues can appreciate the details of what we
are about to lose.  This is a loss to higher education and to political
struggle. The Right is so committed to its institutions, the Left seems
willing to let this critical one die.  I'm heartbroken and disappointed in
so many, many ways.

Sincerely,
Julie Gallagher
Assistant Professor of History
Antioch College
795 Livermore Street
Yellow Springs, OH  45387
(937)769-1249


 An Education for Praxis:  Antioch College Confronts the Challenges of a
New Century
By
Julie Gallagher
Assistant Professor of History
Antioch College
April 4, 2007

I want to start by thanking my colleagues for selecting me for this honor,
although a mere thank you feels so inadequate.  When I was here four years
ago for my campus interview, and it was just about to the day, I parted
from Marianne Whelchel as she headed off to hear Jill Yeager deliver that
year’s faculty lecture. I was excited to be considered for a job at the
college, knowing that it celebrated its faculty each year with this kind
of wonderful recognition.  On my very first day of work at the faculty
retreat, Anne Filemyr and Hassan Rachmanian each gave a presentation on
curriculum, and without having consulted with each other, they both did so
using fruit metaphors.  I had frankly given curriculum design little
thought up to that point, and could never have put the issues in terms of
grapes or cherry pie or anything else. In fact, I still don’t think I
could do much better than a boring old flow chart model.  In any case, I
went home that night and told Jane that I was working with the most
creative and amazing group of people I had ever met.  I immediately
realized I had so much to learn – I hoped I was up to the challenge. 
Every single day since then has provided me with stimulating and new ways
to think about ideas and issues.  It is an unbelievably dynamic
environment to work in and I am indebted to my colleagues for that.    
There is a second set of faculty – I would call them the super faculty –
who have been role models and support systems for me in countless ways.  I
am referring to the emeriti faculty.  Irwin, Marianne, Victor, Harold, Al,
Connie, Bob, Barbara, Elaine, and Jewel in particular have given me vital
assistance and walked me through some challenging times inside and outside
the classroom.  They are the gems of the college and we are so very
fortunate to have their wise counsel to tap into.  I know I have been
deeply marked by their generosity and wisdom. To the extent that I am a
better teacher, scholar, or community member more generally, I can thank
them in large part.
I also want to express my very deep gratitude to the Dean of Faculty’s
office and the executive office staff for their ongoing support.  For the
many challenges Antioch faces, I have always walked into that office and
found someone ready and able to help me – I particularly want to thank
Kathy Carr and Andrzej Bloch.  I know that this evening’s event came
together because of Kathy Carr.  Kathy, Anna, Nancy, and Sharon are the
glue that holds this institution together, and their unwavering generosity
of time, and their consistent professionalism remind me of the ways I want
to be as a colleague.
Finally, I want to thank the students at Antioch.  No matter what is
happening on campus or beyond, when I walk in the classroom, I have the
best part of my day.  I am continuously inspired and challenged.  There is
a wonderful energy that comes from our classroom dynamics.  The rigor and
commitment our students pursue their studies with is often fantastic.  My
reading of texts, my writing, my analysis of the world is better and
deeper because of the classroom conversations that take place on a daily
basis.  And so, I thank the students from the bottom of my heart.
When I was first elected to give this lecture back in early September, I
was daunted by the idea of having something meaningful to say to this
community.  I am still early in my life education, especially as a
professor.  I thought to myself, what in the world do you say to the most
interesting, committed, creative and intelligent people you have ever met?
 And when I thought about it that way, the answer was easy – I tell them
the ways not only that I have continuously learned from them, but even
more, how much they have to say about the problems the world faces.  And
so in this lecture tonight, I will reflect on a few of the ways that the
Antioch College community has informed my own thinking and how it does or
could contribute to the public discourse regarding some of the grave
challenges of our time.  Unfortunately the challenges I will talk about
don’t begin to exhaust the list, but I feel they are significant
nonetheless.  They are 1) the tremendous inequality in wealth
distribution, 2) the entrenchment of and enchantment with militarism in
the United States, and 3) the fundamental interconnectedness of
environmental issues and social justice.  The Herndon Gallery and this
exhibit on human rights is a perfect reminder of how Antioch keeps these
issues in front of our eyes constantly.  For those of you who haven’t had
an opportunity to look at Tom Block’s portraits of courageous people who
have been tortured or killed for their commitments to social justice, I
urge you to do so.

Economic Inequality
I want to first discuss the persistent and pervasive problem of economic
inequality and how the education one receives at Antioch positions us to
not only critically analyze the roots and mechanisms of its proliferation,
but also equips us to weigh in as public intellectuals and activists.  We
can help shift the debates globally and domestically in ways that can
illuminate the true nature of the maldistribution of wealth and point to
alternative paths forward.  
For the past 30 years, we have existed in a world dominated by a
conservative discourse regarding global capitalism. Not only has the
discourse supported this growth, the U.S. political system actively
facilitated the dramatic resurgence and expansion of unregulated corporate
dominance.  Neo-liberalism promised to reduce poverty not just within the
United States, but across the world.  To that end, large corporations were
given free reign, and international institutions like the World Trade
Organization, the International Monetary Fund, and the World Bank
compelled countries in the global south to adopt their oppressive
structural adjustment agendas. The minimal regulatory state was largely
dismantled, and capital was encouraged to flow in all directions.  In
large sections of society, that message was greeted with enthusiasm. 
Americans were encouraged to buy with literally reckless abandon as access
to credit became irresponsibly easy.  
While conservatives pushed neo-liberalism, Antioch faculty, students and
alumni have continued to critically analyze and challenge it.  One very
simple example was an enlightening discussion we had in class one day
recently about a corporate message found in newspaper fliers and on the
trucks shipping merchandise for Target, a national big box chain.  The
company’s simple slogan “Expect More, Pay Less,” encapsulates this new
global order. Americans are told that they deserve more than anyone else
and they should get it for less money. The presumption of American
dominance is effectively reinforced at the same time that the wheels of
consumer capitalism are greased.  
  Over the past few decades, while much of America embraced these
opportunities to buy more and pay less for it, Antioch has remained a
place where uncomplicated messages of capitalist celebration have not
taken hold.  Humanities, Social Science and Arts faculty and students
regularly discuss the failure of neo-liberalism to produce the poverty
alleviation it promised.  Collectively we help illuminate the injustices
in the capitalist system that it denies exist.  In the Humanities, namely
literature, philosophy, and history courses, we expose the origins and
manifestations of power and we also study struggles to resist it.  Jean
Gregorek’s courses on the British Empire and post-colonial literature
introduce students to ways that people have responded and are still
responding to problems of injustice that they face.  Third world theorists
have effectively used film and literature to spread messages about global
oppression and resistance to it.  Our students are frequently exposed to
these ideas, are urged to not only read them, but also to think about ways
to apply them in their daily lives.  Isabella Winkler’s philosophy and
women’s studies courses give students the tools to deconstruct master
narratives to see how identities are created and recreated to both
positive and negative effect.  The tools she provides students with in the
classroom are employed in community here and in work experiences when
students do co-op jobs.  In my history courses, we study contradictions in
the system.  For example African Americans are particularly positioned to
see the inequalities in capitalism. They have in the past and continue to
experience the realities of racism even though the free market system
insists that it is fair.  Historically, U.S. wealth was built by people
both in forced bondage and later in dangerous and exploitative factories
on land violently seized from its indigenous inhabitants. The U.S. has
achieved economic greatness, but our students know the real costs of that
wealth, and they begin to understand who has paid the greatest price. 
In political science and economics courses taught by Hassan Nejad and
Janice Kinghorn, students are made aware that when Americans pay less, it
is because someone else somewhere in the world has not been paid a fair
wage.  Our students are urged to understand the interconnectedness of
global poverty and American wealth, as well as the hierarchies of wealth
and poverty within the United States.  No one circulated that message more
prominently and effectively than our own professor of media studies, Anne
Bohlen in her award winning documentaries “The Global Assembly Line” and
“With Babies and Banners.”  Anne and others on the faculty including
management professors Hassan Rachmanian, Cathy LaPalombara, and the
director of the Antioch Education Abroad, Women’s Studies in Europe
Program, Iveta Jusová, encourage students to critically analyze economic
inequalities and politics globally, but they demand that we also attend to
the ways that gender, race, and ethnicity intersect with class issues.
Chris Smith’s, Kim Barton’s, and Beverly Rodgers courses in psychology,
sociology and anthropology provide students with critical tools to
evaluate individuals and their relationships to social systems, especially
in the U.S. They teach our students to see how power operates on multiple
vectors simultaneously within and outside of the United States.  These
aren’t tools that lay fallow here at Antioch.  Our students utilize them
continuously in their conversations with each other and in their
reflections on the world.  They are developing habits of mind and
dispositions of engagement that leave with them every time they head off
campus, and especially when they graduate.  Our very active and impressive
alumni are evidence of what I am saying.
There are huge cultural obstacles and there is intentional obfuscation
that makes the workings of economic power nearly invisible to the
untutored eye.  A number of people on this faculty regularly monitor and
call attention to the myth-making machinery. Chris Hill, Scott Warren and
Bob Devine offer courses that not only expose the complicity of the state
in creating economic inequalities, but they model for students how to
deconstruct the discourses in the media that support the myths.  I would
note that Chris Hill’s and Jean Gregorek’s work on prisons and the growth
of the prison industrial complex is an excellent case in point.  I don’t
know how many of you had an opportunity to see the prison art exhibit that
the Herndon sponsored a few years ago.  Chris and Jean gave presentations
as part of that program that significantly changed the way I think about
race, gender, capitalism, crime and punishment. Our unemployment numbers
look much better to the public when we warehouse the “unemployables” we as
a society have failed to provide decent educations and decent
opportunities for.  Louise Smith through theater, Dennie Eagleson through
photography, and David LaPalombara through painting encourage students to
study and create art that urges a counter narrative, that forces us
beneath the smooth and seductive surfaces that capitalism needs in order
to function easily. Art at Antioch is a public discourse of social
criticism and activism.
The same critical perspective is encouraged when our students go on co-ops
in Chicago, in rural West Virginia, in western Kenya, and in northern
Brazil.  Lessons that are taught in the classroom have immediate
application in the work place.  While students are learning valuable
skills and new ideas in the work place, they also reflect on power
dynamics, on who has which opportunities to advance and who does not, on
how decisions get made and resources get allocated.  Our co-operative
education faculty like Tom Haugsby and Susan Eklund-Leen seek out
opportunities for our students to employ the critical frameworks of
analysis they are developing about economics, gender, race and national
identity.  Not only do students apply the ideas they learn in the
classroom at their jobs, but also when they return to campus, their work
place education informs their classroom studies.  As a result, our
students are well equipped to resist the tantalizing messages and cheap
goods that corporate suppliers lure the mass of consumers with. But even
more than that, they are positioned to become effective advocates for a
more just world in whatever workplace or community groups they are a part
of.
In the post Cold War period since the early 1990s, we have been encouraged
to believe that there are no alternatives to free market, global
capitalism.  However, there is growing evidence that people around the
world ARE trying to find alternatives.  Two ways they have sought to
challenge U.S. economic hegemony are through a resurgence of leftist
structural arguments and governments to go with them, and through
fundamentalism, especially religious fundamentalism.  
In nation after nation in South America, people are turning away from
neo-liberalism and are looking for a political and economic system of
distribution that more adequately meets their needs and that more fairly
distributes wealth.  A number of countries have elected leaders that have
explicitly challenged neo-liberal globalization and American dominance.
Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, president of Brazil, hailed from the Workers
Party.  He has taken a cautious stance regarding free trade agreements and
endeavored to reduce huge inequalities domestically. Evo Morales is the
President of Bolivia.  He is the first indigenous head of state and the
leader of the Movement for Socialism Party.  In Chile, Michelle Bachelet,
the first female president in that country, was also a survivor of
Pinochet’s Villa Grimaldi secret detention center.  She is a
left-of-center politician trying to bring greater economic justice to her
people. And finally, we are all familiar with Hugo Chavez, the president
of Venezuela who has aggressively, and I might add controversially,
targeted the U.S. for its position as the global economic and cultural
hegemon. 
People across Latin America are trying to resist capitalism’s global
dominance and they are looking for new solutions.  There are few people in
the United States with a platform to engage the debates that are emanating
from South America.  But because of Antioch’s history and its commitment
to critical analyses, especially of the economy, our students and our
faculty are positioned to move forward, to illuminate the ways that
neo-liberalism has failed to bring equality and greater justice globally. 
We can and must help broaden the boundaries of the public discourse on
capitalism.
------------
In pockets of the United States and across the world, people are also
challenging messages about economic inequalities with ideological
arguments grounded in religious fundamentalism.  These are vital critiques
that we have to find better ways to engage.  While some of our courses and
programs do this, especially Hassan Nejad’s, Jim Keen’s and Pat Mische’s,
and our AEA Buddhist studies programs in Japan and India led by Brian
Victoria and Robert Pryor, we need to have more substantive conversations
about religions and further critical study of the roots of fundamentalisms
and their current manifestations. Religious organizations have
historically followed quickly with the bible after the sword has done its
work.  When I did refugee work during the Balkans conflict in Kosovo in
1999, I saw this first hand.  Missionaries are everywhere offering “help”
for the promise of a soul.  Antioch has a different mission.  From time to
time, our faculty and alumni have been involved in conflict situations. 
But we do not just “help” and presume we have the answers.  We understand
the importance of listening to people – to letting them define their needs
for themselves.  We have an unusual kind of exchange to offer.  It is
imperative that as religious conservatives, who have a lot of money and
well-oiled machines, offer pathways to challenge economic injustices, that
alternatives such as those our education can provide are also part of the
conversation. 
Antioch can point the way forward in discussions about economic
inequalities. While it may sometimes feel impossible that things can
change, history has taught us that it doesn’t have to be.  For one thing,
Antioch is still here despite the relative minority perspectives it
supports.  The faculty are role models; they haven’t given up.  Moreover,
we have designed courses and a stimulating curriculum that resists the
atomization of specific disciplines.  We have not only a strong commitment
to illuminating the interconnections of politics, economics, history, art
and culture, of theory and practice, but we have intentionally designed
our education to continuously reinforce those relationships for our
students.  In addition, we have a new center for cultural and intellectual
freedom, the Coretta Scott King Center, which we are proud to have
directed by Dana Patterson.  As we were reminded just last week during the
inauguration, Coretta Scott King was a tireless activist in her own right
for political freedom and for human rights.  Workers, racially oppressed
people, women, gays and lesbians, and peace activists found a vocal
advocate in Mrs. King.  We have not just the opportunity, but also the
obligation to carry her work forward.  What I want to tell you tonight is
that we also have the talent and commitment.  Finally, when the struggles
against economic injustices seem overwhelming, I would also remind you of
the wealth of knowledge, experience, and commitment we have in our alumni.
 They haven’t given up.  Instead, they have found myriad ways to live
their commitments to economic justice. 
 
Militarism
I turn now to a brief discussion of the entrenchment of and enchantment
with militarism in the United States.  Since October 2001, almost six
years now, the United States has been engaged in war, first in Afghanistan
and then also in Iraq.  I would remind you too that our guns had not been
silent long because in 1999 we led a NATO mission in Kosovo, and before
that in Bosnia.  In addition, the nation has been saber rattling with
Iran, gave material and moral support to Israel’s war with Lebanon,
established new military bases in Central Asia, and sold allies countless
billions of dollars worth of military equipment.  The United States has
also undermined the effectiveness of the United Nations, one of the only
spaces where nations can come together to engage in dialogue before they
pick up guns and roll tanks, or fly drones and drop bombs.  While peace
activists and politicians appropriately condemn any movement by other
states to acquire nuclear weapons, the United States remains the only
country in the world to have used them, and we dropped those bombs on
civilians.  A full accounting of that decision has never been taken in
this country, and the lessons too many people take from it are very
disconcerting.  With the onset of World War II, the United States economy
became overly dependent on the expansion and maintenance of our military
and the militaries of our allies.  Although former U.S. President General
Eisenhower warned the nation about the centrality of the military
industrial complex to our society, little has changed in over sixty years. 
National conversations and debates about U.S. military actions and the
nation’s dependence on militarism more generally have been terrifyingly
narrow, especially given the lives and infrastructure that are at risk of
destruction, and the high opportunity costs of pursuing war instead of
peace. From January through March 2003, a million plus Americans took to
the streets protesting the march to war.  But nearly 300 million more gave
ascent through their silence and through their articulations of support. 
We are just now at a moment where the mainstream of American society and
the U.S. Congress itself are urging a departure from Iraq.  According to
the national discourse, we are “losing” in Iraq because too many U.S.
soldiers are being killed and so the solution is to leave.
Yet in conversations at Antioch, in Pat Mische’s and Jim Keen’s peace
studies classes, or in Hassan Nejad’s political science and international
law classes for example, students are taught to analyze why the situation
requires a much more complex response.  This war is currently being
discussed in terms of winning and losing. It is often compared to the
Vietnam War.  In Vietnam, the mainstream argument went, it was right to
engage because the nation feared the spread of communism, but ultimately
it was not a “good” war because the U.S. “lost” – the cost in U.S. lives
became too high to bear.  
Today, most people don’t talk about the hundreds of thousands of Iraqis
who have had their lives and livelihoods destroyed or have been killed. 
They say nothing about the nearly half a million that died during the
embargos of the 1990s, when U.S. military planes patrolled Iraqi skies and
routinely dropped bombs.  In addition, journalists, pundits and
politicians are silent about the infrastructure that has been destroyed,
as well as the sea of oil that lies underneath the ground.  
Faculty at Antioch and Yellow Springs community members give us tools to
evaluate not just the current manifestations of the conflict, but the
history and packaging of the war as well.  We are indebted to the
Interfaith Council and the Unitarians of Yellow Springs for hosting urgent
dialogues about war.  Gordon Chapman has generously shared his experiences
with us, as a speaker in my classes, and in the panel on torture that Jean
Gregorek and Jim Malarkey organized in October.  He discussed the broad
contours of his early work in the CIA and his determined effort to pursue
a different life course.  In Scott Warren’s philosophy courses, in my
history courses, and Bob Devine’s media studies courses students are
encouraged to analyze how and why military conflicts came to pass and how
they have been effectively maintained. When the war is framed in terms of
simplistic beginnings and endings, winning and losing like this, the
central causes and potential alternative paths forward remain obscured. 
Discussions about nineteenth and twentieth century colonialism, the CIA’s
covert activities, proxy wars and unholy alliances, and support of
authoritarian regimes, are vital elements to scrutinize in order to
comprehend the big picture.  Beverly Rodgers’ and Jean’s courses regularly
challenge students to dig deeper, to illuminate the workings of power and
oppression. 
There are a few points of light in the national and international debates,
yet Antioch and the Yellow Springs community more generally have been
consistent in their condemnation of the war and the causes of war more
broadly.  Jill Becker’s dance interpretations of the conflict in which she
explored the gendered affects of the war on Iraqi women, David
LaPalombara’s encouragement of students to create broadsides that
challenge complacency about war, and music professor James Johnston’s
coordination of Apple Hill’s music program for peace on campus, are just a
couple of the insightful and necessary responses that Antioch generates. 
Iveta and Isabella, Hassan Rachmanian, and Chris Hill, all demand that any
analysis of social, economic or cultural practices, of contestations over
power, include an exposition of the interconnections of race and gender as
well.  We have been living in a period of heightened, and I might suggest,
hyper masculinity. No moment demonstrated that more than when the
president of the United States landed on the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln in a
flight suit to announce, “mission accomplished.”  Rhetoric like “we want
‘em dead or alive” and “you’re either with us or against us” intentionally
created narrow boundaries within which to debate U.S. responses to the
horrifying attacks of September 11.  They became, by sleight of hand, the
first of many rationales for war in Iraq.  They remain the generally
accepted justification for human rights abuses and violations of
international law in Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib prisons and Bagram Air
Force Base. I would remind us as well that the U.S. is a signatory to the
international laws that our current government has violated. To the extent
that public conversations grapple with the implications of the conflation
of U.S. military might with masculinity or with economic predominance, we
have succeeded in bringing a important elements to the debates.  When
there is silence on these dynamics, we know that we have more work to do.  
Antioch students who travel to points around the globe on co-ops set up by
Eric Miller, who study languages with Ivan Dihoff, Jocelyn Hardman, and
Haruna Tomaru and who pursue the AEA programs Europe in Transition, Mali,
and the Buddhist Studies programs, encounter people and cultures affected
by U.S. militarism and who often hold different values than mainstream
Americans promulgate.  Through ongoing dialogues and experiences in these
different places, our students gain perspectives that benefit themselves
and those of us on campus with whom they share their new knowledge. 
Praxis in action.
We understand that the vital elements in the debates about the war in Iraq
are not about whether to remain, or remain for a year, or two years, or
leave now.  We dig deeper.  Historical contexts, thorough political and
cultural analyses, comprehensive exposés of economic motivations are what
the Antioch and Yellow Springs community have to offer to the national
discussions.  Colette Palamar and the Herndon Gallery committee wanted to
remind us about what is immoral, what is a violation of international law,
what is terribly wrong about losing site of human rights in our national
debates.  Again, I encourage you to spend time contemplating the artwork
and biographies that line these walls. The way forward requires that we
discuss the war and U.S. militarism in terms beyond that of U.S. body
counts and U.S. losses.  There is a broader conversation that urgently
needs to happen.  U.S. culpability should be weighed.  This nation engaged
in a pre-emptive war of aggression and destroyed the infrastructure and
livelihood of millions of people.  It may have committed war crimes. Yes,
Congress just voted last week to bring the troops home.  Americans are
increasingly saying that the war in Iraq is a mistake.  And I would agree,
the war was and is a mistake but not because we are “losing.”  What we
don’t hear being discussed, but I and many of us here would argue
absolutely should be, is that war and militarism are a deeply troubling
way to live in the world, especially when one lives in the midst of a
global giant.  
Again we can find hope and role models in our alumni like Steve Schwerner
and Eleanor Holmes Norton, or the thousands of Antiochians who have taken
up the challenge to bring about a different and more just world.  Here on
campus our conversations go on in our classrooms all the time.  Now we can
sponsor much more comprehensive debates in the Coretta Scott King Center. 
We have the forums, we have the talent, and we have the commitment.  We
must get busy.  I don’t pretend to have the answers.  I don’t know what
“winning” was supposed to look like, but I do know that the entire debate
needs to be changed.  

Environmental Issues and Social Justice
The third area I want to briefly reflect on is the fundamental
interconnectedness of environmental issues and social justice.  For years
debates have waged as to whether or not global warming exists or is a
problem. Those who denied its existence or saw efforts to address it as
too burdensome on the economy, succeeded in blocking the United State’s
support of the Kyoto Treaty.  Even this internationally supported
incomplete solution could not curry national favor.  
At long last, however, those who argue in the affirmative, that in fact
there have been dramatic and frightening fluctuations in the earth’s
climate have finally convinced the majority of Americans that we need to
put our moral authority and economic weight behind this problem.  We owe
Al Gore and his film, “An Inconvenient Truth,” no small measure of
appreciation for helping advance the discussion about environmental
degradation.  Politicians and business leaders are talking seriously about
“doing something” to help save the environment.  It has become the new
political vogue.  But we know that the shift is not just about polar bears
drowning.  Businesses are finally finding ways to make environmental
management profitable.  To the extent that the world may stay whole a
little longer, we can be thankful.  
	But as with the public discussions about economic inequalities and U.S.
militarism, the national discourse around environmental concerns has
remained troublingly limited.  The discussion needs to be framed in terms
not just of the environment but of social justice as well, both within the
United States and internationally.  And Antioch is already doing that. 
Not only do students develop the knowledge and skill sets to evaluate and
measure environmental change in our science and math classes led by Kab
Butimina, C.T. Chen, Eli Nettles, Chuck Taylor, and Brenda Moore.  But
nature is their classroom as Tom Ayersman so eloquently noted the other
day.  He, Peter Townsend, Colette and David Kammler demonstrate knowledge
in action in our regions natural settings like our very own Glen and on
nearby prairies.  Our students learn both a respect for and sense of
wonder about the world around them and beyond from Bill Whitsell, a
physics and astronomy professor here.  Bill I hope you and your wife will
take this in the spirit it was meant with – but I’d love to spend the
night lying on the grass looking at the stars with you. You have a
fantastic curiosity about the world and everything in it.  Jill Yager, a
biologist, has been a great model of living a life committed to
integrating theory and practice, as she teaches students and her
colleagues to integrate the natural world into our everyday lives. Co-op
professor Kathy Sheltens helps students find co-ops that facilitate their
potential to apply their science and math classroom-based learning in work
places. And AEA professor Suzanne Kolb, who heads our environmental
studies program in Brazil, creates opportunities for students to see the
global impacts of environmental change and further apply classroom
learning in new situations.  Praxis in action.
Our students’ classroom skills find immediate and numerous opportunities
for application. At the same time, they bring a different lens to the
problems they encounter because at Antioch we are schooled to look at the
interconnectedness of the environment and social justice – to think about
not just what is happening to nature, but who is experiencing the changes
most acutely and why.  One cannot study climate change without thinking
about how racism, gender bias and class discrimination are interwoven into
the fabric of these problems, which Chris Smith reminds students in her
classroom regularly.  In addition, under Bonner Program leader Ona
Harshaw, our students have worked in economically disadvantaged
communities that are suffering from problems particularly connected to
environmental degradation and social injustices.  After their trip to New
Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, our students presented a
comprehensive reflection on the ways racism, class discrimination and
environmental problems played out.  The destruction left in the wake of
Hurricane Katrina foreshadows the impacts of global warming and who pays
the price, and who gets left behind.
Moreover, our arts faculty has been innovative in their collaborations
with our science professors, and they have found powerful ways to make
manifest the very critical connections of human rights and environmental
issues.  Photography professor Dennie Eagleson and poetry professor Ben
Grossberg have worked together to teach students to document these
problems with a sensitive but well trained eye.  Louise Smith, Chris
Garcia, Nevin Mercede, and David LaPolombara are art makers and
simultaneously thoughtful social critics.  Anne Bohlen, Chris Hill, and
Pat Mische in their most recent work have each been looking at the natural
world and been critically illuminating the ways that its transformations
have affected not just the other millions of species that we co-habit the
earth with, but the ways that these changes are affecting people in
Dayton, Ohio, in Central Europe, and in East Timor.  These are urgent
environmental problems, but they are also human rights problems.  To the
extent that we don’t talk about this, the world will increasingly face
devastating conflicts and human generated tragedies. 
Our faculty and our alumni have been keeping this part of the debates
alive in the worlds in which we work.  I suggest that we need to find even
more ways to insert our perspectives into national and international
debates.  

I want to say a few closing words about community.  Antioch is a very
special place.  The generosity of spirit and the passion with which people
live their lives here is distinct among the many places, the progressive
communities, I have lived in.  We are inspired to live fully and live
healthfully.  I never close an email from Judy Kintner that I don’t say,
yes, Judy’s right, “If you don’t take care of your body, where will you
live.”  Judy, in her many roles on campus and in the community, is so
giving of spirit and I thank her for the many ways she supports us all. 
We have also faced some daunting personal challenges together.  We’ve lost
fathers and mothers, sisters, brothers, daughters and friends in only the
few years I have been here.  We have supported each other and mourned
together.  When someone is in need, people move with lightening speed to
lend a hand.  
I am continuously moved by the caring and love that people here so often
share with each other.  At the same time, there’s a singularly special
place on this campus that I want to mention for just one minute and that
is the library.  It is the physical and emotional embodiment of community.
 We lost a fine man and a true institution when we lost Joe Cali in
February.  We have all been marked by his life in so many ways.  But
despite his loss, the library and its wonderful staff, especially Nina,
Scott, Duffy, Ritch, Sandy, Debra, and Sue have carried forward the
mission and the vision of the college as a dynamic and welcoming place to
come and learn, share, and reflect on life’s little and big challenges. 
We are lucky to have them all.  Together we live fully and we feel deeply.
 Tonight I wanted to take a few minutes to remind us that perhaps we
should find more ways to celebrate each other and what we have to give to
the world. Thank you.