FAHE 2007 General Schedule

Friends Association for Higher Education

2007 Conference

Scholars for Peace, Justice, and Sustainability

Earlham College

June 14-17, 2007

Plenary Sessions

Thursday, June 14, 7:00-9:00 pm

Opening Plenary: “Scholars for Peace, Justice, and Sustainability: Responding in Faithfulness, Seeking Effectiveness," Laura Rediehs

The opening session will be an introduction to the conference theme. Serious global problems face us, problems having to do with militarism, social and economic injustice, and environmental sustainability. These problems are so complex and interconnected that effectively addressing them requires study and planning. There is much good research about these problems, and about how to plan for effective change, but in our world that is overloaded with information both good and bad, it can be hard for concerned individuals and groups who wish to educate themselves about these problems to gain access to helpful and reliable research presented in accessible forms. Scholars often feel that they are working in isolation, encouraged by their profession to speak primarily to small scholarly audiences within specialized academic disciplines. Even those scholars already committed to addressing these issues may feel overwhelmed at the immensity of the problems, and discouraged by how hard it is to bring about change. What is our call to faithfulness? How do we nurture our spirits and find positive ways forward? By gathering here at this conference, can we share ideas and forge connections with each other that can build our hope and strengthen our effectiveness?

Introduction to the Small Groups and Small Groups Initial Session

A new feature of this year’s conference schedule will be that all participants will meet together in small groups to share with each other the work that they do and the challenges they face integrating their work with their lives of faith and their concerns for peace, justice, and/or sustainability. Laura Rediehs will follow her presentation with an introduction to the small groups, and the small groups will have time for their initial meeting.

Laura Rediehs is Associate Professor and Chair of the Philosophy Department at St. Lawrence University. She is also the Assistant Clerk of the Friends Association for Higher Education, and is this year's FAHE Program Committee Convener. Laura teaches peace studies courses as well as philosophy courses on knowledge, meaning, and ethics. Her research interests focus on the power of words, and how meanings change across different conceptual systems An Earlham graduate, Laura is delighted to be returning to Earlham for this occasion. She is a member of the St. Lawrence Valley Friends Meeting, in Potsdam, New York.

Friday, June 15, 9:00-10:30 am

Plenary on Peace: Mary Lord

More information will be available soon!

Saturday, June 16, 7:00-9:00 pm

Plenary on Sustainability: "Working the Faith: Friends, Higher Education, and the Question of Sustainability," Jay Roberts and Mic Jackson

Jay Roberts is the Director of Wilderness Programs and an Assistant Professor of Education at Earlham College in Richmond, Indiana. He teaches in both the Education and Environmental Studies programs and has led several off-campus programs including an environmental field study semester in the southwestern United States and northern Mexico and an up-coming Environmental Studies program to New Zealand in the spring of 2008. He lives in Richmond with his wife, Marcie, and two children, Ellie and Arden. Jay is a member of First Friends Meeting of Richmond, Indiana.

Mic Jackson is Professor of Mathematics and Director of Environmental Programs at Earlham College. He teaches a course which focuses on using mathematics to develop a better understanding of environmental problems, and regularly teaches seminar courses on sustainability topics. Mic's family is strongly connected to Earlham. His wife, Sandy, works at Earlham. Their daughter Emily (26) attended Earlham and recently married an Earlham classmate. Their son Adam (20) just finished his first year at Earlham. They attend West Richmond Friends Meeting.

Sunday, June 17, 8:30-10:00 am

Plenary on Economic Justice: "Seeds of Discord, Seeds of Harmony," Arnie Alpert, American Friends Service Committee; Response by Tom Head, George Fox University

"Wealth is attended by power, by which bargains and proceedings contrary to universal righteousness are supported, and here oppression, carried on with worldly policy and order, clothes itself with the name of justice and becomes like a seed of discord in the soil."

~John Woolman

The American Friends Service Committee has a project on Economic Justice. Arnie Alpert will be sharing information about this AFSC initiative and about the crucial importance of economic justice in today's world. Tom Head, Professor of Economics at George Fox University, will be responding to Arnie Alpert's presentation.

Arnie Alpert - biographical sketch

Since 1981, Arnie Alpert has been New Hampshire Program Coordinator for the American Friends Service Committee, a Quaker organization devoted to social justice, peace, and nonviolent change. He is active in movements for economic justice and affordable housing, civil and worker rights, peace and disarmament, abolition of the death penalty, and an end to racism and homophobia.

He was named “Citizen of the Year” by the New Hampshire Women’s Lobby in 1997, received the NH AFL-CIO’s annual Social Justice Award in 1999, the Thomas Merton/Dorothy Day Award from Rivier College in 2005, and the Blanche Tyson Spirit Award from the Circle of Friends in 2005.

As Communications Coordinator for the Martin Luther King Day Committee from 1988 to 1999, Arnie played a central role in the campaign for a state holiday honoring Dr. King. The holiday was enacted in 1999 and first observed officially in 2000.

Since the early 1990s, Arnie has traveled in Mexico, Honduras, Guatemala, Nicaragua, and Haiti to learn about the impact of globalization on peoples’ jobs and access to basic services. He writes, leads workshops, and speaks frequently on issues related to workers’ rights, globalization, water, and trade policy. Arnie participated in protests and other activities during the 1999 World Trade Organization meeting in Seattle, the 2003 WTO meeting in Cancun, and the 2005 WTO meeting in Hong Kong. He was an AFSC delegate to the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre in 2005. Arnie was a member of the AFSC Global Economics Working Party, which produced “Putting Dignity and Rights at the Heart of the Global Economy,” a report issued in 2004.
Arnie was the lead organizer of a 1998 anti-sweatshop protest at the Mall of New Hampshire in Manchester, where he was arrested with seven other people who were passing out leaflets about sweatshop abuses and the human rights of workers. The activists, who were labeled the “Footlocker Eight” by the Concord Monitor because their protest targeted the store which serves as Nike’s primary retail outlet, used their court case to draw widespread attention to the exploitation of workers by global corporations and to the threat to democracy from enclosure of public space. His article about the Footlocker Eight, “Brining Globalization Home is No Sweat,” is included in the AFSC anthology, Living in Hope: People Challenging Globalization, published in 2002. From 2000 to 2005, Arnie served on the national Steering Committee of the Campaign for Labor Rights, which promotes grassroots activism to end sweatshop abuses.

Prior to joining the AFSC staff, Arnie worked as a volunteer and staff member with the Clamshell Alliance, the organization that popularized nonviolent direct action to halt nuclear power plants. As a Clamshell member, Arnie began leading workshops on the methods and philosophy of nonviolence, something he continues to do.

In the early 1980s, Arnie coordinated the Nuclear Arms Freeze campaign which popularized concerns about nuclear weapons throughout the state. The creation of the organization now known as NH Peace Action is an outgrowth of those efforts.

Arnie served from 1991 to 1997 on the Board of the New Hampshire Community Loan Fund, a nonprofit organization which serves as a bridge between socially conscious lenders and organizations that need financing for affordable housing or job creation.

Arnie is an active member of his union, UNITE Local 66L, which represents industrial laundry workers and social change activists in the northeast.

Arnie is a frequent contributor to New Hampshire’s op-ed pages, especially the Concord Monitor, for which he is a member of the Board of Contributors. He has also published columns in the, the Union Leader, the Keene Sentinel, the NH Gazette, and the NH Business Review. He is also published frequently in the AFSC’s monthly magazine, Peacework, and has published articles in The Progressive and Dollars and Sense, NH Business Review. Arnie wrote the entry on New Hampshire in Civil Rights in the United States, an encyclopedia published by MacMillan Reference USA in 2000.

Arnie Alpert received a BA in Environmental Science from Wesleyan University in 1977 and an MS in Community Economic Development from New Hampshire College in 1995. He lives in Canterbury, New Hampshire with Judith Elliott, Executive Director of the NH Coalition for Occupational Safety and Health..

For information, contact:
AMERICAN FRIENDS SERVICE COMMITTEE,
NEW HAMPSHIRE OFFICE
4 Park St., Suite 209 PO Box 1081 Concord NH 03302
tel: (603) 224-2407 fax: (603) 228-6492
e-mail: aalpert@afsc.org