You reached this page through the archive. Click here to return to the archive.

Note: This article is over a year old and information contained in it may no longer be accurate. Please use the contact information in the lower-left corner to verify any information in this article.

Lecture to examine global community

By Anna Stevens '10
January 21, 2008

"St. Olaf's mission assumes an education fitted to global citizenship. But citizenship assumes belonging. So what can global citizenship mean if we do not have global community?" asks St. Olaf Regent Larry Rasmussen '61.

Rasmussen will address this question and others during a lecture titled "Is Global Community Possible?" that will be held on Thursday, Jan. 24, at 7 p.m. in Buntrock Commons, Viking Theater. Rasmussen, a visiting professor of environmental studies at St. Olaf and the Reinhold Niebuhr Professor Emeritus of Social Ethics at Union Theological Seminary, will deliver the lecture as part of the "Global Citizenship: Civic Engagement in the Liberal Arts" theme that the college will focus on this semester. His lecture will examine global citizenship apart from global community, what the theme of Civic Engagement actually means, and chances for the evolution of a global community. It is free and open to the public.

Rasmussen's lecture will kick off this semester's Civic Engagement theme, which is part of the yearlong theme of Global Citizenship. The purpose of this theme is to challenge the college community and ask students and faculty to consider the public purpose of a liberal arts education and how to be a global citizen.

Rasmussen earned a B.A. from St. Olaf, a B.D. from Luther Theological Seminary, and a Ph.D. from Union Theological Seminary. He is a published author of such books as Earth Community, Earth Ethics, and Moral Fragments & Moral Community.

Contact Kari VanDerVeen at 507-786-3970 or vanderve@stolaf.edu.