UNE Center for Global Humanities announces spring 2016 lecture series

Why do today’s students view higher education as a pathway to personal gain, while in centuries past students saw college as preparation for serving the greater good? Although our pop-culture is rife with examples of the gypsy people and gypsy lifestyle, how much do we really know about the ethnic minority spread across Europe and the discrimination its people face? If “One Nation under God” and “In God We Trust” didn’t come from America’s Founding Fathers but were adopted in the 1950s, who invented them, and why?     

The University of New England Center for Global Humanities’ Spring 2016 lecture series promises to shed light on these and other fascinating questions. The series will offer four lectures over the course of the semester. Each will begin at 6 p.m. on UNE’s Portland Campus after a public reception at the UNE Art Gallery that begins at 5 p.m.  

Spring 2016 Center for Global Humanities Lecture Series

• January 25, 2016: “Higher Education and the Common Good”

                     Charles Dorn, Bowdoin College

• February 29, 2016: “A Critical Look at Europe’s Policy on Roma (Gypsies)”

                     Yaron Matras, University of Manchester, England

• April 11, 2016: “One Nation under God”

                     Kevin M. Kruse, Princeton University

• April 25, 2016: “Christianity and the Ways of Being Religious”

                     Luke Timothy Johnson, Emory University

Since its founding in 2009 by prominent UNE scholar Anouar Majid, the Center for Global Humanities (CGH) has brought to UNE’s Portland Campus leading thinkers from around the globe to share their expertise with students and a diverse audience of community members. Past speakers have included international luminaries like Noam Chomsky, Neal Barnard, and Bill McKibben.

The Center for Global Humanities lecture series introduces attendees to exploration of some of the most pressing issues facing humanity today. In addition to serving members of the Portland community, the lectures are streamed live online so that students at UNE’s campus in Tangier, Morocco, and people around the world can view them. The lectures are also archived on the CGH webpage.