Please join us for the first David A Walsh Seminar for the arts and sciences on Monday Sept 30th at noon in Snell 213.
Patrice Brodeur, Professor of Religious Studies at the Institut d`études religieuses at the Université de Montréal, Quebec, Canada will talk on “
Dialogue Emergencies at a Time of Global Polycrisis” He was the Canada Research Chair (junior) on Islam, Pluralism and Globalization between 2005 and 2015. His expertise includes contemporary Islamic thought, geopolitics of religions, and interreligious dialogue for transformative peacebuilding.
Dialogue Emergencies at a Time of Global Polycrisis
Our common humanity is facing a unique critical point of no return due to the current speed of climate change and environmental deterioration. To increase the present speed of human behavioral change to avoid the worst (unsustainability of human life on earth), a better understanding of how to overcome the vicious cycle of victimization discourses is urgently needed. Too much human and material resources are spent fighting identity self-preservation/expression battles due to a variety of codependent factors, such as: ideological polarizations, systemic racisms, epistemic injustices, economic disparities, and lack of sustainable consciousness of our common human interdependence. To avoid adding fuel to the proverbial fire, there is an urgent need to address the global polycrisis of our time through multi-lateral and inclusive approaches that necessarily require dialogue, from the personal to the global human family, using the interdependent micro, meso and macro levels of our human decision-making structures. A transformative interworldview dialogue approach seeks to provide both an analytical framework to better understand our contemporary problems as well as a set of skills to acquire in order to increase our personal and collective agency to accelerate effectively the speed of change in our human behaviors so as to make us all more responsible and sustainable global citizens.
Patrice Brodeur is a professor of religious studies at the Institut d`études religieuses at the Université de Montréal, Quebec, Canada. He was the Canada Research Chair (junior) on Islam, Pluralism and Globalization between 2005 and 2015. His expertise includes contemporary Islamic thought, geopolitics of religions, and interreligious dialogue for transformative peacebuilding. He was the founding director of the research department (2013-2015), and later a Senior Adviser (2016-2021) at the International Dialogue Centre (KAICIID) in Vienna, Austria, participating in the training of over 600 fellows worldwide, of all major religions. His publications include more than fifty articles, book chapters and books. He has lectured academically to a variety of audiences and conducted in five languages mostly trainings on dialogue in over fifty countries around the world.
The Arts & Sciences Seminar Series is a weekly colloquium series that has been supported by the School of Arts & Sciences Advisory Council at Clarkson University especially through generous gifts from David A. Walsh ‘67. Please contact ansseminar@clarkson.edu
SA&S 300: Arts and Sciences Seminar is a one credit course intended to foster an interdisciplinary outlook in undergraduates majoring in the School of Arts and Sciences.