Spring 2018 Global Issues Colloquium

Thursday, January 18, 7pm
Baldwin Hall Little Theater (BH 102)
Bending the Arc,” A powerful documentary about the extraordinary team of doctors and activists – including Paul Farmer, Jim Yong Kim, and Ophelia Dahl – whose work thirty years ago to save lives in a rural Haitian village grew into a global battle in the halls of power for the right to health for all. Epic, yet intimate, the film is a compelling argument for the power of collective and personal vision and will to turn the tide of history.

Thursday, February 15, 7pm
Baldwin Hall Little Theater (BH 102)
Christine Harker, climate change and global refugees
The immediate cost of climate change in the coin of human suffering is unmistakable: from heat stroke and starvation in the wake of record-breaking global temperatures and droughts to drownings in flash floods and ever-more energetic tsunamis, the line of direct causality is clear. However, the effects of global warming are not limited to simple, first-order cause-effect relationships. What is not widely recognized is the hand of climate change in our world’s increasingly unstable geopolitics, or the degree to which these chains of indirect causality can extend over time. Failed crops in one growing season can displace whole populations, destabilize countries, fuel resistance movements and drive international politics in the years to follow. This presentation will explore the central role of climate change in the global refugee crisis.

Thursday, March 22, 7pm
Baldwin Hall Little Theater (BH 102)
Eric K. Olson, UMKC, cooperative economies
Co-Sponsor: Students for a Democratic Society (SDS)
Olsen specializes in Marxian economics and will be speaking on cooperatives as a democratic alternative to capitalism.

Thursday, April 19, 7pm
Baldwin Hall Little Theater (BH 102)
Cuba study abroad report back