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<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt 1.5in"
align="left"><span
style="font-size:10pt;font-family:Arial,sans-serif">[For what
it's worth, there is a <a
href="http://www.coachusa.com/shortline/ss.tickets.asp">Shortline
Bus</a> from Port Authority directly to the Ramapo College
campus.]<br>
</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt 1.5in"><b><span
style="font-size:10pt;font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><br>
The Ramapo College Masters in Sustainability
Studies Program</span></b><span
style="font-size:12pt;font-family:Arial,sans-serif"></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"
style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt;text-align:center;line-height:12pt;background:rgb(250,250,250)"
align="center"><b><span
style="font-size:10pt;font-family:Arial,sans-serif;background:white">Invites
you to the Fourth
Lecture in Our 2016 Series (</span></b><span
style="font-size:12pt;font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><a
href="http://goo.gl/7haKPr"><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://goo.gl/7haKPr">http://goo.gl/7haKPr</a></a>)</span><b><span
style="font-size:10pt;font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><br>
<br>
<br>
</span></b><span
style="font-size:12pt;font-family:Arial,sans-serif"></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"
style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt;text-align:center;background:rgb(250,250,250)"
align="center"><b><span
style="font-size:14pt;font-family:Arial,sans-serif;background:white">"Lessons
of
Sustainability: Voices of Key Practitioners" </span></b><b><span
style="font-size:12pt;font-family:Arial,sans-serif;background:white">(<a
href="http://goo.gl/7haKPr"><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://goo.gl/7haKPr">http://goo.gl/7haKPr</a></a>)</span></b><span
style="font-size:12pt;font-family:Arial,sans-serif"></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"
style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt;text-align:center;line-height:12pt;background:rgb(250,250,250)"
align="center"><span
style="font-size:10pt;font-family:Arial,sans-serif"> </span><span
style="font-size:12pt;font-family:Arial,sans-serif"></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt
1.5in;text-align:center" align="center"><b><span
style="font-size:18pt;font-family:Arial,sans-serif">MURRAY
BOOKCHIN’S SOCIAL ECOLOGY AS</span></b><span
style="font-size:12pt;font-family:Arial,sans-serif"></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt
1.5in;text-align:center" align="center"><b><span
style="font-size:18pt;font-family:Arial,sans-serif">A
PATHWAY TO SUSTAINABLE CHANGE</span></b><span
style="font-size:12pt;font-family:Arial,sans-serif"></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt
1.5in;text-align:center" align="center"><b><span
style="font-size:18pt;font-family:Arial,sans-serif">Janet
Biehl</span></b><span
style="font-size:12pt;font-family:Arial,sans-serif"></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt
1.5in;text-align:center" align="center"><b><span
style="font-size:16pt;font-family:Arial,sans-serif">Followed
by a Panel of Ramapo faculty</span></b><span
style="font-size:12pt;font-family:Arial,sans-serif"></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt
1.5in;text-align:center" align="center"><b><span
style="font-size:16pt;font-family:Arial,sans-serif">Wednesday, March
9, 2016</span></b><span
style="font-size:12pt;font-family:Arial,sans-serif"></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"
style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt;text-align:center;background:rgb(250,250,250)"
align="center"><b><u><span
style="font-size:16pt;font-family:Arial,sans-serif">SC 219
Friends Hall, 6-8:00 pm</span></u></b><span
style="font-size:12pt;font-family:Arial,sans-serif"></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"
style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt;text-align:center;background:rgb(250,250,250)"
align="center"><b><span
style="font-size:16pt;font-family:Arial,sans-serif"> </span></b><span
style="font-size:12pt;font-family:Arial,sans-serif"></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"
style="margin-bottom:12pt;text-align:center;background:rgb(250,250,250)"
align="center"><b><span
style="font-size:16pt;font-family:Arial,sans-serif">Free and
Open to the Public---Help Spread the Word</span></b><span
style="font-size:12pt;font-family:Arial,sans-serif"></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"
style="margin-bottom:12pt;text-align:center;line-height:12pt;background:rgb(250,250,250)"
align="center"><span
style="font-size:12pt;font-family:Arial,sans-serif">Janet
Biehl, Author of <i>Ecology or Catastrophe, the Life
of Murray Bookchin</i>, will discuss Murray Bookchin’s
important contribution
as the founder of Social Ecology and leading thinker about the
social
transformation to a sustainable society. Murray taught at
Ramapo during its
formative years as a model institution for interdisciplinary
and integrative
thought.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"
style="margin-bottom:12pt;text-align:center;line-height:12pt;background:rgb(250,250,250)"
align="center"><span
style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif;color:black;background:white">*****</span><span
style="font-size:12pt;font-family:Arial,sans-serif"></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt"><span
style="font-size:12pt;font-family:Arial,sans-serif">Murray
Bookchin came
of age during a period of revolutionary thought and action. He
grew up on
discourse about how to create a better society. Drawn into a
succession of
social movements, he eventually espoused his own concept of
transformation, a
highly democratic and communal approach that he called
Communalism. Largely
self-taught, he was a disciplined learner who taught himself
classic Greek in
order to understand the classics in their original
formulation. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt"><span
style="font-size:12pt;font-family:Arial,sans-serif"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt"><span
style="font-size:12pt;font-family:Arial,sans-serif">By the
1960s, he had
realized that social transformation not only had to address
issues of workers’
rights and equity, but it also had to come to grips with the
ever increasing
destruction of the physical environment caused by capitalism
dependent on perpetual
growth; the resulting cancer was destructive of the earth and
society alike.
Bookchin’s <i>Our Synthetic</i> <i>Environment</i> predated
not
only Rachel Carson but anticipated virtually the entire
breadth of discourse in
subsequent field of Environmental Studies. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt"><br>
</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt"><span
style="font-size:12pt;font-family:Arial,sans-serif">Bookchin’s
genius was
to place social problems into an ecological context, a radical
reformulation of
social theory totally missed by the Marxists. In his systemic
thinking, the
root error of society was its embrace of domination, not only
of workers and
the means of production, but of women and the environment.
Needed was a
theoretical formulation that replaced this domination with
direct participatory
democracy sensitive to place and community.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt"><br>
</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt"><span
style="font-size:12pt;font-family:Arial,sans-serif">In his
1982 book <i>The
Ecology of Freedom</i>, written while he taught at Ramapo,
Bookchin achieved
just this synthesis. As synthesized in his later thinking on
Communalism,
Bookchin saw the future shaped around nonhierarchical
communities where free
expression, involvement and shared responsibility united
people and environment
in a healthy process of future building. By describing the
social mechanisms as
well as the theoretical basis for Communalism, he clearly
described the
required path for the social transformation to a sustainable
society as perhaps
no one else has done.</span></p>
<br>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt"><span
style="font-size:12pt;font-family:Arial,sans-serif">Bookchin’s
life has
been powerfully described by his long term collaborator and
second wife, Janet
Biehl. She is the author of several books on social ecology,
including <i>Ecology
or Catastrophe: The Life of Murray Bookchin</i> (2015), <i>The
Murray
Bookchin Reader </i>(1997), and <i>The Politics of Social
Ecology:
Libertarian Municipalism</i> (1998), as well as numerous
articles, during
her 19-year collaboration with Bookchin. Now that the Kurdish
freedom movement
has picked up on his ideas, she has translated (from German
into English)
several books on that subject, including <i>Democratic
Autonomy in North
Kurdistan</i> (2013) and <i>Revolution in Rojava </i>(forthcoming).
She
earns her living copyediting books for Alfred A. Knopf,
Penguin, W.W.
Norton, and other publishers in New York.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"
style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt;line-height:16.25pt"><span
style="font-size:10.5pt;font-family:'Open
Sans',serif;color:rgb(68,68,68)"> </span><span
style="font-size:12pt;font-family:Arial,sans-serif"></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"
style="margin-bottom:12pt;line-height:12pt;background:rgb(250,250,250)"><span
style="font-size:10pt;font-family:Arial,sans-serif;color:rgb(59,56,56);background:white">Those
parking
on campus should acquire a parking permit from the guard booth
at the
north entrance. For additional information or an advance
parking permit,
contact Professor Michael R. Edelstein at </span><u><span
style="font-size:10pt;font-family:Arial,sans-serif;color:rgb(17,85,204);background:white"><a
href="mailto:medelste@ramapo.edu"><a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:medelste@ramapo.edu">medelste@ramapo.edu</a></a></span></u><span
style="font-size:10pt;font-family:Arial,sans-serif;background:white">.
Ramapo is handicapped
accessible but if special provisions are required, let us
know. </span></p>
</div>
<br>
<pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">--
-
Ashwani
Vasishth <a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:vasishth@ramapo.edu">vasishth@ramapo.edu</a> (201) 684-6616
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://phobos.ramapo.edu/~vasishth">http://phobos.ramapo.edu/~vasishth</a>
--------------------------------------------------------
Associate Professor of Sustainability Planning
Director, Center for Sustainability
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://ramapo.edu/sustainability">http://ramapo.edu/sustainability</a>
Ramapo College of New Jersey
505 Ramapo Valley Road, SSHS, Mahwah, NJ 07430
--------------------------------------------------------
</pre>
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