The Center for Peacemaking, Campus Ministry and Multicultural Affairs partner to host Marquette's Soup with Substance program.
The program invites members of the Marquette and larger Milwaukee community to listen and discuss a topic with a local or national figure known for his/her academic or practical work in nonviolence while enjoying free soup and bread during the lunch hour. This program occurs every Wednesday and has existed at Marquette for over 40 years.
The Soup with Substance series is completed for the Spring 2012 semester. Thank you for your participation and interest in this series.
Please check back as we anticipate another successful round of topics and speakers for the Fall semester.
What do America, Haiti and Pakistan have in common? We are all part of one global community. American communities may have a myopic view of the world. We can learn from each other by getting to know one another. Resolution of global conflict may encourage global peace by educating ourselves of the current political situation in the context of diverse cultural backgrounds.
Ethan Casey is a writer and speaker who grew up in Wisconsin and will lead this discussion. He spent 15 years as a journalist working to help foster the historical and geographical perspective, human connection and conversation between Americans and Pakistanis. He is also working at improving Americans' awareness of both the historic and the contemporary situation in Haiti.
Marquette University students are becoming more and more involved in advocating for comprehensive immigration reform. This soup will feature student participants of a spring break border awareness experience and members of “YES” (Youth Empowered in the Struggle) a newly formed immigration reform advocacy student organization on campus.
Gerry Fischer will moderate the student participants. He is the Associate Director in Campus Ministry at Marquette whose focus in ministry is social justice and community outreach.
Since the Occupy Wall Street Movement, we hear more and more conversations about the economy and inequality: tax cuts, profits, bonuses, unemployment which are all related to THE WEALTH GAP. This Soup will offer background and implications of the current wealth gap for our democracy and our common good. The presentation will be done in the form of a workshop designed by NETWORK, called “Mind the Gap”.
A Catholic leader in the global movement for justice and peace, NETWORK educates, lobbies, and organizes for economic and social transformation.
NETWORK is a progressive voice within the Catholic community that has been influencing Congress in favor of peace and justice for more than 30 years. Through lobbying and legislative advocacy, we strive to close the gap between rich and poor and to dismantle policies rooted in racism, greed and violence. Since their founding in 1971 by 47 Catholic sisters, NETWORK has been faithfully answering the Gospel call to act for justice.
How can you be a man or woman for others? Four Marquette students examine this question as they talk of their summer experiences at World Youth Day in Spain. They will share their stories of humanity where faith goes far beyond one’s own language or culture. Their journey begins at St. Ignatius’ castle in Loyola, moves to a small town in Portugal, and ends in a field of two million people from around the world with a Mass said by the Pope.
Marquette students Joseph Corrigan, Sarah Lauer, Daryn Peres and Kate Reisinger were part of a group of Marquette pilgrims that went to World Youth Day in Spain organized by Campus Ministry.
2012 has brought the implementation of a new voter ID law that requires the presentation of a government issued photo ID at the polls to vote. The presentation will address the rationale for and against this law and the on the ground impacts that this voter ID requirement will have on students, the poor, and the elderly.
Anahí Sánchez has been a volunteer of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Wisconsin for many years and is currently working for them on the Voter ID law federal lawsuit. Anahí is a long time advocate for immigrant, low-income worker and LGBT rights in Milwaukee. She is a recent Marquette University graduate and during her time as an undergraduate she was involved with multiple student organizations. This includes the Latin American Student Organization and MEChA, a Chicana/o student organization promoting higher education, culture and history, where she served as National Co-Chair.
Aminifu (Henry Brown), former member of the NAACP Youth Council, member of the Oshkosh 94, member of Governor Pat Lucey's Task Force on Affirmative Action, filmmaker, and cultural curator will present the history of vocalized and written protest surrounding housing in Milwaukee during the 1950's-1960's. During the talk, Brown will outline the history of protests, demonstrations and the organizations behind the movements including the NAACP Youth Core, C.O.R.E., MUSIC (Milwaukee United School Integration Committee), and NALC (Negro American Labor Council). Brown will also discuss the tactics that were employed in such protests and demonstrations and share personal artifacts, anecdotes, and images.
Join members from Milwaukee's Common Ground for a discussion about how, through training and support, they turn neighbors into collaborative leaders working together to help shape community decisions.
Sponsored by Campus Ministry, the Center for Peacemaking and Common Ground.
This talk will highlight the significance in the thought of colonial Latin America's most important writer, Sister Juana Inés de la Cruz (Mexico, 1651-1695), of the commandment to love one’s neighbor. With anguish, courage, humor and intelligence, this exceptional early modern writer grappled with her own situation as a woman with a literary vocation within an ecclesial and patriarchal establishment.
Imbued by a Christian and humanistic outlook, and well aware of her situation of marginality, Sor Juana puts forth the idea of obligation towards the neighbor as a space of exchange and recognition. In her writings, she establishes a relation of proximity with marginalized figures such as females, Indians, and black slaves. She strives to give voice to these traditionally marginalized groups. But Sor Juana’s vision of loving the neighbor doesn’t remain in the plane of the literary. Besieged at the end of her life by the ecclesiastical powers that led to her abandonment of her literary studies and writing, Sor Juana chooses to embody the commandment to love. This choice untimely led her to her death while tending to her sickly sisters in religion, a result of the plague that ravaged the City of Mexico, as well as Sor Juana’s convent, the Convent of Saint Jerome.
Dr. Dinorah Cortés-Vélez, Assistant Professor of Spanish at Marquette University, will lead this discussion. She specializes in Colonial Latin American literature and is interested in the literatures of the Hispanic Caribbean. Professor Cortés-Vélez divides her time between teaching, academic research, and creative writing. A current research project is is a book on Sor Juana’s discourse on sexual difference.
Marquette's Office of International Education is sponsoring this weeks Soup program.
A person's first encounter with violence is sadly, often in the home, and often as a child. This interdisciplinary panel examines the phenomenon of child abuse from various aspects - psychological, physical, philosophical, and theological. What are its possible side effects on the person in the short and long term? Are there ways to heal or counteract those effects? Each panelist will make a brief presentation to allow for subsequent interaction among panelists and with those present. The panel is presented in honor of Mrs. Joan Ellwood Thomas, whose lifelong concern was for the welfare of women and children.
Dr. Theresa Tobin, Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Marquette University, Simon Harak, S.J., Director, Marquette University Center for Peacemaking, and Eva Cribben, Program Therapist at Milwaukee Academy, will serve as panelists.
Sexual, domestic and dating violence cuts across cultural lines, but for Native American women it is an all to familiar reality. Data from the Department of Justice indicate that Native American women experience violence more than any other group. It's a war zone in Indian country. But violence against women is not part of any cultural traditions. Meet a panel whose passion is to stem the cycle of violence, provide support for women in need and honor the life giving force for all humanity. Like the shawl that wraps Native American women in traditional dance and ceremony, let the panelists figuratively draw you in with their own. You are sure to feel the warmth and hope of their informative presentations as they provide reminders of care, peace and solidarity.
Sue Cooper, Coordinator of Sexual Violence Advocacy Services at Marquette University, will facilitate this discussion. She assumed this newly created position in 2011 to coordinate the university's efforts on programming and direct services relating to sexual violence.
Fr. Adolofo Nicolas in his plea for Jesuit Universities to develop deep thinking patterns in students and faculty points to creative imagination and floating awareness as requisites for moving away from the superficial in our culture. This talk will examine the creative imagination as a means of moving beyond received wisdom in peace talk. We will also pay attention to the interdisciplinary notion of floating awareness as a means of recreating the parameters of discussions about peace. The final section of the presentation will apply the two core notions of creative imagination and floating awareness to learned ministry in our Marquette University context. A university is uniquely suited to reformulation of peace talk at a profound level.
Fr. Jack Treloar, S.J., serves as the Wisconsin Province Society of Jesus provincial assistant for higher education and Superior of the Arrupe House Jesuit Community. He received his Ph.D. in Philosophy in 1976 from Michigan State University where he also served as dean of the College of Philosophy and Letters from 1975-1984. From 1985 until 2001 he was a member of the Philosophy Department at Marquette University. He served as Academic Dean of the Jesuit School of Theology at Berkeley California from 2002-2006.
January 18, 1964 marks a day in history in which Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., met with Roy Wilkins, James Farmer, Whitney Young and President Lyndon Johnson in the White House to discuss strategies to move forward a stalled Civil Rights Bill from the House Rules Committee.
This soup will focus on the ever-lasting messages of peace, education, and equality for which MLK, Jr., advocated. Sharing their persistence and dedication for civil rights, hear from students and community members about how they have incorporated these messages into their academic, personal, and civic pursuits for the betterment of their communities. These guests will share their contributions towards making their respective communities more socially just and equitable. Guests will also discuss their obstacles, personal successes, and triumphs related to this work and will respond to participant's questions in a panel-like discussion.
You can read more about MLK's meeting with Wilkins, Farmer, Young and Johnson on the National Archives blog.
So many things have been tried, and with such limited success. Where do things stand when it comes to finding ways to improve the troubling overall record of academic success of low-income students? What are the most promising paths to explore going forward? Join us for the final Soup with Substance presentation of the semester.
Alan Borsuk, Senior Fellow in Law and Public Policy at Marquette University's Law School and reporter for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, will examine this crucial and troubling issue.
A panel of students will speak about their recent service learning experiences in Chile, El Salvador and South Africa. Programs like these offer students the opportunity to put their education to work through serving with community-based organizations in countries around the world during their study abroad experience.
Kenia Margarita Ortez Alvarez is a lawyer and a Social Programs Manger at the Santa Rosa de Lima Catholic Parish. Part of her job is to deal with the mess left by a Milwaukee corporation's gold mine. She is the secretary of the "Grupo de Ambientalistas," or Environmental Group, which includes religious activists and health promoters. Kenia's father worked in the mine until he got sick, and she grew up close to it.
Kenia will explain the impact of this mine on El Salvador and parish efforts to bring safe water to residents. They want to close the now-dormant mine permanently, to fix the soil and wter around the mine, to revive the dead river, and to get land titles for people who built homes on the mining property.
They have a remediation project with the Rotary Club to help families get clean drinking water.
The gold mine is owned by Commerce Group, with headquarters in the Milwaukee area. This small multi-national corporation is using the Central American Free Trade Agreement [CAFTA] to sue the government of El Salvador for supposed loss of profit, despite losing the same case in the Salvadoran Supreme Court.
Dr. Pravin Kamdar holds a Ph.D. in Economics and a D.Litt in Philosophy. He was a first recipient of the Cardinal Stritch University's "Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Peacemaker Award." He has also been awarded, "Stritch Teaching Excellence and Community Leadership" and the "Educator of the Year" award. He is a fellow of the "Collegium of Scholars" at Morehouse College in Atlanta. For the past twenty years, he has given talks at Wisconsin campuses on Gandhi, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.; Jain philosophy and nonviolence on behalf of Wisconsin Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies (WIPCS).
Our conversation will emphasize the power of Ahimsa (Nonviolence) as a philosophy of life. We will look at Gandhi's strategy and technique of Swaraj and Satyagraha which were his ethical basis/spirituality for political and social change. Gandhi defined his moral principle and his mission. He claimed nonviolence was not for the coward and it requires that we not repay violence with violence. Nor should we submit to or comply with indignity or injustice. Using Gandhi's ideas as a framework, we will share and exchange ideas of Dr. King's, Dorothy Day's, César Chávez's nonviolence, which continues to be relevant, inspiring, and vital to our world even in an age of terrorism.
Like any American city created as a commercial center, the production of goods--and coincidentally wealth--fractured the community between those who have abundant resources and those who struggled to survive. Privatism reigned supreme in Milwaukee, leading to jobs and inequities all at the same time. The history of philanthropy in the Brew City never addressed these divisions adequately.
Dr. Thomas Jablonsky, History Professor at Marquette University and Director of the Institute for Urban Life, will lead this discussion.
In the days after 9/11, Usama Alshaibi's mother suggested that he change his name. Suddenly, Usama's name was not solely his own. He unfortunately shared it with a criminal mastermind. In the forthcoming film "American Arab," Iraqi-American filmmaker Usama Alshaibi shares his own story and introduces us to others, sparking a frank conversation about identity of, and perceptions about, Arab-Americans. At this soup, filmmaker Usama Alshaibi will show clips from his forthcoming film to spark a discussion of the complexities of racism in post-9/11 America. American Arab is a project of Kartemquin's first Diversity Fellowship, sponsored by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation and the Ford Foundation.
Usama Alshaibi was born in Baghdad, Iraq in 1969 and spent his formative years living between the U.S. and the Middle East. His work in film and video has been screened at numerous film festivals and venues across the globe. In early 2004, Usama and his wife returned to his birthplace to shoot his first feature documentary, Nice Bombs. The documentary had a theatrical release in 2007 and a broadcast premiere on the Sundance Channel in March. Usama has completed more than 40 short films that are on various international DVD compilations and have played in museums and multimedia exhibitions.
From early feminism to today's hook-up culture, this discussion will explore the changes in and influences on relationships, dating and social expectations surrounding sex and consider ways to think about sex and healthy relationships.
The discussion will be led by Dr. Amelia Zurcher, Associate Professor of English and Coordinator of the Women's Studies Program, Sara Johnson, Coordinator of Alcohol Programs and Sue Cooper, Coordinator of Sexual Violence Services.
Mr. Othman Atta (Law '94) discusses how the suspicion, fear and hostility toward Islam increased after September 11, 2001. Known as “Islamophobia,” this attitude resulted in Muslims with no association to the 9/11 attacks to become victims of extreme acts of prejudice and violence.
Mr. Atta serves as the executive director of the Islamic Society of Milwaukee and on the Marquette University Law School Advisory Board. He is also on the Board of the Interfaith Conference of Greater Milwaukee as a representative for ISM and is a member of the FBI Civil Rights Advisory Group.
A panel of 10 employees who participated in the first Faber Center Spring Break Mission Retreat with the Women’s Intercultural Center in Anthony, New Mexico, last spring, will share their experiences and what they learned about immigration and issues facing the people at the United States/Mexico border. Next year’s Border Awareness Experience, which will take place March 11-16, 2012, will also be discussed.
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