Annual Daniel Patrick O'Connor Lecture in Social Justice

The Annual Daniel Patrick O'Connor Memorial Lecture exists to promote the principles of scholarship, research, and volunteerism in the service for social justice. The Daniel Patrick O'Connor Memorial Lectureship Endowed Fund is made possible through generous contributions from Margaret O'Connor, Michael and Kathie O'Connor, and their friends.

2009 O'Connor Lecture -- Alan Weisman, author of The World Without Us.

September 8, 2009, 7:30 p.m., Armstrong Hall Auditorium

Books will be available for sale and signing after the lecture.

Alan Weisman's reports from around the world have appeared in such outlets as Harper's, The New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic Monthly, The Los Angeles Times Magazine, Orion, Vanity Fair, Mother Jones, Discover, and Audubon. His most recent book, The World Without Us, a bestseller translated into 30 languages, was named the Best Nonfiction Book of 2007 by both Time Magazine and Entertainment Weekly, the #1 Nonfiction Audiobook of 2007 by iTunes; a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in Nonfiction, for the Orion Prize, and a Book Sense 2008 Honor Book. His previous books include An Echo In My Blood; Gaviotas: A Village to Reinvent the World (10th anniversary edition available from Chelsea Green); and La Frontera: The United States Border With Mexico. A senior producer for Homelands Productions, Weisman’s documentaries have aired on National Public Radio, Public Radio International, and American Public Media. Each spring, he leads an annual field program in international journalism at the University of Arizona, where is Laureate Associate Professor in Journalism and Latin American Studies.

In The World Without Us, Alan Weisman offers an utterly original approach to questions of humanity's impact on the planet: he asks us to envision our Earth, without us.

Lecturing from his 2007 best-selling book by the same title, Weisman explains how our massive infrastructure would collapse and finally vanish without human presence; what of our everyday stuff may become immortalized as fossils; how copper pipes and wiring would be crushed into mere seams of reddish rock; why some of our earliest buildings might be the last architecture left; and how plastic, bronze sculpture, radio waves, and some man-made molecules may be our most lasting gifts to this universe.

Past O'Connor Lectures

2008 -- Naomi Klein (view her lecture at: www.apbspeakers.com/naomi-klein-colorado.html)

2007 -- Bill McKibben
2006 -- Jim Wallis
2005 -- Thomas Frank
2004 -- Amy Goodman
2003 -- Nancy Folbre
2002 -- Nancy Fraser
2001 -- Kevin Danaher
2000 -- Jay MacLeod
1999 -- Randall Kennedy
1998 -- Jody Kretzmann
1997 -- William Julius Wilson
1996 -- Gary Snyder
1994 -- Vandana Shiva
1993 -- Richard Moore
1992 -- Robert Bullard

Daniel Patrick O'Connor

Dan O'Connor was a student at Colorado College in the fall of 1990 and winter of 1991. A committed social activist, he participated in student campus organizations concerned with environmental issues in ethnic communities as well as other social justice struggles. He participated in the student protests against Battle Mountain Gold's strip mine and cyanide leach mill in the foothills above the Chicano land grant community of San Luis. He also participated in the "alternative spring break" program of the College's Center for Community Service in the San Luis Valley. Dan was committed to workplace democracy, environmental justice, cultural diversity, and social equality.

"I knew that I wanted to change the world at least a little bit.... I didn't believe that any political system could create a good society. 'Change has to come through the heart, not through the mind,' I would say. I wanted to affect people's hearts. I began to paint more and tried to raise my own life to an art form. By this, I mean simply to be as just as possible in my relationships with other people.... I now believe that change can only come through a synthesis of the heart and the mind. I continue to feel an ethical code is necessary to live by, but now I include in this code, political activity.... I am compelled to hit the streets and make my voice heard."

--Daniel Patrick O'Connor, 1991