Blog

Welcome to the new Yale Forum Blog!

We will be sharing a variety of original content including interviews, reviews, reports from the field, new and enhanced resources on the Forum website, content from our new video podcast series, FORE Spotlights, and much more. 

Check back every Tuesday and Thursday for new content. 

March 20, 2025

  Joyous Spring! The annual International Day of Forests takes place tomorrow, March 21. And to honor it, some of the members of our Forum team have shared their favorite forest and tree-related books, poems, and multimedia offerings with us, today.  Elizabeth McAnally Newsletter editor & Webmaster 

   

The experiential project by...

February 27, 2025

We're very pleased to announce that Forum associate Sam King will be leading two courses this spring through the DeepTime Network. They will be based on the Journey of the Universe Coursera courses created by Mary Evelyn Tucker and John Grim. See the course preview above for a taste of what you'll get in this very special guided and curated experience. 

The first course will be “Journey of the Universe.” It will begin on March 25 and run for seven weeks. Go here to find out more...
January 23, 2025

 

The new year is fully upon us! And today we wrap up 2024 and look towards the new year ahead of us. 

Last year our blog theme was Syntropy. We played around a bit with this broad underlying concept  and its six principles and were able to see a few concrete examples in areas such as relatively untouched ecosystems; microbes; and Syntropic agriculture and agroforestry. Robin Wall Kimmerer's latest volume, The Serviceberry: Abundance and Reciprocity in the Natural World is a beautiful fully fleshed out...

January 16, 2025

 

The close of 2024 saw the loss of some esteemed figures in our field and in our world who will be sorely missed. We'd like to take some time today to honor their life and legacy.

Jimmy Carter passed on December 29 at the age of 100, making him the longest-lived U.S. president in history. He served as Head of State from 1977-1981. I actually attended Jimmy Carter's inauguration in January 1977. I was 5 years old, and I carried a giant, inflatable porpoise far larger than my small...

December 26, 2024
Today we share with you Mary Evelyn and John's holiday letter to friends and family, which includes all of you, our extended Forum family. We hope your festivities are joyful, whatever you celebrate at this time of year, and that 2025 brings you peace, love, and light. 

 

Solstice – Christmas – Hanukkah  2024

Dear Family and Friends,

Thinking of you in these challenging times and sending warmest greetings for the holidays. Snows come less frequently and leave fast with springlike freshness in...

October 24, 2024

Today in the blog, we have a guest post from our associate Sam King, reporting out on the amazing Thomas Berry Award presentation held at Union Theological Seminary last week. See the full video of the event at the end of this post, and go here to see galleries of photos taken during and after the ceremony. Read more about the event at the Center for Earth Ethics blog. 

On Indigenous Peoples’ Day, Chief Oren Lyons was granted the Thomas Berry Award at Union Theological Seminary on the ancestral homeland...
September 26, 2024

 

As many of our readers know, Mary Evelyn and John took an exciting journey to China this summer, where they spoke at numerous conferences, gave many talks related to Ecological Civilization, and showed screenings of our Emmy Award-winning documentary, Journey of the Universe. We followed their travels on our blog with Mary Evelyn and John Across China Part 1 and Part 2. 

Mary Evelyn published an article on DeepChina about their experiences this summer and an article about “Building academic friendships with people...

September 20, 2024

The Autumn Equinox is this coming Sunday, and with it one of our most profound and reflective transition times of the year. I'm definitely one of those individuals who needs the turning of the seasons–the annual journey through growth, decay, death, and rebirth to feel whole and complete. So, I always eagerly read posts and articles about these transition times. Yet, at this particular turn of the wheel, I find them falling flat for me, their suggestions and rituals lacking. Balance, harmony, journaling, relfection, all very...

September 12, 2024

  The Loka Initiative at University of Wisconsin Madison has recently launched a four course online program titled “Psychology of Deep Resilience.” It can be taken as a certificate program with a fee, but individuals can also audit each course free of charge. I find this a very exciting prospect, especially given Loka's exciting RITA (Resilience in the Anthropocene) Summit (see our review of that event, here) last year and the growing need for support and awareness around issues of eco-anxiety and grief. 

From the...