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.
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...
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...
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...
Today, we...
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...
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...
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...
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...
On September 19-20, the Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University and the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies (OCIS) will be holding a roundtable on Faith and Climate Change in Boston. Though the event is not open to the public, we wanted to share the information and make you aware of this exciting and important gathering. This is the second roundtable on these topics this year; the first was held in England this past May.
From the event brochure:
Climate change is an urgent – possibly existential – challenge to...
Today, we'd like to bring your attention to this recent article from Mary Evelyn Tucker: “Ecological Civilization: An emerging paradigm in China.” Upon her return from China, Mary Evelyn reflected deeply on all, and wrote this piece for DeepChina to illustrate the importance of Ecological Civilization for the future of the planet, as well as why it is not merely a government program in China, but a valuable framework being embraced at all levels of society.
From the article:
…we can...