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.
This week's episode of Spotlights features Chris Ives, professor of religious studies at Stonehill College in Massachusetts. He discusses his work with Zen Buddhism, ethics, and ecology, including teaching and writing as well as practice and activism. His latest book, Zen on the Trail, draws on his personal experiences with hiking and backpacking to describe the meditative power of walking and the spiritual significance of pilgrimage. You can find more information here: https://zenonthetrail.com
You can watch...
For the empowerment and enfranchisement of people everywhere, inclusivity is crucial, including inclusivity with regard to different ways of knowing and different ways of being in the world. This is a key factor in the book, Living Earth Community: Multiple Ways of Being and Knowing, edited by myself (Sam Mickey) along with Mary Evelyn Tucker and John Grim.
The book emerged from a unique workshop that took place at the Oak Spring Garden Foundation in Virginia in October of 2018, hosted by the renowned botanist and evolutionary plant scientist Peter Crane and organized by Mary...
This week's episode of Spotlights features Mitchell Thomashow, renowned educator and author, with a brand new book coming out this week, To Know the World: A New Vision for Environmental Learning (MIT Press, 2020). The discussion covers some of the main themes and topics of the book, including the Anthropocene, memory, interdisciplinary thinking, improvisation, adaptive and perennial learning, and cosmopolitan bioregionalism.
You can watch a vide of the interview below, or you can listen to it (audio-only) HERE...
Last week marked both the Birth of the Báb (also known as “The Gate”) and the Birth of Bahá'u'lláh, two major days in the Baha'i calendar. In honor of these Baha’i holy days, we wanted to highlight some of the resources in the Baha’i Faith section of the Forum site.
One of the more recent additions to the site, our Baha’i section offers a variety of ways to learn about and engage with the intersection of the Baha’i Faith and ecology. The Overview Essay, “Baha...
This week's episode of Spotlights features Tara Trapani, the chief administrator for the Yale Forum on Religion and Ecology. She talks about her work with the Forum on Religion and Ecology, including some exciting, new projects happening there, especially the freshly redesigned website. She leads us through the website, navigating the abundance and diversity of news, events, bibliographies, multimedia resources, and so much more. You can check out the website for yourself: https://fore....
In honor of UN Day this weekend, we wanted to highlight the work of Forum partner, UNEP Faith for Earth. Forum associate, Anna Thurston, interviewed Faith for Earth director, Iyad Abumoghli, to learn more about what they do and their upcoming projects.
Dr. Iyad Abumoghli has long focused on global solutions when it comes to environmental sustainability. In an interview with Anna Thurston, he discusses his role as director of the United Nations Environment Programme’s Faith...
In this episode of Spotlights, Mary Evelyn Tucker and John Grim talk with the host (Sam Mickey) about the new encyclical from Pope Francis, Fratelli Tutti. They articulate historical, religious, and ecological contexts for understanding what this encyclical means and how it is relevant for efforts to create a more loving, just, and open world. You can read the encyclical here.
You can watch the episode below or listen to it (audio-only) here. As always, an archive of previous episodes can be found here, with audio versions...
This is our second installment featuring current Indigenous environmental issues for Indigenous People’s Day. Go here for last week's feature on the Wet’suwet’en peoples and their fight against the Coastal GasLink pipeline.
Since taking office in early 2019, Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro's...
This week’s episode of Spotlights features Rev. Dr. Christopher Carter, an assistant professor and the assistant chair of the Theology and Religious Studies department at the University of San Diego, in San Diego, California. He is also the co-creator of Racial Resilience, an anti-racism and anti-bias training program that utilizes the combined insights of contemplative practices and critical race theories. His work focuses particularly on the ways in which ecological spaces impact black, Indigenous, and other people of color (BIPOC...
This coming Monday, October 12, is Indigenous People’s Day, and in honor of this, we wanted to highlight a couple of the many issues going on regarding Indigenous peoples and environmental protection .
Since 2014, the Wetʼsuwetʼen hereditary chiefs of British Columbia have been fighting the construction of the 460 mile-long Coastal GasLink pipeline (a project of TC Energy), which will go directly through their tribal lands. Their objections are cultural as well as...