Archive for category: 5 News

My guess is that you are being inundated with information about the upcoming election.  And, by the tenor of the messaging, you would think that the world is a binary place—red or blue. In fact, polarization in the US is at an all time high and this polarization increasingly is creeping into daily life, with people choosing what to buy, where to live and whom to date, on political grounds.

To help us make sense of all this, we have scheduled a special RED Talk on Tuesday, September 29^th at 8pm; our guest is Peter Loewen, Dean of A&S (and a distinguished political scientist). Peter will be speaking about his course called Disagreement . This course, which is part of a larger campus-wide initiative to teach and engage students in “civics” (remember 7^th grade?!), provides  students with the tools they need to disagree effectively, especially on social and political topics.

Peter has observed that in the current environment, “there’s an easy playbook now; assume the worst of the other side, demonize them, be unfairly uncritical of your own side. And then enjoy feeling you’re on the right moral side of things. That’s a good, cheap drug. I thought it was important to show students there’s another way to do it. My hope is that students get a sense of not only how to disagree better, but why disagreement is fundamental to democracy, and why so many things over which we disagree are actually really hard problems with multiple ways of understanding them.”

Peter inaugurated this course last year and he will share his thoughts about what both his students and he learned. Please join the conversation. Register by clicking below.

Register Here

Hope you will join us!

John Foote

jhf25@cornell.edu

PS: Last Fall Peter gave a riveting, insightful and timely talk titled “Reducing Political Polarization“.  One of Peter’s slides shows that our ability to relate across the aisle or at the Thanksgiving dinner table is at an all-time low. This chart shows the degree of intersection between the two major US parties over the past 140 years.  Between 1923 and 1983 there’s overlap between the parties, meaning that the conservative Dems and liberal Republicans were “on the same page”.  Over the past 20 years, however, there’s significant (but not unprecedented) lack of overlap between blues and reds.

Thank you, Seals & Crofts. (I played this 1972 song when I was a WVBR DJ.)  Hope your summer is proving equally enjoyable.

Just thought I’d interrupt briefly to recap what our [Notable] Class accomplished this past academic year. Coming off our 50^th Reunion, we offered two more RED Talks.  These were live webinars, hosted by classmate John Foote, with the first one featuring Corey Earle ’07 with an updated version of our time on the hill from ‘70-’74, and the second one featuring classmate John Williams of Frog’s Leap Winery in California. Together, these webinars were viewed by more than 100 of you, so look for this series to continue this fall. If you missed these talks, you can watch the recordings here.

Also, nearly 100 of you participated in Cornell’s Giving Day in March to support our undergraduate scholarship recipients.  And several hundred of you paid your Class dues between last July and this past June.  Thank you!

Our pre-game event at Fall 2024 Homecoming, hosted by classmates Lou and Roberta Bandel Walcer, featured great food and a tour of the Center for Life Science Ventures in Weill Hall.  Lou just retired last month as Director and Founder of that Center.  (A life-long entrepreneur, Lou launched Cornell’s first on-campus incubator in 2011.)

We continue to follow the success of our Scholarship recipients, both of whom graduated in May. Our Class of 1974 scholar, Summer Parker-Hall ‘25, majored in Communication, served as one of our Reunion student clerks, and led the Big Red women’s basketball team.  Our Christopher Reeve ’74 scholar, Ashley Alexander ’25, double-majored in Government and Performing Arts and contributed to both on-stage and backstage roles in productions at Cornell’s Schwartz Center for Performing Arts.

And many of you (classmates) continued to work on completing your Memory Book page.  The Memory Book is a feature we introduced in our 50^th Reunion year.  Nearly 700 classmates completed a page in the Book.

Coming this fall! More Class activities!  Stay tuned!