Newsroom

CORVALLIS - Indian activist and outspoken critic of biotechnology Vandana Shiva will speak at Oregon State University on Wednesday, Nov. 20.

Shiva's talk, "Earth Democracy: Creating Alternatives for Peace, Democracy and Justice," is free and open to the public. It begins at 7:30 p.m. in OSU's LaSells Stewart Center at 26th Street and Western Boulevard.

Shiva and others have proposed an alternative economy in which corporations are dismantled in favor of smaller enterprises owned by workers, customers and other local groups. She contends such a change would give communities the power to tackle poverty, create jobs, ensure plentiful food and reduce demand for fossil fuels.

A trained physicist, Shiva's books, "The Violence of Green Revolution" and "Monocultures of the Mind," have challenged modern agricultural and development techniques.

Shiva is the first of three speakers scheduled for this year's Convocations and Lectures Committee lecture series at the university. Horace Freeland Judson, director of the Center of History of Recent Science at George Washington University, will speak on "The Continuing Revolution in Biology" on Jan. 15 and conservationist Michael Dombeck, who has directed both the U.S. Forest Service and the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, will speak on "The Big Ten Conservation Challenges for a New Century: Where Do We Go from Here?" on April 16.

The OSU Convocations and Lectures Committee sponsors three to four major speakers each year intended to broaden the intellectual and spiritual knowledge of the community. Lecture topics typically reflect the development of the humanities and sciences, while stimulating individual thought.