St. Olaf College’s Freedom and Community Institute will host five events this fall featuring speakers and discussions on the theme of “Food Policy and Food Politics.”
The event will be held on the St. Olaf campus and is free and open to the public. Most events will be live streamed online. As part of our commitment to constructive policy debate, the Freedom and Community Institute will host a post-event dialogue after each presentation. These conversations are led by the Institute’s student fellows, who are trained to foster a constructive atmosphere for discussion and debate.
“Teaching students how to have constructive conversations about policy and other important debates is essential,” says Kelly Schiller, assistant director of the Freedom and Community Institute.
“Teaching students how to have constructive conversations about policy and other important debates is essential.”
Kelly Schiller, Associate Director of the Freedom and Community Institute
The fall series began on September 26th with freelance writer and researcher Sarah Mock presenting “Agricultural Dilemmas: The Farm System We Have and What Else Is Possible.” Ms. Mock drew on her experience working in agriculture across the United States to discuss the challenges and myths of small family farms in the United States, as well as the policy environment that influences agricultural practices in the United States. The author of Mr. Mock is Farm and other F words and big team farm. Watch her lecture below.
The next event in the fall speaker series will be held on October 18th, when Katherine Gutierrez and Osama Wasif will speak on “Food Access, Social Policy, and Inequality.” The two will present their original research and discuss social policies surrounding food access, such as Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits and grocery taxes. Mr. Gutierrez holds a Ph.D. candidate in public economics at the University of New Mexico. Wasif is a postdoctoral fellow in her Education Policy Innovation Collaborative (EPIC) program at Michigan State University, where she studies Michigan’s educator workforce. Their presentation begins at 3:30 p.m. with Tomson 280.
“We hope that the Oct. 18 meeting will not only highlight policy differences, but also serve as a model for how to speak constructively to identify policy solutions,” Freedom and Community Research said. says Christopher Chappe, director of the Morrison family.
The fall series continues on October 23 with a presentation by Ashante Reese, associate professor of African and African Diaspora studies at the University of Texas at Austin. He studies the relationship between critical food studies and black geography. The presentation will focus on her research in this area, including special insight into her ongoing research in Sugar Land, Texas.Mr. Reese is the author of this book. Black food geographies: Race, independence, and food access in Washington, DC.winner of the 2020 Margaret Mead Award, Black Food Matters: Racial justice in the wake of food justice. The presentation will take place at the Viking Theater starting at 3:30 p.m.
This was followed by an event on November 2 by Cindy Sturtzreetharan, professor in Arizona State University’s Department of Human Evolution and Social Change, titled “Too Stressful and Too Busy: Negotiating the Lived Experience of Weight Across Four Cultures.” There will be a lecture titled. Mr. Sturtz Sreetharan, who is interested in the interaction between language and the body, is a co-author of the following book: Fat in four cultures: A global ethnography of weight., and her presentation will incorporate research from this text to challenge assumptions about body image. The event begins at 3:30pm at the Viking Theater.
The final fall speaker event will be held on November 6th and will feature a discussion by Claire Block, assistant professor of political science at Colorado State University. Mr. Block examines the agriculture and food sector at the legislative level and will present his research on policy and how lobbying processes influence everyday food choices. her new book, Farmed Out: Farm Lobbying in a Polarized Congress, will be released in November. The event begins at 3:30pm at the Viking Theater.
Established in 2014 at St. Olaf, the Freedom and Community Institute encourages free inquiry and meaningful discussion of important political and social issues among students, faculty, and the public. In addition to lecture series, the Institute sponsors a variety of programming opportunities to further foster civil discussion in the liberal arts context.