Exploring 2 different worlds

Last week's schedule of public lectures included two examples of how broad the sources of knowledge can be at a university. In the first, Wade Davis demonstrated why he is "Explorer in Residence" for National Geographic, leading a "Journey Through the Realm of Vanishing Cultures." Dr. Davis, whose work has taken him from the Amazon to the Arctic and whose specialty of ethnobotany is but one of his many interests, gave the George Gund Environmental Lecture in remembrance of JCU Sociology Professor Mark Diffenderfer. "Twenty years ago there were 6,000 languages on the planet," he said. "Today half of them are no longer even whispered."

Wade Davis
Wade Davis of National Geographic

Millicent Marcus
Millicent Marcus, University of Pennsylvania

 The next evening Millicent Marcus of the University of Pennsylvania analyzed "the serious humor," of "Life is Beautiful," an Academy Award winning movie about a father's heroic efforts to use fantasy and gamesmanship to protect his son from the horrors of a Nazi death camp, countering charges that the movie trivializes the Holocaust. At the outset Dr. Marcus praised Santa Casciani, Director of the Bishop PIlla Program in Italian-American Studies that sponsored the lecture. Surveying the fairly full Lombardo conference room audience that included many members of the public, she said, "You have established a community through the Pilla Chair that extends beyond the JCU campus to the community at large."
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