The 2005 John Swan Lecture on Intellectual Freedom will be given by Laurie Lane-Zucker, President of the Triad Institute. Lane-Zucker will speak on A New Vision of Citizenship For a Fast-Globalizing and Ecologically Challenged World. The lecture will be held in the main reading room of the Brooks Memorial Library, 224 Main St. Brattleboro, Vermont, on Thursday, June 9, 2005, at 7:00 PM. The public is invited.
Previous to starting Triad, Lane-Zucker was the senior staff member (Executive Director/Managing Director) of The Orion Society since its inception. Lane-Zucker joined the Orion magazine staff in 1991, and soon after spearheaded the transformation of the magazine into a multi-faceted cultural, educational, and political organization. During Lane-Zucker’s tenure, membership in the organization increased over four hundred percent, staff size tripled, and the operating budget increased over three-fold ($500,000 to $1.8 million . Orion Magazine (and Orion Afield magazine) received a total of thirty nominations from the Independent Press Awards, and was given their highest award, for General Excellence, in 2004.
Lane-Zucker also has pioneered thinking in “Place-based Education,” a flourishing form of education that has taken root in communities throughout the United States and abroad.
He has also published two series of books, The Nature Literacy Series and New Patriotism Series, including In The Presence of Fear by Wendell Berry, Citizens Dissent: Security, Morality, and Leadership in an Age of Terror by Wendell Berry and David James Duncan, which received the 2004 Intellectual Freedom Award from the American Library Association and, most recently, The Open Space of Democracy by Terry Tempest Williams.
Prior to joining Orion, Lane-Zucker, 39, worked in the motion picture industry and as a high school teacher in the Bronx. Lane-Zucker did his undergraduate studies at Middlebury College and Edinburgh University and his graduate work at Columbia University and the Bread Loaf School of English.
The John Swann Lecture Series was begun in 1992 as a tribute to John Swan, the director of libraries at Bennington College and strong advocate of intellectual freedom in all types of libraries.
The lecture is free and open to the public. Doors open at 6:45 PM