The Arthur Zajonc Lectures on Contemplative Education

The Arthur Zajonc Lecture Series on Contemplative Education presents lectures on contemplative pedagogy, epistemology, and learning.

The series honors Arthur Zajonc’s groundbreaking work in the field as a distinguished thought leader and committed teacher by enabling eminent scholars and educators to share their insights and experience in integrating contemplative practices and perspectives into higher education across the disciplines.

The series continues Arthur’s work in building the education needed for a society based on compassion, inclusion, care for each other and the earth, and respect for the interconnection of all life.

2022 Lecturer: Colette Pichon Battle

Rooting Deep for Global Change

Originally broadcast on Wednesday, August 3rd, 2022

As the topic of climate change enters into the psyche of more people, the work of more justice organizations, and the teachings of more learning institutions, the complexity of addressing both the invisible atmospheric crisis through the need for broader economic and social transformation shifts short term individual action into long-term social change. To do this the work rooted in culture, tradition, peace, and spirit requires an intersection of training, analysis-development, organizing, and solution-building.

How can we serve our communities and honor long-standing traditions of sustainability? How can we address and heal trauma in the midst of the often traumatic impact of the climate crisis? How can we learn from struggles for sovereignty to advance a new climate reality? How can we spread knowledge, skills, and information rooted in traditional wisdom while creating more humane and ecologically just standards for climate solutions?

We will discuss the importance of exploring these questions so that we forge and fortify networks rooted in a shared power, as opposed to an unchangeable fate.

Colette Pichon Battle, Esq is a generational native of Bayou Liberty, Louisiana. As Visions & Initiatives Partner of Taproot Earth (formerly the Gulf Coast Center for Law & Policy), she develops programming focused on equitable disaster recovery, global migration, community economic development, climate justice, and energy democracy.

Colette worked with local communities, national funders, and elected officials in the post-Katrina and post-Deepwater Horizon disaster recovery. She was a lead coordinator for Gulf South Rising 2015, a regional initiative around climate justice and just transition in the South. In 2015 Colette was selected as an Echoing Green Climate Fellow, in 2016 she was named a White House Champion of Change for Climate Equity, and in 2018 Kenyon College awarded her an Honorary Doctorate. In 2019, Colette was named an Obama Fellow for her work with Black and Native communities on the frontline of climate change and she gave a TED Talk, “Climate change will displace millions. Here’s how we prepare.”

In 2021, Colette was appointed a Margaret Burroughs Community Fellow. In addition to developing advocacy initiatives that intersect with race, systems of power, and ecology, Colette directs Taproot Earth’s legal services in immigration and disaster law.

Among her many engagements, she serves on the board of the US Climate Action Network and leads the Red, Black & Green New Deal — the climate initiative of the Movement for Black Lives. In March 2022, Colette sat in conversation with Krista Tippett and was featured on the podcast, On Being.

Watch the previous lectures

Dr. Arthur Zajonc

Arthur Zajonc is the former director of the Center for Contemplative Mind in Society and former president of the Mind & Life Institute. He is also emeritus professor of physics at Amherst College, where he taught from 1978 to 2012. He was a visiting professor and research scientist at the Ecole Normale Superieure in Paris, the Max Planck Institute for Quantum Optics, and the Universities of Rochester and Hannover. He was a Fulbright professor at the University of Innsbruck in Austria. His research includes studies in electron-atom physics, parity violation in atoms, quantum optics, the experimental foundations of quantum physics, and the relationship between science, the humanities, and contemplative traditions. As director of the Center for Contemplative Mind in Society, Zajonc fostered the use of contemplative practice in college and university classrooms, and developed the foundations for contemplative pedagogy. He coauthored The Heart of Higher Education: A Call to Renewal with Parker Palmer. Out of this work and his long-standing meditative practice, Zajonc authored Meditation as Contemplative Inquiry: When Knowing Becomes Love, and contributed to the Psychology Today blog on meditation. He served as general secretary of the Anthroposophical Society in America, was a co-founder of the Kira Institute, president of the Lindisfarne Association, and a senior program director at the Fetzer Institute.

Lecture Recordings

Dr. Monika L. Son

"Es aquí donde sanamos: It is here where we need to heal"

Presented by Monika Son (John Jay College of Criminal Justice)
on Thursday, August 5, 2021.

Dr. Lenwood W. Hayman, Jr.

"Radical Love as a Public Health Initiative"

Presented by Lenwood Hayman (Associate Professor of Public Health, Morgan State University)
on Wednesday, August 7, 2019.

Dr. Veta Goler

"If the Beautiful See Themselves, They Will Love Themselves: Contemplative Practice and Cultural Healing"

Presented by Veta Goler (Associate Professor and Chair of Dance Performance & Choreography Co-Director of the Teaching Resource and Research Center Spelman College) on Wednesday, August 8, 2018.

Dr. Paul Wapner

"Across the Divides: A Pedagogy of Love"

Presented by Paul Wapner (Professor, School for International Service, American University) on Wednesday, August 9, 2017.