C. P. Snow Lecture Series Will Consider the Politics of Pollution

A sociology professor who provided demographic evidence that poor and minority neighborhoods house a disproportionate number of waste dumps and an internationally known advocate for American Indian issues will give talks in this year’s C. P. Snow Lecture Series, titled "Environmental Justice: The Politics of Pollution." Both events are free and open to the public.

On Wednesday, March 21, Robert Bullard, the Ware professor of sociology and director of the Environmental Justice Resource Center at Clark Atlanta University, will speak on "Environmental Justice for All" at 7:30 p.m. in 102 Textor Hall.

In addition to conducting groundbreaking research in the areas of urban land use, community development, and environmental quality, Bullard currently serves on the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s National Environmental Justice Advisory Committee. In 1990 he received the National Wildlife Federation’s Conservation Achievement Award for his work in integrating the efforts of environmentalists and community activist groups. His book Dumping in Dixie: Race, Class, and Environmental Quality has become a standard text in the environmental and social justice field.

Bullard will be followed on Thursday, March 29, by Oren Lyons, who will speak on "When Is a Crisis Not a Crisis? When It’s on Indian Land." His lecture begins at 7:30 p.m. in Park Hall Auditorium. A professor of American studies and director of the Native American studies program at the State University of New York at Buffalo, Lyons is also a member of the Onondaga Nation Council of Chiefs of the Six Nations of the Iroquois Confederacy.

Raised on the Seneca and Onondaga reservations in northern New York State, Lyons served in the United States Army and earned all-American honors in lacrosse at Syracuse University. Since 1970 he has been speaking on American Indian traditions and human rights. In 1992 he organized a delegation of the Iroquois Confederacy to the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro, where he was invited to address the national delegations. That same year he addressed the United Nations General Assembly.

C. P. Snow, a physicist and novelist who was awarded an honorary degree from the College, was concerned with what he called "a gulf of mutual incomprehension" between literary intellectuals and scientists. Held at Ithaca College since 1965, the C. P. Snow Lecture Series attempts to bridge that gulf by bringing speakers to campus who combine scientific and humanistic perspectives.