Zoom registration: https://us06web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_f14T-72HThSXGFqCmpnAMQ
Lecture description: Higher education is challenged by attacks on institutional reputation coming from multiple directions and sources. This webinar will focus on the importance of prioritizing efforts to show stakeholders how our efforts improve everyday life in our communities, country and world.
Dr. Doug Barry serves on the AltLiberalArts Board and is an award-winning educator, author and video maker. He specializes in designing and developing instructional content for adults to help them reach their full potential. He has lived and worked internationally, especially in Asia, to expand cooperation, trade and understanding. As a scholar and practitioner, he uses communication technology and compelling storytelling for greatest impact. With clients in business, government and the non profit world, his interests are in individual and organizational transformation. Current work focuses on conflict resolution, gun violence prevention, preserving the liberal arts in higher education and strengthening democracy. He earned a doctorate in education from Columbia University.
Dr. Jonathan Becker is entering his 30th year at Bard College. In addition to being acting president of the College, Becker is executive director of Bard Center for Civic Engagement, which he founded in 2011, and a professor of politics. He also serves as the vice chancellor of the Global Higher Education Network for the 21st Century. He has worked with Bard’s international and national networks of liberal arts institutions, including: Bard’s partnerships with the American University of Central Asia (Kyrgyzstan); Al-Quds University (East Jerusalem); and Bard College Berlin; Bard’s programs with institutions in exile, including the American University of Afghanistan, Parami University (Myanmar), and Smolny Beyond Borders (Russia); the Bard Early Colleges; Bard Prison Initiative; and Clemente Course in the Humanities. He is author of Soviet and Russian Press Coverage of the United States: Press, Politics and Identity in Transition (Palgrave, 2003); coeditor of Youth Voting Rights: Civil Rights, the Twenty-Sixth Amendment, and the Fight for American Democracy on College Campuses (De Gruyter, 2026); and editor of Civic Engagement and Social Action: Locally, Nationally, and Globally (CEU Press, forthcoming). He has recently published articles on youth voting rights in Liberal Education, The Nation, Inside Higher Ed, Forbes, The EDU Ledger, and Times Higher Education; the impact of civic engagement and displaced students and refugees in Times Higher Education; and the challenges of institutional neutrality in Liberal Education. The story of Afghan students’ harrowing escape to freedom and education is told in “A Journey from Kabul to Bishkek and its follow-up, “Our Journey to Bard.”
Dr. John E. Jones III ’77, P’11, was officially named Dickinson College’s 30th president on Feb. 28, 2022, after serving as interim president since the summer of 2021. After taking the helm, Jones immediately launched the Dickinson Forward: Our Revolutionary Future initiative that included a strategic planning process and the college’s most ambitious scholarship fundraising campaign in its history. The college has advanced rapidly under Jones’ leadership, building an alumni and family center, improving athletics facilities, witnessing record philanthropic investments in the academic program and renovating the student center on campus. He also led the college in taking a bold step forward in its commitment to affordability by launching the Dickinson Promise, which offers tuition-free education to eligible domestic students from families earning $125,000 or less, while eliminating student loans from financial aid packages for families earning $75,000 or less. Jones previously served as chair of Dickinson’s board of trustees and retired as chief judge of the U.S. Middle District Court of Pennsylvania. He was appointed to the federal bench by President George W. Bush and unanimously confirmed by the United States Senate in 2002. Jones presided over a number of high-profile cases, including the landmark case of Kitzmiller v. Dover School District, after which he held that it was unconstitutional to teach intelligent design within a public school science curriculum. In 2006, Time Magazine named him as one of its Time 100 most influential people in the world. He was the recipient of the first John Marshall Judicial Independence Award given by the Pennsylvania Bar Association. Born and raised in Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania, he is a graduate of Mercersburg Academy, Dickinson College and Penn State Dickinson Law.
Dr. Margee Ensign serves on the AltLiberalArts Board. Dr. Ensign has been a university president for 15 years, including at Dickinson College in the United States and the American University of Nigeria. She serves on the Board of AltLiberal Arts, the Center for Peace, Development and Democratic Governance in Rwanda, chairs the Global Center for Dehumanizing Democracy in the UK, and is a Senior Fellow at Bard College.