Environmental policies and management strategies are more effective when they are informed by science than when they are not. However, there are some questions that science is not well suited to address, such as, “What aspects of the environment should be protected and to what level?” or “What level of risk is acceptable?”. Using examples from chemical risk assessment under US and EU legislation, Forbes will explore how science can inform decision making and when involvement of other disciplines and stakeholders is needed.

The mass incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II is not only a tale of injustice; it is a moving story of faith. In this pathbreaking account, Duncan Ryūken Williams reveals how, even as they were stripped of their homes and imprisoned in camps, Japanese American Buddhists launched one of the most inspiring defenses of religious freedom in our nation’s history, insisting that they could be both Buddhist and American. This event is organized by the IAS Research and Creative Collaborative Group called Historical Injustices. Co-sponsors are the Immigration History Research Center, the Religious Studies Program, the Asian American Studies Program, and the Department of History.

Join a conversation about environmental policy with two regional leaders who have organized political and grassroots justice efforts. Halston Sleets served as the Senior Policy Aide for Environmental Justice and Sustainability to Minneapolis Mayor Betsy Hodges, and is now the Associate Manager of Sustainable Tech Products at Best Buy. 

Jessica Hellmann leads a discussion on the evolution and current directions of Environmental Sciences and Ecology programs in public higher education. Hellmann is the director of the University of Minnesota’s Institute on the Environment and the Ecolab Chair in Environmental Leadership. She and her colleagues work to help build a future where people and planet prosper.

In Book 16 of the City of God Augustine of Hippo discusses human bodies described by what he calls "too curious histories" as monstrous; such bodies, he tells us, are also depicted in mosaics on the grand esplanade in Carthage. Augustine here refers to Pliny the Elder's Natural History, where Pliny talks about pygmies, persons with feet so big that they can be used as sun shades, or persons who have only one eye in the center of their foreheads. Augustine additionally sprinkles mentions of extraordinary bodies throughout the City of God, not as described in histories but as present phenomena. Why is Augustine so interested in these bodies and why does he discuss them in greater detail in Book 16? What might that tell us about Augustine’s concepts of histories and the role of extraordinary bodies?