Consumer advocate and U.S. presidential candidate Ralph Nader was on campus on February 20 to speak at the 7th annual GSAED Conference on the theme of “The Scholar and the State.”
Taking up his familiar themes, Nader said universities should act as watchdogs overseeing the actions of government and corporations, and underscored the importance of keeping education as a public good. He urged students “never to allow yourselves to be trivialized when the forces of trivialization are all over you every day. Take the country you’re living in, the education you have, the health you have, and place it in the context of the moral imperative so you can become public citizens engaged in what Daniel Webster once called ‘justice – the great work of human beings on Earth.’”
A number of speakers from the University of Ottawa, as well as from other universities, government departments, and not-for-profit organizations, spoke at the conference, which is creating more interest both within the university community and the general public with each passing year.
Previous speakers at the conferences have included environmentalist and scientist David Suzuki, and Herzberg Prize winners David Schindler and Howard Alper.
Nader was accompanied by his colleague Leonard Minsky, executive director of the United States National Coalition of Universities in the Public Interest.
On February 21, former Grateful Dead drummer Mickey Hart took the podium to talk about his latest project, Songcatchers. This book and multimedia project, a collaboration with National Geographic, chronicles the quest to record traditional music from around the world.
A drummer with the Grateful Dead for 28 years, Hart has also created scores for films including Apocalypse Now and written a number of books. His 1990 recording Planet Drum won the first-ever World Music Grammy Award.
Hart is appointed to the board of trustees of the American Folk Life Center at the Library of Congress, where he heads up the subcommittee on the digitization and preservation of the center's vast collection.
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