Research Talks

Sigurd F. Olson of Minnesota was one of the foremost American environmentalists in the 20th century. Olson served as vice president and president of the Wilderness Society, as a member and president of the of National Parks Association’s board of trustees, and remains the only individual to have received each of the highest honors from the Sierra Club, Izaak Walton League, Wilderness Society, and National Wildlife Federation—and the John Burroughs medal for nature writing. Olson’s involvement in the conservation movement, however, was guided by an “environmental ethic” firmly rooted in regional identity, especially Minnesota’s history and that of the French “voyageurs” in the Quetico-Superior wilderness. Olson thought this region’s historical and natural heritage was so precious that he devoted his life to protecting and writing about it, producing several bestselling volumes and countless essays on the region’s history and wilderness. More than his conservation activism, it was these writings that marshalled public support for wilderness protection. In reemphasizing the centrality of regional identity in Olson’s writings, I resituate his environmental ethic in the growing scholarship on Midwestern history and argue that its popular appeal was made possible by its cultivation of an accessible, reasonably coherent concept of the region’s environmental and cultural history. By way of conclusion, I will attempt to connect the regional rootedness of Olson’s environmental ethic with the contemporary climate crisis.

Gender discrimination is often seen from a human rights perspective; it is a violation of women’s basic human rights, as embedded in the Universal Declaration, the UN Charter and other such founding documents. However, there is overwhelming evidence that restrictions and various forms of discrimination against women are also bad economics. They undermine the talent pool available to the private sector, they distort power relationships within the family and lead to inefficiencies in the use of resources. They contribute to create an environment in which women, de facto, are second class citizens, with fewer options than men, lower quality jobs, lower pay, often the victims of various forms of violence, literally from the cradle to the grave. They are also not fully politically empowered and have scant presence in the corridors of power, whether as finance ministers, central bank governors, prime ministers or on the boards of leading corporations. Why is gender inequality so pervasive? Where does it come from? Does it have cultural and religious roots? And what are the sorts of policies and values that will deliver a world in which being born a boy or a girl is no longer a measure of the likelihood of developing one’s human potential? A look at some of these and other such difficult questions