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Opinion | Student support needed for Van Jones lecture

Ashleigh Achor

Jan. 20, environmental activist and scholar Van Jones will speak at Miami University. Jones, a current professor of Princeton University, is speaking as part of the Annual Robert E. Strippel Memorial Continuing Dialogue on Justice and Human Rights.

Dedicating his life's work to greening the economy, Van Jones wrote The Green Collar Economy and founded the nonprofit Green For All, which works in small communities to create quality, environmentally-conscious jobs. As one of Time's 2009 Most Influential People, the Strippel Committee is proud to welcome Jones onto Miami's campus so interested students, faculty and community members can learn and understand why green jobs are important in the world today. The event, held in Hall Auditorium at 7:30 p.m., is open to the public and free. Each person can pick up to two tickets at Miami's box office.

While topics of the environment, green jobs and global warming have become rooted in politics, I encourage you to listen, to consider and then to analyze the viable solutions Jones offers to our environmental and economic problems.

I urge you to look at the issues of today through another lens in which the dialogue surrounding a green economy ultimately determines our country's step toward the future. 

As more than 20 community and university organizations have dedicated their support for the Van Jones lecture, I ask for your support as a student of Miami. On a campus of thousands we encounter opinions contrary from our own everyday, and I hope you do so respectfully. 

This upcoming Thursday should be no different. I hope you welcome Van Jones into our community, I hope you listen with respect and I hope you give his innovative solutions a chance as we all have much to learn.