Laura Sloat

Winner of a genius grant and one of TIME Magazine's World's 100 Most Influential People, Will Allen will share his expertise in urban farming and its relationship to strong local communities. As a world-traveling ambassador for food security, Allen trains others through his not-for-profit Growing Power organization. With both words and images, Allen documents his experiences from […]

Feeding the hungry is a world problem we all want to solve. But how? Should we leave it up to big agriculture? Big government? Big philanthropy? Gloria Otieno, a development economist and food policy expert, believes local communities play a major role in their own agricultural fates. In this talk, she argues that local communities in […]

The 2015 Cotter Debate will feature panelists Stephen Moose, professor of crop sciences at the University of Illinois, Judith Chambers, director for the Program for Biosafety Systems International Food Policy Research Institute, Jonathan Latham, executive director of the Bioscience Resource Project, and Jodi Koberinski, Colby’s Oak Human Rights Fellow to debate the question, "Should we […]

Oak Fellow Khalid Albaih and Bangor Daily News cartoonist George Danby have thought a lot about how to respond to violence, including the actual shooting of artists like themselves, or really bad jokes about killing artists like themselves. In 2015 Albaih was horrified by the murder of cartoonists at Charlie Hebdo, even though he, a Muslim, had criticized the […]

One of the Arab world’s leading hip-hop artists, Narcy, a rapper, actor, and professor, has performed with Mos Def, shared the stage with Kanye West, and forged a collective, The Medium, to promote transnational, multimedia art. He was born in Dubai to Iraqi parents and grew up in Montreal, Canada, where he still lives. Narcy […]