Rudolf Steiner's Vision for the Future - Anthroposophical Society in ...

Camphill is a worldwide movement of
over 100 intentional communities that specially
address the needs of vulnerable people,
our endangered earth, and the contemporary
social fabric. Its communities base their work
on the far-ranging insights of Rudolf Steiner.
Symposium Speakers:
Dan McKanan is the Ralph Waldo Emerson
Unitarian Universalist Association Senior
Lecturer at Harvard Divinity School, where he
has taught since 2008. For the previous
decade, he taught at the College of Saint
Benedict and Saint John’s University in central
Minnesota, where he forged a strong connection
with Camphill Village Minnesota. Dan’s
Camphill experience is reflected in Touching
the World: Christian Communities Transforming
Society, which presents both Camphill and
the Catholic Worker as communal movements
capable of enriching the broader society in
which they exist. Dan is the author of three
other books, including the forthcoming
Prophetic Encounters: Religion and the American
Radical Tradition, which traces spiritual
movements for social change from the abolitionists
to the present.
Judith Snow, MA is a social inventor and
an advocate for Inclusion—communities that
welcome the participation of a wide diversity
of people. She is also a visual artist and
Founding Director of Laser Eagles, an organization
making creative activity available
through personal assistance to artists with
diverse ability. Judith consults and holds workshops
on peace and inclusion, person
centered planning, personal assistance,
support circle building, family support and
inclusive education. Her goal is to foster an
understanding of how people with disabilities
can be full participants in communities everywhere.
Judith does this work out of a background
of being labeled disabled herself.
Tom Stearns, President, High Mowing
Organic Seeds, began gardening at an early
age at his family home in CT. Prior to completing
a degree in Sustainable Agriculture from
Prescott College in AZ, he began saving seeds.
High Mowing Organic Seeds has since
expanded into one of the leading organic seed
companies in the U.S. Tom’s vision has always
been to create a company that would help
support the re-building of healthy food
systems. He has also taught workshops in
more than 30 states. He is current President
of The Center for an Agricultural Economy and
NOFA-VT.
After completing high school in Manila,
Stephen Usher attended the University of
Michigan in Ann Arbor where he met anthroposophy
in Ernst Katz’s physics class. He
received a BA and MA in mathematics and a
Ph.D. in economics at the University of Michigan.
In 1978, he took a position at the Federal
Reserve Bank of New York. At Anthroposophic
Press he served as Managing Director from
1980-1988. Until 1999 he was with an internationally
known economic consulting firm,
specializing in financial economics. Since
2005, Steve and his wife Beth have lived in
Austin, TX where they participate in Novalis
Branch activities.
A graduate of Columbia University,
Eugene Schwartz has worked with all stages
of life, from the young child to the elderly and
the dying. He began his teaching career by
adapting the Waldorf schools’ curriculum to
educate a group of handicapped and emotionally
disturbed adolescents, after which he
became a class teacher at Green Meadow
Waldorf School. After many years of service to
Green Meadow, Eugene now works worldwide
as an educational consultant and lecturer. He
currently serves as a Fellow of the Research
Institute for Waldorf Education. In addition to
his thirty years of experience as a class
teacher, high school teacher, and educator of
Waldorf teachers, Eugene has served as a
consultant to Waldorf endeavors throughout
the United States, and in Canada, England,
Ireland, Mexico, Austria, and Italy. As a Teaching
Fellow at the Carnegie Foundation for the
Advancement of Teaching in Princeton, NJ, he
worked with public school teachers from
across the nation, and he worked closely with
the late Ernest Boyer, the Foundation’s
president, to establish new curricular ideas
and methods. Since 2005, he has been a
Fellow of the Research Institute for Waldorf
Education.
Eva Feder Kittay is Distinguished
Professor of Philosophy at Stony Brook University/SUNY
and Senior Fellow, Center for
Medical Humanities, Compassionate Care, and
Bioethics, Stony Brook University/ SUNY.
Among her most recent publications are
Cognitive Disability and Its Challenge to Moral
Philosophy (with Licia Carlson, Blackwell
2010), and Blackwell Studies in Feminist
Philosophy (with Linda Alcoff, 2006). She is at
work on a book, tentatively entitled, A Quest
for A Humbler Philosophy: Thinking about Disabled
Minds and Things that Matter, which
explores challenges posed by cognitive
disabilities to philosophy and ethics.
Sophia Wong is Associate Professor of
Philosophy at the Brooklyn Campus of Long
Island University in New York, NY, USA. She has
written about definitions of moral personhood,
comparisons between sexism and discrimination
against people with intellectual disabilities,
and how the availability of preimplantation
genetic diagnosis affects the reproductive
autonomy of prospective parents. Her current
research analyzes the complex relationships
between people with intellectual disabilities
and their non-disabled siblings.
Contact Julie Rienhardt, julie@
imaginesls.org; (831) 464-8355, x. 1
Dates: April 26–29, 2011
first issue 2011 • 83