How does one navigate this world of unrest?
“People are angry and confused,” explained Jim Moore. “Some of them are making stuff up and saying, ‘No, that’s not what reality is.’ And so I want to put the political times in
context.”
On Wednesday, April 3 at 6 pm, Moore will attempt to do just that. The Acting Assistant Director for the College of Arts and Sciences and the Acting Director for the School of Social Sciences, Moore also teaches about civic engagement and foreign policy. Directly after Spring Break, he will talk in Old College Hall for the Alumni Association’s “Old College Hall Speakers Series.” The talk, titled “Citizenship in Times of Disruption: The Good, the Bad, and the Just Plain Weird,” will be about how difficult and dramatic political talk can be, especially in times of unease.
In the lecture, Moore plans to present events from both the past and present which shaped political discussions at the time, including past elections. The goal in including these examples is to show how people have faced the world in the past and to shine a light on how similarly people are facing the present. “Right now, people are talking about the election and saying, ‘Well, this is the most consequential election ever,’” Moore said. “And we’ve had 58 presidential elections. I would bet that someone said that at every single one of those elections.”
Moore also will pull from past political climates, such as the 1960s and 70s, where major events such as desegregation and the Vietnam War were sparking intense social and political discussions. In an interview with the Index, Moore explained that, back then there was a heavy conflict between party lines that seems similar to current divisions; but, points out Moore, in contrast may show that the divisions are not quite as rabid as in 1968 when civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated and, just months later, after leaving a victory speech for winning the California primary, presidential candidate Robert Kennedy was shot, and with far-right American Independent Party like George Wallace. “We had a candidate for president who actually got Electoral College votes, who was an out-and-out racist who said basically, we should end desegregation,” said Moore, referring to Wallace. “And so just putting that in context, yes, things are interesting now, but people aren’t shooting each other and people aren’t, in effect, calling for, realistically, to split the country into several pieces.”
Moore added, “I hope that, after the talk, the campus and the community will have a set of tools that they can use to understand what’s going on around them and say, ‘Aha, I feel this way because I’m on this side or that side’ or ‘I feel this way because this is a new thing for me in terms of the way people are carrying out political discourse.’”
Lectures for this series are free, but advanced registration is required.
Major: Sports Communications
Hometown: Stayton, OR
Hobbies: Watching baseball, thrifting, skincare, hanging out with my pets, snowboarding, and going on walks.
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