The document summarizes the planned events and discussions for the 2015-2016 academic year by the Cultural and Intellectual Climate Committee at SUNY Cortland. The committee plans to have a year-long discussion about the significance of local economies, environmental resilience, and overcoming inequalities. They want to critically discuss how promoting localism and local purchasing has addressed issues like poverty and racial inequality. The document provides information about contacting the committee and lists the planned events which include films, presentations and discussions on topics like place, local movements, history of the local area, immigration, and planning communities with consideration of food access.

1. If you don’t know where you are, you don’t know who you are. – Wendell Berry
For the 2015-2016 academic year, the Cultural and Intellectual Climate Committee plans a year-long discussion about the
“local” and its significance for thinking about economic health, environmental resilience, and overcoming inequalities of all
types. We also hope the series will encourage service in Cortland and surrounding areas.
Many of us here at the college are new residents or short-term visitors in Cortland. What connects us to this place, and why
should we care?
In particular, we want to engage the campus in a critical discussion of localism and privilege. Strong arguments have been
made about the value of shopping locally and eating locally grown food, but has the promotion of local economies done
enough to engage with problems of poverty and racial inequality? Can the poor afford to be locavores, who purchase local
products produced in a sustainable manner? Does the idea of the “local” invite everyone into our “home” or wall some of us out?
For more information please contact:
Howard Lindh, Performing Arts Department or Scott Moranda, History Department
Website: http://www2.cortland.edu/committees/cultural-and-intellectual-climate-committee/index.dot
Twitter: @SUNYCortCICC
Where Are We?
February 18
4:30 pm, Old Main Colloquium
Place as Voice
David Franke, SUNY Cortland
February 25
7 pm, Sperry 104
This Changes Everything
Film Screening
Naomi Klein and Avi Lewis
March 22
7 pm, Memorial Library 2nd Floor
A Farm Girl - Billie:
The Gillette Murder Case 110 Years After
Joseph Brownell
March 24
7pm, Jacobus Lounge
The Local Opt-Out Movement:
Parents’ Responses to Standardized
Testing Requirements
Moderated by Anne Burns Thomas
March 29
7 pm, Sperry Room 106
Our Town: Cortland Then & Now
A Multi-Media Presentation
April 5
4:30 pm, Jacobus Lounge
Cortland’s Red Scare: Immigration,
Radicalism and Civil Liberties in the Post
World War I Period
Randi Storch
April 7
7 pm, Jacobus Lounge
What Porter Ranch Can Teach Us
about Seneca Lake
Joe Heath and Colleen Kattau
April 11
4:30 pm, Sperry 104
Planning Communities as if People Eat
Samina Raja, University of Buffalo
April 18
4:30 - 6:30 pm, Jacobus Lounge
Through My Eyes, Café Night
Students from H. W. Smith Elementary School
April 25
4:30 pm, Sperry 104
I Learn America, Film Screening
April 26
7 pm. Jacobus Lounge
Welcoming the Stranger
Dylan Fresco