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Lecture on Rachel Carson’s Legacy & North Carolina

Robert K. Musil, the president and CEO of the Rachel Carson Council, will present “Rachel Carson’s Environmental Legacy and North Carolina,” at Meredith College.

The lecture will be held on Wednesday, Oct. 17, 2018, at 7 p.m. in Jones Auditorium. A pre-lecture reception will be held at 5 p.m. in the SMB Atrium.

The Rachel Carson Council is the legacy organization envisioned by Rachel Carson and founded in 1965 by her closest friends and colleagues. Musil was named president and CEO in February 2014 and is only the third head of this historic environmental group. Musil is also a Senior Fellow and Adjunct Professor at the Center for Congressional and Presidential Studies, School of Public Affairs, American University, where he teaches about climate change and American environmental politics. He also has been a Visiting Scholar at the Churches’ Center for Theology and Public Policy, Wesley Theological Seminary, where he taught about religious responses to global warming and security threats.

From 1992-2006, Musil was the longest-serving Executive Director and CEO of Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR), winner of the 1985 Nobel Prize for Peace. During his tenure, he nearly tripled PSR’s membership, budget, and staff. He is a graduate of Yale and Northwestern Universities and the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health and has been a Visiting Honorary Fellow at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and of Pembroke College, Cambridge University.

Musil specializes in contemporary global sustainability, security, and health issues, as well as Cold War history, culture, and policy. He is the author of numerous articles and Hope for a Heated Planet: How Americans are Fighting Global Warming and Building a Better Future (Rutgers University Press, 2009) and Rachel Carson and Her Sisters: Extraordinary Women Who Have Shaped America’s Environment (Rutgers Press, 2014).

His latest book is Washington in Springtime: A Nature Journal for a Changing Capital (Bartleby Press, 2016), a reflective nature journal that looks at two very different springs in the Capital area in the light of global climate change. Musil notes birds, flowers, and animals and their shifts since they were described by historic observers like Captain John Smith, John Burroughs, Solomon Northup, Florence Merriam Bailey, Louis Halle, and Rachel Carson.

Musil’s visit to Meredith is sponsored by the Department of Biological Sciences and Environmental Sustainability, with support from the Kenan Foundation.

Melyssa Allen

News Director
316 Johnson Hall
(919) 760-8087
Fax: (919) 760-8330

allenme@meredith.edu