Gloria Steinem and Alice Walker —two of the most renowned activists in women’s and civil rights and other causes—will be joined by Dr. Chung Yung Kyung and Aaron Stern at Leading by Being: Exploring a New Vision of Leadership, from 7 to 9 p.m., October 11, at the Lensic Performing Arts Center, in Santa Fe. The discussion, presented by New Mexico’s Academy for the Love of Learning and Ghost Ranch Education & Retreat Center, will spotlight perspectives of these esteemed thinkers on the concept of balanced leadership and explore emerging new styles of leadership.

Steinem, a writer, lecturer, editor, feminist activist and founder of Ms. Magazine, is particularly interested in the shared origins of sex and race caste systems, gender roles and child abuse as roots of violence, nonviolent conflict resolution, cultures of indigenous peoples and organizing across boundaries for peace and justice. Walker, whose 1983 novel, The Color Purple, won the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award, is also an acclaimed poet and activist.

Kyung, a lay theologian of the Presbyterian Church of Korea, earned international attention in 1991 by delivering a celebrated feminist/Asian/Third-World interpretation of the Holy Spirit at the World Council of Churches in Canberra, Australia.

Stern, a composer, teacher and international consultant on learning, is the founder and president of the nonprofit Academy for the Love of Learning, and serves on the board of the Mind & Life Institute, in Hadley, Massachusetts. Stern says, “It appears that all around us, new views, expectations of and approaches to leadership—and related to this ‘followership’ – which, in this context, means how we organize ourselves as a human community, in right relationship to all of nature—are being discussed, imagined, explored and practiced.” These explorations are at the heart of the Academy’s New Images of Leadership: A Year Long Community Inquiry.

The event will support the academy’s leadership scholarship program for state residents and related workshops and discussions next year at the Santa Fe campus and in surrounding communities.

Cost: $100 (including $65 for the scholarship program) or $35 per person. Location: Lensic Theatre, 211 W. San Francisco St., Santa Fe, NM. For more information or to register, call 505-988-1234, email [email protected] or visit
ALoveOfLearning.org. See ad, page 7.