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Panel Discussion Planned for 2019 Earle Bates Lecture at W&L The discussion is free and open to the public.

Screen-Shot-2019-09-16-at-4.42.41-PM Panel Discussion Planned for 2019 Earle Bates Lecture at W&LThe event will take place on Oct. 2 at 7 p.m. at Stackhouse Theater in Elrod Commons.

Washington and Lee University’s Environmental Studies Program will host a panel discussion for the 2019 Earle Bates Memorial Lecture. The event will take place on Oct. 2 at 7 p.m. at Stackhouse Theater in Elrod Commons.

The panel discussion, which is free and open to the public, will look at issues of agriculture through the lens of sustainability, and address areas of improvement and development.

Members of the panel will include Mahadev Bhat, professor of economics at Florida International University; Chelsea Fisher, assistant professor of environmental studies at W&L; and Samina Raja, professor, director of the Food Systems Planning and Healthy Communities Lab, and associate dean for research and inclusive excellence at the University of Buffalo.

“For our food systems to be sustainable, we have to break down disciplinary boundaries and engage with the complex ‘messiness’ of the social and political dimensions of sustainability,” said Fisher. “The panel will discuss how conceptions of value, historical dynamics and environmental justice converge in the foods we grow and eat. We will explore how a deeper and more democratic understanding of those dynamics is critical to creating sustainable food systems for the future.”

The Earle S. Bates ’54 Environmental Studies Fund was endowed upon his death in August 2017. The endowment supports the Earle Bates Memorial Lecture series as well as the Earle Bates Prize in Environmental Studies and the Earle Bates Prize in Environmental Citizenship, awarded to rising seniors at Commencement each year.