HPI Interim Director Gives Honors Last Lecture
Interim Director of the Heravi Peace Institute, Colin Flint, giving the Honors Last Lecture on October 4, 2023
By Jade Bartnicki, Heravi Peace Institute Staff Assistant
Initiated in 1976, the Honors Last Lecture has become an important tradition for the Utah State University community. Honors students nominate outstanding professors who have made an educational impact on them, in or outside of the classroom. Nominees should be established professors with an exceptional record of undergraduate teaching, scholarly research, and university service at USU. Each year, a committee of Honors students selects one Honors Outstanding Professor, whom they invite to deliver an imagined "Last Lecture," a talk that shares wisdom and insight with students and community members as if it were the professor's final chance to lecture at USU.
HPI Interim Director Colin Flint delivered this year's lecture entitled, “Dare to Build Global Peace.” Flint began his lecture by challenging listeners to rethink USU’s Land Grant Mission and broader educational approach in a way that focuses on human security, not national security. The lecture was laced with calls to action including daring to push the limits of what you know, enacting personal change, building peace on all levels—local and global—and remembering that you don’t have to dare alone.
"We are being educated and socialized to think of the world as a world of threat, a world of others, a world of exclusion, a world in which force is the ultimate solution, a world of simple binary right and wrong...We [need to] integrate critical thinking, and empathy, and a mindset of global connection across the curriculum. In other words, we can put peace throughout the curriculum." - Colin Flint
"The pathway we should dare to travel is going to be uncomfortable, it's going to be hard, but it is not naive...What's it going to entail? Don't stay comfortable, don't settle for normal, strive to be critical, dare to know what you're being told. Dare to make positive change, but don't feel like you need to do it alone."
Watch the full lecture here
How are you daring to build global peace? Share your stories with us at hpi.usu.edu