As students return to universities around the world and I return to my role as a professor of Sustainable Food and Farming, I am thinking about how to maintain the freedom of thought and action that I experience during the summer months while returning to work within a hierarchical institution of power and control.  Students often wonder the same thing…….

I ask each fall – how do we maintain our sense of freedom and hope when we are faced with the sometimes oppressive  university hierarchy?  In 2003, I addressed this question during a graduation ceremony speech in which I claimed the key was compassion for all and knowledge of the connectedness of all things. I adapted an essay by Joanna Macy for this speech which I renamed “the Shambhala worker” (with the author’s permission of course).

I’ve posted it here for you

Namaste…..