Author and activist David Barsamian will address the dangerous impact of humans on the environment in a talk titled “Ecocide: The War on Nature” at 7 p.m. Thursday, October 29, in the Prairie Room of the Bone Student Center at Illinois State University.

Faculty, staff, and students are invited to an “Open Dialogue with Barsamian” at 1 p.m. October 29, on the second floor of Milner Library. The discussion will cover any topic of interest from the audience, including politics, economy, social justice, history, governance, capitalism, and journalism, among others.

“Human activities inflict harsh and often irreversible damage on the environment and on critical resources,” said Barsamian. “If not checked, many of our current practices put at serious risk the future that we wish for human society and the plant and animal kingdoms.”

The events, which are free and open to the public, is sponsored by Illinois State’s Milner Library, the School of Teaching and Learning, the departments of History, English, Geography and Geology, Philosophy, and Sociology and Anthropology, School of Biological Sciences, the College of Arts and Sciences, and the Office of the President. This event is also sponsored in part by the Harold K. Sage Foundation and the Illinois State University Foundation Fund.

Faculty, staff, and students are invited to an “Open Dialogue with Barsamian” at 1 p.m. October 29, on the second floor of Milner Library. The discussion will cover any topic of interest from the audience, including politics, economy, social justice, history, governance, capitalism, and journalism, among others.

Barsamian is the award-winning founder and director of Alternative Radio, the independent weekly audio series based in Boulder, Colorado. One of America’s most wide-ranging and respected independent journalists, Barsamian has altered the media landscape with his radio programs and books with Noam Chomsky, Tariq Ali, Howard Zinn, Edward Said, Arundhati Roy, and others.

His most recent books are Power Systems with Noam Chomsky and Occupy the Economy with Richard Wolff. He is winner of the Media Education Award, the ACLU’s Upton Sinclair Award for independent journalism, the Cultural Freedom Fellowship from the Lannan Foundation, and the 2014 Peacemaker of the Year Award from the Rocky Mountain Peace and Justice Center. The Institute for Alternative Journalism named him one of its Top Ten Media Heroes.

The talk is also part of The Speaker Series of Illinois State University, which seeks to bring innovative and enlightening speakers to the campus with the aim of providing the community with a platform to foster dialogue, cultivate enriching ideas, and continue an appreciation of learning as an active and lifelong process.

More information on all speakers can be found on the Speaker Series website.