Clemente Veterans' Initiative: Tacoma, WA; Houston, TX; and Newark, NJ

FAIN: AV-266019-19

Clemente Course in the Humanities, Inc. (New York, NY 10065-8014)
Lela Hilton (Project Director: November 2018 to present)

A preparatory program for ten discussion leaders, followed by three parallel 12-week courses on the themes of the call to war, going to war, and reconciliation, for a total of 45-60 veteran participants.

Clemente Veterans Initiative (CVI) Dialogues on the Experience of War will offer a twelve-week series of Dialogues at three venues: Tacoma, WA, Houston,TX, and & Newark, NJ. Our target audience is veterans who are struggling to return to civilian life, including those with less than honorable discharges. Many have been disabled serving their country. We developed CVI based on 20 years of experience with the Clemente Course, which offers free, college-level humanities courses to low-income adults, and upon four years of offering Clemente Courses specifically to veterans. We have seen the value to these veterans of deep reflection through engagement with humanities texts over a period of months, and of establishing an intellectual peer group that creates lasting bonds . The content will emphasize great works of literature, history, philosophy and visual art that came out of, or were inspired by, the Trojan and Peloponnesian Wars, the American Civil War, and the Vietnam War.