Pacific Lutheran University announces spring partnership with the Clemente Course in the Humanities

Thanks to a new 2019 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, Pacific Lutheran University is happy to announce a Spring 2020 partnership with the Clemente Course in the Humanities.

The partnership will launch a Clemente Veterans’ Initiative (CVI) course that will take place in the coming spring semester. CVI was developed in 2014 to provide a meaningful intellectual community to veterans who are working to adapt to civilian life, and is based on the idea that guided discussion of humanities texts can provide these veterans with an opportunity to reflect on their military experiences and move out of isolation and into community.

“Pacific Lutheran University is proud of the work we’ve done over the years supporting veterans who have access to VA education benefits,” said Michael Farnum, PLU’s Director of Military Outreach. “This is an opportunity for us to extend that work to veterans who don’t have that access.”

The partnership pairs CVI’s new Tacoma program with PLU faculty in philosophy and humanities. Dialogues will use humanities texts from the Ancient Greeks to contemporary literature to explore themes of war and reconciliation, considering universal human experiences and questions.