Dr. John Ray has Peer Reviewed Papers Accepted for Presentation

Dr. John W. Ray of Montana Tech’s Liberal Studies Department has had two peer reviewed papers in different areas accepted for presentation next year at two international conferences. The first paper entitled:  Organized Religion and Democracy: An Inherent Conflict will be presented at the Fourteenth International Conference on New Directions in the Humanities to be held at the University of Illinois at Chicago. The paper argues that in terms of their concept of the nature of the good and the good life, how one knows what constitutes the good life, how one makes decisions about pursuing the good life and how one deals with diversity and dissent, organized religion and liberal democracy are incompatible.

The second paper entitled Globalization, Sense of Place, and Environmental Protection will be presented at UCLA at the Global Studies Conference.  The second paper contends that environmental protection depends on a sense of place to protect. Globalization, which contributes to a weakening of a traditional sense of place, makes it hard to re-establish a new sense of place when the place becomes the world. Without a sense of place, environmental protection becomes difficult. The paper asks and answers the question: Can we create a global sense of place and protect the environment globally?   Dr. Ray began teaching at Montana Tech in 1975 and teaches classes in public policy, political science and communications.