Not so for Satish Kumar, Webster University’s 2007-08 Des Lee Visiting Lecturer in Global Awareness. He’s been advising against our growth-at-all-costs paradigm for 50 years. FULL STORY

The ‘House That Reta Built’ Expands
New endowed scholarship honors longtime English professor

Every university has its legends. Those larger-than-life people who excite all around them with their passion and brilliance. For Webster University English professors and alumni, that legend is Reta Madsen.

A former longtime Webster English professor and department chair, Madsen is revered by colleagues and former students – who are often one and the same – for her enthusiasm for literature, her inspiring teaching, and her legacy of constructing and growing an exemplary undergraduate English department.

“Whenever I praise the English department, the English faculty are quick to remind me, ‘This is the department that Reta built,’” says David Carl Wilson, dean of the College of Arts & Sciences. FULL STORY

Webster Celebrates Year of International Human Rights
University mission in spotlight on 60th anniversary of Universal Declaration

In 1946, in the aftermath of yet another “great war” that wrought horrors upon civilizations around the globe, leaders of the newly formed United Nations sought to establish a new norm for international conflict resolution and a new respect for basic human rights.

In response to the atrocities of the previous decade, the UN established a Commission on Human Rights led by Eleanor Roosevelt, whose first task was to write an international bill of human rights with committee members from many religions and states traditionally at odds. Members included a leading French Jewish jurist, a Lebanese Arabic philosopher, a Chinese Confucian diplomat, and Russian Communists. FULL STORY