ASU paleoanthropologist is a keynote speaker at World Civic Forum

This week, roughly 2,000 people ― including United Nations officials, Nobel Prize laureates, scholars and students ― are gathered in Seoul, South Korea, for the 2009 World Civic Forum. Organized by Kyung Hee University and the U.N. Department of Economic and Social Affairs, the event is designed to promote civic values and civic action through international partnerships and will focus on three related concepts: civic values for global justice; civic engagement in public and global governance; and civic action for the global agenda, including climate change.

“Building our Humanitarian Planet” is the overarching theme of the forum, giving a platform to such human issues as social justice, peace, crisis management, political development, sustainability and higher education for humane purposes and social responsibility.

Arizona State University paleoanthropologist Don Johanson will participate in the event’s plenary session and deliver one of its five keynote speeches. A professor in Arizona State University’s School of Human Evolution and Social Change and the founding director of the Institute of Human Origins in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, Johnson is known for discovering the 3.2-million-year-old hominid fossil called “Lucy.”

In his welcome, Kyung Hee president Choue In-won stated that an anticipated outgrowth of the forum is that by engaging the university and international communities, they will “join in the spirit of global consensus and agreement and together search for a better future for humanity and planet Earth.”

The forum runs through May 7 in the COEX Mall in southern Seoul. The World Civic Forum will be held biannually in various international locations.