NOTE: For the 2024-25 academic year, the Hauenstein Center will be sponsoring free copies of Open Minds Book Club books for currently enrolled GVSU students only.
The Open Minds Book Club invites thoughtful participation from GVSU students, faculty and staff, Hauenstein Center members, and community members. Kahler Sweeney, program manager of the Common Ground Initiative, and Brian Bowdle, associate professor of psychology, will host discussions on books that seek to understand and serve the needs of our democratic society.
Upcoming Open Minds Book Club Books
January 2025
For the January 2025 session of Open Minds, we will be reading and discussing Out of the Melting Pot, Into the Fire: Multiculturalism in the World's Past and America's Future by Jens Kurt Heycke.
As it absorbs record numbers of new immigrants, the U.S. faces critical questions: is it better to promote a unifying, shared identity that transcends ethnic differences or to foster a multicultural salad of distinct group identities? Is it better to minimize ethnic distinctions or to accentuate them with diversity initiatives and ethnic preferences? Out of the Melting Pot, Into the Fire takes a global, historical perspective to address these questions, examining how societies, from ancient Rome to modern Rwanda, have dealt with them. It provides essential analysis and data for America and other countries that are contemplating an increasingly multiethnic future.
The discussion for this book will be held on Wednesday, January 22, from 4:00 to 6:00 p.m. in the Richard M. DeVos Center’s Meijer Regency Room located on the GVSU Pew Campus.
GVSU students interested in a free copy of the book must register by January 1.
February 2025
For the February 2025 session of Open Minds, we will be reading and discussing The City and The City: A Novel by China Miéville.
When a murdered woman is found in the city of Beszel, somewhere at the edge of Europe, it looks to be a routine case for Inspector Tyador Borlú of the Extreme Crime Squad. To investigate, Borlú must travel from the decaying Beszel to its equal, rival, and intimate neighbor, the vibrant city of Ul Qoma. But this is a border crossing like no other, a journey as psychic as it is physical, a seeing of the unseen. With Ul Qoman detective Qussim Dhatt, Borlú is enmeshed in a sordid underworld of nationalists intent on destroying their neighboring city, and unificationists who dream of dissolving the two into one. As the detectives uncover the dead woman’s secrets, they begin to suspect a truth that could cost them more than their lives. What stands against them are murderous powers in Beszel and in Ul Qoma: and, most terrifying of all, that which lies between these two cities.
The discussion for this book will be held on Wednesday, February 19, from 4:00 to 6:00 p.m. in the Richard M. DeVos Center’s Meijer Regency Room located on the GVSU Pew Campus.
GVSU students interested in a free copy of the book must register by January 29.
March 2025
For the March 2025 session of Open Minds, we will be reading and discussing Don't Label Me: An Incredible Conversation for Divided Times by Irshad Manji.
In these United States, discord has hit emergency levels. Civility isn't the reason to repair our caustic chasms. Diversity is. Don't Label Me shows that America's founding genius is diversity of thought. Which is why social justice activists won't win by labeling those who disagree with them. At a time when minorities are fast becoming the majority, a truly new America requires a new way to tribe out.
The discussion for this book will be held on Wednesday, March 26, from 4:00 to 6:00 p.m. in the Richard M. DeVos Center’s Meijer Regency Room located on the GVSU Pew Campus.
GVSU students interested in a free copy of the book must register by March 5.
Past Titles
November 2024 - The End of Race Politics: Arguments for a Colorblind America by Coleman Hughes
October 2024 - The Practice, the Horizon, and the Chain by Sofia Samatar
September 2024 - The Life-Changing Science of Detecting Bullshit by John V. Petrocelli
April 2024 - Rooted: Life at the Crossroads of Science, Nature, and Spirit by Lyanda Lynn Haupt
February 2024 - The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis
January 2024 - Rescuing Socrates: How the Great Books Changed My Life and Why They Matter for a New Generation by Roosevelt Montas
November 2023 - The Myth of Left and Right: How the Political Spectrum Misleads and Harms America by Hyrum Lewis and Verlan Lewis.
October 2023 - Becoming Kin: An Indigenous Call to Unforgetting the Past and Reimagining Our Future by Patty Krawec.
September 2023 - How to Educate a Citizen: The Power of Shared Knowledge to Unify a Nation by E.D. Hirsch Jr.
April 2023 - The Lathe of Heaven by Ursula K. Le Guin
March 2023: This View of Life: Completing the Darwinian Revolution, by David Sloan Wilson
January 2023 - The White Mosque by Sofia Samatar
November 2022 - War Is A Force That Gives Us Meaning by Chris Hedges
October 2022 - Liberalism and its Discontents, by Francis Fukuyama
April 2022 — Suspicious Minds by Robert Brotherton
January 2022 — No One is Talking About This by Patricia Lockwood
September 2021 — Mistrust: Why Losing Faith in Institutions Provides the Tools to Transform Them by Ethan Zuckerman
June 2021 — Self Portrait in Black and White by Thomas Chatterton Williams
March 2021 — Speak Freely: Why Universities Must Defend Free Speech by Keith E. Whittington
Goals of the Open Minds Book Club
Initiating the kinds of conversations necessary for fostering an informed citizenry and wise leadership
Bridging cultural, ideological, and generational divides through civil discourse
Growing a shared sense of belonging in our West Michigan community