Open Minds Book Club: On Civil Disobedience

Wednesday, April 1, 2026
4:00 p.m. - 6:00 p.m.
Robert C. Pew Grand Rapids Campus
Alumni, Community, Faculty, Staff, Students

For the April 2026 session of Open Minds, we will be reading and discussing On Civil Disobedience , edited by Roger Berkowitz and featuring essays from Hannah Arendt and Henry David Thoreau.

"Together for the first time, classic essays on how and when to disobey the government from two of the greatest thinkers in our literature. In Resistance to Civil Government (1849), Henry David Thoreau recounts the story of a night he spent in jail for refusing to pay poll taxes, which he believed supported the Mexican American War and the expansion of slavery. His larger aim was to articulate a view of individual conscience as a force in American politics. No writer has made a more persuasive case for obedience to a “higher law.” In Civil Disobedience (1970), Hannah Arendt offers a stern rebuttal to Thoreau. For Arendt, Thoreau stands in willful opposition to the public and collective spirit that defines civil disobedience. Only through positive collective action and the promises we make to each other in a civil society can meaningful change occur."

The discussion for this book will be held on Wednesday, April 1, from 4:00 to 6:00 p.m. in the Richard M. DeVos Center’s Meijer Regency Room located on the GVSU City Campus.

Books for GVSU students will be mailed to those who register by midnight on March 3.

See the full Open Minds Book Club schedule here!

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Location Information

Meijer Regency Room

Richard M. DeVos Center

401 West Fulton Street
Grand Rapids, MI
49504-6431

Contact Information

If you have any questions, please email Kahler Sweeney.

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This event was added to the calendar by Kahler Sweeney (sweenkah@gvsu.edu) on Thursday, December 4, 2025 and was last updated on Monday, December 15, 2025 at 3:27 p.m.

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