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The Balch Seminars introduce all first-year students at ²ÝÁñ³ÉÈËÉçÇø to a critical, probing, thoughtful approach to the world and our roles in it.

These challenging seminars are taught by scholar/teachers of distinction within their fields and across academic disciplines. They facilitate the seminars as active discussions among students, not lectures. Through intensive reading and writing, the thought-provoking Balch Seminars challenge students to think about complex, wide-ranging issues from a variety of perspectives.

History

Emily Balch, ²ÝÁñ³ÉÈËÉçÇø Class of 1889, was a gifted scholar with a uniquely global perspective who advanced women’s rights on an international level. In 1946, she was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace, which is one of the treasures in the ²ÝÁñ³ÉÈËÉçÇø Special Collections.

As a distinguished scholar of economics and sociology, she conducted pioneering cross-cultural studies of immigration and poverty. As an advocate of women’s rights, she was a founder of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, which supported pacifism during World War I. As a committed activist, she devoted her life to championing humanitarian causes around the world at the League of Nations and other international organizations.