You can add “enter contest” to the many reasons you should plan on attending Professor Chomsky’s talk on Tuesday.

“In the spirit of extending and deepening critical and creative engagement with issues of public importance, the UMass-Boston English Department, the MFA Creative Writing Program, the Honors College, and Writ Large Magazine are pleased to announce a contest to recognize the most thoughtful written responses to Noam Chomsky’s April 14th lecture at UMass-Boston.

On Tuesday, April 14th, beginning at 3:15 pm, Professor Chomsky will speak on the topic of “The Common Good: Assaults and Resistance.” Thus we are asking for students to respond–in whatever form or genre they choose– to the following prompt, in no more than 750 words (fewer is fine):

How would you define the “common good” today? Based on the lecture and discussion, what is your forward-looking (even lofty or idealistic) vision of the common good? What do you think stands as a threat to this common good? Where in the world you know do you see “resistance” emerging that asserts an inspiring notion of the “common good” against these threats? 

How so do the ideas put forth by Professor Chomsky help us to identify and engage the common good, including what the common good has the potential to become and that which threatens it? How so do you see the critical ideas put forth by our guest speaker as relevant to the situation that is currently faced by members of the UMass-Boston community in particular? How so do your own experiences or observations concur, complicate, or complement the picture that Professor Chomsky paints? Coming out of this lecture and discussion, what do you see as the relation between the notion of the common good put forth by Prof. Chomsky, and your own appraisal of what the common good is or should be, and what enables or prevents it from coming into being?

Submissions should be sent via email to UMBCommonGood@gmail.com by Friday May 1st, at 5pm. Winning writers will be awarded with a gift-card prize, with winning submissions to be published in Writ Large magazine, and recognized at an event in May.”