Free Lecture: How Ageism Warps Our View of Long Life

Monday, April 8, 2013, 6:30 - 8:30pm

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Ashton Applewhite.  Photo courtesy of Ashton Applewhite

Ashton Applewhite. Photo courtesy of Ashton Applewhite

Baby boomers once swore not trust anyone older than 30. But as they and other Americans who are living longer now find, ageism internalized and in the culture at large - obscures all but the most negative messages about life beyond the blush of youth, with disastrous personal and political implications. Ashton Applewhite, blogger for This Chair Rocks and Yo, Is this Ageist? will discuss stereotyping and discrimination on the basis of age and why it is so damaging at The Cooper Union.

Applewhite is a Knight Fellow, a New York Times Fellow, and an Age Boom Fellow (Columbia Journalism School). She is the author of Cutting Loose: Why Women Who End Their Marriages Do So Well, media liaison to the board of the Council on Contemporary Families, and a staff writer at the American Museum of Natural History.

Located in the Frederick P. Rose Auditorium, at 41 Cooper Square (on Third Avenue between 6th and 7th Streets)

  • Founded by inventor, industrialist and philanthropist Peter Cooper in 1859, The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art offers education in art, architecture and engineering, as well as courses in the humanities and social sciences.

  • “My feelings, my desires, my hopes, embrace humanity throughout the world,” Peter Cooper proclaimed in a speech in 1853. He looked forward to a time when, “knowledge shall cover the earth as waters cover the great deep.”

  • From its beginnings, Cooper Union was a unique institution, dedicated to founder Peter Cooper's proposition that education is the key not only to personal prosperity but to civic virtue and harmony.

  • Peter Cooper wanted his graduates to acquire the technical mastery and entrepreneurial skills, enrich their intellects and spark their creativity, and develop a sense of social justice that would translate into action.