2020

No One Is Too Small To Make A Difference by Greta Thunberg

What to expect: Sometime after May, you will receive the Class of 2024 Common Reading. Then, during summer orientation, you will participate in a small group discussion of the book with your peers, led by one of our outstanding faculty. Every year we carefully select the book to be relevant and of interest to a broad audience. You can expect the book to challenge your thoughts some way. We are asking all first-year students to read the Class of 2024 Common Reading: No One Is Too Small to Make a Difference (2019), by the internationally recognized environmental activist Greta Thunberg. This book is a collection of Ms. Thunberg’s speeches to the public and to political leaders, calling all of us to wake up and fight to protect our planet.

Why are we giving you homework over the summer? The Common Reading will provide a shared experience with your peers, in ways that will set the stage for your continued intellectual growth at Hofstra. If you don’t receive the book in time for your summer orientation session, don’t worry! To ensure everyone is on the same page at the start of your group discussion, your faculty leaders will read the speech or speeches they have chosen to focus on, and will make the text visible to everyone. The conversation that occurs during orientation will give you a taste of what it’s like to participate in a discussion with your peers and faculty.

Author Bio: Greta Thunberg was born in 2003. In August 2018, she started a school strike that became a movement called Fridays for Future, which has inspired school strikes for climate action in more than 150 countries involving millions of students. In September 2019, she spoke in New York City at the UN Climate Action Summit. She has won the prestigious Prix Liberté and been nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize. Hillary Clinton calls her, ‘One of my favorite gutsy women.’ Thunberg is a vegan and doesn’t fly, in order to live a low-carbon lifestyle.