LECTURE TO EXAMINE NEW MILLENNIUM

At the end of each year, many people pause to reflect on the past 12 months' accomplishments and then make resolutions for improvement in the coming year.

Dr. Michael Osborn wonders what resolutions will be made on the eve of a new millennium.

Osborn will contemplate "Communication Resolutions for the New Millennium" at the fourth annual Joseph H. Low Jr. Lecture tonight at Southeast Missouri State University. The free lecture begins at 7 p.m. in the University Center Ballroom.

"I began thinking of the greatest developments of the past 1,000 years," Osborn said. "There have been many in technology, the arts, science, but I guest the greatest development has been the Rights of Man."

For this communications professor, chief among those rights is freedom of speech.

Osborn, professor emeritus at the University of Memphis, lived through the sanitation workers' strike in that city. "I saw the worst of the freedom of speech," he said. "I saw how people can treat each other, belittling, demonizing and over-simplifying each other."

People across the globe continue to jump to conclusions and make snap judgments about others. Ethnic cleansing in Croatia is an example, he said.

Perhaps, Osborn suggests, a resolution for the new millenium will be the presumption of complexity in other human beings.

Similar to the judicial system's presumption of innocence, Osborn's presumption of complexity would cause individuals to pause before making judgments.

"All people are complex, not caricatures," he said. "They have different convictions, different motives, a mixture of good and evil."

To understand those differences, Osborn said, principles of communication are needed. People need to use the skills of argument, evidence and example, he said.

Dr. Tom Harte, chairman of the speech communication and theatre department at Southeast, said Osborn is a leading figure in the field of speech communication.

Osborn chaired the communication department at the University of Memphis for eight years. During his tenure, he was recognized as having one of the top four master of arts degree programs in communication in the country.

The annual Low Lecture was created in 1995 by Low's mother, Mildred I. low, through an endowment in her son's name for the department of speech communication and theatre at Southeast.