The Aspen Institute offers many programs and seminars for lots of different subjects, ranging from business, justice, sports and the environment, trying to provide affordable and accessible programming for the locals in western Colorado. 

Founded in 1949 in Aspen, their headquarters now in Washington D.C., the Aspen Institute holds events mostly on their campus in Aspen, but once a year they hold a socratic seminar event in the city of Rifle.

“We have a diverse population that attends in Aspen,” said Katie Carlsen, the Program Manager of the Aspen Community Programs team in the Institute. “The crux of it is travel time. We thought there was equity in asking them to come to us and we decided to go to them.”

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The program being held is the Teen Socrates Seminar, where teens aged 15-17 can come and read a variety of texts, with a base in Socrates, Plato and Aristotle and other readings from Maya Angelou, Leonardo Da Vinci, Asian-based philosophy, songs and other modern texts. 

“We change most of the readings up, some threads stay the same,” Carlsen said.

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The first Teen Socrates Seminar held in Rifle was in 2022, giving the Institute opportunities to draw texts from as many people over the years as they can. 

“Not many public schools use the Socratic Method,” Carlsen said. “Our lived experiences color our values and viewpoints of the world.”

Students learn from their peers at these seminars and the forum is meant to spark conversations in a time where there’s much contention in the world.

“The executive seminar is so valuable, so we try to get back into the community and back to our students here,” Carlsen said. “Because they partake in conversations outside the classroom.”

The Teen Socrates Seminar at the Rifle Branch Library runs through Nov. 8-10, costing $25 for each teen, which includes all sessions, readings and light refreshments.

Scholarships are available in case anyone needs financial assistance. The Rifle session is at capacity, but email Carlsen at katie.carlsen@aspeninst.org to be put on the waitlist. 

“The Rifle community is so beautiful and getting to know that community is wonderful,” Carlsen said. “We do a walking tour of Rifle during the seminar and it’s awesome.”

The schedule of readings and discussions are as follows, with authors listed first and their piece afterward:

Session I, Nov. 8: Being and Seeming

●  Plato, Gorgias

●  Nathanial Hawthorne, The Birthmark

●  Elizabeth Kolbert, Welcome to the Anthropocene

Session II, Nov. 9: A Common Spirit?

●  Aristotle, Politics, Book 1

●  The International Goethe Convocation, Program Introduction

●  Maya Angelou, Mother’s Long View

●  Martine Rothblatt and Amara D. Angelica, Biocyberethics: should we stop a company from unplugging an intelligent computer?

Session III, Nov. 10: Horizons of Creativity

●  Leonardo da Vinci, Thoughts on Art and Life

●  Ellen McGirt, We are all redesigners now

●  Chuang Tzu, The Woodcarver