The Rev. Dr. Teri McDowell Ott, a pastor, writer, and editor/publisher of The Presbyterian Outlook, will speak at University of the Ozarks on Tuesday, Feb. 28, as part of the University’s annual Farmer Lecture Series.
The event will begin at 7 p.m. in the Rogers Conference Center. Ott’s visit is made possible by the Cecil and Ruth Boddie Farmer Guest Speaker Endowment. There is no charge for admission and the public is invited to attend.
Ott’s lecture is titled, “Bound Together: Our Common Need for Liberation from Systems of Injustice.”
“Lilla Watson, an indigenous activist from Australia is known for saying, ‘If you have come here to help me you are wasting your time, but if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together,’ ” Ott said. “This lecture will focus on intersecting systems of injustice — particularly systemic racism, systemic poverty and the United States carceral system; how these systems function and how they dehumanize us all.”
Ott is the author of the 2022 book, “Necessary Risks: Challenges Privileged People Need to Face,” by Fortress Press. The book was inspired by her work with college students and her experience volunteer teaching in a men’s prison.
According to the book’s summary: “Good people of privilege are increasingly aware of racial injustice but unsure what to do about it and afraid to venture into challenging dialogues and spaces. ‘Necessary Risks: Challenges Privileged People Need to Take’ encourages readers to value risk-taking as the path toward a more equitable and just world. Building on skillful, memoir-like stories, Teri McDowell Ott explores 10 risks — including learning, teaching, leading, following, going, and staying — with which she has wrestled in her work with diverse populations as the chaplain of a liberal arts college and as a volunteer in a men’s state prison. Ott then reflects on how these experiences, including mistakes in often tense settings, have forced her to confront and wrestle with the systems and structures that have privileged her as a white Christian woman.”
Ott has been an ordained Presbyterian (PCUSA) minister for 24 years. After receiving her master of divinity degree from Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary, she served the church in a variety of pastoral positions. In 2008 she completed her doctor of ministry degree from McCormick Theological Seminary. She began serving Monmouth College as Chaplain in January of 2011 and was promoted to Dean of the Chapel in 2019.
On June 1, 2021, Ott accepted a new call as editor/publisher of The Presbyterian Outlook, the only independent news resource of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.).
Ott will also lead the University’s weekly Chapel Service at 11:30 a.m. on Feb. 28 in Munger-Wilson Memorial Chapel.
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