LEWISTON – Americans must beware of their country’s growing alienation from the rest of the world, two social studies experts told the crowd gathered for the Great Falls Forum Thursday.

In fact, said Canadian professor Eric Waddell, America is becoming “a kind of enormous gated community whose very existence depends on the wealth and obediency of the entire world.”

Waddell and Barry Rodrigue, an historian and assistant humanities professor at Lewiston-Auburn College, spoke to nearly 100 people at the Lepage Conference Center at St. Mary’s Regional Medical Center. It was this season’s last Great Falls Forum.

Sponsored by the Lewiston Public Library, St. Mary’s Regional Medical Center and the Sun Journal, the forum brings speakers from around the region to discuss current issues.

In his speech, Rodrigue compared the border and timber disputes between Maine and Canada in the 19th century to the worldwide border and oil disputes going on today. He warned of corporate globalization and the domination “by a handful of ruthless corporate bosses and their political bag boys.”

While protest has been called unpatriotic in this climate of war, he said, such dissent can be one of the most patriotic things Americans do.

Waddell, a Canadian geography professor who was born in America and raised in England, spent decades teaching and conducting research around the world. In his speech, Waddell discussed America’s place in the world and the very real danger that U.S. citizens are becoming too insulated, self-important and ignorant of the world around them.

“In its frenzied need for nourishment, the one global power shows increasing signs of acting like an angry elephant in a china shop, trampling on all of the fragile objects that surround it – the wealth and beauty of the world,” he said.

The Great Falls Forum will break for the summer. Sessions will resume in September.

ltice@sunjournal.com