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With a lot of help from Jane Butcher and many others

In 1963, a young Jane Butcher attended a speech on campus by I.F. Stone, an investigative journalist who was arguing against what would soon become the Vietnam War.

It was the first time she’d attended a session of the Conference on World Affairs at the University of Colorado. “I wandered into the office the next day and said, ‘Can I help?’” It turns out that she could, did and does.

In the four and a half decades since, she’s helped the conference and the university more than she might have thought possible. But she says she gains more than she gives. Important parts of her life stem from the conference.

It was there that she met her future husband, the late Charlie Butcher. A conference participant, he was the CEO of a successful company. He had also gone to prison because, as a conscientious objector, he did not fight in World War II.

“He just didn’t believe in war,” she says.

Butcher graduated with a bachelor’s degree in international affairs in 1966. After they married, Jane moved with Charlie to Massachusetts, where they had four children. She didn’t do anything with the conference for 10 years. But when she met the conference’s founder, Howard Higman, again in 1978, he talked her into jumping back in.

She says, “It’s been a central part of my life.” She is not overstating things.

Also at the conference, Butcher met the founder of Mother Jones, a nonprofit news organization specializing in investigative, political and social-justice reporting. He invited her to join the board of the magazine, where she’s served ever since.

With both time and other resources, Butcher gives generously to the conference, which she co-chairs. More than four decades since her first exposure to the conference, she still speaks about the conference with a mixture of affection and awe.

The conference, she says, is an open exchange of ideas. Its appeal comes partly from the fact that it’s intergenerational, and that many people work together to make it happen. Particularly during smaller sessions as the week-long event progresses, leading thinkers let down their guard, expressing their hopes and fears, she says.

“There’s a freedom and a safety that people feel, so they’re not afraid to express emotions.”

Butcher says it’s exciting for students to see how these older and more experienced people have developed, “to see how you can grow, to see who you are.” Such exchanges are priceless, she suggests. “It’s really helped me become the person I am.”

Though some of the larger conference sessions are webcast, the smaller ones are not, “because that intimacy could be broken.”

That quality is one thing that keeps speakers coming back year after year, she adds. “It’s what Roger Ebert loves. It’s what Molly Ivins loved,” she says, referring to the Pulitzer-winning film critic and the late syndicated columnist, known and cherished for her acid tongue, sharp wit and Texas-bred humor.

The conference, Butcher says, is a “gift from the university” to the community.

In her work on the conference, Butcher offers that sensibility and an institutional memory. “One of the things I learned from Howard was to take advantage of change,” she says. “I argued with Howard and respected Howard and now I feel sometimes I’m channeling Howard.”

She does so, she says, by reiterating core principles articulated by Higman: Participants pay their own way and do not receive honoraria, but they are treated graciously while here. Their housing, for instance, is provided by conference organizers and friends.

The Conference on World Affairs’ 61st annual appearance this year begins on April 6. As usual, the conference will include more than 100 participants who will join more than 200 sessions. All events are free and open to the public. And the whole thing costs the university about $160,000.

The event itself costs a total of about $300,000 a year, and Butcher notes that private support is critically needed. She adds that the value of the conference to the university is measured in the millions.

If that sounds like a lot, Butcher notes the honoraria given to many prominent speakers of the caliber of those at the conference. Thomas Friedman, the Pulitzer-winning New York Times columnist who spoke on campus this year, commands a $75,000 speaking fee.

But she supports more than the conference. She has contributed to the renovation of the Women’s Studies Cottage. She serves as chair of the Deans’ Advisory Council for the College of Arts and Sciences. And to carry on a passion of Charlie’s, Butcher has given significant support to critical, cutting-edge work in biotechnology.

With a major gift that was matched by the university, she has established the Butcher Symposium, which fosters ground-breaking interdisciplinary research in the emerging field of molecular biotechnology. The initiative aims to further research in an area at the forefront of science and medicine.

The Butchers have a well-known history of philanthropy. After selling their cleaning-products company to industry giant S.C. Johnson Co., the couple gave $18 million to their 325 employees.

Her philanthropy reflects her values: “I believe that if you really care about something, you have an obligation to support it. That depends on your means and how much you believe in it.”

She adds, “You only go around once, and it’s all about values and putting them into action.”

Still, she emphasizes that giving enriches the giver. “I think I get more than I give, by feeling part of the university family.”

She pauses to recall time spent with consumer advocate Ralph Nader, communications theorist Marshall McLuhan and futurist Buckminster Fuller, whom she calls a man of ideas, an iconoclast, a great thinker and a very long talker. Of Fuller, she says it was “thrilling to sit at his feet and listen to him ramble.”

For more information about the Conference on World Affairs, see: . To support the conference, please contact Kathy Parker, senior director of development at the College of Arts and Sciences, (303) 492-5804 or Kathy.Parker@cufund.org.