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Shanna Flowers is The Roanoke Times' metro columnist.

Shanna Flowers

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The challenge of diversity in the nation's communities and institutions.

A college president's role in helping students make moral decisions in a higher education setting.

The moral implications of discovering disabilities in fetuses in the womb.

Each topic is compelling on its own. But together, they make up the subjects of a provocative forum Saturday evening in Roanoke called "How shall we live together? Determining today's acceptable moral decisions in a multi-religious, multiethnic, diverse society."

The forum at Virginia Western Community College has a long, fancy title. But it provides a welcome opportunity for the community to talk about issues that make people uncomfortable.

"These are issues that are facing society, known by most people but not very often discussed," said organizer Dr. Gerald Roller.

"We are trying to show that because of the increasing number of immigrants and increasing awareness of the world, we're going to have to learn to live with one another."

The forum is part of a series of local activities celebrating the Jamestown 400th anniversary.

Roller, 75, is a retired physician, husband and father of five who has traveled extensively and done mission work in Nigeria since 1999. He was named to the Jamestown celebration committee in early 2006.

Earlier this year, the committee presented a forum at the Dumas Center for Artistic & Cultural Development called "From slavery to freedom to equality."

I asked him to explain the connection between the moral dilemma of stem cell research or the merit of diversity and the settling of Jamestown.

"If you go back to the Indians, they were put on reservations," Roller said. "This is just a continuation from Jamestown to now. Jamestown was the beginning of how we should live together."

Roller should be credited for his willingness to tackle the subject of diversity from the widest perspective possible. But creating change is easier said than done.

Just last month, a massive new study from a Harvard political scientist found that the greater the diversity in a community, the less civic involvement it has. Fewer people voted, volunteered, gave to charity and worked on community projects.

In a nation that's becoming more and more diverse, that portends all kinds of challenges for the future.

"We can't ignore the findings," Ali Noorani, executive director of the Massachusetts Immigrant and Refugee Advocacy Coalition told The Boston Globe. "The big question we have to ask ourselves is, what do we do about it; what are the next steps?"

A key to creating greater understanding among people is to acknowledge historical ramifications, said forum speaker Ben Dixon, recently retired vice president of intercultural affairs at Virginia Tech.

"We continue to deny the real nature of what happened in the past. When we don't take time to reflect on the past, we lose out on the lessons learned," Dixon said. "There are lessons from the positive stuff and lessons from the negative stuff that we should not only learn from but collectively acknowledge."

Discussions such as Saturday's forum can begin the dialogue on some of society's touchy subjects.

Along with Dixon, featured speakers will be Nancy Gray, president of Hollins University; Brent Brown, a lawyer with the firm Brown & Jennings in Salem, and Shana Merrill, a prenatal genetic counselor at Carilion Clinic.

"What I'm hoping to do is to get people to begin thinking about this and not just say, 'Oh it's interesting, but ...,' " Roller said.