Anita Tuvin Schlechter Auditorium, 7 p.m.

This program will not be livestreamed. It will, however, be recorded for future viewing via Dickinson login on our website.

Never Enough: What the Neuroscience of Addiction Can Teach Us About Living Our Best Lives

Judith Grisel, Bucknell University

Most chemicals that people use to medicate or enhance reality have both risks and benefits, at different times and for different people. Nonetheless, regular use of any mind-altering substance causes the exact opposite states to a drug’s original effects. Chronic stimulants result in lethargy, sedatives lead to anxiety and insomnia, and euphoriants guarantee misery.  Dr. Grisel will explain how the brain adapts to addictive drugs by creating the states of craving, tolerance, and dependence that characterize addiction. She’ll address the synergistic influences of genetic predispositions, childhood trauma, and drug exposure during periods of brain development that make some people more vulnerable than others. These general principles will be applied to illustrate specific risk factors and neural changes associated with cannabis use, and conclude by illustrating how advances in neuroscience can help to reduce suffering from addiction.

This program is sponsored by the Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues and co-sponsored by the Wellness Center and the Read more

Anita Tuvin Schlechter Auditorium, 7 p.m.

Livestream Link

What Does It Mean to Be a Human Translator in the Age of AI?

Amélie Josselin-Leray, University of Toulouse

The advent of generative AI in the last two years has been considered as a matter of considerable concern in the field of language-related trades, and in particular in the field of translation and interpreting: will AI take over the jobs of translators and interpreters? In this presentation, Josselin-Leray will argue in favor of an even more pressing need to train future translators and show how the way to train translators has evolved in the last two decades, based on her 17-year-long experience as a trainer in a programme belonging to the EMT (European Master’s programmes in Translation) network, under the umbrella of the Directorate General for Translation at the European Commission. Over the last few decades, translators have been successively faced with new technologies such as Computer-Assisted Tools (also called translation memories) or Neural Machine Translation. Now they have to face Large Language Models (LLMs). To be able to integrate successfully the labour market which is more and more highly technologized, young language professionals thus need to acquire specific skills (post-editing, writing Read more

Anita Tuvin Schlechter Auditorium, 7 p.m.

Livestream Link

Joseph Priestley Award Celebration Lecture

Misinformation in the Age of AI

Marcia McNutt, President of the National Academy of Sciences

The intentional (disinformation) or unintentional (misinformation) spread of false information is not new, but with the advent of social media and the growth of narrowly-directed communication channels the problem has reached epidemic proportions. Prominent examples of disinformation include the intentional efforts of the tobacco industry to discount the impact of smoking on lung cancer and the campaign of the fossil fuel industry to question whether climate change is even happening and its role in warming the climate. Even misinformation can be deadly, as seen in resistance to childhood vaccines and the excess death toll during the COVID-19 pandemic caused by false rumors about the RNA vaccine. Coupled with the erosion in public trust in the efforts of our government and prominent institutions, including colleges and universities, it is difficult to craft simple solutions for the benefit of public health and safety. AI raises the stakes by making it easier to create and spread false information and more difficult to detect truth from fiction. Fortunately, there are promising approaches, but success will depend Read more

Anita Tuvin Schlechter Auditorium, 7 p.m.

This program will not be livestreamed. It will, however, be recorded for future viewing via Dickinson login on our website.

Rainbows and Mud: Pathways to Queer Thriving in a Marginalizing Society

Nic Weststrate, Associate Professor in the Department of Educational Psychology, University of Illinois Chicago

The over 500 anti-LGBTQ+ bills introduced to state legislatures in 2024 are a painful reminder that circumstances framing LGBTQ+ lives haven’t gotten much better despite promises of progress and no shortage of hope. A subset of these bills concern LGBTQ+ curriculum censorship and book bans—bans that threaten LGBTQ+ people’s access to knowledge necessary for surviving and thriving in a marginalizing and increasingly hostile society. Such limitations around access to knowledge are conceptualized here as an epistemic injustice. Drawing from six years of research, this lecture will explore the ways that LGBTQ+ communities counter epistemic injustice by coming together across generations for social connection, storytelling, and wisdom-sharing. The studies leverage multiple methods, including an innovative letter-writing paradigm, close observations of intergenerational dyadic storytelling exchanges, and a multi-year community-engaged ethnographic experiment. By shining a light on the joys and challenges of LGBTQ+ intergenerational engagement, glimmers of a better future for LGBTQ+ Read more

Anita Tuvin Schlechter Auditorium, 7 p.m.

This event is in-person only. It will not be livestreamed or recorded.

Breaking Issue

A World Transformed? Foreign Policy in the Current Moment

Dickinson Faculty Participants

Russell Bova, Professor of Political Science and International Studies
Magda Siekert, Senior Lecturer in Middle East Studies
Fatou Thioune, Assistant Professor of International Studies
Andrew T. Wolff, Associate Professor of Political Science and International Studies

The current administration’s approach to world politics appears to represent a radical departure from eighty years of US foreign policy consensus on a range of issues. In just two months, crucial US relationships to the outside world, including to Russia, NATO, the Middle East, Greenland, Canada, and many more, has been transformed dramatically. This panel will attempt to help us understand the causes, consequences, and durability of these dizzying changes in the US global role.

This program is sponsored by the Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues.

Biographies (provided by the participants)

Russ Bova is professor of political science and the J. William Stuart & Helen Stuart Chair in International Studies. Professor Bova is the editor of Russia and Western Civilization: Cultural and Historical Encounters and the author of the international relations textbook How Read more

Sunday, March 23, 2025

Althouse 106, 4 p.m.

Film Screening of Call Me by Your Name

The Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues and the Italian and Italian Studies department are hosting a film screening of the movie Call Me by Your Name. There will be a Q&A session following the film screening with André Aciman, the author of the book (of the same title) which inspired the screenplay.

Monday,  March 24, 2025

Anita Tuvin Schlechter Auditorium, 7 p.m.

On Being from Elsewhere

André Aciman, author of Call Me by Your Name

I have been a foreigner in many countries but never a local. As a writer of memoirs, I have given the matter much thought. Although all memoirs tell the story of what happened, what a memoir is not always able to do is narrate what was desired to happen but never did happen. To write what happened is one thing—that’s what autobiographies are supposed to do—but to probe the psychological intricacies of desire, fear, heartache, disappointment, etc., is usually the domain of novels, not even of memoirs. But then here is the paradox: a memoir can borrow the conventions of fiction, even wants to sound novelistic, but without Read more