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Thursday, November 30, 2023 – The President’s Award and Celebration

Anita Tuvin Schlechter Auditorium, 7 p.m.

The President’s Award and Celebration

Lives of Leadership: A Conversation with David Petraeus P’04 and Holly Petraeus ’74, P’04

The Dickinson College President’s Award is a symbol of excellence and distinction. The award is bestowed by President John E. Jones III ’77, P’11, to individuals who lead lives of service, forge new paths in their respective fields, contribute meaningfully to the betterment of the world and inspire future generations. The inaugural recipients of the President’s Award are David Petraeus P’04 and Holly Petraeus ’74, P’04, in recognition of their exemplary lives of service, both to their nation and to their community. This conversation will be facilitated by President Jones.

This program is sponsored by the Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues and the Office of the President. It is also part of the Clarke Forum’s Leadership in an Age of Uncertainty Series.

Biographies (provided by the speakers)

David Petraeus HeadshotGeneral David Petraeus, US Army (Ret.) P’04 is one of the leading battlefield commanders and strategists of our time.  He served over 37 years in the US military culminating his career with six consecutive commands as a general officer, five of which were in combat, including command of Read more

Tuesday, November 14, 2023 – The Morgan Lecture

Anita Tuvin Schlechter Auditorium, 7 p.m.

Livestream link coming soon 

Morgan Lecture

Savage States: Settler Governance in an Age of Sorrow

Audra Simpson, Columbia University

How is the past imagined to be settled? What are the conditions that make for this imagining, this fantasy or rather, demand of a new beginning? In this lecture, Professor Audra Simpson will consider the making of ‘new time’ in light of histories of wrongdoing – residential and boarding schools and the dispossession that is tied to this in recent history – 1990 to the near present in Canada. This is a time of apology, and a time in which Native people and their claims to territory are whittled to the status of claimant in time with the fantasy of their disappearance from a modern and critical present. How has settler governance adjusted itself in line with global trends and rights paradigms away from overt violence to softer and kinder, caring modes of governance? This lecture will ask not only in what world we imagine time to stop, but will also take up the ways in which those that survived the time stoppage stand in critical relationship to dispossession and settler governance apprehend, analyze and Read more

Wednesday, November 8, 2023 – The Glover Memorial Lecture

Anita Tuvin Schlechter Auditorum, 7 p.m.

The Glover Memorial Lecture

Uncertainty in Climate Change Research:  An Integrated Approach

Linda Mearns,  Senior Scientist in the Research Applications Lab of the National Center for Atmospheric Research

Uncertainty is a factor in all phases of climate change research regarding the future from projections of regional climate change, to the various impacts of climate change, through the economics of climate change. All these uncertainties need to be considered when approaching the complete problem of climate change. We start from the consideration of decision making under uncertainty, and then consider the nature of uncertainty in the different parts of the problem.

This program is sponsored by the Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues and the Glover Memorial Lecture Fund and co-sponsored by the Department of Physics & Astronomy and the Center for Sustainability Education. It is also part of the Clarke Forum’s Leadership in an Age of Uncertainty Series.

Biography (provided by the speaker)

Linda Mearns PhotoLinda O. Mearns is a senior scientist in the Research Applications Lab of the National Center for Atmospheric Research, Boulder, Colorado. She previously served as director of the Weather and Climate Impacts Assessment Science Program (WCIASP) for 15 years and director of Read more

Thursday, November 2, 2023

Carlisle Theatre, 40 W. High Street, 7 p.m.

Film Screening of Retrograde

Baktash Ahadi, Filmmaker
Asem Shukoori, Film Subject

Retrograde captures the final nine months of America’s 20-year war in Afghanistan from multiple perspectives: one of the last U.S. Special Forces units deployed there, a young Afghan general and his corps fighting to defend their homeland against all odds, and the civilians desperately attempting to flee as the country collapses and the Taliban take over. From rarely seen operational control rooms to the frontlines of battle to the chaotic Kabul airport during the final U.S. withdrawal, this Oscar-Shortlisted film offers a cinematic and historic window onto the end of America’s longest war, and the costs endured for those most intimately involved. A Q&A featuring the film’s executive producer will follow the screening.

The film showing is sponsored by the Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues and the Carlisle Theatre.

Biographies (provided by the speakers) are forthcoming.

Headshot of Baktash Ahadi

Baktash Ahadi is an award-winning documentary filmmaker, storyteller, and executive leadership coach. He was born in Kabul in 1981, and his family fled during the Soviet invasion in 1984. After spending nearly two years in Pakistan between refugee camps and makeshift homes, his family Read more

Monday, October 30, 2023

Anita Tuvin Schlechter Auditorium, 7 p.m.

Livestream link coming soon 

Program is Part of the Dialogues Across Differences Project 

Creating a Calling In Culture within the Reproductive Health, Human Rights, and Justice Movements

Loretta Ross, Smith College

Professor Ross will speak on transforming the Calling Out Culture into a Calling In Culture within the Reproductive Health, Rights, and Justice movements. She is committed to changing our national dialogue and improving our work on human rights by inviting us to deeply explore how we can most effectively affect change in our society to protect women’s human rights.

This program is sponsored by the Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues and is part of the Dialogues Across Differences Project, which is funded by a grant from the Arthur Vining Davis Foundations. The program is also co-sponsored by the Women’s & Gender Resource Center and the Department of Women’s, Gender & Sexuality Studies.  In addition, it is part of the Clarke Forum’s Leadership in an Age of Uncertainty Series.

Biography (provided by the speaker)

Loretta J. Ross is an Associate Professor at Smith College. As a 2022 recipient of the MacArthur Foundation “Genius” award, she is an activist, public intellectual, and scholar. Her Read more

Thursday, October 26, 2023

Stern Center, Great Room, 7 p.m.

Livestream link coming soon 

The Bechtel Lecture

Know-Do Gap: A Fallacy for Scale-Up & Sustainability 

Malabika Sarker, Brown University

Implementation Research (IR) is a systematic process of causal analysis, bottlenecks of implementation identification, and optimum strategy selection in a particular context. IR refers to understanding know-do gaps; what, why, and how an intervention works in real-world settings and testing approaches to improve them, introduce potential solutions to a system, or promote their large-scale use and sustainability. Bridging the know-do gap is crucial for the successful implementation of any public health intervention especially in pertinent to scalability and sustainability. This presentation will showcase the fallacy in addressing the know-do gap as a simple linear two-dimensional strategy. In addition, it will illustrate with examples from Sarker’s research in Sub-Saharan Africa and Bangladesh, that the know-do gap is a continuum, not a binary theme.

This program is sponsored by the Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues and co-sponsored by the Bechtel Lectureship Fund.

Biography (provided by the speaker)

Dr. Malabika Sarker is a Professor of the Practice of Behavioral and Social Sciences at Brown School of Public Health, Brown University.  Professor Sarker is an implementation researcher and a Read more

Thursday, October 5, 2023

Anita Tuvin Schlechter Auditorium, 7 p.m.

Livestream Link

In Celebration of 150 Years of The Dickinsonian

A Conversation on Corrections in Ink

Keri Blakinger, Los Angeles Times
Renée Ann Cramer, Dickinson College

In this program, Blakinger will discuss her memoir which traces her journey from competitive figure skating, to struggles with an eating disorder and addiction, to eventually a two-year sentence in New York’s prison system. Blakinger will reflect on her experiences and how they have influenced her work as an investigative reporter covering mass incarceration. The discussion will be facilitated by Dickinson’s Provost Renée Ann Cramer.

This program is sponsored by the Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues and The Dickinsonian and co-sponsored by the Department of Sociology.

Biographies (provided by the speakers)

Keri Blakinger is a staff reporter at the Los Angeles Times, where she covers the sheriff’s department and jails. Previously, she was an investigative reporter at The Marshall Project where she focused on incarceration and prior to that she covered the death penalty and prisons for the Houston Chronicle. She’s been featured on PBS News Hour and HBO Real Sports, and her work has appeared in the The New York Times, on the BBC Read more

Thursday, September 28, 2023

Stern Center, Great Room, 7 p.m.

Livestream Link

Bodega Poetics: Classics and Caribbean Diaspora

Dan-el Padilla Peralta,  Associate Professor of Classics at Princeton University

Beginning with a reflection on the history of the word “bodega,” this lecture will look at the significance of ancient Greece and Rome to modern Caribbean communities. The focus will be on thinking through the shifting relationship of “classics” to Afro-Caribbean diasporas, and on several forms of interpretation useful for charting that relationship: historical, poetic, autobiographical. A book sale and signing will follow the presentation.

This program is sponsored by the Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues and co-sponsored by the First-Year Seminar Program and the departments of classical studies, Spanish & Portuguese studies, Africana studies, educational studies and the Latin American, Latinx & Caribbean studies program.

Biography (provided by the speaker)

Dan-el Padilla Peralta is associate professor of classics at Princeton University, where he is associated with the Department of African American Studies and affiliated with the Programs in Latino Studies and Latin American Studies and the University Center for Human Values. He researches and teaches the religious history of the Roman Republic and Empire, global histories of slavery and citizenship, and critical race theory’s importance Read more

Tuesday, September 26, 2023 – Winfield C. Cook Constitution Day Conversation

Anita Tuvin Schlechter Auditorium, 7 p.m.

Livestream Link

Winfield C. Cook Constitution Day Conversation

Citizenship and Immigration Law in American History

Amanda Frost, University of Virginia

John E. Jones, III, Dickinson College

To commemorate Constitution Day in 2023, Dickinson College will feature President John E. Jones III, a retired federal judge, in a wide-ranging constitutional conversation with noted legal historian Amanda Frost from the University of Virginia. Jones and Frost will discuss how various landmark cases and developments from the American past have helped shape several recent controversies in citizenship and immigration law.

This program is sponsored by the Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues and the House Divided Project.

The first 40 students who arrive at ATS for this presentation will received a free, signed copy of Amanda Frost’s book.

Biographies (provided by the speakers)

Photo of Amanda FrostAmanda Frost is the John A. Ewald Jr. Research Professor of Law at the University of Virginia School of Law.  She writes and teaches in the fields of immigration and citizenship law, federal courts and jurisdiction, and judicial ethics. Her scholarship has been cited by over a dozen federal and state courts, and she has been invited to testify on the topics of her articles Read more

Thursday, September 21, 2023

Anita Tuvin Schlechter Auditorium, 7 p.m.

Livestream Link

The Beirut Barracks Bombing of 1983: The Stories that America Needs to Hear

Panelists

James Breckenridge, U.S. Army War College
Michael Gaines, Beirut Veterans of America
Mireille Rebeiz, Dickinson College

In 1975, civil war erupted in Lebanon and opposed the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and Muslim fighters to Lebanese Christian militias. The PLO was launching military attacks on Israel from Lebanese soil. On June 6, 1982, Israel Defense Forces, under the orders of the Defense Minister Ariel Sharon, launched Operation Peace for Galilee and invaded Lebanon to end these attacks and eliminate the PLO. Upon Lebanese request, a Multinational Peacekeeping Force (MNF) was created to oversee the departure of the PLO from Lebanon. The MNF was composed of American, French, Italian, and British military. Iran responded to Israel’s invasion of Lebanon and the MNF’s arrival by training Shiite fighters whose immediate goal was to expel all foreign forces out of Lebanon.

On October 23, 1983, witnesses reported seeing a yellow Mercedes speeding toward the barracks. Loaded with over ten thousand pounds of explosives, it flattened a concrete building that housed American troops. Two hundred and forty-one (241) American servicemen died that day. Read more

Thursday, September 14, 2023

Anita Tuvin Schlechter Auditorium, 7 p.m.

Livestream Link

It’s Time to Talk about Women’s Brains and the Birth Control Pill 

Sarah E. Hill, Texas Christian University

The majority of women in the US will use the birth control pill at some point in their lives. Yet, there is very little information out there for women or their partners about what the pill does to the brain. This is critical information to have because – although women go on the pill for a small handful of targeted effects sex hormones simply can’t work that way. Sex hormones impact the activities of billions of cells in the body at once, many of which are in the brain. This means that being on the birth control pill makes women a different version of themselves than when they are off of it. In this talk, Hill will discuss what we know and don’t know about the pill and women’s brains and behavior. She will also talk about why this information matters for men and for those who care for women’s mental and physical health. Lastly, Hill will urge researchers to conduct better, more inclusive science that Read more

Tuesday, September 12, 2023

Stern Center, Great Room, 7 p.m.

Livestream Link 

Counting Lost Stars: Fiction Inspired by History

Kim van Alkemade, Author

In this program, the author will discuss the facts that inspired her latest novel, and how a writer’s imagination transforms history into fiction to tell a human story. The Nazis’ use of punched card computer technology to orchestrate the Holocaust becomes the thread that weaves together the fictional story of Cornelia Vogel, a computer operator in WWII Netherlands who uses her knowledge to save the woman she loves, and Rita Klein, a pioneering woman in the new field of computer programming in 1960s New York whose education is derailed by an unexpected pregnancy. Through the stories of a diverse cast of characters, Counting Lost Stars explores the coerced adoptions of the Baby Scoop Era, the unique horrors of transit Camp Westerbork in the Netherlands, the generational impact of trauma, the dangers of information technology, and individual courage in the face of systemic injustice. A book sale and signing will follow.

This program is sponsored by the Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues and co-sponsored by the departments of American studies, data analytics, English, history and women’s, gender & sexuality studies.

Biography (provided Read more

Thursday, September 7, 2023

Poster for Myisha Cherry program

Anita Tuvin Schlechter Auditorium, 7 p.m.

Livestream Link

The Case for Rage: Why Anger Is Essential to Anti-Racist Struggle 

Myisha Cherry, University of California, Riverside

Anger has a bad reputation. Many people think that it is counterproductive, distracting, and destructive. It is a negative emotion, many believe, because it can lead so quickly to violence or an overwhelming fury. And coming from people of color, it takes on connotations that are even more sinister, stirring up stereotypes, making white people fear what an angry other might be capable of doing, when angry, and leading them to turn to hatred or violence in turn, to squelch an anger that might upset the racial status quo.

In this lecture, professor and philosopher Myisha Cherry will argue that anger is powerful, but its power can be a force for good, especially a form of anti-racist anger, which Cherry calls “Lordean rage.” For Cherry, “Lordean rage” can use its mighty force to challenge racism: it aims for change, motivates productive action, builds resistance, and is informed by an inclusive and liberating perspective. Cherry will make her argument for anti-racist anger by putting Aristotle in conversation with Audre Lorde and James Baldwin in conversation with Read more

Our Programming is Completed for the Spring 2023 Semester

Check back with us periodically to see what it is planned for Fall 2023.

While we work on our programming for the spring semester, there are a few ways to stay connected to the Clarke Forum. You can enjoy our content by viewing past programs and listening to guest interviews conducted by our talented student project managers.

You can also subscribe to our YouTube channel where our previous programs are available for viewing.

Fall 2023 Programs

Thursday, September 7, 2023 – 7 p.m.
The Case for Rage: Why Anger is Essential to Anti-Racist Struggle 
Myisha Cherry, University of California, Riverside
Anita Tuvin Schlechter Auditorium

Tuesday, September 12, 2023 – 7 p.m.
Counting Lost Stars: A Reading and Discussion
Kim van Alkemade, Author
Stern Center, Great Room

Thursday, September 14, 2023 – 7 p.m.
It’s Time to Talk about Women’s Brains and the Birth Control Pill
Sarah E. Hill, Texas Christian University
Anita Tuvin Schlechter Auditorium

Thursday, September 21, 2023 – 7 p.m.
The Beirut Barracks Bombing of 1983: The Stories that America Needs to Hear
James Breckenridge, U.S. Army War College

Michael Gaines, Beirut Vetarans of America
Mireille Rebeiz, Dickinson College
Anita Tuvin Schlechter Auditorium

Tuesday, September 26, 2023 – Read more

Saturday, April 29, 2023

Poster to advertise Celebrating Community-Based Scholarship & Learning Celebrating Community-Based Scholarship & Learning
A Symposium in Honor of Susan Rose

Special Film Showing with Susan Rose – The Sociological Lens: Framing Social Research

Althouse Hall, Room 106, 3 p.m.

 

Panel Discussions

Stern Center, Great Room, 4:30 – 6:30 p.m.

This symposium includes three panels comprised of students, alumni, and collaborators. Each panel will highlight one aspect of Professor Rose’s intellectual contributions to the Dickinson community, including the Community Studies Center, the Mosaics Program and the Department of Sociology.

This symposium is sponsored by the Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues, the Office of the Provost, the Department of Sociology, Community Studies and Mosaics.

Reception to Follow in Rector Atrium

 

About Susan Rose

Headshot of Susan RoseSusan D. Rose has served as Professor of Sociology at Dickinson College since 1984. An alumna of Dickinson (class of 1977), Professor Rose has been a leading scholar and teacher at the College for more than four decades. She is the author (or co-author) of four scholarly books, covering a wide range of topics. Her most recent book, powerful and still on the leading edge of social change across the United States and beyond, is titled The Carlisle Indian Read more

Monday, April 24, 2023 – “The Molly and Wayne Borges Memorial Lecture”

Anita Tuvin Schlechter Auditorium – 7 p.m.

There will be a bag check upon entry

Livestream Link

Poster for Paradigm Lost: From Two-State Solution to One-State RealityThe Molly and Wayne Borges Memorial Lecture

Paradigm Lost: From Two-State Solution to One-State Reality

Ian Lustick, University of Pennsylvania  

Why have Israelis and Palestinians failed to achieve a two-state solution to the conflict that has cost so much and lasted so long? Whose interests are served by decades of a peace process merry-go-round and by the mirage of eventual success? If Palestinian Arabs and Israeli Jews can agree on neither a state for each nor a state for both, then what way forward is there? In this lecture, Professor Ian Lustick argues that protracted, identity-based conflicts are never solved by clever compromises arrived at through negotiations between antagonists. He explains the failure of negotiations toward a two-state solution by showing how the combination of Zionism’s partially successful Iron Wall strategy for dealing with Arabs, an Israeli political culture saturated with “Holocaustia,” and the Israel lobby’s dominant influence on American policy toward the Arab-Israeli conflict scuttled efforts to establish a Palestinian state alongside Israel. But there is hope.  By appreciating the long-term political decisiveness of the unintended consequences of attempts to do other Read more

Tuesday, April 18, 2023

Anita Tuvin Schlechter Auditorium, 7 p.m.

Poster for Advertise the event: Ukraine-Russia War: Reflections After One YearUkraine-Russia War: Reflections After One Year

Panel Discussion

Russell Bova, Dickinson College
Alyssa DeBlasio, Dickinson College
Andrew Wolff, Dickinson College

February 24th marked the one-year anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. According to estimates from the United Nations, the war has claimed the lives of over 8,000 non-combatants and injured an additional 13,000 in Ukraine. Additionally, tens of thousands of Ukrainian and Russian military personnel have been killed, and the war has created a multifaceted humanitarian crisis in Ukraine and in surrounding countries affected by an influx of displaced people and disruptions to regional and global food systems, energy infrastructures, and economies. This student-initiated panel will explore the state of the war and its potential to spread or escalate, and it will apply a transnational lens to the many cultural, economic, political, and social considerations associated with this conflict. Panelists from Dickinson’s departments of international studies, political science, and Russian will engage in a multidisciplinary discussion covering a range of topics, including global responses to the war; the potential effects of NATO expansion; prospects for the Putin regime; and the conflict’s impact on Russian and Ukrainian art, film, language, and literature.

This event is Read more

Monday, April 10, 2023

Anita Tuvin Schlechter Auditorium, 7 p.m.

Poster for Mark Paul EventThe Ends of Freedom: Reclaiming America’s Lost Promise of Economic Rights

Mark Paul, Rutgers University

Since the Founding, Americans have debated the true meaning of freedom. For some, freedom meant the provision of life’s necessities, those basic conditions for the “pursuit of happiness.” For others, freedom meant the civil and political rights enumerated in the Bill of Rights and unfettered access to the marketplace—nothing more.  As Mark Paul explains, the latter interpretation—thanks in large part to a particularly influential cadre of economists—has all but won out among policymakers, with dire repercussions for American society: rampant inequality, endemic poverty, and an economy built to benefit the few at the expense of the many.

In this book, Paul shows how economic rights—rights to necessities like housing, employment, and health care—have been a part of the American conversation since the Revolutionary War and were a cornerstone of both the New Deal and the Civil Rights Movement. Their recuperation, he argues, would at long last make good on the promise of America’s founding documents. By drawing on FDR’s proposed Economic Bill of Rights, Paul outlines a comprehensive policy program to achieve a more capacious and enduring version of Read more

Thursday, April 6, 2023

Poster to advertise ARRIVALS program Goodyear Gallery, Exhibit Opening 5:30 – 7 p.m.
Public talk starting at 6 p.m.

Directions to the Goodyear Gallery.  Driving away from downtown Carlisle, travel to the end of the 500 block of W. Louther Street, turn right onto Cedar Street, then take the next right into an alley and keep going straight until you enter a parking lot. The gallery is on your right.

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

ARRIVALS: What’s Left Behind, What Lies Ahead

Andy Bale, Dickinson College
Jon Cox, University of Delaware

ARRIVALS: What’s Left Behind, What Lies Ahead is a collaborative multidisciplinary project that is recording and disseminating the stories of refugees and immigrants that are living in Idaho and the Native Americans that have been displaced from their ancestral lands. As of February 2019, refugees and immigrants from over 100 countries have agreed to participate in a project .

Although Idaho is reputed to be a place of relative cultural homogeneity, the stories of Idaho’s people are layered and complex. Idaho has long been a place where Native Americans have lived or relocated. For three hundred years, it has been a place where other migrants and Read more

Tuesday, March 28, 2023 – “Joseph Priestley Award Celebration Lecture”

Anita Tuvin Schlechter Auditorium – 7 p.m.

Joseph Priestley Award Celebration Lecture

Poster for John C. Mather program.Opening the Infrared Treasure Chest with the James Webb Space Telescope

John C. Mather, NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center

The James Webb Space Telescope, launched in 2021, is NASA’s largest and most powerful space science telescope. Peering back in time, it probes the cosmos to uncover the history of the universe from the Big Bang to alien planet formation and beyond. 100 times more powerful than the celebrated Hubble Space Telescope, Webb can detect the heat signature of a bumblebee at the Earth-Moon distance.

The Joseph Priestley Award recipient is chosen by a different science department each year. The Department of Physics & Astronomy selected this year’s recipient. The event is supported by the Priestley Fund and is sponsored by the Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues and co-sponsored by the departments of biology, chemistry,  data analytics, earth sciences, environmental studies, mathematics & computer science, psychology, and physics & astronomy, and the Churchill Fund.  It is part of the Clarke Forum’s Leadership in an Age of Uncertainty Series.

Topic overview written by Natalia Fedorczak ’24.

Biography (provided by the speaker)

John Mather headshotDr. John C. Mather is a senior Read more