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

Film Screening of Retrograde

Baktash Ahadi, Filmmaker
Chris Mason, U.S. Army War College
Farida Mohammadi, Afghan Female Tactical Platoon
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. The screening will be followed by a Q&A session with the panelists.

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

Topic overview written by Ella Layton ’26, Clarke Forum Student Project Manager

Biographies (provided by the speakers).

Baktash Ahadi is an award-winning documentary filmmaker, storyteller, and executive leadership coach. He was born in Kabul in 1981, and his Read more

Stern Center, Great Room, 7 p.m.

Livestream link 

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 and the Department of International Studies.

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 Read more

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. A book sale and signing will follow the presentation.

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

Topic overview written by Isa Mester ’26, Clarke Forum Student Project Manager

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 Read more

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.

Topic overview written by Bella Lapp ’26, Clarke Forum Student Project Manager

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 Read more

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)

Amanda 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

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

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

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

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

Susan 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

Anita Tuvin Schlechter Auditorium – 7 p.m.

There will be a bag check upon entry

Livestream Link

The 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

Anita Tuvin Schlechter Auditorium, 7 p.m.

Ukraine-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

Anita Tuvin Schlechter Auditorium, 7 p.m.

The 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

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

Anita Tuvin Schlechter Auditorium – 7 p.m.

Bruce R. Andrews Lecture in Political Science

Sueño Americano or Sueño Republicano? Latino Voters in 2020, 2022, and Beyond  

Bernard Fraga, Emory University 

In 2020, support for Joe Biden among Latina/o/x voters was 8 percentage points lower than support for Hillary Clinton in 2016, the largest drop of any racial/ethnic group. While much media and academic attention has focused on understanding the impact of misinformation, COVID concerns, and racial animus on Latino voters in 2020, in this lecture Fraga will discuss co-authored work examining the demographic and core ideological characteristics of Latino voters who voted for Donald Trump in 2020. Using a mix of national survey data, precinct returns, and voter file records, and disaggregating components of electoral change, he provides evidence of increasing alignment between issue positions and vote choice among Latinos. Moreover, he highlights pro-Trump shifts among working-class Latinos and modest evidence of a pro-Trump shift among newly-engaged U.S.-born Latino children of immigrants and Catholic Latinos. Examining evidence from 2022 elections, Fraga concludes by discussing the likelihood of a durable Republican shift for Latinos going forward. 

The program is sponsored by the Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues and the Read more

Anita Tuvin Schlechter Auditorium – 7 p.m.

Psychedelic-Assisted Psychotherapy: A Promising Intervention Mental Health Treatment

Alan Davis, Ohio State University

Psychedelic substances produce cognitive effects ranging from psychologically challenging to spiritual, mystical, and insightful. Although several factors are related to the type of psychedelic experiences one might have (i.e., dose, purity of substance, substance used, individual/environmental factors), many report that these experiences are psychologically helpful. For example, cross-sectional surveys and laboratory experiments suggest that psilocybin can have psychotherapeutic benefits, with published reports documenting positive outcomes. Furthermore, evidence suggests that the acute psilocybin experience is associated with positive clinical outcomes and with persisting changes in attitude, mood, personality, beliefs, and behavior among clinical samples with depression, PTSD, addiction, and anxiety. Therefore, this lecture aims to briefly review the empirical literature supporting the study of psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy, provide a basic framework of the possible acute effects occasioned by these medicines, and assist attendees in developing a foundational understanding of contemporary psychedelic research.

This event is sponsored by the Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues and co-sponsored by the Pre-Health Program and the departments of chemistry and psychology. This event was initiated by the Clarke Forum’s student project managers.

Topic overview written by Read more