Past Programs

Eboo Patel

Interfaith Youth Core (IFYC)

Out of Many Faiths: Religious Diversity and the American Promise

Wednesday, October 24, 2018
Anita Tuvin Schlechter Auditorium, 7 p.m.

America is the most religiously devout country in the Western world and the most religiously diverse nation on the planet. Will America’s identity as a Judeo-Christian nation shift as citizens of different backgrounds grow in numbers and influence? In what ways will minority religious communities themselves change as they take root in American soil? In addressing these questions, Eboo Patel will explore how America’s promise is the guarantee of equal rights and dignity for all, and how that promise is the foundation of America’s unrivaled strength as a nation. A book sale and signing will follow the program.

This event is sponsored by the Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues and co-sponsored by The Marjorie M. and Irwin Nat Pincus Fund in Honor of their Daughters, The Milton B. Asbell Center for Jewish Life, the Division of Student Life, the Center for Service, Spirituality & Social Justice, the Office of Institutional Effectiveness & Inclusivity, the Departments of Judaic Studies and Religion, the First Year Seminar Program and the Churchill Fund. It is also part of the Clarke Read more

Congress to Campus

Monday, October 15, 2018
Anita Tuvin Schlechter Auditorium, 7 p.m.

Panelists

Don Manzullo, (R-IL, 1993-2013) (Replacing Jim Kolbe, R-AZ)
Betsy Markey, (D-CO, 2009-2011)
David O’Connell (moderator), Dickinson College

Live Stream Link

A bipartisan pair of former members of Congress will look back on their own experiences in government and reflect on the challenges currently facing the United States of America. This discussion will be moderated by political scientist David O’Connell.

The event is sponsored by the Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues and co-sponsored by the department of political science, the Churchill Fund, and the Office of Institutional Effectiveness & Inclusivity.

Biographies (provided by the panelists)

Don Manzullo recently retired as president & CEO, KEI, Korea Economic Institute of America. During his 20 years of service representing the 16^thDistrict of Illinois, Manzullo was a leading voice in shaping congressional economic and foreign policy towards the Asia Pacific region. He started his career in the House of Representatives in 1993 on the Subcommittee on Asia and the Pacific of the House Foreign Affairs Committee and ended his tenure in Congress serving as the Republican leader of this pivotal subcommittee from 2007 until 2013, including chairing the Asia subcommittee Read more

Sustainable Endowment?

Thursday, October 11, 2018
Weiss Center for the Arts, Rubendall Recital Hall, 3 p.m.

Panelists

Alice Handy, Investure
Sarah Kolansky, Graham Partners
Rob Symington, Dickinson Board of Trustees

What is the purpose of Dickinson’s endowment? How is it managed? Should Dickinson join a growing movement to invest our endowment in ways that align with community values regarding corporate behavior, social justice, environmental stewardship, climate change and other issues? What might be the implications for the performance of our endowment and the financial wellbeing of the college? Is it possible to have a sustainable endowment? Join us for a discussion about these issues.

This event is sponsored by the Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues and co-sponsored by the President’s Office, Dickinson Sustainable Investment Group, Board of Trustees, Office of Finance & Administration, and Center for Sustainability Education.

Biographies (provided by the speakers)

Alice Handy founded Investure in December 2003. Prior to founding Investure, Alice spent 29 years managing the endowment of the University of Virginia. She started as the first investment officer, later became treasurer, and finally president of the University of Virginia Investment Management Company. Alice began her career as a bond portfolio manager and

NAACP

Environmental Racism in the Age of Climate Change

Wednesday, October 10, 2018
Anita Tuvin Schlechter Auditorium, 7 p.m.

Live Stream Link

Environmental racism proliferates throughout the climate change continuum from who is most likely to be exposed to the co-pollutants from facilities that spew the greenhouse gas emissions that cause climate change, to who is most likely to be displaced or even killed from climate change induced disasters. The depth of the systemic inequities require a transformative response to ensure that civil, human, and earth rights are upheld. A book sale and signing will follow the program.

The program is sponsored by the Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues and co-sponsored by the Popel Shaw Center for Race & Ethnicity, the Churchill Fund, the departments of American studies, sociology, Africana studies, the program in policy studies, the Women’s & Gender Resource Center, the Alliance for Aquatic Resource Monitoring (ALLARM), and the Center for Sustainability Education. This program was initiated by the Clarke Forum’s Student Project Managers and it is also part of the Clarke Forum’s Leadership in an Age of Uncertainty Series.

Biography (provided by the speaker)

Jacqueline Patterson is the director of the NAACP Environmental and Climate Justice Program. Read more

Bob Weick

Actor and Monologist, Featured as Karl Marx

Marx in Soho by Howard Zinn

Tuesday, October 9, 2018
Anita Tuvin Schlechter Auditorium, 7 p.m.

In Howard Zinn’s one-person play, Karl Marx, the revolutionary socialist, comes back to earth to clear his name. Performed by Bob Weick, Marx in Soho, is a freewheeling and entertaining show, and Weick delivers an impassioned performance that connects Marx to contemporary themes.

The presentation is sponsored by the Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues and co-sponsored by the departments of history, sociology, economics, American studies and the First Year Seminar program.

Biography (provided by the speaker)

Bob Weick is the celebrated national touring actor of Howard Zinn’s Marx in Soho. A veteran stage actor in Philadelphia, he is a two-time Barrymore nominee with Iron Age Theatre (TERRA NOVA) and Theatre Horizon (CIRCLE MIRROR TRANSFORMATION). Weick’s friendship and working relationship with the late Howard Zinn began in 2004 with the critically acclaimed sold out Philadelphia premiere of Marx in Soho. Weick has gone on to perform the piece over 300 times across the country from Maine to California.

Weick is a company member of Iron Age Theatre, where he collaborates with artistic director John Doyle Read more

Angela Belcher – “Joseph Priestley Award Recipient”

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Joseph Priestley Award Celebration Lecture

Giving New Life to Materials for Energy, the Environment and Medicine

Thursday, September 27, 2018
Anita Tuvin Schlechter Auditorium, 7 p.m.

Live Stream Link

This talk will address the possibilities Engineering Biology provides for working with a larger toolkit of materials to tailor properties in devices for energy, environmental remediation, and cancer diagnostics and treatment.

The Joseph Priestley Award recipient is chosen by a different science department each year. The Department of Chemistry has selected this year’s recipient. The event is supported by the College’s Priestley Fund and is sponsored by the Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues and co-sponsored by the departments of biology, chemistry, 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.

Biography

Angela Belcher is a biological and materials engineer with expertise in the fields of biomaterials, biomolecular materials, organic-inorganic interfaces and solid-state chemistry and devices. Her primary research focus is evolving new materials for energy, electronics, the environment, and medicine.

She received her B.S. in creative studies from The University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB). Read more

Neal Katyal

Georgetown Law

Talk is Trump and the Rule of Law

Wednesday, September 26, 2018
Anita Tuvin Schlechter Auditorium, 7 p.m.

Neal Katyal, former acting solicitor general of the United States, will be discussing the Supreme Court, President Trump, the Mueller investigation, and the rule of law in a wide ranging discussion.

This event is sponsored by the Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues and Penn State’s Dickinson Law and co-sponsored by the Departments of Political Science and History.

Biography (provided by the speaker)

Neal Katyal is the Paul and Patricia Saunders Professor of Law at Georgetown University and a partner at Hogan Lovells. He previously served as acting solicitor general of the United States. He has argued 37 cases before the Supreme Court of the United States, with 35 of them in the last 9 years. Most recently, Neal argued the “Travel ban” case on behalf of the State of Hawaii against President Trump in the Supreme Court of the United States. In the 2016-17 term alone, Neal argued 7 cases in 6 separate arguments at the Supreme Court, far more than any other advocate in the nation – nearly 10% of the docket. At the age of 48, he has Read more

The Fugitive Slave Law and the Crisis Over Immigration Policy: Assessing a Forgotten Legacy

Winfield C. Cook Constitution Day Address

Monday, September 17, 2018
Anita Tuvin Schlechter Auditorium, 7 p.m.

Live Stream Link

Panelists:

Richard Blackett, Vanderbilt University
Andrew Delbanco, Columbia University
Judy Giesberg, Villanova University
Matthew Pinsker (moderator), Dickinson College

The controversial 1850 Fugitive Slave Law provoked a bitter national debate over open borders, due process, family separation, federal power and northern states’ rights. Our panelists will discuss those earlier controversies and assess how they might offer important insights or perspective for the current and increasingly intense debates over Trump Administration immigration policies. A book sale and signing will follow.

This event is sponsored by the Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues and the House Divided Project and co-sponsored by the Departments of History and American Studies and the Program in Policy Studies.

Biographies (provided by the speakers)

Richard Blackett is Andrew Jackson Professor of History at Vanderbilt University. He is the author, most recently, of The Captive’s Quest for Freedom: Fugitive Slaves, the 1850 Fugitive Slave Law and the Politics of Freedom (2018) and Making Freedom: The Underground Railroad and the Politics of Freedom (2013). He teaches courses on 19th century U.S. history and the history of the Caribbean. During Read more

Dan Longboat – Roronhiakewen (He Clears the Sky)

Trent University

Honoring Indigeneity: Indigenous Knowledge(s) and Indigenous Sovereignty

Wednesday, September 12, 2018
Anita Tuvin Schlechter Auditorium, 7 p.m.

For millennia Indigenous Nations have cared for and actively engaged with the landscape and through our respective cultures and unique ways of life have worked to create the bio-diverse richness of the Americas. Today, the Americas are confronted by a complexity of issues and problems that Indigenous Knowledge(s) can help to address. But we’ll need to start from the beginning, opening our minds to learning, understanding and honoring the Indigenous Peoples of the Americas.

This program is sponsored by the Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues and co-sponsored by the Churchill Fund and the departments of anthropology & archaeology, American studies, psychology, environmental studies, and earth sciences. It is part of the Clarke Forum’s Leadership in an Age of Uncertainty Series and its semester theme, Indigeneity in the Americas.

Biography (provided by the speaker)

Dan Longboat – Roronhiakewen (He Clears the Sky) is a Turtle Clan member of the Mohawk Nation and a citizen of the Rotinonshón:ni (Haudenosaunee – People of the Longhouse), originally from Ohsweken – the Six Nations community on the Grand River. Longboat is an associate professor in the Read more

Rick Smolan ’72

New York Times Best-Selling Author and National Geographic Photographer

The Good Fight: America’s Ongoing Struggle for Justice

Friday, April 27, 2018
Althouse Hall, Room 106, 4:30 p.m.

Smolan will share images and stories from his new book The Good Fight. The book captures the sporadically violent, often triumphant, always risky struggles of Americans who have experienced hatred, oppression or bigotry because of their gender, skin color, country of origin, religion, sexual orientation, disability or beliefs over the past 100 years. A book sale and signing will follow the presentation.

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

Biography (provided by the speaker)

Rick Smolan, CEO of Against All Odds Productions is a New York Times best-selling author with more than five million copies of his books in print. A former Time, Life, and National Geographic photographer, Smolan is best known as the co-creator of the “Day in the Life” book series. His global photography projects, which feature the work of hundreds of the worlds leading photographers and combine creative storytelling with state-of-the-art technology, are regularly featured on the covers of prestigious publications around the globe including Fortune, Time, and GEO. His latest book, Read more

Stephen Walt

Harvard University

Phi Beta Kappa Visiting Scholars Program

Where is U.S. Foreign Policy Headed?

Thursday, April 26, 2018 (Rescheduled from March 22, 2018)
Anita Tuvin Schlechter Auditorium, 7 p.m.

Watch Live Stream

This lecture explores the future of U.S. foreign policy under President Trump. Walt argues that Trump, his bellicose tweets notwithstanding, is gradually being captured, coopted, and constrained by the foreign policy establishment. Under Trump, therefore, U.S. foreign policy is likely to be an even more inept version of our recent follies.

The event is sponsored by the Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues and Phi Beta Kappa and co-sponsored by the Office of Academic Advising, Political Science and International Studies.

Biography (provided by the speaker)

Stephen Walt is Belfer Professor of International Affairs at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government and a former academic dean. He also taught at Princeton and the University of Chicago and has been a resident associate of the Carnegie Endowment for Peace and a guest scholar at the Brookings Institution. He is a contributing editor at Foreign Policy, co-chair of the editorial board of International Security, and co-editor of the Cornell Studies in Security Affairs book series. A fellow of the American Academy Read more

Dale Bredesen

UCLA and Buck Institute

Reducing the Global Burden of Dementia: The First Alzheimer’s Survivors

Wednesday, April 25, 2018
Anita Tuvin Schlechter Auditorium, 7 p.m.

Watch Live Stream

Bredesen describes his treatment for Alzheimer’s and pre-Alzheimer’s, along with associated challenges and implications. A book sale and signing will follow the presentation.

The program is sponsored by the Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues and co-sponsored by the Office of Senior Associate Provost; the Career Center; Pre-Health Society; Pre-Health Program; Division of Student Life; the Wellness Center; Department of Biology; and the Program in Policy Studies. It was initiated by the Clarke Forum Student Project Managers.

Biography (provided by the speaker)

Dale E. Bredesen, M.D. received his undergraduate degree from Caltech and his medical degree from Duke. He served as resident and chief resident in neurology at UCSF, then was postdoctoral fellow in the laboratory of Nobel laureate Prof. Stanley Prusiner. He was a faculty member at UCLA from 1989-1994, then was recruited by the Burnham Institute to direct the Program on Aging. In 1998 he became the founding president and CEO of the Buck Institute for Research on Aging, and Adjunct Professor at UCSF; then in 2013 he returned to UCLA as Read more

Aloys Mahwa

Living Peace Institute – Promundo

Masculine Identity and Sexual Gender Based Violence: The Case of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC)

Thursday, April 19, 2018
Althouse Hall, Room 106
Noon – 1 p.m. (Light lunch will be provided)
RSVP strongly encouraged, but not required to clarkeforum@dickinson.edu.

Sexual gender-based violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo has been described as the worst in the world. Mahwa will discuss ProMundo and Living Peace Institute preventative approaches that engage men, working to eradicate the root causes of violence.

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

Biography (provided by the speaker)

Aloys Mahwa is Promundo’s Living Peace project director in Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). Using group therapy and group education techniques, the Living Peace initiative addresses the trauma associated with conflict and promotes equitable, nonviolent paths to healing for individuals, families, and communities.

Mahwa manages the scale-up of Living Peace in the North and South Kivu provinces of eastern DRC, playing a key role in coordinating stakeholder working sessions, developing the Living Peace Institute, documenting and building upon the program’s lessons learned and best practices, and supervising monitoring and evaluation of the initiative. Mahwa joined Promundo after five Read more

Reece Jones

University of Hawaii at Manoa

Violent Borders: The State vs. the Right to Move

Monday, April 16, 2018
Stern Center, Great Room, 7 p.m.

Over 40,000 people died trying to cross a border in the past decade around the world. Jones argues these deaths are part of a long history of states using movement restrictions to protect privileges and to contain the poor. 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 Middle East Studies Program, the Departments of Sociology and International Studies and the Security Studies Certificate Program. It is also part of the Clarke Forum’s semester theme, Citizen/Refugee.

Biography (provided by the speaker)

Reece Jones is professor of geography at the University of Hawaii and the author two books: Violent Borders: Refugees and the Right to Move (Verso 2016) and Border Walls: Security and the War on Terror in the United States, India, and Israel (Zed Books 2012), four edited books, and over two dozen journal articles. His work has been published in the Guardian, the New York Times, and dozens of other media outlets around the world. He is currently working Read more

Nicole Guidotti-Hernández

University of Texas at Austin

Latinx: The Future is Now

Thursday, April 12, 2018
Stern Center, Great Room, 7 p.m.

This lecture charts out the histories of how we went from using Mexican American and Puerto Rican to Chicano and Nuyorican and then to the latest iterations, Latina/o and now Latinx. While millennials are leading the charge with the Latinx conversation, Guidotti-Hernández argues their boomer intellectual forerunners are often outright resistant to the use of Latina/o let alone Latinx, indicating the futurist potential and political necessity of the term.

This program is sponsored by the Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues and co-sponsored by the Departments of English, American Studies, Latin American, Latino & Caribbean Studies, and the Women’s & Gender Resource Center. It is also part of the Clarke Forum’s semester theme, Citizen/Refugee.

Biography (provided by the speaker)

Nicole Guidotti-Hernández is associate professor of American Studies and Mexican American and Latina/o studies at UT Austin. She is an expert in Borderlands History after 1846, Transnational Feminist Methodologies, Latinx Studies, and Popular Culture and Immigration.

Her book titled Unspeakable Violence: Remapping U.S. and Mexican National Imaginaries, Duke University Press (2011) won the 2011-2012 MLA Prize in Chicana/o and Latina/o Read more

Jacob Udo-Udo Jacob – Bechtel Lecturer

Dickinson College

The Bechtel Lecture

(Dis)Owning God: Religious Identity and Violent Extremism in the African Sahel Region

Monday, April 9, 2018
Stern Center, Great Room, 7 p.m.

Religious identity, Jacob argues, has far greater normative influence on extremist recruitment and radicalization than religious beliefs and other appeals, but it has rarely been accounted for in counter-narrative campaigns and deradicalization programs in the West African Sahel region.

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

Biography (provided by the speaker)

Jacob Udo-Udo Jacob is a visiting international scholar in the International Studies program of Dickinson College. His teaching and research interest is located at the intersection between communications, conflicts and peace building with particular reference to the Lake Chad Basin, Somalia and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Jacob visits Dickinson from the American University of Nigeria where he was chair of the Communications & Multimedia Design Program and interim dean in the School of Arts & Science. He has led the implementation of some very important donor-funded projects in support of peace building in North-East Nigeria and the Lake Chad region including a U.S. State Department-funded CVE project on peace journalism, Read more

Beyond Kinetics: Advancing Civil-Military Partnership in Preventing/Countering Violent Extremism

Wednesday, April 4, 2018
Anita Tuvin Schlechter Auditorium, 6 p.m.

Panelists

Muhammad Umer Bashir, Pakistan Army
Shawn Diniz ’18, Dickinson College
Margee Ensign, Dickinson College
Jacob Udo-Udo Jacob, Dickinson College
Casey Miner, United States Army
Yssouf Traore, Mali Army

ISIS and its affiliate organizations have recently suffered significant military losses in Syria, Iraq, North and West Africa as well as the broader Lake Chad Region. As important as these military achievements are, they signal neither the end of ISIS and its affiliates nor the defeat of their extremist ideologies. Instead, they usher in an increasingly diffuse and unpredictable phase in the global war on terror. This panel discussion explores how the United States, Pakistan, Mali and Nigeria have experienced and learned from the changing phases of extremism, focusing mainly on what has worked and what hasn’t.

This event is sponsored by the Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues in collaboration with the Carlisle Scholars Program at the U.S. Army War College.

Biographies from our Panelists

Brigadier Muhammad Umer Bashir is an artillery officer in the Army of Pakistan. He has commanded at the Regiment and Brigade levels, and performed as an instructor at the Pakistan Read more

Seeing = Believing?

Tuesday, April 3, 2018
Anita Tuvin Schlechter Auditorium, 7 p.m.

Panelists

Eitan Grinspun, Columbia University
Steven Malcic, Dickinson College
Tabitha Peck, Davidson College
Graham Roberts, The New York Times
Gregory Steirer (moderator), Dickinson College

Where is computer-generated imaging and sound technology, including virtual reality, going next? Our panel of experts will discuss new developments in these technologies and what they mean for the politics of media production and consumption.

This program is sponsored by the Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues and co-sponsored by the Departments of English; International Business & Management; Philosophy; the Film Studies Program; and the Churchill Fund. This program was initiated by the Clarke Forum’s Student Project Managers and it is also part of the Clarke Forum’s Leadership in an Age of Uncertainty Series.

Biographies (provided by the panelists)

Eitan Grinspun is associate professor of computer science and applied mathematics at Columbia University, and co-director of the Columbia Computer Graphics Group. He was an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellow and NSF CAREER Award recipient, NVIDIA Fellow and a Caltech Everhart Distinguished Lecturer. Prior to joining Columbia University, he was a research scientist at the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences from 2003-2004, a doctoral Read more

Yoko Tawada

Award-Winning Writer

An Evening with Yoko Tawada

Wednesday, March 28, 2018
Anita Tuvin Schlechter Auditorium, 7 p.m.

Known internationally for her novels, poems and essays in German and Japanese, author Yoko Tawada creates worlds in which foreigners, outsiders and animals, always aware of their strangeness, navigate and read their surroundings with wonder and minuteness. Tawada will collaborate with Bettina Brandt (Pennsylvania State University) in a multilingual performance which includes German and Japanese as well as English translations. 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 Departments of German; East Asian Studies; English; the Max Kade Foundation; and the Flaherty Lecture Fund. It is also part of the Clarke Forum’s semester theme, Citizen/Refugee.

Biography (forthcoming)

Yoko Tawada was born in Tokyo in 1960, educated at Waseda University and has lived in Germany since 1982, where she received her Ph.D. in German literature. She received the prestigious Akutagawa Prize for The Bridegroom Was a Dog. She writes in both German and Japanese, and in 1996, she won the Adalbert-von-Chamisso Prize, a German award recognizing foreign writers for their contributions to German culture. She also received Read more

Ajuan Mance

Mills College

The 1001 Black Men Online Sketchbook and the Art of Social Justice

Wednesday, March 7, 2018
Anita Tuvin Schlechter Auditorium, 7 p.m.

Mance created 1001 Black Men: An Online Sketchbook as a reaction against the controlling images that have limited and defined media representations of Black men. Mance will use a slideshow of images from her series as the basis of a wide ranging discussion of art, Black maleness and gender performance, and representation.

This program is sponsored by the Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues and co-sponsored by the Women’s & Gender Resource Center; the Popel Shaw Center for Race & Ethnicity; and the Departments of Africana Studies; American Studies; English; French; and Women’s, Gender & Sexuality Studies.

Biography (provided by the speaker)

Ajuan Mance is a professor of English at Mills College in Oakland, California. She holds degrees from Brown University and the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. A lifelong artist, she works in acrylic on paper and canvas, ink on paper and, for the 1001 Black Men project, ink on paper and digital collage. Ajuan has participated in solo and group exhibitions throughout the San Francisco Bay Area as well as at the University of Read more