Past Programs

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

Extremism Poster FinalWednesday, 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

Umer eBrigadier 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?

VR PosterTuesday, 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 previewEitan 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

 Tawada Final PosterAward-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)

TawadaYokoYoko 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

Mance Poster FINALMills 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)

Headshot HawaiiAjuan 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

Martin Burt and Margee Ensign

burt ensign posterMartin Burt, Fundación Paraguaya
Margee Ensign, Dickinson College

A Conversation with President Margee Ensign and Global Entrepreneur Martin Burt

Monday, February 26, 2018
Anita Tuvin Schlechter Auditorium, 7 p.m.

Ensign and Burt will discuss what it means to be a social entrepreneur; ways to envision a life in the areas of social innovation, advocacy, and social change; and the possibilities of entrepreneurship as a mechanism for reducing poverty.

This event is sponsored by the Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues and co-sponsored by the Social Innovation and Entrepreneurship (SINE) Certificate Program and the Department of International Business & Management. This program is also part of the Clarke Forum’s Leadership in an Age of Uncertainty Series.

Biographies (provided by the speakers)

Burt thumbnailMartin Burt is founder (1985) and CEO of Fundación Paraguaya, a 33-year old NGO devoted to the promotion of entrepreneurship and economic self-reliance to eliminate poverty around the world. He is a pioneer in applying new poverty metrics, microfinance, micro-franchise, youth entrepreneurship, financial literacy and technical vocational methodologies to address chronic poverty around the world. He has developed one of the world’s first financially self-sufficient agricultural and tourism high schools for the rural poor. He is co-founder of Teach a Read more

Margot Canaday

Canaday Final PosterPrinceton University

Pink Precariat: LGBT Workers in the Shadow of Civil Rights

Wednesday, February 21, 2018
Anita Tuvin Schlechter Auditorium, 7 p.m.

This talk – part of a larger book project that centers the workplace in queer history – offers a preliminary ethnography of LGBTs working in mainstream occupations during the American economy’s “golden age” of the 1950s and 1960s.

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

Biography (provided by the speaker)

CanadayM copyMargot Canaday is a legal and political historian who studies gender and sexuality in modern America. She holds a B.A. from the University of Iowa and a Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota. Her first book, The Straight State: Sexuality and Citizenship in Twentieth Century America (Princeton, 2009), won the Organization of American Historians’ Ellis Hawley Prize, the American Political Science Association’s Gladys M. Kammerer Award (co-winner), the American Studies Association’s Lora Romero Prize, the American Society for Legal History’s Cromwell Book Prize, the Committee on LGBT History’s John Boswell Prize, the Lambda Literary Award for LGBT Studies, Read more

Komozi Woodard ’71

Woodard Final PosterSarah Lawrence College

The Strange Career of the Jim Crow North: A Dickinson Story?

Tuesday, February 20, 2018
Anita Tuvin Schlechter Auditorium, 7 p.m.

Live Stream Link

In the 1960s, the Congress of African Students at Dickinson College began the study of the Strange Career of the Jim Crow North with the early development of Africana Studies and the Black Arts Movement. This is the story of those Dickinson roots.

This program is sponsored by the Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues and co-sponsored by the Waidner-Spahr Library; the Division of Student Life; and the Departments of History; Africana Studies; American Studies; Sociology; and the Churchill Fund. It is also part of the Clarke Forum’s Leadership in an Age of Uncertainty Series.

Biography (provided by the speaker)

thumbnail picKomozi Woodard ’71 is professor of history, public policy and Africana studies at Sarah Lawrence College; he attended Princeton, Andover, Dickinson, the New School, Rutgers, Northwestern University and the University of Pennsylvania. Woodard was managing editor of Unity & Struggle and Black Newark newspaper and radio program in the Black Power Movement, Main Trend journal in the Black Arts Movement and Manhattan’s Children’s Express before writing and editing these: A Nation within a Nation: Read more

Emma Howard

Howard PosterPerformer and Writer

I’m Smiling Because I’m Uncomfortable

Friday, February 16, 2018
Adams Hall, Basement Kitchen, 4:30 p.m.

Why do we eat? Why do we stop eating? This one woman show is an autobiographical story traveling from early childhood experiences of queerness and lessons on body image, to a college eating disorder, to the present challenges of eating and living in a human body.

This program is sponsored by the Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues and is part of Love Your Body Week programming.

Biography (provided by the guest)

Howard HeadshotEmma Howard (Performer, Writer) is a recent graduate from the Experimental Theatre Wing at Tisch School of the Arts. Most of her work addresses eating and mental illness. When not writing or performing, she works for a non-profit theatre organization called The Possibility Project. To pay rent, she works at an overpriced vegan fast food restaurant that caters to a lot of men at JP Morgan. She is interested in one day becoming a medical and humanitarian clown and using physical comedy to tackle body image issues. Her favorite food to binge on is peanut butter granola.

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Substantia Jones

Jones PosterFounder and Photographer, The Adipositivity Project

The Adipositivity Project

Wednesday, February 14, 2018
Anita Tuvin Schlechter Auditorium, 7 p.m.

Jones discusses (and displays) a decade of body politics activism promoting fat acceptance and physical autonomy by subverting that most commonly used tool of what she calls the angst industrial complex: photography.

The program is sponsored by the Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues and co-sponsored by The Trout Gallery. This program is also part of Love Your Body Week programming.

Biography (provided by the speaker)

Detroit Greektown BC CBal BC CBal cropSubstantia Jones is the founder and Photographer of The Adipositivity Project.  Jones’ work has been included in art exhibitions at the Tate Modern in London, the Steirischer Herbst Arts Festival in Graz, Austria, Lesbiche in Sardinia, Italy, and in a two-month solo exhibition of her photographs at Te Manawa Museum in New Zealand. She’s also been featured in VICE News, Glamour Magazine, US News & World Report, Cosmopolitan, BUST, MIC.com, Huffington Post, Bustle, Mashable, The Establishment, on numerous podcasts and radio broadcasts, and in a TIME magazine video profile of Jones and The Adipositivity Project. She hopes to soon produce a book of her photographs, and looks forward to another Read more

Food Access & Poverty

Thursday, February 8, 2018Food Access Poverty Final
Anita Tuvin Schlechter Auditorium, 7 p.m.

Panelists

Alyssa Feher, Tapestry of Health
Becca Raley ’94 (moderator), Partnership for Better Health
Risa Waldoks ’12, The Food Trust
Robert Weed ’80, Project Share

Food security allows all people to have access to regular, culturally appropriate food sources to ensure a healthy existence. Increased reliance on national and state food assistance programs reflect rising poverty and food insecurity in our community. Panelists will discuss both the systemic nature of persistent poverty and food insecurity and innovations designed to address these root concerns.

This event is sponsored by the Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues and co-sponsored by the Department of Environmental Studies, the Center for Sustainability Education, the Food Studies Program, Partnership for Better Health and the Churchill Fund. It is also part of the Clarke Forum’s Leadership in an Age of Uncertainty Series.

Biographies (provided by the panelists)

Alyssa FeherAlyssa Feher has served as the director of the Tapestry of Health WIC Program servicing Cumberland, Perry, Mifflin, and Juniata counties since 2011.  Feher is responsible for overseeing clinic operations and works frequently with clients needing assistance from multiple agencies.  She previously served as the human resources manager Read more

Christopher S. Parker

Parker Poster FinalUniversity of Washington, Seattle

2018 MLK Jr. & Black History Month Symposium

Donald Trump, Race, and the Crisis of American Democracy

Monday, February 5, 2018
Anita Tuvin Schlechter Auditorium, 7 p.m.

The Democratic Party likes to make the argument that Trump can be defeated by wooing working-class whites. A classed-based strategy must be scrapped in favor of one that emphasizes race.

This event is sponsored by the Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues and co-sponsored by the Popel Shaw Center for Race & Ethnicity.

Biography (provided by the speaker)

Parker ChristopherChristopher S. Parker is Stuart A. Scheingold Professor of Social Justice and Political Science in the department of political science at the University of Washington, Seattle. After serving in the military for a total of ten years, and another five as a probation officer for Los Angeles County, Parker attended UCLA. He then earned his doctorate at the University of Chicago. Parker is the author of Change They Can’t Believe In: The Tea Party and Reactionary Politics in America (Princeton). Parker’s award-winning first book, Fighting for Democracy: Black Veterans and the Struggle Against White Supremacy in the Postwar South, was also published by Princeton University Press. He resides in Seattle.

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Gabriela González

Gonzalez PosterLouisiana State University

The Glover Memorial Lecture
Einstein, Black Holes and Gravitational Waves

Monday, January 29. 2018
Anita Tuvin Schlechter Auditorium, 7 p.m.
(360 W. Louther Street, Carlisle, PA)

More than a billion years ago, the merger of two black holes produced gravitational waves  that were observed traveling through Earth on September 14, 2015. The talk will explain how Einstein predicted the existence of gravitational waves more than one hundred years ago, and describe the latest exciting discoveries with the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) detectors.

The event is sponsored by the Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues and the Glover Memorial Lecture Fund and co-sponsored by department of physics & astronomy and the Churchill Fund. It is also part of the Clarke Forum’s Leadership in an Age of Uncertainty Series.

Gonzalez Gabriela LSU previewBiography (provided by the speaker)

Gabriela González is a physicist working on the discovery of gravitational waves with The Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) team.  She was born in Córdoba, Argentina, studied physics at the University of Córdoba, and pursued her Ph.D. in Syracuse University, obtained in 1995. She worked as a staff scientist in the LIGO group at MIT until 1997, when she joined the faculty at Read more

Solmaz Sharif

Sharif Final PosterIranian-American Poet

An Evening with Solmaz Sharif

Thursday, November 30, 2017
Anita Tuvin Schlechter Auditorium, 7 p.m.

Poet Sharif, a National Book Award finalist, will share work that explores, in eloquent detail, the conduct of contemporary war, the intimacy of loss, and the unbearable—but necessary—power of language. A book sale and signing will follow the presentation.

This event is sponsored by the Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues and co-sponsored by the Department of English, the Creative Writing Program, the Department of American Studies and the Women’s & Gender Resource Center.

Biography (provided by the speaker)

PhotoCredit:Arash SaediniaBorn in Istanbul to Iranian parents, Solmaz Sharif’s astonishing debut collection LOOK (Graywolf Press) was a finalist for the 2016 National Book Award and 2017 PEN Open Book Award. In LOOK, she recounts some of her family’s experience with exile and immigration in the aftermath of warfare—including living under surveillance and in detention in the United States—while also pointing to the ways violence is conducted against our language. Throughout, she draws on the Department of Defense’s Dictionary of Military and Associated Terms, the language used by the American military to define and code its objectives, policies, and actions. The Publishers Weekly Starred Review Read more

Michael Snyder

snyder posterStanford University

Using Your Genome and Big Data to Manage Your Health

Tuesday, November 28, 2017
Anita Tuvin Schlechter Auditorium, 7 p.m.

New technologies that determine DNA sequencing means we can now profile people over time to better predict and diagnose disease. Snyder will share his work in these new technologies and the power they hold to transform how we manage human health. A book sale and signing will follow the presentation.

This event is sponsored by the Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues and co-sponsored by the Department of Biology and the Health Studies Program. It is also part of the Clarke Forum’s semester theme, Big Data.

imageBiography (provided by the speaker)

Michael Snyder is the Stanford Ascherman Professor and chair of genetics and the director of the Center of Genomics and Personalized Medicine at Stanford University. Snyder received his Ph.D. training at the California Institute of Technology and carried out postdoctoral training at Stanford University. He is a leader in the field of functional genomics and proteomics, and one of the major participants of the ENCODE project. His laboratory study was the first to perform a large-scale functional genomics project in any organism, and has developed many technologies Read more

Jonathan Albright

Albright PosterTow Center for Digital Journalism, Columbia University

The Shadow of “Fake News”

Thursday, November 9, 2017
Anita Tuvin Schlechter Auditorium, 7 p.m.

Albright will explore the emerging arms race in how “fake news” is being used to target and track individuals and the implications this has for media, the tech industries, and democracy itself.

This event is sponsored by the Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues and co-sponsored by the Writing Program and Student Senate.  It is also part of the Clarke Forum’s semester theme, Big Data.

Biography (provided by the speaker)

IMGJonathan Albright is the research director at Columbia University’s Tow Center for Digital Journalism and a faculty associate at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University. His work focuses on the analysis of socially-mediated news events, misinformation/propaganda, and trending topics, applying an exploratory, mixed-methods, and data-driven approach. He is a co-author of the Pew Internet report, “The Future of Free Speech, Trolls, Anonymity and Fake News Online.”  Albright’s work uncovering and mapping the news ecosystem has been featured in The Washington Post, The Guardian, Fortune, and cited in The New Yorker, AP Technology, BuzzFeed, Fox Business, Quartz, and the BBC. Read more

The Opioid Epidemic in Central Pennsylvania

Opioid Epidemic Poster FinalMonday, November 6, 2017
Anita Tuvin Schlechter Auditorium, 7 p.m.

Panelists

Jack Carroll (moderator), Cumberland-Perry Drug and Alcohol Commission
Carrie DeLone, Holy Spirit-Geisinger
David Freed, Cumberland County District Attorney’s Office
Duane Nieves, Holy Spirit EMS
Kristen Varner, The RASE Project

Watch Live

This panel will address the current opioid epidemic in Central Pennsylvania, focusing both on the situation we face now and plans and opportunities for ending this significant problem.

This program is sponsored by the Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues and co-sponsored by the Department of Sociology, the Program in Policy Studies, the Health Studies Program and the Wellness Center.

Biographies (provided by the panelists)

Jack CarrollJack Carroll is the executive director of the Cumberland-Perry Drug & Alcohol Commission.  The Commission is responsible for managing public funded substance abuse prevention, intervention, and treatment services for residents of Cumberland and Perry Counties.  Carroll has worked in several different capacities within the drug and alcohol field since his graduation from Penn State in 1976.

HeadshotCarrie L. DeLone, M.D joined Geisinger Health System as the medical director of the Holy Spirit Medical Group in 2015.  DeLone is responsible for overseeing clinical operations at Holy Spirit Medical Group’s Read more

Sean Sherman

SHERMAN FINAL POSTERFounder, The Sioux Chef

The Evolution of Indigenous Food Systems of North America

Friday, November 3, 2017
Stern Center, Great Room, 4:30 p.m.

Committed to revitalizing Native American cuisine, Sherman will share his  research uncovering the foundations of the Indigenous food systems. There will be a book sale and signing following the presentation.

This program is sponsored by the Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues and co-sponsored by the the Office of Dean & Provost – Neil Weissman, the Center for Sustainability Education, the Department of Anthropology & Archaeology, American Studies, Environmental Studies, and the Food Studies Program.

Biography (provided by the speaker)

bowmanSean Sherman, Oglala Lakota, born in Pine Ridge, South Dakota, has been cooking in Minnesota, South Dakota and Montana for the last 27 years.  In the last few years, his main culinary focus has been on the revitalizing of indigenous foods systems in a modern culinary context.  Sean has studied on his own extensively to determine the foundations of these food systems which include the knowledge of Native American farming techniques, wild food usage and harvesting, land stewardship, salt and sugar making, hunting and fishing, food preservation, Native American migrational histories, elemental cooking techniques, and Native culture Read more

Paul Offit

Offit posterPediatrician and Expert on Vaccines, Immunology and Virology

The Vaccine-Autism Controversy

Thursday, November 2, 2017
Anita Tuvin Schlechter Auditorium, 7 p.m.

How have scientists, the media, and the public dealt with the question of whether vaccines cause autism? A book sale and signing will follow the presentation.

The event is sponsored by the Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues and co-sponsored by the Departments of Biology, Chemistry, Physics & Astronomy and the Health Studies Program.

Biography (provided by the speaker)

offit for programPaul A. Offit, MD is the director of the Vaccine Education Center at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia as well as the Maurice R. Hilleman Professor of Vaccinology and a professor of pediatrics at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. He is a recipient of many awards including the J. Edmund Bradley Prize for Excellence in Pediatrics from the University of Maryland Medical School, the Young Investigator Award in Vaccine Development from the Infectious Disease Society of America, and a Research Career Development Award from the National Institutes of Health. Offit has published more than 160 papers in medical and scientific journals in the areas of rotavirus-specific immune responses and vaccine safety. He is also the co-inventor Read more

Franklyn Schaefer – “Wesley Lecturer”

Schaefer Poster FinalPastor, Activist and Author

Wesley Lecture

An Indictment of the United Methodist Anti-Gay Doctrine

Thursday, October 26, 2017
Stern Center, Great Room, 7 p.m.

Does the United Methodist anti-gay doctrine violate John Wesley’s “do-no-harm” rule? Testimonies of queer church members and an analysis of a study by the American Psychology Association strongly suggest that it does.

This lecture is sponsored by the Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues and the Center for Service, Spirituality and Social Justice with special thanks to the Baltimore-Washington Conference of the United Methodist Church and co-sponsored by the Department of Religion, the Division of Student Life and the Office of LGBTQ Services. It is also co-sponsored by the Churchill Fund and part of the Clarke Forum’s Leadership in an Age of Uncertainty Series.

Biography (provided by the speaker)

hs fs eRev. Franklyn Schaefer is a United Methodist pastor, chaplain and author (Defrocked, 2014). He and his wife immigrated from Germany in 1990. After obtaining a master’s of divinity from Princeton Theological Seminary (1996) and following ordination as an elder (1998), he served two church appointments in Pennsylvania. In between appointments, he obtained a clinical pastoral education degree from Penn State University while working as a resident chaplain Read more

Erica Frankenberg

Frankenberg PosterPennsylvania State University

Contemporary School Segregation

Tuesday, October 24, 2017
Anita Tuvin Schlechter Auditorium, 7 p.m.

Racial and economic segregation is rising, unraveling many of the gains of the civil rights era, as students of color become the majority of enrollment in public schools. Professor Frankenberg describes the benefits of integrated schools, contemporary trends in public school enrollment, and what should be done to further integration in schools and communities.

This program is sponsored by the Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues and co-sponsored by the Popel Shaw Center for Race & Ethnicity, the Program in Policy Studies, the Departments of Education and Sociology, and the Churchill Fund. It was initiated by the Clarke Forum Student Project Managers and is part of the Clarke Forum’s Leadership in an Age of Uncertainty Series.

Biography (provided by the speaker)

Frankenberg Picture eErica Frankenberg is an associate professor of education and demography at the Pennsylvania State University, and co-director of the Center for Education and Civil Rights. Her research interests focus on racial desegregation and inequality in K-12 schools, school choice & segregation, and the connections between school segregation and other metropolitan policies particularly in suburban communities. Prior to joining the Penn State faculty, she Read more