Past Programs

Winona LaDuke – “Morgan Lecturer”

Final LaDuke PosterExecutive Director, Honor the Earth

Morgan Lecture

The Next Energy Economy: Grassroots Strategies to Mitigate Global Climate Change & How We Move Ahead

Wednesday, March 22, 2017 
(Rescheduled from Fall 2016)
Anita Tuvin Schlechter Auditorium, 7 p.m.

Native American writer and activist Winona LaDuke will draw from her grassroots experiences, including the #NoDAPL movement at Standing Rock, to explore how we can move forward to create a new energy economy. A book sale and signing will follow the presentation.

This program is sponsored by the Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues and the Morgan Lecture Fund and co-sponsored by the Center for Sustainability Education, the Churchill Fund and the Departments of Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies, Environmental Studies, American Studies, Anthropology & Archaeology and Political Science.  It is also part of the Clarke Forum’s  Leadership in an Age of Uncertainty Series and part of the Clarke Forum’s Fall 2016 semester theme, Food.

laduke winonaBiography (provided by the speaker)

Winona LaDuke is an internationally renowned activist working on issues of sustainable development renewable energy and food systems. She lives and works on the White Earth reservation in northern Minnesota, and is a two-time vice presidential candidate with Ralph Nader for the Green Read more

Bees and Beekeeping Today

Bee Panel PosterWednesday, March 1, 2017
Anita Tuvin Schlechter Auditorium, 7 p.m.

Panelists:

Olivia Bernauer, graduate student, University of Maryland
Carolyn Fluehr-Lobban, beekeeper and professor, Rhode Island College
Rodney Morgan, beekeeper
Samuel Ramsey, doctoral student, University of Maryland
Marcus Welker, (moderator), projects coordinator, Center for Sustainability Education, Dickinson College

This panel explores the significance of bees and beekeeping from a variety of perspectives, including the recent entomological research, the growth of beekeeping, and the work we are doing here at Dickinson.

This event is sponsored by the Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues and co-sponsored by the Center for Sustainability Education, the Department of Biology and the Food Studies Certificate Program.

Biographies (provided by the panelists)

Olivia Bernaur PhotoOlivia Bernauer is currently a second-year Masters student at the University of Maryland, College Park working in the vanEngelsdorp bee lab. Her ongoing research combines citizen science with a specimen collection to determine the most valuable pollinator plants for the native pollinators in the state of Maryland. Previously, at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, she worked to understand the response of bumble bee colonies to fungicide both in the field and in a controlled cage experiment.

Fluehr LobbanCarolyn Fluehr-Lobban is a professor emerita of Read more

Lila Abu-Lughod – “Morgan Lecturer”

Abu Lughod Poster finalProfessor, Columbia University

Morgan Lecture

Muslim Women and the Freedom to Choose

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

What can we learn from public debates about Muslim women that hinge on a right – the “right to choose freely”- that has been enshrined in international feminist conventions and that animates the popular American imagination about such practices as veiling and arranged marriage?  Anthropologist Abu-Lughod will examine the everyday lives of young women in one Egyptian village to open up new ways of thinking about choice and to expose the politics of common fantasies about this right. A book sale and signing will follow the presentation.

This event is sponsored by the Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues, the Morgan Lecture Fund 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)

Abu Lughod Publicity c Martyn Gallina JonesLila Abu-Lughod is the Joseph L. Buttenwieser Professor of Social Science at Columbia University where she teaches anthropology and women’s studies.  A leading voice in the debates about culture, gender, Islam, and global feminist politics, her books and articles have been translated into 14 languages. Her scholarship, mostly ethnographic and based Read more

Sonya Renee Taylor

Author/Poet

These events are part of “Love Your Body Week”

Your Body is Not an ApolTaylor Posterogy

Thursday, February 23, 2017
Anita Tuvin Schlechter Auditorium, 7 p.m.

This performance by author/poet Sonya Renee Taylor uses popular education, performance poetry and media examples to introduce participants to the concepts of body terrorism and radical self-love.

Workshop: 10 Tools for Radical Self Love

Friday, February 24, 2017
(Open only to Dickinson community. RSVP to clarkeforum@dickinson.edu  – Space is limited)
TIME & LOCATION CHANGE: Noon – 1:30 p.m. in Althouse 106

Can you re-imagine a relationship with your body and your life that is not adversarial? In this two-hour workshop get practical tools and a step by step action plan that can dramatically shift your relationship with your body from enemy to gorgeous partner in creating your most unapologetic life of radical self-love!

These events are sponsored by the Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues, the Churchill Fund, the Division of Student Life, the Women’s and Gender Resource Center, the Popel Shaw Center for Race and Ethnicity, the Office of LGBTQ Services, and the Departments of Sociology, Psychology and Women’s, Gender, & Sexuality Studies. It is also part of the Clarke Forum’s Read more

Yoga for Every Body

Tuesday, February 21, 2017
HUB, Dance Studio, Noon – 1 p.m.

Our spectacular, local yoga instructor Michele Landis, owner of Simply Well Yoga, will conduct a yoga class for everyone–all levels, all bodies, all ages.  Mats are provided or bring your own!

The event is sponsored by the Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues and is part of Love Your Body Week.

Biography of Michele Landis

Michele Landis is the owner of Yoga at Simply Well. Michele teaches yoga and works as a one-on-one holistic health coach in Carlisle, PA. She graduated with honors from the Institute for Integrative Nutrition in New York, NY. The Institute for Integrative Nutrition is the only nutrition school integrating all of the different dietary theories, combining the knowledge of traditional philosophies with modeMichele Landisrn concepts such as the USDA food guidelines, the glycemic index, the Zone and raw foods. Michele’s passion is helping her clients cook more and buy and eat local, seasonal foods. She earned her teacher certification in Kripalu Yoga from the Karma Yoga Lifestyle Program of the renowned Kripalu Institute in the Berkshire Mountains of Massachusetts. At the Kripalu Institute, where she studied and served on staff for almost two years, Read more

Lester Spence

Spence Final PosterJohns Hopkins University

Trump, Race, and the Slow Death of Democracy

Thursday, February 16, 2017
Anita Tuvin Schlechter Auditorium, 7 p.m. (New Location)

Spence will talk about the causes and the potentially stark consequences of Donald Trump’s election. While some point solely to racial politics, Spence examines the role of the neoliberal turn.

This event is sponsored by the Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues and co-sponsored by the Churchill Fund, the Popel Shaw Center for Race and Ethnicity, the Division of Student Life, and the Departments of American Studies, Political Science, Sociology, and the Program in Policy Studies. It is also part of the Clarke Forum’s Leadership in an Age of Uncertainty Series. This event was initiated by the Clarke Forum’s student project managers.

Biography (provided by the speaker)

NWKLester Spence is an associate professor of political science and Africana studies at Johns Hopkins University and the Center for Emerging Media Scholar in Residence. Spence  specializes in the study of black, racial, and urban politics. Over the past decade Spence published articles on American institutional legitimacy in the wake of the contentious 2000 Presidential election, the effects of long-term black political empowerment on black participation, the role of media Read more

Community Responses to Anti-Muslim Hatred

Anti muslim hatred PosterMonday, February 13, 2017
Stern Center, Great Room, 7 p.m.

Panelists:

Joyce Davis (moderator), founder and president, World Affairs Council
Samia Malik, director of education, Council on American-Islamic Relations Harrisburg chapter
Ikram Rabbani ’17, student, Dickinson College
Ann M. Van Dyke, Community Responders Network

Since 2015, attacks on Muslims have spiked in the United States, including Central Pennsylvania. This evening’s panel will discuss community responses designed to combat anti-Muslim hatred by promoting pluralism and interfaith dialogue.

The event is sponsored by the Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues and co-sponsored by the Middle East Studies Program.

Biographies
Joyce DavisJoyce M. Davis is director of communications for the City of Harrisburg and supervisor of WHBG Channel 20, the region’s government and public affairs television station.  She also is founder and president of The World Affairs Council of Harrisburg. A former foreign correspondent and foreign editor for National Public Radio and Knight Ridder Newspapers, Davis is author of many articles, broadcasts and two books: Between Jihad and Salaam: Profiles in Islam and Martyrs: Innocence, Vengeance and Despair in the Middle East. Davis is a member of several boards, including the World Affairs Councils of America, United Way of the Capital Read more

Border Angels and AMIREDIS: The Sad Face of Undocumented Immigration

Castro Cruz PosterWednesday, February 8, 2017
Stern Center, Great Room, 7 p.m.

Hugo Castro, Border Angels
José Luis Hernandez Cruz, AMIREDIS

Two members of the organizations Border Angels and AMIREDIS will share their work with organizing disabled and undocumented immigrants within Central and North America.

This event is sponsored by the Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues and co-sponsored by the Departments of Spanish and Portuguese, American Studies, and Latin American, Latino and Caribbean Studies.

Biographies

Hugo Castro PictureHugo Castro is the son and grandson of Bracero Workers, Roberto Castro and Martin Velazquez. His childhood spanned both sides of the U.S. / Mexico Border. He was born in Salinas, Mexico, later his family migrated to Mexicali a town that borders Calexico, California, and after moving to the United States he graduated from Calexico High School in 1989.

Castro began organizing for immigrant rights in 2002, particularly around the Taft Correctional Institute where detained migrants suffered for 6 to 60 months in prison without contact from loved ones. Castro was mobilized by his incarceration in a federal, privately run, correctional institute. He served a two years sentence from 2001 to 2003 and was able to continue his education in prison. There he obtained an Read more

Maly G. Jackson

Maly Jackson PosterEthiopian Refugee

My Journey: Ethiopia to Israel

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

Jackson walked for three weeks from Ethiopia to Sudan together with her mother and baby sister as a seven-year-old fleeing Ethiopia and the religious and political strife that threatened the lives of the Ethiopian Jews. Jackson’s story takes us on her arduous journey and reveals the essence of Exodus as she, her family and friends fled Sudan on an Israeli Air Force commissioned-airplane which landed in Israel in December 1984.

This event is sponsored by the Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues and co-sponsored by the Departments of Judaic Studies, Religion and Women’s, Gender & Sexuality Studies and also the Milton B. Asbell Center for Jewish Life. The event was organized by the Clarke Forum student project managers.

Biography (provided by the speaker)

Maly JacksonMaly G. Jackson, now 39, walked for three weeks from Ethiopia to Sudan together with her mother and baby sister as a seven-year-old fleeing Ethiopia and the religious and political strife that threatened the lives of the Ethiopian Jews. Maly’s father remained in Ethiopia. She and her mother and little sister, age 2, trekked across the desert and forest into Read more

Thomas Palley

Palley PosterSenior Economic Policy Adviser to the AFL-CIO

Inequality and Stagnation by Policy Design

Tuesday, January 31, 2017
Stern Center, Great Room, 7 p.m.

This talk will survey competing hypotheses explaining the financial crisis of 2008 and the ensuing stagnation. How we explain these events is of critical significance since it influences how economic policy and society respond.

This program is sponsored by the Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues and co-sponsored by the Churchill Fund, the Departments of Economics, International Business and Management, and the Program in Policy Studies. It is also part of the Clarke Forum’s Leadership in an Age of Uncertainty Series.

Biography (provided by the speaker)

Thomas Palley is senior economic policy adviser to the AFL-CIO. He was foThomas Palley Head shotrmerly chief economist with the US – China Economic and Security Review Commission. Dr. Palley is the author of numerous journal and magazine articles and several books, including From Financial Crisis to Stagnation: The Destruction of Shared Prosperity and the Role of Economics (Cambridge University Press, 2012) and Plenty of Nothing: The Downsizing of the American Dream and the Case for Structural Keynesianism (Princeton University Press, 1998). He holds a B.A. degree from Oxford University and a M.A. Read more

Reproductive Rights: Religion, Ethics, and the Law

Reproductive Rights PosterMonday, January 30, 2017
Anita Tuvin Schlechter Auditorium, 7 p.m.

Panelists:

Kathryn Ellis, Unitarian Universalist minister
David O’Connell, assistant professor of political science, Dickinson College
Katie Oliviero (also moderator), assistant professor of women’s, gender and sexuality studies, Dickinson College

This panel will explore contemporary religious, ethical and legal debates and realities concerning reproductive rights in the United States.

This event is sponsored by the Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues and co-sponsored by the Wellness Center and the Departments of Philosophy, Political Science, Religion, Women’s, Gender & Sexuality Studies and the Health Studies Certificate Program.  This event was organized by the Clarke Forum’s student project managers.

Biographies (provided by the panelists)

ordination with stoleKathryn Ellis retired from the active Unitarian Universalist ministry on June 30, 2016.  Before seminary and ordination, she was a mental health counselor, a college counselor, a professor of counseling and a psychotherapist in private practice in Carlisle, PA. She is a trained facilitator for Our Whole Lives, a comprehensive sex education curriculum created by the Unitarian Universalist Association and the United Church of Christ. This is a sex affirmative and spiritual curriculum.

Kathy has been told that one never really stops being a minister. She knows that Read more

Jenny Lee

Lee PosterVictoria University, Melbourne, Australia

Fat Activism Down Under

Thursday, December 1, 2016
Althouse Hall, Room 106, 7 p.m.

This talk explores the fat activist movement in Australia and New Zealand including fat  femme synchronized swim, fat burlesque, and the “plus size” fashion industry.  Lee will discuss the challenges of doing fat activism and scholarship, the complexities of dealing with the media and organizations that discriminate, the personal cost of fat activism, and the white privilege of prominent fat activists.

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

J LeeBiography (provided by the speaker)

Jenny Lee researches in the interdisciplinary fields of Fat Studies and Creative Writing at Victoria University, Melbourne, Australia. She is also a Research Associate of the Centre for Cultural Diversity and Wellbeing in ‘Culture and values in health’ at Victoria University.

She is a Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing and Literary Studies and has published in academic journals and books, literary journals and magazines. She has presented her research at conferences in Spain, Portugal, Italy, South Africa, New Zealand and Australia, and published work in England, Ireland, the U.S, and Australia. Her academic publications include, ‘Not just a type: diabetes, fat and fear’, in Somatechnics Read more

James McBride – “Mary Ellen Borges Memorial Lecturer”

McBride PosterAuthor

Mary Ellen Borges Memorial Lecture

The Good Lord Bird: Faith & American Slavery

Tuesday, November 15, 2016
Anita Tuvin Schlechter Auditorium, 7 p.m.

In this presentation, which is based on his National Book Award winning novel, The Good Lord Bird, McBride shares the story of John Brown, using gospel and spiritual music of the time to frame his life and how it is presented in the book. He will be accompanied by his band, The Good Lord Bird Band. A book sale will follow.

This event is a joint venture sponsored by St. John’s Episcopal Church on the Square and the Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues and co-sponsored by the Churchill Fund, the Division of Student Life and the Department of Religion.

mcbride jamesBiography (provided by the speaker)

James McBride is a renaissance man and a born storyteller. He is the author of The Color of Water: A Black Man’s Tribute to His White Mother, a moving narrative about his mother, a white Jewish woman from Poland who married a black man, founded a Baptist church and put 12 children through college.

The Color of Water is an American classic, read in colleges and high schools Read more

Laura Wexler

Wexler Final PosterYale University

Phi Beta Kappa Visiting Scholars Program

Frederick Douglass: On Photography

Thursday, November 10, 2016
Stern Center, Great Room, 7 p.m.

In the 1860s, Frederick Douglass gave several public lectures about the importance of the then-new invention of photography.  In “Pictures and Progress” he shared his vision of the role he hoped photography would play in fostering a more democratic society after the Civil War.  Along with Sojourner Truth, Douglass thus became one of the first major American theorists of the medium.  This lecture engages with his critical thought in the context of his time, and ours.

The event is sponsored by the  Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues and Phi Beta Kappa.

Biography (provided by the speaker)

LauraWexlerphoto copyLaura Wexler, co-director of the Yale Public Humanities Program, is professor of American studies, professor of film & media studies, and professor of women’s, gender & sexuality studies at Yale University, and she holds an affiliate position in ethnicity, race & migration.  She is also founder and director of the Photographic Memory Workshop at Yale.  She is former chair of the Women’s, Gender & Sexuality Studies Program, and former co-chair of the Yale Women Faculty Forum.

Professor Wexler has received numerous Read more

Carolyn L. Karcher

Karcher PosterProfessor Emerita, Temple University

Albion W. Tourgée and the Interracial Campaign Against Lynching

Thursday, November 3, 2016
Stern Center, Great Room, 7 p.m.

This lecture focuses on Tourgée’s campaign against lynching, in which he teamed up with the African American journalist-activists Ida B. Wells and Harry C. Smith to form a united front against anti-Black violence. A book sale and signing will follow.

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

Carolyn Karcher PhotoBiography (provided by the speaker)

Carolyn L. Karcher is professor emerita of English, American studies, and women’s studies at Temple University, where she taught for twenty-one years and received the Great Teacher Award and the Lindback Award for Distinguished Teaching in 2002.  She is the author of Shadow over the Promised Land: Slavery, Race, and Violence in Melville’s America (1980); The First Woman in the Republic: A Cultural Biography of Lydia Maria Child (1994); and A Refugee from His Race: Albion W. Tourgée and His Fight against White Supremacy (2016).  She has also edited scholarly reprints of works by several 19th-century writers, including Tourgée’s novel about Black Read more

Kristen Leslie – “Wesley Lecturer”

Leslie PosterEden Theological Seminary

Wesley Lecture

Noisy Believing: Ethical and Spiritual Responses to Sexualized Violence

Wednesday, November 2, 2016
Allison Great Hall, 7 p.m.

Transformative responses to sexualized violence reflect an early Methodist ethic that connects faith to public action.  This spirituality encouraged followers to “do all the good you can… for as long as ever you can.”  Holding communities accountable to such a public ethic and teaching the silenced to speak are basic building blocks to changing the nature of sexualized violence on college campuses.

This lecture is sponsored by the Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues, the Office of the President and the Center for Service, Spirituality and Social Justice with special thanks to the Baltimore-Washington Conference of the United Methodist Church. This event is also co-sponsored by the Prevention, Education and Advocacy Center, the Department of Religion, the Women’s and Gender Resource Center, Dickinson Christian Fellowship 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)

The Rev. Kristen Leslie, Ph.D., is a feminist pastoral theologian who addresses issues of resilience in survivors of sexualized violence on college campuses and in the military.  Read more

James McWilliams

McWilliams PosterTexas State University

Bringing Animal Welfare to 21st Century Agriculture

Tuesday, November 1, 2016
Stern Great Room, 7 p.m.

McWilliams will explore the many ways in which alternatives to industrial animal agriculture–pastured, cage-free, and grass fed systems, for example–do not live up to their promised welfare reforms, before outlining a future agricultural system that can more effectively attend to animal welfare concerns.

The event is sponsored by the Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues and co-sponsored by the Center for Sustainability Education. This program was initiated by the Clarke Forum’s student project managers. It is also part of the Clarke Forum’s semester theme, Food.

imgresBiography (provided by the speaker)

James McWilliams is an historian and writer based in Austin, Texas. His books include The Modern Savage: Our Unthinking Decision to Eat Animals (Thomas Dunne Books), Just Food: Where Locavores Get It Wrong and How We Can Truly Eat Responsibly (Little, Brown) and A Revolution in Eating: How the Quest for Food Shaped America (Columbia University Press). His writing has appeared in The Paris Review daily, The New Yorker.com, The New York Times, Harper’s, The Washington Post, Slate, The American Scholar, Texas Monthly, and The Atlantic. He writes Read more