Professor, Amherst College

Venezuela: The Politics of Barricades

Wednesday, November 5, 2014
Stern Center, Great Room, 7 p.m.

This lecture seeks to explain why Venezuela, the country that has experienced the most spectacular economic windfall in Latin America from 2003 to 2011, is today in one of the worst political crises in the region and one of the worst economic crises in the world. It confronts the question of how “new” is the “new Venezuela” after Hugo Chavez.

This event is sponsored by the Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues and co-sponsored by the Constance and Rose Ganoe Memorial Fund for Inspirational Teaching, courtesy of Professor J. Mark Ruhl and by the Department of Latin American Studies.

Biography (provided by the speaker)

Javier Corrales is professor of political science at Amherst College in Amherst, Massachusetts. He is currently working on the second edition of his co-authored book with Michael Penfold, Dragon in the Tropics: Hugo Chávez and the Political Economy of Revolution in Venezuela (Brookings Institution Press, 2011).  In addition, he is working on a book project on constitutional assemblies and presidential powers in Latin America.   Corrales is also the co-author with Daniel Altschuler of The Promise of Participation: Experiments Read more

Tuesday, October 28, 2014
Stern Center, Great Room, 7 p.m.

Participants:

Dickinson Faculty:
Sarah Niebler, assistant professor of political science
David O’Connell, assistant professor of political science
Thomas Kozdron, class of 2018
Samantha Lodge, class of 2015
Angeline Apostolou (moderator), class of 2015

The 2014 elections will be held on November 4. Do American citizens have a duty to participate in this election? This debate will focus on whether there is such a duty from multiple perspectives.

This event is part of a new series titled Dickinson Debates sponsored by the Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues and the Student Senate Public Affairs Committee.

Biographies (provided by the participants)

Sarah Niebler is an assistant professor of political science at Dickinson College. She studies campaigns and elections, political participation, and political communication and her work is published or forthcoming in the American Journal of Political Science, Political Communication, Legislative Studies Quarterly, and American Politics Research. Prior to coming to Dickinson, Sarah was a postdoctoral fellow in the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions at Vanderbilt University. She earned her Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, but is a Pennsylvania native having grown up in Read more

Jill Bartoli (D) vs. Stephen Bloom (R)

Wednesday, October 22, 2014 – 7 p.m.
NEW LOCATION:  Anita Tuvin Schlechter Auditorium

The Republican and Democratic candidates running in the general November election for the 199th seat in the Pennsylvania state legislature will debate the central issues confronting local voters and answer questions from the audience. The event will be moderated by Michelle Crowley, president and CEO of the Greater Carlisle Area Chamber of Commerce.

This event is sponsored by The Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues, the Greater Carlisle Area Chamber of Commerce, American Association of University Women (AAUW), the League of Women Voters,  YWCA Carlisle and The Sentinel.

Biographies

Jill Bartoli (provided by Bartoli)

I have lived in Cumberland County for my entire life, growing up in a rural area near Cumberland Valley High School, which was built when I was in third grade.  So my first three years of school were in a one room country school house, with a pot-bellied stove and an outhouse, that had grades one to eight.

Growing up, I was a member of the 4-H Baby Lamb Club and 4-H Horse and Pony Club, and I took ballet lessons from Marcia Dale Weary when she Read more

Wednesday, October 15, 2014
Stern Center, Great Room, 7 p.m.

Panelists:

Ronald Bailey, executive director, Chester County Planning Commission
Elam Herr, assistant executive director, Penn State Assoc. of Twp. Supervisors
Steve Kusheloff, manager, public information, SEDA-COG
Kirk Stoner (moderator), director of planning, Cumberland County

This program will provide an overview of how Pennsylvania developed its system of local government. Local officials will present stories of achievement and lessons learned from specific examples of regional cooperation to identify the principles that will be the foundation for future success.

The event is sponsored by the Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues and the Greater Carlisle Area Chamber of Commerce.

Biographies (provided by the panelists)

Ronald T. Bailey, AICP is the executive director of the Chester County Planning Commission. Mr. Bailey also serves as a member of the Pennsylvania State Planning Board and is a senior research fellow with the Floyd Institute for Public Policy at Franklin and Marshall College. Previously, Mr. Bailey was the executive director of the Lancaster County Planning Commission. Prior to coming to Pennsylvania, he worked in state and local government the Pacific Northwest. He holds a bachelor of science from the California State University at Read more

Labor Economist, Keystone Research Center

Fighting Runaway Inequality: The Minimum Wage Controversy

Tuesday, October 7, 2014
Stern Center, Great Room, 7 p.m.

Through the lens of the debate over the minimum wage, Price will explore the connections between public policy, the social sciences and one of the most pressing social issues of our time, the rise of income inequality.

This event is sponsored by the Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues and co-sponsored by the Departments of Sociology,  Political Science, Economics, and American Studies.

Biography (provided by the speaker)

Mark Price has been the Keystone Research Center’s (KRC) labor economist for over a decade. He received a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Utah in 2005. The KRC is a non-partisan research and policy development institute based in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. His areas of research include income inequality, trends in employment and compensation, the construction industry, and low-wage labor markets. Mark’s work involves policy analysis and advocacy on a wide range of issues including, prevailing wage law, unemployment insurance, payday lending, economic and workforce development and tax and budget policy.  His advocacy involves fielding questions from reporters, testifying before the state legislature and making public presentations on current policy issues and Read more

Award-Winning Investigative Journalist

Inside the FBI’s Terror Factory

Wednesday, October 1, 2014
Stern Center, Great Room

Aaronson, author of The Terror Factory: Inside the FBI’s Manufactured War on Terrorism, will explore how the FBI has built up a network of more than 15,000 informants whose primary purpose is to infiltrate Muslim communities to create and facilitate phony terrorist plots so that the government can then claim victory in the War on Terror.  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 Middle East studies and religion.

Biography (provided by the speaker)

Trevor Aaronson is an accomplished investigative journalist and author of The Terror Factory: Inside the FBI’s Manufactured War on Terrorism.  Aaronson reported and produced a one-hour documentary for Al Jazeera Media Network, “Informants,” about the FBI’s counterterrorism program. He co-founded the nonprofit Florida Center for Investigative Reporting, which won national and regional journalism awards under his leadership, and has written for Mother Jones magazine. A two-time finalist for the Livingston Awards, Aaronson has won more than two dozen national and regional awards, including the Molly National Journalism Prize, Read more

Professor, Harvard University

Ecoambiguity: Asia and the Environmental Humanities

Thursday, September 18, 2014
Stern Center, Great Room, 7 p.m.

This talk examines East Asian writing on environmental degradation, introducing the concept of ecoambiguity (environmental ambiguity) to highlight the contradictions in human behaviors vis-a-vis the nonhuman.

This event is sponsored by the Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues and co-sponsored by the Department East Asian Studies.

Biography (provided by the speaker)

Karen Thornber is professor and chair of comparative literature, Harvard University; she is also chair of Harvard’s Regional Studies East Asia Program and holds an additional faculty appointment in Harvard’s Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations.  Thornber’s research and teaching focus on world literature, East Asian literatures, the literatures of the Indian Ocean Rim, postcolonialism, diaspora, environmental humanities, and medical humanities.

A 2006 Harvard Ph.D., her books include Empire of Texts in Motion: Chinese, Korean, and Taiwanese Transculturations of Japanese Literature (Harvard, 2009) and Ecoambiguity: Environmental Crises and East Asian Literatures (Michigan, 2012), both of which were awarded multiple international prizes.  She is the author of over 50 articles/chapters as well as of an award-winning translation of Japanese poetry; Thornber is additionally guest editor of a special issue of the Read more

Professor, University of Vermont

Buddhist Contributions to Climate Ethics

Tuesday, September 16, 2014
Stern Center, Great Room, 7 p.m.

This lecture will draw on Buddhist environmental thought to explore climate change and consumerism looking at human behavior and ethical choice.

The event is sponsored by the Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues and co-sponsored by the Departments of East Asian Studies, Religion, the Center for Sustainability Education, and the Luce Foundation’s Initiative on Asian Studies and the Environment.

Biography (provided by the speaker)

Dr. Stephanie Kaza is professor of environmental studies at the University of Vermont and director of the Environmental Program. Her courses include Unlearning Consumerism; Religion and Ecology; Women, Health, and Environment; and other values-based courses. She co-founded the Environmental Council at University of Vermont, a campus-wide consortium on sustainability, and is the faculty director for the UVM Office of Sustainability and Sustainability Faculty Fellows program. Her current scholarship focuses on Buddhist perspectives on climate ethics and bicycle commuting quality of life benefits.

Dr. Kaza is the 2011 winner of the UVM George V. Kidder Outstanding Faculty Award for excellence in teaching. Her books include Mindfully Green (2008), Hooked! Buddhist Writings on Greed, Desire, and the Read more

Monday, September 8, 2014
Anita Tuvin Schlechter Auditorium, 7 p.m.

Panelists:

Kamaal Haque, professor, Dickinson College
Craig Nation, professor, U.S. Army War College
Michael Neiberg, professor, U.S. Army War College
Karl Qualls, professor, Dickinson College

In recognition of the centennial anniversary of the beginning of World War I, this panel discussion will address the causes of this world-changing event from multiple and diverse perspectives in an effort to better understand the origins of international conflicts.

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

Biographies (provided by the participants)

Kamaal Haque is an assistant professor of German at Dickinson College. His research interests include German film, the literature and culture of the German-speaking Alps, and the influence of the Middle East in German culture. He has published on such diverse topics as the German mountain film, the poetry of Goethe, and Muslim minorities in Germany today. In addition to courses at all levels of German language and culture, he has taught recent courses such as Mountains in the German Cultural Imagination, Minority Cultures in the German Context and Modern German Film. This semester he is teaching German Literature and Culture of the First World Read more

New Date:
Thursday, May 1, 2014
Anita Tuvin Schlechter Auditorium
Noon – 1 p.m.

** Bring your Lunch **

Panel Discussion

Participants:

Kristine Mitchell, assistant professor political science and international studies
Anthony Williams, visiting professor of security studies, Dickinson College
Andrew Wolff, professor of political science, Dickinson College
Karl Qualls (moderator), associate professor of history, Dickinson College

Following Russia’s annexation of the former Ukrainian province of Crimea, the United States and its European allies have imposed sanctions on Russia, but pro-Russian Ukrainian separatists have responded by occupying government buildings in eastern Ukrainian cities and Russia has demanded that the Ukraine adopt a federal constitutional structure that would grant considerable autonomy to Russian-speaking areas of the country.  The panel will consider the implications of these ongoing developments from the perspective of the Ukrainian government in Kiev, NATO, the European Union, Russia, and United States.

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

Biographies of the Panelists

Kristine Mitchell is assistant professor of political science and international studies at Dickinson College. Her teaching and research interests include European and EU politics, labor politics, and Left parties. She has conducted field research across Western Europe and has held visiting Read more

Panel I:

Resolving the Missile Gap

Monday, April 21, 2014
Althouse Hall, Room 106, 7 p.m.
Dickinson College

Panelists:

John Bird, Central Intelligence Agency (Ret.)
Richard Immerman, U.S. Army War College
Fred Kaplan, Slate Magazine
Gene Poteat, Central Intelligence Agency (Ret.)
Moderator: Major General William Burns, U.S. Army (Ret.)

In the 1950s, our nation faced one of the gravest military threats in its history. The Soviet Union had nuclear weapons and boasted they had the means to deliver them. Was the U.S. truly vulnerable to a first strike? Intelligence analysts had few answers and assertions of “Bomber Gaps” and “Missile “Gaps” abounded.  President Eisenhower recognized that aerial reconnaissance of the Soviet Union was the answer. The story of the U-2 and Corona satellites is now history, but the success of those programs and their follow-on versions is the stuff of today’s high-tech intelligence and warfare.

Link to more information on the U.S. Army Heritage and Education Center Site

Panel II:

CIA Analysis of the Warsaw Pact: The Importance of Clandestine Reporting

Tuesday, April 22, 2014
Army Heritage and Education Center, 9:30 – 11:30 a.m.
(950 Soldiers Drive, Carlisle PA)

Panelists:

John and Joan Bird Read more