Past Programs

Robert Bilheimer

Bilheimer Film Poster FinalPresident, Worldwide Documentaries, Inc.

Not My Life (Film Showing and Discussion with Film Director)

Tuesday, September 10, 2013
Stern Center, Great Room, 6:15 p.m.

Not My Life is a film that depicts the cruel and dehumanizing practices of contemporary human trafficking.  Bilheimer, who directed and produced the film, will make general remarks and conduct a question-and-answer session at the end of the film. This event is one of a series on “Hidden Dangers: Emerging Global Issues of the 21st Century” sponsored with the World Affairs Council of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.

This event is sponsored jointly by the Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues and the World Affairs Council of Harrisburg and co-sponsored by the Office of Institutional & Diversity Initiatives, and the Departments of Sociology and Economics.  It is also part of The Clarke Forum’s Leadership in a Age of Uncertainty Series.

imageBiography (provided by the speaker)

Robert Bilheimer, president of the nonprofit company Worldwide Documentaries, is one of the most influential documentary filmmakers working in the world today.
In 1989, Robert was nominated for an Academy Award for Cry of Reason, a feature-length documentary that profiles the South African anti-apartheid leader Beyers Naude. Since that time, he has made Read more

Gail Dines

Founding Member, Stop Porn Cultureporn culture poster

Sex, Identity and Intimacy in a Porn Culture

Tuesday, September 3, 2013
Anita Tuvin Schlechter Auditorium, 7 p.m.

In this multi-media presentation, Dines explores how masculinity and femininity are shaped by a consumer-driven image-based culture and how pornography reproduces a gender system that encourages social and economic inequality and promotes a rape culture.  Note: This presentation contains explicit images.

A book sale and signing will follow.

This event is sponsored by the Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues and co-sponsored by the Division of Student Development, Women’s and Gender Resource Center and the Departments of American Studies, Psychology, Sociology, Economics, Political Science and Women’s and Gender Studies.

Gail web portraitBiography (provided by the speaker)
Dr. Gail Dines is a professor of sociology and women’s Studies at Wheelock College in Boston, where she is also chair of the American Studies department. She has been researching and writing about the porn industry for well over twenty years. Dr. Dines is co-editor of the best-selling textbook Gender, Race and Class in Media and she has written numerous articles on pornography, media images of women and representations of race in pop culture. She is a recipient of the Myers Center Award for Read more

Syria: What Next?

Syria Poster

** Breaking Issue **

Monday, September 2, 2013
Althouse Hall, Room 106 – 7 p.m.

A panel discussion focused on the issues arising out of the Syrian civil war, in particular the recent apparent use of chemical weapons by the Assad regime and the likelihood of a military response by the United States.  The situation highlights a number of perplexing issues regarding how the conflict affects other countries in the Middle East, the outcomes of the Arab uprisings, the substance and binding character of international law, along with a number of domestic U.S. constitutional and political issues.

Panelists

Neil Diamant, professor of Asian law and society
Joseph Sestak, General Omar N. Bradley Chair of Strategic Leadership
Edward Webb, assistant professor of political science and international studies
Russell Bova, (moderator), professor of political science and international studies

Biographies

Neil J. Diamant is professor of Asian law and society at Dickinson College. He has a Ph.D. in political science from the University of California, Berkeley, and teaches classes on Israeli politics and the history of Zionism in addition to those in his primary field of expertise.  He lived in Israel between 1978-1988, and 1997-2000, serving in the Israeli Read more

Pennsylvania Gun Debate

Tuesday, April 30, 2013
Stern Center, Great Room, 7:00 p.m.

Gun Debate Poster FinalParticipants:

State Representative Stephen Bloom (R), serving the 199th Legislative District in Cumberland County

State Senator Larry Farnese (D), serving the 1st Senatorial District in Philadelphia

The participants will discuss the merits of gun control provisions currently being considered by the Pennsylvania legislature.

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

Biographies

BloomPORTRAITRepresentative Stephen Bloom, of Cumberland County, was first elected to represent the citizens of the 199th Legislative District in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives in November 2010. A practicing lawyer for more than 20 years, now of counsel with the Carlisle firm of Irwin & McKnight, P.C., Bloom focused on business and transactional matters. He was also an adjunct instructor of management and business at Messiah College, where he taught economics and business law.

His mission as a lawmaker is to cut the size and scope of government, reduce the burden of taxes and unnecessary regulation, protect and defend constitutional freedoms, and by doing those things, unleash the power of individuals and businesses to create and grow jobs and economic prosperity.
Full Biography

Farnese downloadSenator Larry Farnese Read more

Amy-Jill Levine – “Mary Ellen Borges Memorial Lecturer”

University Professor of New Testament and Jewish Studies, Vanderbilt University

Levine posterHearing Jesus’s Parables Through Jewish Ears

Thursday, April 25, 2013
Allison United Methodist Church, 7:00 p.m.
(99 Mooreland Ave., Carlisle, Pa)

Understanding Jesus’s parables requires understanding Jesus’s Jewish context. How would the parables have been heard by Jesus’s original Jewish listeners, and how might those original messages still speak to Jews and Christians today?

This event is sponsored by St. John’s Episcopal Church on the Square and the Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues.

Levine PhotoBiography (provided by the speaker)

Amy-Jill Levine is University Professor of New Testament and Jewish Studies, E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Professor of New Testament Studies, and professor of Jewish studies at Vanderbilt Divinity School and College of Arts and Science in Nashville, TN; she is also affiliated professor, Centre for the Study of Jewish-Christian Relations, Cambridge UK. Holding the B.A. from Smith College, and the M.A. and Ph.D. from Duke University, she has honorary doctorates from the University of Richmond, the Episcopal Theological Seminary of the Southwest, the University of South Carolina-Upstate, Drury University, and Christian Theological Seminary. Her recent publications include The Misunderstood Jew: The Church and the Scandal of the Jewish Jesus and  Read more

Michael Mann

Professor, Penn State University

Mann Final PosterThe Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars

Monday, April 22, 2013
Stern Center, Great Room, 7:00 p.m.
A book sale and signing will follow

Mann will discuss the topic of human-caused climate change through the prism of his own experiences as a reluctant and accidental public figure in the societal debate over global warming.

This event is jointly sponsored by the Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues, Penn State Dickinson School of Law and School of International Affairs and co-sponsored by the Departments of Earth Sciences and Environmental Studies.

mannBiography (provided by the speaker)

Dr. Michael E. Mann is a member of the Penn State University faculty, holding joint positions in the Departments of Meteorology and Geosciences, and the Earth and Environmental Systems Institute (EESI). He is also director of the Penn State Earth System Science Center (ESSC).

Dr. Mann received his undergraduate degrees in Physics and Applied Math from the University of California at Berkeley, an M.S. degree in Physics from Yale University, and a Ph.D. in Geology & Geophysics from Yale University. His research involves the use of theoretical models and observational data to better understand Earth’s climate system.

Dr. Mann was a Lead Read more

Joan Steitz – “Joseph Priestley Award Lecturer”

Sterling Professor of Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry, Yale University

Steiz Poster FinalLupus and Snurps: Bench to Bedside and Back Again

Thursday, April 18, 2013
Anita Tuvin Schlechter Auditorium, 7:00 p.m.

This talk will trace the origins of our understanding of how small cellular particles contribute to the critical process of splicing and relate this knowledge to today’s quest for treatment of splicing diseases, such as Lupus.

The Joseph Priestley Award recipient is chosen by a different science department each year.  This year the recipient was selected by the Department of Biology.  The event is sponsored by The Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues and Student Senate and co-sponsored by and the Departments of Biology, Chemistry, Earth Sciences, Psychology, Physics & Astronomy and Environmental Studies.

Steitz J fettersBiography (provided by the speaker)

Joan Steitz is a Sterling Professor of Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry; and Investigator at Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Yale University.

Steitz earned her B.S. in chemistry from Antioch College in 1963. Significant findings from her work emerged as early as 1967, when her Harvard PhD thesis with Jim Watson examined the test-tube assembly of a ribonucleic acid (RNA) bacteriophage (antibacterial virus) known as R17.

Steitz spent the next three years in postdoctoral studies at Read more

Angela Stent

Professor, Georgetown University

Stent PosterU.S.-Russia: The Second Obama Term

Tuesday, April 16, 2013
Stern Center, Great Room, 7:00 p.m.

The U.S-Russian relationship faces new challenges as President Barack Obama embarks on his second term. Both countries will have to reassess the relative priority of interests versus values as they seek to move forward.

This event is jointly sponsored by the Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues, Penn State Dickinson School of Law and School of International Affairs, and the Constance and Rose Ganoe Memorial Fund for Inspirational Teaching, courtesy of Professor Russell Bova.

astentbrookings eBiography (provided by the speaker)

Angela Stent is director of the Center for Eurasian, Russian and East European Studies and professor of government and foreign service at Georgetown University. She is also a senior fellow (non-resident) at the Brookings Institution and co-chairs its Hewett Forum on Post-Soviet Affairs. From 2004-2006 she served as National Intelligence Officer for Russia and Eurasia at the National Intelligence Council.  From 1999 to 2001, she served in the Office of Policy Planning at the U.S. Department of State.

Stent’s academic work focuses on the triangular political and economic relationship between the United States, Russia and Europe.  Her publications include: Russia and Germany Reborn: Unification, Read more

Scott Silverstone

Professor, United States Military Academy at West Point

Silverstone PosterPreventive War and American Democracy

Monday, April 15, 2013
Althouse Hall, Room 106, 7:00 p.m.

Ten years after the United States launched the first preventive war in its history – against Iraq in 2003 – American leaders are once again wrestling with the preventive war temptation, this time directed at Iran and its nuclear program. This lecture will explore and explain this profound shift in American thinking about preventive war over the past sixty years.

This event is sponsored by the Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues and the Mellon Foundation Project on Civilian-Military Educational Cooperation.  It is also part of The Clarke Forum’s Leadership in a Age of Uncertainty Series.

scott silverstoneBiography (provided by the speaker)
Dr. Silverstone is professor of international relations in the Department of Social Sciences at the United States Military Academy at West Point, where he has been on the faculty since 2001. He received his Ph.D. in political science from the University of Pennsylvania in 1999, and has also served on the faculty at the University of Pennsylvania and Williams College. Dr. Silverstone is a research fellow with the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs, and is Read more

Bill McKibben

Schumann Distinguished Scholar, Middlebury College; Recipient of The Sam Rose ’58 and Julie Walters Prize at Dickinson College for Global Environmental Activism

Mckibben posterFront Line of the Climate Fight

Thursday, April 11, 2013
Anita Tuvin Schlechter Auditorium, 7:00 p.m.
A book signing will follow the lecture

McKibben will highlight the ways in which environmental groups are working around the country and the world to scientifically and politically challenge the power of the fossil fuel industry before it breaks the planet.

This event is sponsored by The Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues and The Sam Rose ’58 and Julie Walters Prize at Dickinson College for Global Environmental Activism and co-sponsored by the Department of Environmental Studies.  It is also part of The Clarke Forum’s Leadership in an Age of Uncertainty Series and the faculty seminar series titled, Living in a World of Limits.

BillMcKibbenNancieBattaglia HighResBiography (provided by the speaker)

Bill McKibben is the author of a dozen books about the environment, beginning with The End of Nature in 1989, which is regarded as the first book for a general audience on climate change. He is a founder of the grassroots climate campaign 350.org, which has coordinated 15,000 rallies in 189 countries Read more

Beatriz Diaz

Professor, University of Havana

Diaz PosterU.S. Role and Image in the World: A Cuban’s Perspective

Tuesday, April 9, 2013 (rescheduled from November 27, 2012)
Stern Center, Great Room, 7:00 p.m.

This lecture focuses on the paradoxes that characterize U.S. role and image in the world: U.S. culture, technological development, civil society, economic influence and military power will be discussed and evaluated.

This event is sponsored by the Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues and the Center for Global Study and Engagement and co-sponsored by the Departments of Economics and Spanish & Portuguese.

Biography (provided by the speaker)
hastaBeatriz Diaz is a full professor at the University of Havana, and at the Cuban Program of the Latin American Social Sciences Faculty (FLACSO). She was the director of the Cuba FLACSO Program (2001-2008) and at present chairs the research group on Rural Development and the Environment at FLACSO. She obtained her BA in psychology at the University of Havana, followed by graduate work at the University of Paris X and Geneva. She obtained her Ph.D. at the Soviet Academy of Educational Sciences in Moscow.

Her main research interests focus on Cuban Social Development and Sustainable Development. She has conducted research on rural, urban and Read more

Kris Perry

Executive Director, First Five Years Fund

Perry PosterSame-Sex Marriage & the Supreme Court: A Plaintiff’s Story

Monday, April 8, 2013
Anita Tuvin Schlechter Auditorium, 7:00 p.m.

In May 2009, two California couples—Kris Perry and Sandy Stier of Berkeley, and Paul Katami and Jeff Zarrillo of Burbank—filed a lawsuit in federal court challenging California’s Proposition 8 under the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. Represented by distinguished attorneys Theodore B. Olson and David Boies, who famously faced-off in Bush v. Gore, the plaintiffs and their case, now known as Hollingsworth v. Perry, have forever changed America’s legal and political landscape surrounding marriage equality.

On March 26, 2013, the Supreme Court of the United States heard oral argument in Perry to review the judgment of the federal court of appeals that upheld the decision of the federal district court that found Proposition 8 unconstitutional. A decision from the Supreme Court, which is expected by June 2013, could result in marriage equality nationwide.

In this lecture, Kris Perry will discuss her personal experience as one of the plaintiffs in this landmark civil rights lawsuit. From testifying at trial and watching oral argument at the Supreme Court, to seeing her twin boys Read more

Peter Lev

Professor, Towson University

Peter Lev PosterThe Politics of an Entertainment Company

Thursday, April 4, 2013
Stern Center, Great Room, 7:00 p.m.

Twentieth Century-Fox has always been involved in local, national, and international politics.  This lecture will describe Fox’s political activism in the 1940s and then fast-forward to the present.

The event is sponsored by The Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues and co-sponsored by Judaic Studies, The Milton B. Asbell Center for Jewish Life, Film Studies, Middle East Studies, and the Departments of Political Science, American Studies, English, French & Italian and History.

LEV Peter hi resolBiography (provided by the speaker)
Peter Lev is professor of electronic media and film at Towson University. His research and teaching focuses on American film history, European film history, and film adaptations of literature.   He is the author of five books on film history and the co-editor of a book on film adaptation:  selected titles include Twentieth Century-Fox, the Zanuck-Skouras Years 1935-1965 (March 2013); The Literature/Film Reader (co-edited with Jim Welsh, 2007); Transforming the Screen:  The Fifties (History of the American Cinema series, 2003);and American Films of the 1970s:  Conflicting Visions (2000).  The Twentieth Century-Fox book was supported by an Academy Scholars Award from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts Read more

Corinne Moss-Racusin

Postdoctoral Associate, Yale University

Moss Racusin Poster eGender Stereotypes in Academic Science Contexts

Tuesday, April 2, 2013
Stern Center, Great Room, 7:00 p.m.

Despite persistent gender disparity, no experimental research has investigated whether subtle gender bias may be contributing to the underrepresentation of women within the academic science community. In this talk, Moss-Racusin will discuss research providing the first evidence of such bias against female students, and highlight implications for academic meritocracy, diversity, and gender parity across science fields.

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

Moss RacusinBiography (provided by the speaker)

Corinne Moss-Racusin is a postdoctoral associate at Yale University in the Department of Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology and the Department of Psychology. Before coming to Yale, she earned her Ph.D. in social psychology from Rutgers University and also studied psychology as an undergraduate at New York University. Dr. Moss-Racusin’s research focuses on understanding and ameliorating inequality within institutions. She studies the ways in which gender and racial stereotypes shape people’s own behavior and their social judgments, and how these in turn impact broader institutional diversity.

Video of the Lecture

 

 

Interview for WDCV Radio, Dickinson College

  Read more

John R. Lott Jr.

Lott posterAuthor and Fox News Contributor

More Guns, Less Crime

Monday, April 1, 2013
Stern Center, Great Room, 7:00 p.m.

The talk will argue that crime rates fall when law-abiding citizens are given the chance to defend themselves.

The Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues has sponsored and planned this event in partnership with the Student Senate Public Affairs Committee.  Please note that college policy prohibits the possession of firearms on college premises.

Biography (provided by the speaker)
John R. Lott Jr. is an economist who has held research and/or teaching positions at the UniversiLott picturety of Chicago, Yale University, Stanford, UCLA, Wharton, and Rice and was the chief economist at the United States Sentencing Commission during 1988 and 1989. He has published over 100 articles in academic journals. He also is the author of seven books of which his newest is At the Brink: Will Obama push us over the edge? His past books have included three editions of More Guns, Less Crime and Freedomnomics. Lott is a FoxNews.com contributor and a weekly columnist for them. Opinion pieces by Lott have appeared in such places as The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Los Read more

Richard Wilkinson – “Morgan Lecturer”

Professor Emeritus, University of Nottingham; Co-founder, The Equality Trust

Wilkinson Poster

Morgan Lecture

Inequality: The Enemy Between Us?

Thursday, March 28, 2013
Weiss Center, Rubendall Recital Hall, 12:00 p.m.

Since before the French Revolution, many people have believed that inequality is divisive and socially corrosive.  Now that we have data allowing us to compare inequality within countries, we find that this intuition is more true than we thought.  Countries like the USA, with relatively large income gaps between rich and poor, suffer much more from a wide range of social ills.

The event is sponsored in partnership with The Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues and the Student Senate Public Affairs Committee, and co-sponsored by Health Studies, the Departments of American Studies, Sociology and Economics and the Community Studies Center.

richardcolourhighresBiography (provided by the speaker)

Richard Wilkinson has played a formative role in international research on the social determinants of health and on the societal effects of income inequality. He studied economic history at London School of Economics before training in epidemiology. He is professor emeritus of social epidemiology at the University of Nottingham Medical School, honorary professor at University College London and a visiting professor at the University of York. Richard Read more

David Orr

Paul Sears Distinguished Professor of Environmental Studies and Politics, Oberlin College

Final Orr PosterDesigning Resilience in a Black Swan World

Wednesday, March 27, 2013
Anita Tuvin Schlechter Auditorium, 7:00 p.m.

Black Swan events are those with low or unknown probability, but high, long-lived and often global impacts. Orr will discuss how we should design communities, regions, and nations to improve resilience and prosperity in the context of such events, with a focus on the Oberlin Project and the National Sustainable Communities Coalition.

The event is sponsored by The Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues and the Office of the President, and co-sponsored by the Center for Sustainability Education and the Department of Environmental Studies.  It is also part of The Clarke Forum’s Leadership in a Age of Uncertainty Series and the faculty seminar series titled, Living in a World of Limits.

IMGBiography (provided by the speaker)

David Orr the Paul Sears Distinguished Professor of Environmental Studies and Politics and senior adviser to the president at Oberlin College. He is the author of seven books, including Down to the Wire: Confronting Climate Collapse (Oxford, 2009) and co-editor of three others. He has authored nearly 200 articles, reviews, book chapters, and professional publications. In Read more

Fallou Ngom

Associate Professor, Boston University

Ngom Poster FinalAfrica’s Sources of Knowledge in Ajami Scripts

Thursday, March 21, 2013
Stern Center, Great Room, 7:00 p.m.

This talk will address the myth of illiteracy in Islamized areas of Africa. It uncovers important sources of African knowledge written in the modified classical Arabic script known as Ajami.

The event is sponsored by The Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues and co-sponsored by Middle East Studies and the Departments of Africana Studies, History, and French and Italian.

DSCBiography (provided by the speaker)
Dr. Fallou Ngom is an associate professor of anthropology and director of the African Language Program at the African Studies Center at Boston University. His research interests include the interactions between African languages and non-African languages, the Africanization of Islam in the Sahel, and Ajami literatures, records of West African languages written in Arabic script.

Relevant Links
http://www.theworld.org/2010/09/africa-ajami-writing/
http://www.bu.edu/bostonia/summer09/ajami/

Video of the Lecture

  Read more

Yoshikuni Igarashi

Associate Professor, Vanderbilt University

Igarashi PosterJapan 1959: The Socioeconomic Effects of Television

Wednesday, March 6, 2013
Stern Center, Great Room, 7:00 p.m.

In this talk, Igarashi will gauge television’s often-underestimated socioeconomic effects on Japanese society by revisiting the late 1950s, when this new technology was introduced into Japan.

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

Biography (provided by the speaker)

IgarashiPhotoYoshikuni Igarashi, associate professor at Vanderbilt University is a specialist in modern Japanese cultural studies. He is the author of Bodies of Memory: Narratives of War in Postwar Japanese Culture, 1945-1970 (Princeton University Press, 2000) and Haisen to sengo no aidade: okurete karerishi monotachi (Homecomings: The Belated Return of Japan’s Lost Soldiers) (Chikuma-shobô, 2012). The radical transformation of Japanese society in the late 1960s and the 1970s has been the focus of his recent research.

 

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Human Dimensions of Natural Resource Extraction – Panel Discussion

Tuesday, March 5, 2013
Stern Center, Great Room, 7:00 p.m.

Natural Extraction Panel PosterPanelists:

Peter Bechtel ’81 – Andorinha Azul Ambiental
Tim Kelsey, Penn State University
Veronica Coptis, Center for Coalfield Justice
Erika Staaf, PennEnvironment
Moderated by Julie Vastine, ALLARM

Natural resource extraction has been at the heart of economic growth and, for that reason, remains a source of considerable political and economic controversy.   Both Pennsylvania and Mozambique are currently experiencing a boom in natural gas exploration while they yet confront the economic, social, and environmental consequences of previous forms of resource extraction.  The panel will discuss and compare the two locations, identify commonalities, and see what lessons have been learned.

This event is part of the faculty seminar series titled, Living in a World of Limits and is sponsored by The Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues and co-sponsored by the Center for Global Study and Engagement, Center for Sustainability Education, Career Center, Department of Religion, Office of Institutional and Diversity Initiatives, Department of International Business and Management, Health Studies, Department of Environmental Studies, Community Studies Center, Department of Africana Studies and ALLARM.

BiographiesDSCN

Peter Bechtel, an ’81 Dickinson graduate, worked with the World Wildlife Fund in Mozambique on Read more