* Breaking Issue *

Thursday, February 28, 2013
Anita Tuvin Schlechter Auditorium, 7:00 p.m.

The purpose of this teach-in, which is sponsored by Penn State University Dickinson School of Law, U.S. Army War College and the Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues on behalf of Dickinson College, is to elevate and broaden the ongoing national discussion about gun safety and gun violence in the United States for the benefit of the faculty, students, and members of the local Carlisle community.  It will focus in particular upon the three following questions: 1) What is the difference, if any, between military weapons and civilian weapons? 2) What are the current limits on the right to bear arms? 3) What are the costs/benefits associated with guns?

Participants:

Thomas Place, professor, Penn State University Dickinson School of Law
Col. David Dworak, professor, U.S. Army War College
Harry Pohlman, professor, Dickinson College (filling in for Stephanie Gilmore, professor, Dickinson College)
William Nelligan ’14 (moderator), student, Dickinson College

The event is co-sponsored by the Student Senate Public Affairs Committee.

Biographies

Thomas Place is a professor of law at Penn State University Dickinson School of Law where he teaches courses on criminal procedure, constitutional law, Read more

Award-Winning Author

God vs. Gay? Common Ground in the Culture Wars

Wednesday, February 6, 2013
Anita Tuvin Schlechter Auditorium, 7:00 p.m.
A book sale and signing will follow

Are there ways to have better conversations about homosexuality and religion?  Michaelson, an award-winning LGBT religious activist, will move this conversation forward by discussing relevant biblical texts and “best practices.”

This event is sponsored by The Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues and co-sponsored by The Milton B. Asbell Center for Jewish Life and the Office of LGBTQ Services.

Biography (provided by the speaker)

Jay Michaelson is the author of four books and two hundred articles on the intersections of religion, spirituality, sexuality, and law. His most recent book, God vs. Gay? The Religious Case for Equality (Beacon), was an Amazon.com bestseller and Lambda Literary Award finalist. Jay is a contributing editor to the Forward newspaper and associate editor of Religion Dispatches magazine, and his work has appeared in The Daily Beast, Salon, Newsweek, Tikkun, The Huffington Post, and other publications. Jay is also a longtime LGBT activist who has worked closely with HRC, GLAAD, and other organizations, and is the founder of Nehirim, a national LGBT Jewish community. Jay’s advocacy on Read more

Co-Director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research

The Fiscal Cliff: New Heights of Sensationalism

Wednesday, November 7, 2012
Anita Tuvin Schlechter Auditorium, 7:00 p.m.

The media have endlessly raised fears of the government falling off the “fiscal cliff.” This talk will explain why such talk fundamentally misrepresents the short-term budget problem and how the longer term problem has been misrepresented as well.

This event is sponsored by The Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues and co-sponsored by the Departments of Economics and Policy Studies and the Keystone Research Center.

Biography (provided by the speaker)
Dean Baker is co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington, DC. He is the author of The End of Loser Liberalism: Making Markets Progressive, Taking Economics Seriously, False Profits: Recovering from the Bubble Economy, Plunder and Blunder: The Rise and Fall of the Bubble Economy, The United States Since 1980, The Conservative Nanny State: How the Wealthy Use the Government to Stay Rich and Get Richer, Social Security: The Phony Crisis (with Mark Weisbrot), and The Benefits of Full Employment (with Jared Bernstein). He was the editor of Getting Prices Right: The Debate Over the Consumer Read more

Wednesday, October 24, 2012
Anita Tuvin Schlechter Auditorium, 7:00 p.m.

Panelists

Douglas Edlin – Associate Professor of Political Science
Michael Fratantuono – Associate Professor of International Studies and International Business & Management
Stephanie Gilmore – Assistant Professor of Women’s and Gender Studies
Andrew Wolff – Assistant Professor of Political Science and International Studies
Moderated by Andrew Chesley ’13 – President of Student Senate

A panel of Dickinson professors will discuss the important policy positions of each of the presidential candidates. The presentations will be nonpartisan and objective in nature. Topics include health care and insurance, the federal budget and the national economy, women’s rights issues, and foreign policy and national security.

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

Biographies

Douglas E. Edlin received his Ph.D. from Oxford University.  He also holds a J.D. from Cornell, an M.A. from the University of Pennsylvania, and a B.A. from Hobart College.  His research and teaching interests are in comparative constitutionalism, the judicial process and judicial review, the legal and policy issues raised by developments in assisted reproductive technology, and the politics of race and gender in the United States.  Along with a number of articles in leading journals, his Read more

Pulitzer Prize-Winning Playwright

The Insubstantial Pageant: Writing for Performance

Thursday, October 18, 2012
Mathers Theatre, 7:30 p.m.

We are born ready to talk and listen, but it takes years to learn to read and write. What is gained and lost when the redolent swirl of human experience is consigned to the abstract, linear, preterite alphabetic code? And what ironies await when the freeze-dried code is reconstituted as live performance?

This event is sponsored by the Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues and co-sponsored by the Norman M. Eberly Writing Center and the Departments of English, American Studies and Theatre & Dance.

Biography (provided by the speaker)
Margaret Edson was born in Washington, DC in 1961.  Between earning degrees in history and literature, she worked on the cancer and AIDS inpatient unit of a major research hospital.  Wit was written in 1991, widely rejected, first produced in 1995, and awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1999.  The HBO production won the Emmy Award for Best Film in 2001.  Wit  has received hundreds of productions in dozens of languages and was presented on Broadway in 2012.  The script is used in classes ranging from AP English to medical ethics.

Ms. Edson has Read more

Associate Professor of Science and Technology, Cornell University

Birds, Biology, & Bioterrorism

Tuesday, October 9, 2012
Stern Center, Great Room, 7:00 p.m.

This lecture will discuss the public and policy controversies surrounding the 2012 publication of scientific data on artificially created, mutated H5N1 avian influenza viruses by two prominent virologists. Read more

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 Biology, Chemistry, Political Science and International Studies.

Biography (provided by the speaker)
Kathleen Vogel is an associate professor at Cornell University, with a joint appointment in the Department of Science and Technology Studies and the Judith Reppy Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies.  Vogel holds a Ph.D. in biological chemistry from Princeton University. Her research focuses on studying the social and technical dimensions of biological weapons threats, and how knowledge is produced in intelligence assessments on threats involving weapons of mass destruction. Prior to joining the Cornell faculty, Vogel was appointed as a William C. Foster Fellow in the U.S. Department of State’s Office of Proliferation Threat Reduction in the Bureau of Nonproliferation. Vogel has also spent time as Read more

Attorney and Constitutional Commentator

A Potemkin Village: The Supreme Court’s Health Care Decision & Faux Federalism

2012 Winfield C. Cook Constitution Address
Monday, October 8, 2012
Great Room, Stern Center, 7:00 p.m.

Mr. Rivkin will analyze the recent Supreme Court decision upholding the Affordable Care Act, in particular Chief Justice John Robert’s pivotal opinion, and explore the decision’s long-term political and policy implications, especially the Court’s apparent willingness to enforce structural federalism-based limitations on congressional powers only if the policy stakes are relatively low, thereby encouraging a system of faux-federalism.

This event is jointly sponsored by The Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues, Penn State Dickinson School of Law and School of International Affairs.

Biography (provided by the speaker)
David B. Rivkin, Jr., is a partner in the Washington office of Baker Hostetler LLP, and co-chairs the firm’s appellate and major motions practice. He is also a visiting fellow at the Center for the National Interest and a contributing editor of the National Review. He specializes in regulatory and litigation work, with a particular emphasis on constitutional, international law and public policy issues.

Mr. Rivkin has been involved in numerous high-profile cases. He has represented the 26 states that have Read more

Professor of Land Resources and Environmental Sciences, Montana State University

Earth’s Icy Biosphere

Thursday, October 4, 2012
Stern Center, Great Room, 7:00 p.m.

Priscu will demonstrate that the Earth’s icy systems, particularly the Antarctic ice sheet and related subglacial environments, hold a large and potentially active carbon pool, comprised of phylogenetically and metabolically diverse prokaryotic organisms. He will then relate these results to our search for life on other icy bodies in our solar system.

This event is sponsored by the Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues and co-sponsored by the Departments of Biology, Earth Sciences, Environmental Studies and Science and The Natural History Sustainability Mosaic.

Biography (provided by the speaker)
Professor Priscu received his M.S. degree from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas in 1978 where he studied how the ecosystems on the lower Colorado River were influenced by large dams. He then went on to obtain his Ph.D. from the University of California, Davis in 1982 for his work on high altitude lakes. Following his Ph.D. he joined a government laboratory in New Zealand where he was involved with research on the marine and freshwaters of New Zealand. It was during this period that he became interested in Antarctic Read more