Past Programs

John R. Lott Jr.

Author 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 University 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

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.

Biography (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

Designing 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.

Biography (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

Africa’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.

Biography (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

Associate Professor, Vanderbilt University

Japan 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)

Yoshikuni 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.

Human Dimensions of Natural Resource Extraction – Panel Discussion

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

Panelists:

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.

Biographies

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

Guns USA : A Teach-In

* 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

Peter Bechtel ’81 and Ruth Mkhwanazi-Bechtel

Peter Bechtel ’81, director, Andorinha Azul Ambiental, a company specializing in sustainable development
Ruth Mkhwanazi-Bechtel, program director, Vanderbilt University’s Friends in Global Health in Mozambique

Sustainable Development in Mozambique

Wednesday, February 27, 2013
Stern Center, Great Room, 7:00 p.m.

For many years, Mozambique has been near the bottom of the UN Human Development Index, but recent discoveries of gas, coal, and mineral deposits have created opportunities for rapid economic development. While the government places some importance on sustainability, there are ongoing problems related to transparency, top-down decision-making, urbanization and climate change.

The event 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 and the Departments of Africana Studies, International Studies, Earth Sciences and Economics.

This event 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.

Biographies

Peter Bechtel ’81, a graduate of Dickinson College, traveled to Africa with the US Peace Read more

Jordan Motzkin

CEO, Big Box Farms

Farming by Design: Cleantech Urban Agriculture

Tuesday, February 19, 2013
Stern Center, Great Room, 7:00 p.m.

Big Box Farms is a disruptive, revolutionary hybrid that combines the benefits of small-scale farming and large-scale agribusiness. Motzkin, the company’s co-founder, will discuss entrepreneurship, technology, and the future of sustainable urban agriculture.

This event is sponsored by The Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues and co-sponsored by the Department of International Business and Management. It is also part of The Clarke Forum’s Leadership in an Age of Uncertainty Series.

Biography (provided by the speaker)

Jordan Motzkin is the co-founder and CEO of Big Box Farms, a NYC-based start-up. The company was started at the College of the Atlantic Sustainable Venture Incubator and seed funded through the National Science Foundation and US Department of Agriculture. Big Box Farms developed a breakthrough technology for the production of salad greens resulting in fresher, safer, and nutritious produce. The company’s technology centers on producing its crops inside industrial warehouses that are located near food distribution facilities, allowing the company to bring sustainable local agriculture to densely populated areas.

Prior to founding Big Box Farms, Jordan Motzkin co-founded a partnership in the ESCO and energy Read more

Ta-Nehisi Coates

Senior Editor, The Atlantic

The 150th Anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation

Thursday, February 14, 2013
Stern Center, Great Room, 7:00 p.m.
Reception will follow

One hundred fifty years after the Emancipation Proclamation, acclaimed writer Ta-Nehisi Coates explores the Civil War and its legacy for contemporary American social and racial dynamics.

The event is sponsored by The Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues and co-sponsored by Student Senate, Office of Institutional and Diversity Initiatives, and the Departments of Africana Studies, English and Sociology.

Biography (provided by the speaker)

Ta-Nehisi Coates is one of the most original and perceptive voices in black America — and one of America’s best young writers, period.” Walter Mosley calls him, “The young James Joyce of the hip hop generation.” Eloquent, opinionated, and immediate, Coates writes about politics, race, black history and pop culture, often in the same stunning article. His critically hailed memoir, The Beautiful Struggle, is a tough and touching memoir of growing up in Baltimore during the age of crack. It’s also a vivid portrait of his father, a former Vietnam Vet and Black Panther who started his own underground black press, had seven children with four women, and dedicated his life to carrying Read more

Jay Michaelson

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

Michael Shellenberger

President, The Breakthrough Institute

Love Your Monsters: Why Technology Will Save the World

Tuesday, January 29, 2013 *
Stern Center, Great Room, 7:00 p.m.

Environmental expert Michael Shellenberger will describe why technology is the key to dealing with the world’s toughest environmental problems from climate change to rainforest destruction and species extinction.

The event is sponsored by The Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues 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 an Age of Uncertainty Series and the faculty seminar series titled, Living in a World of Limits.

Biography (provided by the speaker)

Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus are leading global thinkers on energy, climate, security, human development, and politics. Their 2007 book Break Through was called “prescient” by Time and “the most important thing to happen to environmentalism since Silent Spring” by Wired. Their 2004 essay, “The Death of Environmentalism,” was featured on the front page of the Sunday New York Times, sparked a national debate, and inspired a generation of young environmentalists. They also co-authored the 2011 book titled “Love Your Monsters: Postenvironmentalism and the Anthropocene.”

Over the years, the two Read more

Gianfranco Pasquino

Professor of Political Science, University of Bologna

U.S. Role & Image in the Eurocrisis

Thursday, November 29, 2012
Stern Center, Great Room, 7:00 p.m.

Pasquino will explore the nature and extent of the Eurocrisis and, from a European perspective, address the issue whether the U.S. has any useful role to play in resolving it.

This event is sponsored by The Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues and the Center for Global Study and Engagement.

Biography (provided by the speaker)
Gianfranco Pasquino (1942) graduated in Political Science from the University of Torino, supervisor Norberto Bobbio, and specialized in Comparative Politics at the University of Florence under the guidance of Giovanni Sartori. After teaching at the University of Bologna and Florence, in 1975 he became full professor of Political Science at the University of Bologna. He has also been teaching for more than thirty years at the Bologna Center of the Johns Hopkins University and for several at the Dickinson College Program in Bologna. In 1974-75 he was Lauro de Bosis Lecturer in the History of Italian Civilization at Harvard. In 1978-79 he was Fellow of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington D.C. He has been visiting Professor at the Read more

Ara Wilson

Associate Professor of Women’s Studies and Cultural Anthropology, Duke University

The Erotic Life of Globalization

Friday, November 30, 2012
Stern Center, Great Room, 4:30 p.m.

This talk provides a new direction for thinking about sexuality at the transnational level. It focuses on the infrastructures of globalization, highlights the effects of intensified transnational links in the post-Cold-War period, and argues that transformations of sovereignty, labor, knowledge, and space provide the conditions for key forms of sexuality.

This event is sponsored by the Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues and co-sponsored by Women’s and Gender Studies.

Biography (provided by the speaker)

Ara Wilson is an associate professor of women’s studies and cultural anthropology at Duke University, where she directed the program in the study of sexualities for six years. Trained as an anthropologist, her research combines political economy, culture theory, and post-colonial, queer, and feminist frameworks to understand the operations of sexuality and gender within global capitalist modernity. She has conducted long term research on Bangkok published in The Intimate Economies of Bangkok: Tomboys, Tycoons, and Avon Ladies in the Global City (UC Press 2004) and on transnational feminist and queer politics.

Video of the Program

Associate Professor of Political Science, George Washington University

The Arab Uprisings

Thursday, November 8, 2012
Stern Center, Great Room, 7:00 p.m.
Book Sale/Signing to Follow

Lynch sheds light on the unfinished Middle East revolutions that have so far brought down the governments of Egypt, Tunisia, and Libya, and offers a framework for understanding the deeper changes still emerging from a region thoroughly and forever altered.

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 Constance and Rose Ganoe Memorial Fund for Inspirational Teaching courtesy of Professor Russell Bova and the Department of Middle East Studies. It is also part of the Clarke Forum’s Leadership in an Age of Uncertainty Series.

Biography(provided by the speaker)

Marc Lynch (@abuaardvark) is associate professor of political science at George Washington University, where he is the director of the Institute for Middle East Studies and the Project on Middle East Political Science. He is also a nonresident senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security and edits the Middle East Channel for ForeignPolicy.com. He has written several books including The Arab Uprising: The Unfinished Read more

Dean Baker

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

Anne Fausto-Sterling

Professor of Biology and Gender Studies, Brown University

From Babies to Gender Identity

Thursday, November 15 (Rescheduled from October 30 due to inclement weather)
Anita Tuvin Schlechter Auditorium, 7:00 p.m.

How are we to understand the processes by which bodily differentiation, behavioral differentiation and gendered knowledge intertwine to produce male and female, masculine and feminine? Read more

This event is sponsored by the Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues and co-sponsored by the Women’s Center, Institutional and Diversity Initiatives, Women’s and Gender Studies and the Departments of Anthropology, Psychology, American Studies and Sociology.

Biography (provided by the speaker)

Dr. Anne Fausto-Sterling is a leading expert in biology and gender development and has achieved recognition for works that challenge entrenched scientific beliefs while engaging with the general public. Using a groundbreaking new approach to understanding gender differences, Dr. Anne Fausto-Sterling is shifting old assumptions about how humans develop particular traits. Dynamic systems theory permits one to understand how cultural difference becomes bodily difference. By applying a dynamic systems approach to the study of human development, Dr. Fausto-Sterling’s work exposes the flawed premise of the nature versus nurture debate.

Radio Interview for WDCV, Dickinson College

Panel Discussion: 2012 Presidential Election: What Students Want to Know

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

H. Brian Holland

Associate Professor of Law, Texas Wesleyan School of Law

Hope, Hitler, or Heresy? The Visual Language of a Presidential Campaign

Tuesday, October 23, 2012
Depot, 7:00 p.m.

Remix politics is here. As divergent audiences engage and manipulate the carefully crafted images of presidential campaigns, competing symbols evidence a struggle for power over social convention and meaning. 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 American Studies and Political Science.

Biography (provided by the speaker)
Professor H. Brian Holland joined the faculty of Texas Wesleyan School of Law in 2009. Prior to his arrival, Professor Holland was a Visiting Associate Professor at Penn State University’s Dickinson School of Law.

Professor Holland received a LL.M., with honors, from Columbia University School of Law; a J.D., summa cum laude, from American University’s Washington College of Law, and a B.A. from Tufts University. Professor Holland is currently pursuing his Ph.D. studies in digital media and mass communications at Penn State University.

Prior to joining the academy, Professor Holland practiced law in New York and Washington, D.C., specializing in appellate work before Read more

Lieutenant General James M. Dubik – “General Omar N. Bradley Lecture”

Leadership Under Pressure

Monday, October 22, 2012
Katz Hall, Penn State Dickinson School of Law, 7:00 p.m.
Link to Live Webcast

General Dubik, The General Omar N. Bradley Chair in Strategic Leadership, will discuss the strategic mistakes made in Iraq; the myths that are partly responsible for these mistakes; the transformation that turned Iraq from a strategic failure to a strategic opportunity; and how the U.S. should incorporate its experience in Iraq in addressing current ongoing events in the Middle East and North Africa.

This event is jointly sponsored by Dickinson College, Penn State University Dickinson School of Law and School of International Affairs, and the U.S. Army War College. It is also part of the Clarke Forum’s Leadership in an Age of Uncertainty Series.

The Omar Bradley Chair is a joint initiative among the United States Army War College, Dickinson College and Penn State University Dickinson School of Law and School of International Affairs. Its objective is to advance the study of strategic leadership and enhance civilian-military dialogue by offering distinguished individuals the opportunity to contribute to the educational and research activities of the partner institutions. Previous chair-holders include former director of national intelligence and retired United States Navy Read more