Past Programs

Thom Shanker and Eric Schmitt

Counterstrike PosterPentagon Correspondents, The New York Times and Co-authors of Counterstrike

Counterstrike

Wednesday, March 21, 2012
Stern Center, Great Room, 7:00 p.m.
A book signing will follow.

Schmitt and Shanker explore the Pentagon’s secretive and revolutionary new strategy to fight the war on terrorism. This new strategy will have game-changing effects in the Middle East and in the United States.

This event is jointly sponsored by The Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues, Penn State Dickinson School of Law, the School of International Affairs and Betty R. ’58 and Dan Churchill.

Biographies (provided by the speakers)
Eric SchmittEric Schmitt is a senior writer for The New York Times who covers domestic and internationalism terrorism issues. For nearly 20 years, he has covered military and national security affairs for the newspaper. Since the Sept. 11 attacks, he has made ten reporting trips to Iraq and five trips to Afghanistan to cover American military operations there. In the past year, he has also reported on counter-terrorism operations in Pakistan, Mali and Southeast Asia.

Previously, Mr. Schmitt reported on demographic and national immigration issues for The Times and covered Congress for five years. During that time, he one of newspaper’s main reporters assigned to the 2000 Read more

Michael Granoff

Granoff Final PosterHead of Oil Independence Policies, Better Place

The End of the Oil Monopoly

Tuesday, March 6, 2012
Anita Tuvin Schlechter Auditorium, 6:30 p.m.

For 100 years, virtually all of global transport has been the domain of a single, depleting, polluting commodity to the detriment of the global economy, security and environment. But the trend is beginning to change in 2012 as the convergence of technology and creative business modeling has led to the creation of a less expensive and more convenient alternative to gasoline-driven automobiles. Pioneered in Israel, Denmark and Australia, this radical new approach has the potential to turn two giant industries upside down.

This event is sponsored by The Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues and The Milton B. Asbell Center for Jewish Life and is part of The Clarke Forum’s Leadership in an Age of Uncertainty Series.

Mike Granoff lower resBiography (provided by the speaker)
Michael Granoff has been head of oil independence policies for Better Place since its founding in 2007. In that capacity, he helps stakeholders of all types calibrate policies consistent with the Better Place approach to ending the corrosive effect of oil dependence on economy, environment and security. Stakeholders with which Granoff works include governments on every Read more

Heidi Hartmann

hartman posterPresident, Institute for Women’s Policy Research

Lifting the Floor and Achieving Gender Equality

Tuesday, February 28, 2012 *
Anita Tuvin Schlechter Auditorium, 7:00 p.m

Trends in women’s labor force participation, the gender wage gap, and job segregation by sex indicate that women’s progress has hit a plateau after improvement for several decades. Hartmann will discuss the policies that are needed to lift the floor of the labor market of women, resolve troubling work/family issues, and achieve gender equality between women and men.

The event is co-sponsored by The Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues, the Churchill Fund, the Departments of Economics, Sociology, International Business and Management and the Women’s Center.

* This program is part of the Clarke Forum’s Leadership in an Age of Uncertainty Series.

HHBiography (provided by the speaker)
Heidi Hartmann is the president of the Washington-based Institute for Women’s Policy Research (IWPR), a scientific research organization that she formed in 1987 to meet the need for women-centered, policy-oriented research. She is an economist with a B.A. from Swarthmore College and M. Phil and Ph.D. degrees from Yale University, all in economics. Dr. Hartmann is also a research professor at The George Washington University.

Dr. Hartmann has published numerous Read more

Charles W. Cole Jr. – “Benjamin Rush Award Lecturer”

cole finalFormer President and CEO, First Maryland Bankcorp and The National Bank of Maryland

Light at the End of the Tunnel?

Tuesday, February 21, 2012  **
Stern Center, Great Room, 7:00 p.m.

Cole will analyze and discuss the state of the U.S. economy from a global perspective, with a special focus on both the strengths and weaknesses of current financial markets, including how they might affect future job opportunities of college graduates. Cole will also have some suggestions regarding the shaping of an investment portfolio.

This program is part of the The Clarke Forum’s Leadership in an Age of Uncertainty Series.

Cole PicBiography (provided by the speaker)
Charles W. Cole Jr., is a retired Baltimore Banker and Community leader. He was born in Baltimore, son of a lawyer.  Cole is a graduate of Gilman School and Washington and Lee University with a degree in economics and earned his LL.B. from the University of Maryland School of Law.

Mr. Cole spent 34 years with First Maryland Bankcorp and the First National Bank of Maryland. He served as President (1977-1994) and Chief Executive Officer (1984-1994). He was also Chief Administrative Officer and a Director of First Maryland Bankcorp. During the 10 years after Mr. Read more

Elyse Fenton – “Belfer Creative Writing Lectureship”

Fenton Poster IDAward-Winning Author

Clamor: The Poetics of Wartime

Thursday, February 16, 2012
Stern Center, Great Room, 7:00 p.m.
A book signing will follow.

Fenton will read from her poetry collection, Clamor, which focuses on love, loneliness and grief in the context of the Iraq War, and discuss how her investigation of the language of wartime found its poetic form.

The event is co-sponsored by the Belfer Creative Writing Lectureship, The Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues and the Department of English.

elyse fenton author photoBiography (provided by speaker)
Elyse Fenton is the author of the poetry collection, Clamor, which won the 2010 University of Wales Dylan Thomas Prize and Cleveland State University Press’s First Book Award. She has published poetry and nonfiction in The New York Times, Best New Poets, The Massachusetts Review and Pleiades, and has been featured on NPR’s All Things Considered. She received a BA from Reed College and an MFA from the University of Oregon and has worked in the woods, on farms and in schools in the Pacific Northwest, New Hampshire, Mongolia and Texas.

Related Links
Poetry Society of America

The Belfer Creative Writing Lectureship
The Belfer Creative Writing Lectureship was established in 2001 Read more

Panel Discussion: Bird Flu Dilemmas: Balancing Science, Security, & Free Speech

Avian Flu PosterWednesday, February 15, 2012
Anita Tuvin Schlechter Auditorium, 7:00 p.m.

Panelists

Andrew Pekosz, associate professor, W. Harry Feinstone Department of Molecular Microbiology and Immunology, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
Thomas Place, professor of law, Penn State Dickinson School of Law
Anthony Williams, visiting professor of political science and security studies, Dickinson College
David Kushner, associate professor of biology, Dickinson College, moderator

In December 2011 the US government asked scientists who had recently created a possibly dangerous airborne strain of H5N1 (avian influenza) not to publish all the genetic details of their research. The government’s request highlights the tensions that can arise between scientific inquiry, security, and freedom of speech.

Event is sponsored by The Clarke Forum Contemporary Issues.

Click here for campus-only video Read more

Garret Kramer

Author and Founder of Inner Sports, LLC.

CreatedbyJessicaKarlberg'Stillpower: The Inner Source of Excellence

Thursday, February 9, 2012
Stern Center, Great Room, 7:00 p.m
A book signing will follow.

Garret Kramer, the founder of Inner Sports and the author of Stillpower: The Inner Source of Athletic Excellence, will talk about the states of mind that lead to success—on and off the playing field.  The quality of our thoughts and moods determine our experience; our experience does not determine our moods. He will describe his revolutionarily simple approach to performance through examples and antidotes from his work with professional athletes. Listeners are sure to gain a heightened level of awareness and understanding. They will learn that stillpower, not willpower, is the true source of achievement.

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

gkramer IMG hi resBiography (provided by the speaker)
Garret Kramer is the founder and managing partner of Inner Sports, LLC. He has provided consulting and/or crisis management services to hundreds of athletes and coaches; from well known professionals, Olympians, and teams, to high school and collegiate players across a multitude of sports. A former collegiate ice hockey player, Kramer is credited with bringing the principles of Mind, Consciousness, Read more

Ronald Deibert

Professor of Political Science and Director of the Canada Centre for Global Security Studies and the Citizen Lab at the Munk School of Global Affairs, University of TorontoDeibert Poster

A Perfect Storm in Cyberspace

Wednesday, February 1, 2012
Stern Center, Great Room, 7:00 p.m.

What was once a domain characterized by openness and the free exchange of ideas, cyberspace is being re-shaped by technological changes, a growing underworld of cyber crime, a burgeoning cyber security industrial complex that feeds a cyber arms race, and an increasingly intense geopolitical contest over the domain itself.

Together, these driving forces are creating a kind of “perfect storm” in cyberspace that threats to subvert it entirely either through over-reaction, the imposition of heavy-handed controls and through partition or cantoning.

To restore cyberspace as an open global commons will require a multi-layered strategy, from the local to the global.

Drawing from the research and other activities of the Citizen Lab at the Munk School of Global Affairs, University of Toronto — including the OpenNet Initiative and the Information Warfare Monitor — Ron Deibert discusses the “Coming Perfect Storm in Cyberspace” and what is to be done to prepare for it.

The event is jointly sponsored by Read more

Harold Koh

Chief Legal Counsel for the U.S. Department of State

A Smart Power Approach to International Law and National Security

Thursday, January 26, 2012
Apfelbaum Auditorium, Lewis Katz Hall, Penn State Law, Carlisle, 5:00 p.m.

Koh, a leading expert on public and private international law, national security and human rights, will discuss the threats, responses and accountability mechanisms that will define the future national security configuration.

The event is jointly sponsored by The Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues at Dickinson College and the Penn State Dickinson School of Law. Link to Penn State Dickinson School of Law for additional information. This program is also supported by Betty R. ’58 and Dan Churchill.

Harold Koh WEBBiography (from Yale Law School)
Harold Hongju Koh is the Martin R. Flug ’55 Professor of International Law (on leave, 2011-2012). On June 25, 2009, the U.S. Senate confirmed Professor Koh as Legal Adviser to the United States Department of State.

He began teaching at Yale Law School in 1985 and served from 2004 until 2009 as its fifteenth Dean. From 1998 to 2001, he served as U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights and Labor, and previously had served on the Secretary of State’s Read more

Being a Good Samaritan: Lessons of Penn State

Penn State PosterPanel Discussion

Thursday, December 1, 2011
Stern Center, Great Room, 7:00 p.m.

Panelists

David Freed, Cumberland County district attorney (replacing Frank Fina)
Thomas Nadelhoffer, assistant professor of philosophy, Dickinson
Regina Sweeney, associate professor of history, Dickinson
Andrew Guy ’12, student supervisor, The Clarke Forum, Dickinson

This panel discussion will address the moral and legal obligations we have to stop wrongful conduct when we encounter it and/or to report it to public authorities. The panel will focus in part on how these obligations should be applied to college and university campuses.

Sponsored by The Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues. Read more

Mitchell Sogin

Sogin Poster FinalSenior Scientist and Director, Josephine Bay Paul Center, Marine Biological Laboratory

The Microbial Sea: Single-Cell Organisms Dominate

Tuesday, November 29, 2011
Stern Center, Great Room, 7:00 p.m.

The Census of Marine Microbes, a collaboration between 50 research laboratories working in study sites distributed throughout the world’s oceans, has revealed spectacular levels of single cell microbial diversity, including some very uncommon groups of microbes that constitute the “rare biosphere”.

The event is sponsored by The Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues and the Departments of Biology and Chemistry

soginBiography (provided by the speaker)
Dr. Sogin received his B.S. in Chemistry and Microbiology from the University of Illinois in 1967 and a Ph.D. in Microbiology and Molecular Biology in 1972 with Carl Woese. He joined Norman Pace’s group to work on rRNA processing at the National Jewish Center in Denver, Colorado. In 1976 he joined the faculty of National Jewish Hospital and attained the rank of Associate Professor in the Microbiology Department of the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center. Dr. Sogin was also a Miller Professor at the University of California at Berkeley. He moved to the Marine Biological Laboratory in 1989 after establishing the summer Workshop in Molecular Evolution. His laboratory Read more

Heather Gautney

Occupy PosterAssistant Professor of Sociology, Fordham University, Lincoln Center

**Breaking Issue**

The Occupy Movement

Monday, November 21, 2011
Stern Center Great Room, 7:00 p.m.

The event is sponsored by The Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues and the Departments of Anthropology, American Studies, Sociology and Economics.

On September 17th of this year, a relatively small group of protesters calling themselves “Occupy Wall Street” squatted a small park in Manhattan’s financial district to protest the role of Wall Street institutions in precipitating economic recession and alarming increases in social inequality. Within weeks, the movement has grown into a national phenomenon, spurring “Occupy” communities in nearly every major U.S. city, and entering issues of corruption and social welfare into mainstream political discourse.

Occupy Wall Street describes itself as a leaderless, post-political movement of the 99 Percent. The movement consists of local Occupys that operate as a kind of network: they organize rallies, demonstrations, and squatter communities in their immediate locales, but remain linked through a common antipathy to corporate power and interest in addressing issues of social inequality in a radically democratic way. Each Occupy employs a local decision-making body, or General Assembly, that operates by way of a unique consensus process, but Read more

Paul B. Olsen

Natural Selection War FinalColonel, U.S. Army

Natural Selection & War

Thursday, November 17, 2011
Stern Center, Great Room, 7:00 p.m.

Today’s advances in evolutionary biology are unifying competing theories of natural selection and serve as a timely call for a similar unification of competing theories of war. This lecture explores the relationship between war and natural selection by first examining war’s biological origins, and then placing them within a multidisciplinary framework called the Nature of War Theory.

This theory, as its name implies, reconciles natural selection and war to reveal a shared overarching and paradoxical duality, displaying that war is characterized by the simultaneous violent interplay of evolutionary individual-level and group-level adaptations, manifested by individualist and altruistic wars, respectively, and highlighted by trends and insights recognizable to both students of war and evolutionary biology.

This event is sponsored by The Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues and co-sponsored by the Departments of Biology and Psychology.

Paul OlsenBiography (provided by the speaker)
Colonel Olsen was commissioned in the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers upon graduation from the University of Wisconsin where he earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Geography. He has held leadership positions in Army engineer units in Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and Read more

Arab Spring

Arab Spring FINAL POSTERTuesday, November 15, 2011
Stern Center, Great Room, 7:00 p.m.

Protest movements continue to spread in the Arab world, taking different shape according to local political structures and social dynamics and posing knotty challenges to U.S. policymakers to keep up with the breakneck speed of developments.

Panelists

P.J. Crowley – Omar N. Bradley Joint Chair in Strategic Leadership
Ed Webb -Professor of political science and international studies, Dickinson College
Sherifa Zuhur – Director of the Institute of Middle Eastern, Islamic, and Strategic Studies
David Commins (moderator) – Professor of history and Middle East studies, Dickinson College

Biographies
David Commins is a professor of history and the Benjamin Rush Distinguished Chair in Liberal Arts and Sciences at Dickinson College. He teaches courses in the Middle East studies program and the history department. His publications include Islamic Reform: Politics and Social Change in Late Ottoman Syria (Oxford University Press, 1990), Historical Dictionary of Syria (Scarecrow Press, 1995, revised edition 2004), and The Wahhabi Mission and Saudi Arabia (IB Tauris, 2006).

P.J Crowley, former United States assistant Secretary of State for public affairs, is the 2011-2012 recipient of the General Omar N. Bradley Chair in Strategic Leadership. While in residence, Crowley conducts Read more

Justice Unfunded – Justice Undone: Assuring Sustainable Funding for Courts

Justice Unfunded PosterThursday, November 10, 2011

Penn State Dickinson School of Law
Lewis Katz Hall, Carlisle
Simulcast to Lewis Katz Building, University Park
2:00 p.m.

A distinguished list of speakers and panelists will discuss the consequences of an unfunded judiciary on democracy — whether in Pennsylvania or the other 49 states at both the state and federal levels. In addition, the forum will explore how Pennsylvania’s judiciary, as is true in other states, is joining with the other branches to be part of the solution, rather than a problem, in addressing the ongoing budget shortfalls.

The panel will be moderated by Dick Thornburgh, former Pennsylvania Governor and U.S. Attorney General, and will include Mary McQueen, President, National Center for State Courts, David Quam, Director Federal Relations, National Governors Association, The Honorable Dominic Pileggi, Pennsylvania Senate Majority Leader, The Honorable Debra Todd, Pennsylvania Supreme Court, and The Honorable Charles Zogby, Budget Secretary to Governor Tom Corbett.

Distinguished guests in attendance will include Chief Justice of Pennsylvania Ronald D. Castille, U.S. District Court Judge John E. Jones III, American Bar Association President William Robinson III, and Pennsylvania Bar Association President Matthew Crème.

The event Read more

Michael Klare

klareposterFive College professor of Peace and World Security Studies

The Great Struggle Over Energy

Wednesday, November 9, 2011
Stern Center, Great Room, 7:00 p.m.

This lecture will explain how the world’s existing energy system, based on oil and other fossil fuels, will have to be replaced by a new one over the next 30 years or so due to resource scarcity and climate change. But as no known alternative can replace fossil fuels at the present time, there will be an intense struggle over the various contenders for this role – a struggle that will have immense consequences for the major energy firms, the major energy producers and consumers, and all human beings.

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

michael klareBiography (provided by the speaker)
Michael T. Klare is the Five College Professor of Peace and World Security Studies, a joint appointment at Amherst, Hampshire, Mount Holyoke, and Smith Colleges and the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. Professor Klare has written widely on world security affairs, the arms trade, and global resource politics. His most recent books include Resource Wars (2001), Blood Read more

Bernardino León Gross

E.U. Special Representative (EUSR) for the Southern Mediterranean

Arab Euro PosterArab Spring: A European Perspective

Wednesday, November 9, 2011
Stern Center, Great Room – 12:30 p.m.

Protest movements and uprisings continue to spread in the Arab world, taking different shape according to local political structures and social dynamics. The trend poses knotty challenges to European Union policy makers as they try to keep up with the breakneck speed of developments.

This event is sponsored by The Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues and the Department of Spanish and Portuguese.

Biography (provided by the speaker)
Bernardino Leon is the European Union Special Representative (EUSR) for the Southern Mediterranean.

He was born in Malaga, where he obtained a degree in Law focusing his studies in public international law. He got a diploma in international studies from the CEI, University of Barcelona. He became a Spanish diplomat in 1989. He was first posted to Liberia in 1990-1991, where the devastating civil war focused his professional interest in understanding the underpinning causes of ethnic violence.

Since then, his political and diplomatic career has been mainly devoted to the Arab world. In 1991, he was part of a short mission to Libya in the context of establishing the Read more

George Whitesides -“Joseph Priestley Award Lecturer”

Whitesides PosterWoodford L. and Ann A. Flowers University Professor, Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology,
Harvard University

Low Cost Diagnostics

Tuesday, November 8, 2011
Anita Tuvin Schlechter Auditorium, 7:00 p.m.

* Professor Whitesides will sign copies of his book
No Small Matter: Science on the Nanoscale
Monday, November 7 at 4:00 p.m. in the Waidner-Spahr Library’s Biblio Café.

Biography (provided by the speaker)
George M. Whitesides has worked in an unusually broad range of areas, including nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy, organometallic chemiWhitesidesstry, applied enzymology, self-assembly, soft lithography, microfluidics, organic surface science, and nanotechnology. His current research interests include physical and organic chemistry, materials science, biophysics, complexity and simplicity, tools for biology, technology for developing economies, and the origin of life. His laboratory at Harvard University is noted for its diversity, creativity, and productivity, and for the quality of the students it produces.

He received an A.B. degree from Harvard University and a Ph.D. from the California Institute of Technology under John D. Roberts. He was a member of the faculty of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology from 1963 to 1982. He joined the Department of Chemistry at Harvard in 1982 and served as department chairman from 1986 to 1989. Read more

Dennis Blair

Former United States Director of National Intelligence, Commander in Chief of U.S. Pacific Command, and Retired United States Navy Admiral

The Challenges of China

dennis blair poster

Thursday, November 3, 2011
Stern Center, Great Room, 7:00 p.m.

* This event is part of The Clarke Forum’s series on Leadership in an Age
of Uncertainty.

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

Lecture Description (provided by the speaker)
To outsiders, China seems to be on a roll these days. The 2008 Olympics were an impressive coming-out party; it weathered the 2007-2008 world economic crisis better than most other countries, and has resumed double-digit economic growth; it has shown the world an advanced stealth aircraft, is about to launch an aircraft carrier, and has sent ships to join the international anti-piracy patrol in the Indian Ocean. Yet in many ways China does not act like a powerful, confident country. It squabbles with its neighbors to the East and South; it is in the midst of a mostly secret succession process; Chinese search engines will not accept “jasmine”; labor unrest and inflation are growing. Admiral Blair will describe Read more

“3/11”: Japan’s Disaster (Part 2)

Japan Disaster PosterTuesday, November 1, 2011
Stern Center, Great Room, 7:00 p.m.

Panelists

Saiko Miyamoto, Student, U.S. Army War College
Ben Edwards, Earth Sciences, Dickinson College
John Luetzelschwab, Physics and Astronomy (Ret.), Dickinson College
Jeff Niemitz (moderator), Earth Sciences, Dickinson College

During the fall 2011 semester, the Clarke Forum will sponsor two panel discussions on Japan’s “3/11” that will examine the powerful Tohoku earthquake, the ensuing tsunami, and the ongoing nuclear situation. This panel will examine the disasters from a scientific perspective.

This event is jointly sponsored by The Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues and Penn State University Dickinson School of Law and School of International Affairs and co-sponsored by the Department of East Asian Studies.

Biographies of the Panelists

Saiko Miyamoto is a student at the U.S. Army War College.  She holds a bachelor of arts degree in English literature from Meiji Gakuin University, Tokyo; a master of arts degree in translation and interpretation for Japanese and English from Monterey Institute of International Studies, Monterey, CA; and a master of business administration from University of Maryland University College, Adelphi, MD.  Most recently, she was the assistant deputy chief of staff for Host Nation Acitivies (G5), U.S. Army, Read more