** BREAKING ISSUE **

Tuesday, February 8, 2011
Stern Center, Great Room – 7:00 p.m.

Panelists

Edward Webb – professor of political science and international studies, Dickinson College
Andrew Wolff – professor of political science and international studies, Dickinson College
Larry Goodson – professor of Middle East studies, U.S. Army War College
W. Andrew Terrill – professor of national security affairs, Strategic Studies Institute, U.S. Army War College
Moderator – David Commins – professor of history and Middle East Studies, Dickinson College

The wave of Arab protests sweeping through Tunisia, Algeria, Egypt, Jordan and Yemen caught American policymakers by surprise, posing the dilemma of choosing between apparently reliable autocratic allies and democratic principles.

Biographies (provided by the panelists)
Ed Webb is assistant professor of political science & international studies and a founder of Dickinson’s Middle East studies program. Formerly a member of Britain’s Diplomatic Service, including serving at the British Embassy in Cairo in the 1990’s, he has a B.A. from Cambridge University and Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania. His teaching and research interests in the Middle East include secularism, education, authoritarianism, and media, including digital and social media. He is a member of the National Advisory Board of Read more

Professor of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics and Orthopaedic
Surgery, University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine

Gene Therapy: Current and Future Prospects

Thursday, December 2, 2010
Stern Center, Great Room, 7:00 p.m.

The presentation will provide an overview of gene therapy and how it is being used to treat different types of diseases, including non-lethal diseases and disorders. The clinical development of a gene therapy for rheumatoid arthritis will be used as an example of how gene therapy can be used to treat other non-lethal diseases.

About the Lecture
Gene therapy is the prevention or treatment of disease by intracellular delivery of nucleic acid. Although gene therapy was first developed to treat rare genetic diseases, it is now being applied to the treatment of acquired diseases, such as cancer and arthritis, and disorders such as wound and bone healing. The recent successes in a number of gene therapy trials treating a variety of human disorders, such as X-linked and ADA-SCID, a genetic form of retinal degeneration, some forms of cancer and even a severe neurodegenerative disease demonstrate that gene transfer in humans can provide therapeutic benefit in some patients. The successes of these technologies to treat human disease is leading to Read more

Professor of Geology, University of Bristol, U.K.

Volcanic Eruptions

Thursday, November 11, 2010 *
Stern Center, Great Room – 7:00 p.m.

  
Photos

The causes of volcanism and the dynamics of volcanic eruptions are explained with some implications for society.
Biography (provided by the speaker)
Sparks is research group leader of the Volcanology and Geological Fluid Dynamics Research Group in the Department of Earth Sciences at University of Bristol, United Kingdom. The Group currently consists of six members of academic staff, 8 post-doctoral researchers and 12 Ph.D. students. He is also the director of the newly established Bristol Environmental Risk Research Centre (BRISK), which seeks to nurture interdisciplinary research across the University in risk and uncertainty science. His research interests include how magma chambers form, how volcanoes erupt, kimberlite geology, the movement of sediment gravity flows, assessment of volcanic hazards, the development of new methods to quantify risk and uncertainty in the assessment of natural hazards, and risk perception in relation to natural hazards and disasters.

Sparks is a recipient of a European Research Council Advanced Grant of 2.5 million euros from January 2009 for 5 years. This project seeks to understand how magma chambers form. This research builds on his Read more

The New York Times, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist

Presidential Power: Barack Obama and the Bush-Cheney Legacy

Thursday, October 21, 2010
The Depot – 7:00 p.m.

How President Obama’s team has grappled with the executive powers they inherited from the Bush-Cheney administration presents a case study in the multi-generational, bipartisan trend toward escalating White House authority – and a warning sign for the future of American-style checks and balances.

Biography (provided by the speaker)
Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Charlie Savage is a Washington correspondent for the New York Times. A native of Fort Wayne, Indiana, Savage graduated summa cum laude from Harvard College in 1998 and later earned a master’s degree from Yale Law School while on a Knight Foundation journalism fellowship. He began his career as a local government and politics reporter for the Miami Herald, and covered national legal affairs for the Boston Globe from 2003 to 2008 before moving to the Times. Savage lives in Washington, D.C., with his wife, the journalist Luiza Ch. Savage of Maclean’s Magazine, and their son, Will.

Savage’s work on the Bush-Cheney administration’s efforts to expand presidential power has been widely recognized. His articles in the Boston Globe received the Read more

Stephen Bloom (R) and Fred Baldwin (D)

Tuesday, October 12, 2010
Anita Tuvin Schlechter Auditorium – 7:00 p.m.
The Republican and Democratic candidates running in the general November election for the 199th seat in the Pennsylvania state legislature will discuss the central issues confronting local voters and answer questions from the audience. The debate will be moderated by Prof. Andrew Rudalevige, political science department

Co-sponsored by the Greater Carlisle Area Chamber of Commerce, the League of Women Voters and the YWCA Carlisle.

Biographies
Stephen Bloom (Republican)
Bloom has served as a business lawyer and community leader for 25 years. He is a 1983 graduate of Penn State University, with a B.S. in agricultural economics and rural sociology, and a 1987 graduate of the Penn State Dickinson School of Law. His first book, The Believer’s Guide to Legal Issues, was published in 2008. He has also served terms as president of the Downtown Carlisle Association and treasurer of the Greater Carlisle Area Chamber of Commerce. In addition to his Carlisle law practice at the firm of Irwin & McKnight, P.C., he teaches economics and business law as an adjunct instructor of management & business at Messiah College. Visit www.stephenlbloom.com for Read more

Associate Professor of Gender and Women’s Studies, University of Arizona

The Politics of Resentment in Arizona

Thursday, September 23, 2010
Stern Center, Great Room – 7:00 p.m.

Professor Soto will analyze the treatment of Latinos (both documented and undocumented) in terms of Arizona’s “show-me-your-papers law” and the “ethnic studies law.”

This event is co-sponsored by the Office of Global Education.

Biography (provided by the speaker)
Sandra K. Soto is co-coordinator of the Chicana/Latina Studies Concentration, and affiliate faculty of English, Mexican American Studies, and Latin American Studies. She holds a Ph.D. in English from the University of Texas at Austin (with a focus in Ethnic and Third World Literature). Her interdisciplinary research agenda draws on Chicana/o and Latina/o literary and cultural studies, queer theory, and gender studies to offer innovative approaches to the overdetermined terrain of social relations, cultural representation, and knowledge production. Her book Reading Chican@ Like a Queer: The De-Mastery of Desire (University of Texas Press, 2010), replaces the race-based oppositional paradigm of Chicano literary studies with a less didactic, more flexible, framework geared for a queer analysis of the discursive relationship between racialization and sexuality. She is currently working on her second book tentatively titled Feeling Greater Read more

Monday, September 13, 2010
Anita Tuvin Schlechter Auditorium, 7:00 p.m.

Congressman Todd Platts (R), Ryan Sanders (D) and Joshua Monighan (I)

Moderated by Jim Hoefler, Political Science Department

The candidates running in the general November election for the 19th congressional seat will participate in a debate. The debate will be moderated by Prof. James Hoefler, political science department.

This event is co-sponsored by the Greater Carlisle Area Chamber of Commerce, and the League of Women Voters, and the YWCA Carlisle. Read more

Tuesday, September 7, 2010
Stern Center, Great Room, 7:00 p.m.

Panelists

Hussein Ibish, Ph.D., senior fellow, American Task Force on Palestine
Michelle Boorstein, religion reporter, The Washington Post
Erik Love, adjunct faculty member, sociology department
David Commins, professor, Middle East studies, Moderator

The panelists will discuss the nature and extent of American Islamophobia in the context of the ongoing controversy regarding whether an Islamic community center should be built near Ground Zero, focusing in part on the proper balance between religious freedom, the concerns and rights of the victims and survivors of the 9/11 attacks, and the needs of national security.

This event is co-sponsored by the Departments of Religion and Sociology, Middle East Studies and the Community Studies Center.

Biographies (provided by the panelists)
Michelle Boorstein , a native of suburban Boston, graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she studied history and journalism. She worked what was once the traditional print journalism path, starting at a small city newspaper before joining the Associated Press where she spent eight years in bureaus including Providence, Phoenix, New York City, Nairobi and Afghanistan. She was a general reporter and a foreign editor at the AP before coming Read more