Anita Tuvin Schlechter Auditorium, 7 p.m.

Livestream Link

Joseph Priestley Award Celebration Lecture

Positive Psychology & Beyond

Martin E.P. Seligman,  Zellerbach Family Professor of Psychology and
Director of the Positive Psychology Center at the University of Pennsylvania

Agency is a psychological state that has changed the course of history and it is the immediate cause of progress and innovation. In the absence of this mindset, humanity stagnates.

Agency is the belief that I can influence the world, made up of three components: efficacy, optimism, and imagination. Efficacy is the expectation that I can achieve a specific goal now. Optimism is how long into the future I believe I can achieve that goal. Imagination is the range of goals that I believe I can achieve. Efficacy causes trying hard; optimism causes persistence, and imagination causes innovation. These are the mechanisms by which Agency causes progress.

Progress over the sweep of human history has been viewed through the lens of economics, ecology, theology, ‘great man’ biography, and ‘social force’ history, but almost never, until this book, through the lens of psychology.

Over the last 14000 years there have been several psychological epochs in which agency changes radically to keep pace with new Read more

Anita Tuvin Schlechter Auditorium, 7 p.m.

Livestream Link

Exploring the Strange and Ancient Biology of the Brain Hidden in Our Guts

Subhash Kulkarni, Scientist at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center at Harvard Medical School

The Enteric Nervous System (ENS) is the second largest collection of neurons and glial cells outside of the brain. It is estimated to contain half a billion neurons and a couple of billion glial cells, which makes it a larger nervous system than the spinal cord. Located entirely within the lining of the gastrointestinal tract, it regulates not only important gut functions – including digestion, absorption, motility of the gut, immunity of the gut, but it also plays a central role in regulation of higher order functions such as satiety and behavior. Given the pivotal nature of the functions it regulates, the ENS in some or the other form has existed in animals long before the need to have a central nervous system, which would regulate higher executive functions, evolved. However, despite playing such a key role in an animal’s ability to survive, we know little about how it develops, how it matures, how it maintains itself in a constantly moving organ full of acids, Read more

Anita Tuvin Schlechter Auditorium, 7 p.m.

Livestream Link 

Race and the Origins of Modern Policing

Matthew Guariglia ’12, Senior Policy Analyst at Electronic Frontier Foundation

This talk will show how the modern police department, rather than originating as a “colorblind” institution, was built to explicitly consider race, ethnicity, gender, and sexuality when enforcing laws and repressing individuals and communities. From searching for formerly enslaved African Americans, managing imagined Irish Catholic criminality, surveilling Jewish, Italian, and Chinese communities—police departments look and act the way they do because their early encounters with race and ethnicity led to periods of experimentation and growth. Central to the story of policing in the United States are the tactics and technologies cultivated by colonialism as oppressive tactics traveled home from the U.S. occupation of the Philippines, Cuba, and Puerto Rico as well as from British and French imperialism in African and Asia. This history reveals the deep-rooted fault lines in American policing and the thinking that produced them in the first place. A book sale and signing will follow the presentation.

This program is sponsored by the Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues and co-sponsored by the Division of Diversity, Equity & Inclusion, the departments of American Read more

(Event rescheduled from 11/14/23)

Anita Tuvin Schlechter Auditorium, 7 p.m.

This event is in-person only. It will not be livestreamed or recorded.

Morgan Lecture

Savage States: Settler Governance in an Age of Sorrow

Audra Simpson, Columbia University

How is the past imagined to be settled? What are the conditions that make for this imagining, this fantasy or rather, demand of a new beginning? In this lecture, Professor Audra Simpson will consider the making of ‘new time’ in light of histories of wrongdoing – residential and boarding schools and the dispossession that is tied to this in recent history – 1990 to the near present in Canada. This is a time of apology, and a time in which Native people and their claims to territory are whittled to the status of claimant in time with the fantasy of their disappearance from a modern and critical present. How has settler governance adjusted itself in line with global trends and rights paradigms away from overt violence to softer and kinder, caring modes of governance? This lecture will ask not only in what world we imagine time to stop, but will also take up the ways in which those that survived the time stoppage Read more

Anita Tuvin Schlechter Auditorium, 7 p.m.

Bruce R. Andrews Lecture

Unseen Politics: Hidden Impact of Entertainment Media in Unequal America

Eunji Kim, Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at Columbia University

There is a simple and uncomfortable truth about the nation still recovering from the scars of a reality TV presidency: given the dazzling array of media choices, Americans are not watching news. If our media diet primarily consists of entertainment media, how does it shape politics? In this hyper-politicized world full of partisan news media, it might seem implausible that something as frivolous as entertainment media could possibly affect people’s political attitudes. Defying such conventional wisdom, Kim theorizes and describes the unique power of entertainment media in shaping political attitudes and behaviors. In particular, this talk introduces a puzzle in American politics that can be addressed by bringing entertainment media to the table. In this age of intensifying income inequality, the concerns about the fading American Dream from politicians on both sides of the partisan aisle are omnipresent. Nevertheless, many Americans continue to view the United States as the land of opportunity. Why do beliefs in economic mobility persist despite the raft of empirical evidence to Read more

Linguistic Justice: Black Language, Literacy, Identity, and Pedagogy

April Baker-Bell,  Associate Professor of Language, Culture, and Justice in Education at the University of Michigan in the Marsal Family School of Education

In this talk, Dr. April Baker-Bell will discuss how anti-Black linguistic racism and white linguistic supremacy get normalized in teacher attitudes, curriculum and instruction, pedagogical approaches, disciplinary discourses, and research, and she will discuss the impact these decisions have on Black students’ language education and their linguistic, racial, and intellectual identities. Dr. Baker-Bell will introduce a new way to forward through Antiracist Black Language Pedagogy, a pedagogical approach that intentionally and unapologetically places Black Language at the center to critically interrogate white linguistic hegemony and anti-Black linguistic racism. A book sale and signing will follow the presentation.

This event is sponsored by the Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues and co-sponsored by the Center for Teaching, Learning and Scholarship (CTLS), the Faculty Success Center, and the departments of English and sociology.

Topic overview written by Ella Layton ’26

Biography (provided by the speaker)
Dr. April Baker-Bell  is an award-winning transdisciplinary teacher-researcher-activist and associate professor of Language, Culture, and Justice in Education at the University of Michigan in the Marsal Family Read more

Carlisle Theatre, 40 W. High Street, 7 p.m.

Film Screening of Retrograde

Baktash Ahadi, Filmmaker
Chris Mason, U.S. Army War College
Farida Mohammadi, Afghan Female Tactical Platoon
Asem Shukoori, Film Subject

Retrograde captures the final nine months of America’s 20-year war in Afghanistan from multiple perspectives: one of the last U.S. Special Forces units deployed there, a young Afghan general and his corps fighting to defend their homeland against all odds, and the civilians desperately attempting to flee as the country collapses and the Taliban take over. From rarely seen operational control rooms to the frontlines of battle to the chaotic Kabul airport during the final U.S. withdrawal, this Oscar-Shortlisted film offers a cinematic and historic window onto the end of America’s longest war, and the costs endured for those most intimately involved. The screening will be followed by a Q&A session with the panelists.

The film showing is sponsored by the Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues and the Carlisle Theatre.

Topic overview written by Ella Layton ’26, Clarke Forum Student Project Manager

Biographies (provided by the speakers).

Baktash Ahadi is an award-winning documentary filmmaker, storyteller, and executive leadership coach. He was born in Kabul in 1981, and his Read more

Stern Center, Great Room, 7 p.m.

Livestream link 

The Bechtel Lecture

Know-Do Gap: A Fallacy for Scale-Up & Sustainability 

Malabika Sarker, Brown University

Implementation Research (IR) is a systematic process of causal analysis, bottlenecks of implementation identification, and optimum strategy selection in a particular context. IR refers to understanding know-do gaps; what, why, and how an intervention works in real-world settings and testing approaches to improve them, introduce potential solutions to a system, or promote their large-scale use and sustainability. Bridging the know-do gap is crucial for the successful implementation of any public health intervention especially in pertinent to scalability and sustainability. This presentation will showcase the fallacy in addressing the know-do gap as a simple linear two-dimensional strategy. In addition, it will illustrate with examples from Sarker’s research in Sub-Saharan Africa and Bangladesh, that the know-do gap is a continuum, not a binary theme.

This program is sponsored by the Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues and co-sponsored by the Bechtel Lectureship Fund and the Department of International Studies.

Biography (provided by the speaker)

Dr. Malabika Sarker is a Professor of the Practice of Behavioral and Social Sciences at Brown School of Public Health, Brown University.  Professor Sarker is an Read more

Anita Tuvin Schlechter Auditorium, 7 p.m.

Livestream Link

In Celebration of 150 Years of The Dickinsonian

A Conversation on Corrections in Ink

Keri Blakinger, Los Angeles Times
Renée Ann Cramer, Dickinson College

In this program, Blakinger will discuss her memoir which traces her journey from competitive figure skating, to struggles with an eating disorder and addiction, to eventually a two-year sentence in New York’s prison system. Blakinger will reflect on her experiences and how they have influenced her work as an investigative reporter covering mass incarceration. The discussion will be facilitated by Dickinson’s Provost Renée Ann Cramer. A book sale and signing will follow the presentation.

This program is sponsored by the Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues and The Dickinsonian and co-sponsored by the Department of Sociology.

Topic overview written by Isa Mester ’26, Clarke Forum Student Project Manager

Biographies (provided by the speakers)

Keri Blakinger is a staff reporter at the Los Angeles Times, where she covers the sheriff’s department and jails. Previously, she was an investigative reporter at The Marshall Project where she focused on incarceration and prior to that she covered the death penalty and prisons for the Houston Chronicle. She’s been featured on PBS News Read more

Stern Center, Great Room, 7 p.m.

Livestream Link

Bodega Poetics: Classics and Caribbean Diaspora

Dan-el Padilla Peralta,  Associate Professor of Classics at Princeton University

Beginning with a reflection on the history of the word “bodega,” this lecture will look at the significance of ancient Greece and Rome to modern Caribbean communities. The focus will be on thinking through the shifting relationship of “classics” to Afro-Caribbean diasporas, and on several forms of interpretation useful for charting that relationship: historical, poetic, autobiographical. A book sale and signing will follow the presentation.

This program is sponsored by the Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues and co-sponsored by the First-Year Seminar Program and the departments of classical studies, Spanish & Portuguese studies, Africana studies, educational studies and the Latin American, Latinx & Caribbean studies program.

Topic overview written by Bella Lapp ’26, Clarke Forum Student Project Manager

Biography (provided by the speaker)

Dan-el Padilla Peralta is associate professor of classics at Princeton University, where he is associated with the Department of African American Studies and affiliated with the Programs in Latino Studies and Latin American Studies and the University Center for Human Values. He researches and teaches the religious history of the Roman Republic and Read more

Anita Tuvin Schlechter Auditorium, 7 p.m.

Livestream Link

Winfield C. Cook Constitution Day Conversation

Citizenship and Immigration Law in American History

Amanda Frost, University of Virginia

John E. Jones, III, Dickinson College

To commemorate Constitution Day in 2023, Dickinson College will feature President John E. Jones III, a retired federal judge, in a wide-ranging constitutional conversation with noted legal historian Amanda Frost from the University of Virginia. Jones and Frost will discuss how various landmark cases and developments from the American past have helped shape several recent controversies in citizenship and immigration law.

This program is sponsored by the Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues and the House Divided Project.

The first 40 students who arrive at ATS for this presentation will received a free, signed copy of Amanda Frost’s book.

Biographies (provided by the speakers)

Amanda Frost is the John A. Ewald Jr. Research Professor of Law at the University of Virginia School of Law.  She writes and teaches in the fields of immigration and citizenship law, federal courts and jurisdiction, and judicial ethics. Her scholarship has been cited by over a dozen federal and state courts, and she has been invited to testify on the topics of her articles Read more

Anita Tuvin Schlechter Auditorium, 7 p.m.

Livestream Link

It’s Time to Talk about Women’s Brains and the Birth Control Pill 

Sarah E. Hill, Texas Christian University

The majority of women in the US will use the birth control pill at some point in their lives. Yet, there is very little information out there for women or their partners about what the pill does to the brain. This is critical information to have because – although women go on the pill for a small handful of targeted effects – sex hormones simply can’t work that way. Sex hormones impact the activities of billions of cells in the body at once, many of which are in the brain. This means that being on the birth control pill makes women a different version of themselves than when they are off of it. In this talk, Hill will discuss what we know and don’t know about the pill and women’s brains and behavior. She will also talk about why this information matters for men and for those who care for women’s mental and physical health. Lastly, Hill will urge researchers to conduct better, more inclusive science that Read more

Stern Center, Great Room, 7 p.m.

Livestream Link 

Counting Lost Stars: Fiction Inspired by History

Kim van Alkemade, Author

In this program, the author will discuss the facts that inspired her latest novel, and how a writer’s imagination transforms history into fiction to tell a human story. The Nazis’ use of punched card computer technology to orchestrate the Holocaust becomes the thread that weaves together the fictional story of Cornelia Vogel, a computer operator in WWII Netherlands who uses her knowledge to save the woman she loves, and Rita Klein, a pioneering woman in the new field of computer programming in 1960s New York whose education is derailed by an unexpected pregnancy. Through the stories of a diverse cast of characters, Counting Lost Stars explores the coerced adoptions of the Baby Scoop Era, the unique horrors of transit Camp Westerbork in the Netherlands, the generational impact of trauma, the dangers of information technology, and individual courage in the face of systemic injustice. A book sale and signing will follow.

This program is sponsored by the Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues and co-sponsored by the departments of American studies, data analytics, English, history and women’s, gender & sexuality studies.

Biography (provided Read more