University of Texas at San Antonio

Mary Lincoln’s Assassination

Monday, April 13, 2015
Anita Tuvin Schlechter Auditorium, 7 p.m.

Live Stream Link

Lincoln’s assassination on April 14, 1865 proved a momentous evening for the people of Washington, for the people of the American nation – and its impact would be felt across the world. But perhaps the person most affected by this epic tragedy was Abraham Lincoln’s widow, Mary Lincoln– whose fate would be forever transformed by the death of her husband that Easter Saturday.

This program is sponsored by the Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues, the House Divided Project and the Digital Humanities Advisory Committee.

Biography Forthcoming (provided by the speaker)

Catherine Clinton earned her undergraduate degree in African American studies from Harvard, her master’s in American studies from the University of Sussex and received her doctorate in history from Princeton in 1980. She now  holds the Denman Chair of American History at the University of Texas San Antonio and is an international research professor at Queen’s University Belfast. She has written and edited over two dozen books to date, including three biographies, Fanny Kemble Civil Wars (2000), Harriet Tubman: The Road to Freedom (2004)–which was named as one Read more

University of Maine

The Limits of Climate Change

Tuesday, April 7, 2015
Stern Center, Great Room, 7 p.m.

To understand and predict climate change requires more perspective than is available from a short instrumental climate record.  To expand the climate record in time and space, Mayewski and his teams have recovered ice cores from some of the remotest high and cold places on Earth.  These records tell us a great deal about where we are today in the climate system and enable us to chart the pathways for future mitigation, adaptation and sustainability in the decades ahead.

This program is sponsored by the Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues and co-sponsored by the Churchill Fund. It is also part of the Clarke Forum’s Leadership in an Age of Uncertainty Series.

Biography (provided by the speaker)

Dr. Paul Andrew Mayewski is director and professor of the Climate Change Institute at the University of Maine and has academic affiliations with the university’s School of Earth and Climate Sciences, School of Policy and International Affairs, and School of Marine Sciences. He is an internationally acclaimed scientist and explorer, leader of more than 55 expeditions to some of the remotest reaches of the planet Read more

University of Washington

Prisons, State Violence, and

the Organizing Tradition

Tuesday, March 3, 2015
Stern Center, Great Room, 7 p.m.

This lecture explores the central role that people in prison played during the civil rights and Black Power movements of the 1960s and 1970s. It argues that today’s mass incarceration began as a response to the mass mobilization of prisoners and neighborhoods.

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 Popel Shaw Center for Race and Ethnicity.

Biography (provided by the speaker)

Dan Berger is an assistant professor of comparative ethnic studies in the School of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences at the University of Washington Bothell and an adjunct assistant professor of history at the University of Washington Seattle. He studies race, prisons, and social movements in U.S. history. A widely published author, Berger’s most recent book is Captive Nation: Black Prison Organizing in the Civil Rights Era (University of North Carolina Press, 2014). He graduated summa cum laude from the University of Florida in 2003 and completed his Ph.D. at the University of Pennsylvania in 2010. He was the George Gerbner Postdoctoral Fellow Read more

Middlebury College

Churches and Colleges: Schools of Civility

Tuesday, February 24, 2015
Anita Tuvin Schlechter Auditorium, 7 p.m.

The absence of civility in American politics has become a national crisis, one we revisit every election cycle. This talk will explore the concept of civility, its importance to our public well-being, and the essential role religion and the liberal arts might play in satisfying this national need.

This event is sponsored by St. John’s Episcopal Church on the Square and the Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues and co-sponsored by the Churchill Fund. It is also part of the Clarke Forum’s Leadership in an Age of Uncertainty Series.

Biography (provided by the speaker)

James Calvin Davis is a professor of religion at Middlebury College in Vermont, where he has taught ethics and American religious history for nearly fifteen years. An expert on the role of religion in American political and public life, he is the author of In Defense of Civility: How Religion Can Unite America on Seven Moral Issues that Divide Us (Westminster John Knox Press, 2010). In this book, Davis considers religion’s impact on various moral debates in America’s past and present, arguing that the participation of theological perspectives Read more

Class of 2006

Curiosity on Mars

Tuesday, February 17, 2015
Stern Center, Great Room, 7 p.m.

The geologic and geochemical analyses of sediments from Gale Crater by the Curiosity rover has given us unprecedented insight into the history of Mars and suggests a formerly habitable environment.

This program is sponsored by the Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues.

Biography (provided by the speaker)

Dr. Kristen Miller recently concluded a postdoctoral position at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology working on mineral/organic interactions in Mars analogue soils in collaboration with NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory mission. Kristen earned a B.S. in geology from Dickinson College in 2006 and was the recipient of the William W. Vernon Prize for Excellence in Geology. While at Dickinson she completed a senior honors thesis with Professor Marcus Key on the use of oxygen and carbon stable isotopes from bryozoans as a proxy for sea temperature change. After Dickinson, Kristen went on to earn her PhD in Geochemistry from the University of Maryland College Park in 2012. Her dissertation focused on biological, chemical, and environmental responses to repeated glacial events as recorded by molecular fossils (biomarkers) and stable isotopes in an ~1 billion year old sedimentary formation from Read more

Thursday, February 12, 2015
Stern Center, Great Room, 7 p.m.

Panelists:

Amy Gaudion, Penn State Dickinson School of Law
Douglas Lovelace, United States Army War College
Andrew Rudalevige, Bowdoin College
Douglas Stuart (moderator), Dickinson College

Following the beheading of two Americans, the Obama Administration unleashed an air war against the Islamic State, also known as ISIS, without a declaration of war or any explicit congressional authority. This panel will explore domestic and international legal and political questions related to recent and current U.S. military operations.

The program is sponsored by the Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues and co-sponsored by the Churchill Fund and the Department of Political Science.

Biographies (provided by the panelists)

Amy Gaudion is the assistant Dean for Academic Affairs at Penn State Dickinson School of Law. Gaudion’s scholarly and teaching interests focus on national security and constitutional law. She also serves as a legal advisor to World on Trial, a public television and multimedia project. Prior to joining Penn State she was an associate with Hangley Aronchick Segal & Pudlin, where her practice focused on antitrust and complex litigation matters, and a clerk for the Honorable William H. Yohn of the U.S. District Court Read more

National Endowment for Democracy

Russia after Crimea

Wednesday, February 4, 2015
Stern Center, Great Room, 7 p.m.

Gozman, president of the Union of Right Forces, will discuss what is happening in contemporary Russia, how the deepest crisis in Russia’s post-Soviet history came about, where this crisis is going, why Russia is so negative towards the United States, why do Russians support the annexation of Crimea, and what can be done to make Russia free and democratic and stop the war in the Ukraine.

This program is sponsored by the Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues and co-sponsored by the Churchill Fund. It is also part of the Clarke Forum’s Leadership in an Age of Uncertainty Series.

Biography (provided by the speaker)

Dr. Leonid Gozman is president of the Union of Right Forces and former co-chairman of the Right Cause Party (2008–2011). From 2008 to 2013, he served as director of humanitarian projects at RUSNANO, a state-owned enterprise that commercializes innovations in nanotechnology, and from 1999 to 2008, he was executive board member and representative for governmental and NGO relations at Unified Energy System of Russia (RAO UES). An active participant in Russia’s democratic movement who has served as political advisor Read more

Thursday, December 4, 2014
Stern Center, Great Room, 7 p.m.

Dickinson Faculty Panelists:

Michael Beevers, environmental studies
Marie Helweg-Larsen, psychology
John Henson (moderator), biology

The ongoing Ebola epidemic in West Africa is a World Health Organization classified public health emergency that has caused anxiety around the world, including here within the United States. This panel discussion will focus on the nature and effects of the disease, the perceptions of risk it has generated, and the sociological and public health challenges associated with containing the virus in the source countries.

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

Biographies (provided by the panelists)

Michael D. Beevers is an assistant professor of environmental studies at Dickinson College. His research examines links between environment, conflict and peacebuilding and how natural resources can be managed in war-torn societies to increase the likelihood of a sustainable peace and development. Dr. Beevers has lived and worked in West Africa for many years and conducts ongoing research in Liberia and Sierra Leone—two Ebola-inflicted countries. He has served as a research associate at Princeton University and as a consultant for the United Nations Environment Programme and World Resources Institute. He holds a Ph.D. Read more

Professor, Montana State University

3/11, Asbestos, and the Unmaking of Japan’s Modern World

Wednesday, December 3, 2014 (Rescheduled from 11/18/14)
Allison Great Hall, 7 p.m.

Walker explores the role asbestos has played in the construction and, more importantly, the destruction of Japan’s environment, with a focus on the natural and the unnatural disasters of the 3/11 disaster and the later clean up.

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)

Brett L. Walker is Regents Professor and Michael P. Malone Professor of History at Montana State University, Bozeman. His research and teaching interests include Japanese history, world environmental history, and the history of science and medicine. He is author of The Conquest of Ainu Lands: Ecology and Culture in Japanese Expansion, 1590-1800, The Lost Wolves of Japan, Toxic Archipelago: A History of Industrial Disease in Japan, and the forthcoming A Concise History of Japan, from Cambridge University Press. He has also co-edited two volumes. He spends most of his time in southwestern Montana and the San Juan Islands, where he enjoys the outdoors.

Video of the Lecture

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Monday, November 17, 2014
Stern Center, Great Room, 7 p.m.

Panelists:

Kathleen Lucas (moderator), director, Pennsylvanians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty
Shujaa Graham, death row exoneree
Spero Lappas, criminal defense attorney
Vicki Schieber, murder victim’s family member

This panel will bring the voices of experience to a conversation about capital punishment. You’ll hear from a man who was exonerated after being wrongfully convicted and sentenced to die; the mother of a young woman who was murdered in Philadelphia; and a criminal defense attorney who has represented defendants in death penalty cases. Reality is more complicated than the statistics can communicate adequately. These are the personal stories of those who have been impacted directly by our death penalty system.

Join the conversation on Twitter with #clarkeforum and #deathpenalty.

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

Biographies (provided by the panelists)

Kathleen Lucas has been active in human rights work for over 30 years with organizations including Amnesty International, the Pennsylvania Prison Society and the World Organization for Human Rights. Her professional background includes corporate and nonprofit management and consulting specializing in change management and strategic planning. She earned both her B.S. Read more