Events

Marc Lynch

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

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

Margaret Edson

Pulitzer Prize-Winning Playwright

The Insubstantial Pageant: Writing for Performance

Thursday, October 18, 2012
Mathers Theatre, 7:30 p.m.

We are born ready to talk and listen, but it takes years to learn to read and write. What is gained and lost when the redolent swirl of human experience is consigned to the abstract, linear, preterite alphabetic code? And what ironies await when the freeze-dried code is reconstituted as live performance?

This event is sponsored by the Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues and co-sponsored by the Norman M. Eberly Writing Center and the Departments of English, American Studies and Theatre & Dance.

Biography (provided by the speaker)
Margaret Edson was born in Washington, DC in 1961. Between earning degrees in history and literature, she worked on the cancer and AIDS inpatient unit of a major research hospital. Wit was written in 1991, widely rejected, first produced in 1995, and awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1999. The HBO production won the Emmy Award for Best Film in 2001. Wit has received hundreds of productions in dozens of languages and was presented on Broadway in 2012. The script is used in classes ranging from AP English to medical ethics.

Ms. Edson has Read more

Richard Matthew

Founding Director of the Center for Unconventional Security Affairs & Professor of International and Environmental Politics, UC at Irvine

Natural Resources, Conflict and Peacebuilding

Wednesday, October 10, 2012
Stern Center, Great Room, 7:00 p.m.

Based on fieldwork in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, this presentation examines the complex and evolving relationships among natural resources, violent conflict and peacebuilding.

This event is jointly sponsored by the Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues, Penn State Dickinson School of Law and School of International Affairs and is part of the Clarke Forum’s Leadership in an Age of Uncertainty Series.

Biography (provided by the speaker)
Richard A. Matthew (BA McGill; PhD Princeton) is a professor in the Schools of Social Ecology and Social Science at the University of California at Irvine, and founding director of the Center for Unconventional Security Affairs (www.cusa.uci.edu). He is also a senior fellow at the International Institute for Sustainable Development in Geneva; a senior fellow at the Munk School for International Affairs at the University of Toronto; a senior member of the UNEP Expert Group on Environment, Conflict and Peacebuilding; and a member of the World Conservation Union’s Commission on Environmental, Economic and Social Policy. He has carried Read more

Kathleen Vogel

Associate Professor of Science and Technology, Cornell University

Birds, Biology, & Bioterrorism

Tuesday, October 9, 2012
Stern Center, Great Room, 7:00 p.m.

This lecture will discuss the public and policy controversies surrounding the 2012 publication of scientific data on artificially created, mutated H5N1 avian influenza viruses by two prominent virologists. 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 Biology, Chemistry, Political Science and International Studies.

Biography (provided by the speaker)
Kathleen Vogel is an associate professor at Cornell University, with a joint appointment in the Department of Science and Technology Studies and the Judith Reppy Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies. Vogel holds a Ph.D. in biological chemistry from Princeton University. Her research focuses on studying the social and technical dimensions of biological weapons threats, and how knowledge is produced in intelligence assessments on threats involving weapons of mass destruction. Prior to joining the Cornell faculty, Vogel was appointed as a William C. Foster Fellow in the U.S. Department of State’s Office of Proliferation Threat Reduction in the Bureau of Nonproliferation. Vogel has also spent time as Read more

David B. Rivkin Jr. – Constitution Day Address Lecturer

Attorney and Constitutional Commentator

A Potemkin Village: The Supreme Court’s Health Care Decision & Faux Federalism

2012 Winfield C. Cook Constitution Address
Monday, October 8, 2012
Great Room, Stern Center, 7:00 p.m.

Mr. Rivkin will analyze the recent Supreme Court decision upholding the Affordable Care Act, in particular Chief Justice John Robert’s pivotal opinion, and explore the decision’s long-term political and policy implications, especially the Court’s apparent willingness to enforce structural federalism-based limitations on congressional powers only if the policy stakes are relatively low, thereby encouraging a system of faux-federalism.

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

Biography (provided by the speaker)
David B. Rivkin, Jr., is a partner in the Washington office of Baker Hostetler LLP, and co-chairs the firm’s appellate and major motions practice. He is also a visiting fellow at the Center for the National Interest and a contributing editor of the National Review. He specializes in regulatory and litigation work, with a particular emphasis on constitutional, international law and public policy issues.

Mr. Rivkin has been involved in numerous high-profile cases. He has represented the 26 states that have Read more

John Priscu

Professor of Land Resources and Environmental Sciences, Montana State University

Earth’s Icy Biosphere

Thursday, October 4, 2012
Stern Center, Great Room, 7:00 p.m.

Priscu will demonstrate that the Earth’s icy systems, particularly the Antarctic ice sheet and related subglacial environments, hold a large and potentially active carbon pool, comprised of phylogenetically and metabolically diverse prokaryotic organisms. He will then relate these results to our search for life on other icy bodies in our solar system.

This event is sponsored by the Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues and co-sponsored by the Departments of Biology, Earth Sciences, Environmental Studies and Science and The Natural History Sustainability Mosaic.

Biography (provided by the speaker)
Professor Priscu received his M.S. degree from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas in 1978 where he studied how the ecosystems on the lower Colorado River were influenced by large dams. He then went on to obtain his Ph.D. from the University of California, Davis in 1982 for his work on high altitude lakes. Following his Ph.D. he joined a government laboratory in New Zealand where he was involved with research on the marine and freshwaters of New Zealand. It was during this period that he became interested in Antarctic Read more

Cheng Li

Director of Research and Senior Fellow, Thornton China Center, Brookings

China’s Leadership Transition & the Bo Xilai Case

Tuesday, October 2, 2012
Stern Center, Great Room, 7:00 p.m.

Just as the Chinese Community Party elite is trying to smooth the way for the transfer of power to a new generation of Chinese leaders, one of its rising stars, Bo Xilai, has been ousted as party chief of Chongqing and his wife is charged with the murder of a British businessman. What are the implications of this unfolding crisis for China’s decision-making process, economic policies, social stability, and foreign relations? More information

The 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 Department of East Asian Studies. It is also part of the Clarke Forum’s Leadership in an Age of Uncertainty Series.

Biography (provided by the speaker)

Cheng LI is the director of research and senior fellow at the Brookings Institution’s John L. Thornton China Center. Dr. Li currently also serves as a director of the National Committee on US-China Relations, a member of the Academic Advisory Team of the Congressional U.S.-China Working Group, Read more

Stephen Prothero – “Mary Ellen Borges Memorial Lecturer”

Professor of Religion, Boston University

God is Not One

Thursday, September 27, 2012
Anita Tuvin Schlechter Auditorium, 7:00 p.m.
Book Sale / Signing to Follow

Are the world’s religions different paths up the same mountain? Prothero, author of God is Not One, explains why, especially after 9/11, real and enduring interreligious understanding is achieved, not with a “pretend pluralism,” but with a clear-eyed recognition of religious difference.

This event is sponsored by St. John’s Episcopal Church on the Square and the Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues.

Biography (provided by the speaker)
Though America is one of the most religious places on Earth, in reality, its citizens know little about religion. In his provocative book Religious Literacy, Stephen Prothero addresses this national crisis, and offers solutions. One of them is mandatory academic study of world religions in public schools. The more that Americans know about religion — whether or not they themselves are religious — the less likely they will be to defer, through sheer ignorance, to politicians who often frame their actions in a religious context. In his latest book, God is Not One, Prothero looks at the differences between religions and how they have shaped the world. Read more

Pat Genovese

Head Lacrosse Coach, William Smith College

Title IX: Conception, Progression, Direction

Monday, September 24, 2012
Anita Tuvin Schlechter Auditorium, 7:00 p.m.

In 1972, Congress enacted Title IX, which prohibited sexual discrimination in any education program or activity that received federal financial assistance. Coach Genovese will explore the origin of Title IX; the advances and setbacks that have occurred in athletics since its enactment; and where it will take us in the future.

This event is sponsored by the Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues and co-sponsored by the Department of Athletics, Office of Institutional and Diversity Initiatives, and the Women’s Center. It is also part of the Clarke Forum’s Leadership in an Age of Uncertainty Series.

Pat Genovese’s Biography Read more

Heather Love

Professor of English, University of Pennsylvania

Gay Marriage and Its Others

Thursday, September 13, 2012
Stern Center, Great Room, 7:00 p.m.

This lecture considers the fate of the spinster in the era of gay marriage. Through a reading of the 2006 film Notes on a Scandal, Love argues that, while monogamous gay and lesbian couples have achieved unprecedented levels of social acceptability, those who are alone or whose intimacies are unconventional are more stigmatized than ever. Read more

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

Biography
Heather Love is the R. Jean Brownlee Term Associate Professor at the University of Pennsylvania, where she teaches interests include gender studies and queer theory, the literature and culture of modernity, affect studies, film and visual culture, psychoanalysis, race and ethnicity, sociology and literature, disability studies, and critical theory. She is the author of Feeling Backward: Loss and the Politics of Queer History (Harvard, 2007), the editor of a special issue of GLQ on the scholarship and legacy of Gayle Rubin (“Rethinking Sex”), and the co-editor of a special issue of New Literary History (“Is There Life after Identity Politics?”). She has recent Read more

Susan Abraham

Professor of Law, New York Law School

The Ravi/Clementi Case

Tuesday, September 11, 2012
Stern Center, Great Room, 7:00 p.m.

In September 2010, Dharun Ravi used a webcam to spy on his roommate Tyler Clementi having sex with another man in a Rutgers University dorm. Clementi committed suicide a few days later. Abraham will discuss aspects of this case including hate crime, high-tech bullying on college campuses, and privacy.

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 Department of Sociology, Women’s and Gender Studies and the Department of American Studies.

Biography (provided by the speaker)
Susan J. Abraham is a professor of law at New York Law School, where she teaches evidence,
advanced appellate advocacy, trial skills, and legal method, and is the faculty advisor to the
Moot Court Association. She is also affiliated with the Justice Action Center, through which she
has collaborated with students and faculty on various public interest projects, most recently co-
authoring an amicus brief to the United States Supreme Court on behalf of the University of Texas in Fisher v. The University of Texas, a Read more

The Wisconsin Shooting: An Opportunity for America

Rajbir Singh Datta

Former National Director, Sikh American Legal Defense and Education Fund

Manar Waheed

Policy Director, South Asian Americans Leading Together

Erik Love – Moderator

Assistant Professor, Sociology

Thursday, September 6, 2012
Anita Tuvin Schlechter Auditorium, 7:00 p.m.

The Sikh community has dealt with hate and persecution for over 500 years — long before the 9/11 attacks. Representations of hate – like the Wisconsin shooting at a Sikh Gurdwara – will continue until we see each other as an extension of one family, see each other with respect, stand up to hate everywhere and actually live up to the ideals of our Founding Fathers.

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

Biographies (provided by the speakers)
Rajbir Singh Datta served, from 2005 until 2009, as the national director of the Sikh American Legal Defense and Education Fund (SALDEF), the nation’s oldest Sikh American civil rights organization in the United States. In that role, he was responsible for coordinating policy, legislative, education, and legal assistance programs on behalf of over 700,000 Americans. During his tenure at SALDEF, he conducted multiple briefings on civil rights issues and has addressed audiences about Sikhism, the Sikh American community, Read more

Harry Brod

Professor of Philosophy and Humanities, University of Northern Iowa

Asking for It: The Ethics & Erotics of Sexual Consent

Thursday, August 30, 2012
Anita Tuvin Schlechter Auditorium, 7:30 p.m.

In a nonthreatening, non-hectoring discussion that ranges from the meanings of “yes” and “no,” to the indeterminacy of silence. to the way alcohol affects our ethical responsibilities, Brod challenges young people to envision a model of sexual interaction that is most erotic precisely when it is most thoughtful and empathetic.

This event is sponsored by the Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues and co-sponsored by the Milton B. Asbell Center for Jewish Life and Women’s and Gender Studies.

Harry Brod’s Web site

Johns Hopkins University

Trayvon Martin and the Political Imagination

Wednesday, April 25, 2012
Anita Tuvin Schlechter Auditorium, 7:00 p.m.

The murder of Trayvon Martin has captured the nation’s interest. Many have used his murder to examine and complicate our understanding of the contemporary “post-racial moment”. However I suggest that the construction of the Trayvon Martin narrative as well as the resulting political events that stem from it truncate rather than expand our political possibilities. How might we use this tragic event to not only complicate our understanding of what it means to be a citizen in the Obama era, but to take more “personal moral responsibility for democracy” as Ralph Ellison says?

This event is co-sponsored by The Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues, Office of Diversity Initiatives, Office of Institutional and Diversity Initiatives, the Women’s Center and the Department of Sociology.

About the Speaker
Link to Lester Spence’s webpage

Video of the Program

Co-Chair of the Kitchen Table Patriots

The Tea Party

Thursday, April 19, 2012 (originally scheduled for March 1)
Althouse Hall, Room 106, 5:00 p.m.
Reception to Follow

Puig will address the nature of the Tea Party and the impact that it has had in the early Republican primaries and the role she anticipates it will play in the 2012 presidential election.

This event was initiated by The Clarke Forum Student Project Managers and is sponsored by The Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues. It is also part of the Clarke Forum’s Leadership in an Age of Uncertainty Series.

Ana Puig’s Biography

Video of Program

Beyond the Burqa: Afghan Women Entrepreneurship

Wednesday, April 18, 2012 – **Event Cancelled Due to Travel Issues**
Stern Center, Great Room, 7:00 p.m.

Dr. Latifa will share her experience about starting a woman-owned business in Afghanistan and her viewpoint on current events in her country. Her thesis is that women-owned businesses can be a viable route to peace in Afghanistan.

Bpeace is a non profit organization providing pro bono business consulting to entrepreneurs in Afghanistan with a focus on women. Each year, with the assistance of the U.S. Dept of State, small groups of Afghan business owners travel to the US to learn best practices and apprentice in their field. Dr. Latifa has been in this program for 3 years.

Dr. Latifa graduated from the Faculty of Pharmacy of Kabul in 1992. In 1996, she immigrated to Iran as a refugee from the Taliban and began producing kitchen accessories with other family members. When Dr. Latifa returned to Afghanistan she saw a need for modern, efficient and sanitary kitchens. In 2010 she founded Kitchen Kween. Kitchen Kween designs and provides cabinets as well as wire shelving and storage.

Don’t miss a rare opportunity to experience the news from Afghanistan on Read more

Suzanne Cusick

Professor of Music, New York University

Acoustemology & the “War on Terror”

Tuesday, April 17, 2012
Stern Center, Great Room, 7:00 p.m.

Based on interviews with released detainees at Guantanamo and elsewhere, this lecture analyzes the ways that regimes of sound and silence were used to attack the subjectivities of prisoners detained in U.S.-run prison facilities during the so-called “global war on terror.” More information.

The event is co-sponsored by The Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues and the Department of Music.

Biography (provided by the speaker)
Suzanne G. Cusick is a professor of music at New York University. Her writing on music in relation to gender, sexuality and cultural history has appeared in such journals as the Journal of the American Musicological Society, Early Music, Musical Quarterly, Repercussions, Perspectives of New Music, Early Modern Women, TRANS, and the Journal of the Society for American Music. Her monograph “Francesca Caccini at the Medici Court” will be published by the University of Chicago Press in 2009. She is currently working on a book about the uses of sound and silence in U.S.-run detention camps in the so-called “global war on terror.”

Video of the

Professor of History and International Affairs, Princeton University

Global Order After the Financial Crisis

Thursday, April 5, 2012
Stern Center, Great Room, 7:00 p.m.

Today there exists a real possibility of deglobalization, not so much because of trade protectionism (that was a principal driving force of the last big episode of deglobalization in the 1920s and 1930s) but from the response to the character of the current crisis, which is primarily a financial one, and which will prompt a new financial nationalism that brings very different policy approaches to those of the past quarter century. In the 1990s, the most dynamic and richest states were generally small open economies: Singapore, Taiwan, Chile, New Zealand, and in Europe the former communist states of Central Europe, Ireland, Austria, and Switzerland. In the world after the financial crisis, the center of economic gravity will shift to really large agglomerations of power. Does this mean that the new world order will inevitably be a China-centered world?

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

Biography (provided by the speaker)
Harold James is a Read more