Sterling Professor of Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry, Yale University

Lupus and Snurps: Bench to Bedside and Back Again

Thursday, April 18, 2013
Anita Tuvin Schlechter Auditorium, 7:00 p.m.

This talk will trace the origins of our understanding of how small cellular particles contribute to the critical process of splicing and relate this knowledge to today’s quest for treatment of splicing diseases, such as Lupus.

The Joseph Priestley Award recipient is chosen by a different science department each year.  This year the recipient was selected by the Department of Biology.  The event is sponsored by The Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues and Student Senate and co-sponsored by and the Departments of Biology, Chemistry, Earth Sciences, Psychology, Physics & Astronomy and Environmental Studies.

Biography (provided by the speaker)

Joan Steitz is a Sterling Professor of Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry; and Investigator at Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Yale University.

Steitz earned her B.S. in chemistry from Antioch College in 1963. Significant findings from her work emerged as early as 1967, when her Harvard PhD thesis with Jim Watson examined the test-tube assembly of a ribonucleic acid (RNA) bacteriophage (antibacterial virus) known as R17.

Steitz spent the next three years in postdoctoral studies at Read more

Professor, Georgetown University

U.S.-Russia: The Second Obama Term

Tuesday, April 16, 2013
Stern Center, Great Room, 7:00 p.m.

The U.S-Russian relationship faces new challenges as President Barack Obama embarks on his second term. Both countries will have to reassess the relative priority of interests versus values as they seek to move forward.

This event is jointly sponsored by the Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues, Penn State Dickinson School of Law and School of International Affairs, and the Constance and Rose Ganoe Memorial Fund for Inspirational Teaching, courtesy of Professor Russell Bova.

Biography (provided by the speaker)

Angela Stent is director of the Center for Eurasian, Russian and East European Studies and professor of government and foreign service at Georgetown University. She is also a senior fellow (non-resident) at the Brookings Institution and co-chairs its Hewett Forum on Post-Soviet Affairs. From 2004-2006 she served as National Intelligence Officer for Russia and Eurasia at the National Intelligence Council.  From 1999 to 2001, she served in the Office of Policy Planning at the U.S. Department of State.

Stent’s academic work focuses on the triangular political and economic relationship between the United States, Russia and Europe.  Her publications include: Russia and Germany Reborn: Unification, Read more

Professor, United States Military Academy at West Point

Preventive War and American Democracy

Monday, April 15, 2013
Althouse Hall, Room 106, 7:00 p.m.

Ten years after the United States launched the first preventive war in its history – against Iraq in 2003 – American leaders are once again wrestling with the preventive war temptation, this time directed at Iran and its nuclear program. This lecture will explore and explain this profound shift in American thinking about preventive war over the past sixty years.

This event is sponsored by the Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues and the Mellon Foundation Project on Civilian-Military Educational Cooperation.  It is also part of The Clarke Forum’s Leadership in a Age of Uncertainty Series.

Biography (provided by the speaker)
Dr. Silverstone is professor of international relations in the Department of Social Sciences at the United States Military Academy at West Point, where he has been on the faculty since 2001. He received his Ph.D. in political science from the University of Pennsylvania in 1999, and has also served on the faculty at the University of Pennsylvania and Williams College. Dr. Silverstone is a research fellow with the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs, and is Read more

Professor, University of Havana

U.S. Role and Image in the World: A Cuban’s Perspective

Tuesday, April 9, 2013 (rescheduled from November 27, 2012)
Stern Center, Great Room, 7:00 p.m.

This lecture focuses on the paradoxes that characterize U.S. role and image in the world: U.S. culture, technological development, civil society, economic influence and military power will be discussed and evaluated.

This event is sponsored by the Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues and the Center for Global Study and Engagement and co-sponsored by the Departments of Economics and Spanish & Portuguese.

Biography (provided by the speaker)
Beatriz Diaz is a full professor at the University of Havana, and at the Cuban Program of the Latin American Social Sciences Faculty (FLACSO). She was the director of the Cuba FLACSO Program (2001-2008) and at present chairs the research group on Rural Development and the Environment at FLACSO. She obtained her BA in psychology at the University of Havana, followed by graduate work at the University of Paris X and Geneva. She obtained her Ph.D. at the Soviet Academy of Educational Sciences in Moscow.

Her main research interests focus on Cuban Social Development and Sustainable Development. She has conducted research on rural, urban and Read more

Executive Director, First Five Years Fund

Same-Sex Marriage & the Supreme Court: A Plaintiff’s Story

Monday, April 8, 2013
Anita Tuvin Schlechter Auditorium, 7:00 p.m.

In May 2009, two California couples—Kris Perry and Sandy Stier of Berkeley, and Paul Katami and Jeff Zarrillo of Burbank—filed a lawsuit in federal court challenging California’s Proposition 8 under the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. Represented by distinguished attorneys Theodore B. Olson and David Boies, who famously faced-off in Bush v. Gore, the plaintiffs and their case, now known as Hollingsworth v. Perry, have forever changed America’s legal and political landscape surrounding marriage equality.

On March 26, 2013, the Supreme Court of the United States heard oral argument in Perry to review the judgment of the federal court of appeals that upheld the decision of the federal district court that found Proposition 8 unconstitutional. A decision from the Supreme Court, which is expected by June 2013, could result in marriage equality nationwide.

In this lecture, Kris Perry will discuss her personal experience as one of the plaintiffs in this landmark civil rights lawsuit. From testifying at trial and watching oral argument at the Supreme Court, to seeing her twin boys Read more

Professor, Towson University

The Politics of an Entertainment Company

Thursday, April 4, 2013
Stern Center, Great Room, 7:00 p.m.

Twentieth Century-Fox has always been involved in local, national, and international politics.  This lecture will describe Fox’s political activism in the 1940s and then fast-forward to the present.

The event is sponsored by The Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues and co-sponsored by Judaic Studies, The Milton B. Asbell Center for Jewish Life, Film Studies, Middle East Studies, and the Departments of Political Science, American Studies, English, French & Italian and History.

Biography (provided by the speaker)
Peter Lev is professor of electronic media and film at Towson University. His research and teaching focuses on American film history, European film history, and film adaptations of literature.   He is the author of five books on film history and the co-editor of a book on film adaptation:  selected titles include Twentieth Century-Fox, the Zanuck-Skouras Years 1935-1965 (March 2013); The Literature/Film Reader (co-edited with Jim Welsh, 2007); Transforming the Screen:  The Fifties (History of the American Cinema series, 2003);and American Films of the 1970s:  Conflicting Visions (2000).  The Twentieth Century-Fox book was supported by an Academy Scholars Award from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts Read more

Author and Fox News Contributor

More Guns, Less Crime

Monday, April 1, 2013
Stern Center, Great Room, 7:00 p.m.

The talk will argue that crime rates fall when law-abiding citizens are given the chance to defend themselves.

The Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues has sponsored and planned this event in partnership with the Student Senate Public Affairs Committee.  Please note that college policy prohibits the possession of firearms on college premises.

Biography (provided by the speaker)
John R. Lott Jr. is an economist who has held research and/or teaching positions at the University of Chicago, Yale University, Stanford, UCLA, Wharton, and Rice and was the chief economist at the United States Sentencing Commission during 1988 and 1989. He has published over 100 articles in academic journals. He also is the author of seven books of which his newest is At the Brink: Will Obama push us over the edge? His past books have included three editions of More Guns, Less Crime and Freedomnomics. Lott is a FoxNews.com contributor and a weekly columnist for them. Opinion pieces by Lott have appeared in such places as The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Los Read more

Professor of Political Science, University of Bologna

U.S. Role & Image in the Eurocrisis

Thursday, November 29, 2012
Stern Center, Great Room, 7:00 p.m.

Pasquino will explore the nature and extent of the Eurocrisis and, from a European perspective, address the issue whether the U.S. has any useful role to play in resolving it.

This event is sponsored by The Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues and the Center for Global Study and Engagement.

Biography (provided by the speaker)
Gianfranco Pasquino (1942) graduated in Political Science from the University of Torino, supervisor Norberto Bobbio, and specialized in Comparative Politics at the University of Florence under the guidance of Giovanni Sartori. After teaching at the University of Bologna and Florence, in 1975 he became full professor of Political Science at the University of Bologna. He has also been teaching for more than thirty years at the Bologna Center of the Johns Hopkins University and for several at the Dickinson College Program in Bologna. In 1974-75 he was Lauro de Bosis Lecturer in the History of Italian Civilization at Harvard. In 1978-79 he was Fellow of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington D.C. He has been visiting Professor at the Read more