Themes

Thomas Palley

Palley PosterSenior Economic Policy Adviser to the AFL-CIO

Inequality and Stagnation by Policy Design

Tuesday, January 31, 2017
Stern Center, Great Room, 7 p.m.

This talk will survey competing hypotheses explaining the financial crisis of 2008 and the ensuing stagnation. How we explain these events is of critical significance since it influences how economic policy and society respond.

This program is sponsored by the Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues and co-sponsored by the Churchill Fund, the Departments of Economics, International Business and Management, and the Program in Policy Studies. It is also part of the Clarke Forum’s Leadership in an Age of Uncertainty Series.

Biography (provided by the speaker)

Thomas Palley is senior economic policy adviser to the AFL-CIO. He was foThomas Palley Head shotrmerly chief economist with the US – China Economic and Security Review Commission. Dr. Palley is the author of numerous journal and magazine articles and several books, including From Financial Crisis to Stagnation: The Destruction of Shared Prosperity and the Role of Economics (Cambridge University Press, 2012) and Plenty of Nothing: The Downsizing of the American Dream and the Case for Structural Keynesianism (Princeton University Press, 1998). He holds a B.A. degree from Oxford University and a M.A. Read more

Kristen Leslie – “Wesley Lecturer”

Leslie PosterEden Theological Seminary

Wesley Lecture

Noisy Believing: Ethical and Spiritual Responses to Sexualized Violence

Wednesday, November 2, 2016
Allison Great Hall, 7 p.m.

Transformative responses to sexualized violence reflect an early Methodist ethic that connects faith to public action.  This spirituality encouraged followers to “do all the good you can… for as long as ever you can.”  Holding communities accountable to such a public ethic and teaching the silenced to speak are basic building blocks to changing the nature of sexualized violence on college campuses.

This lecture is sponsored by the Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues, the Office of the President and the Center for Service, Spirituality and Social Justice with special thanks to the Baltimore-Washington Conference of the United Methodist Church. This event is also co-sponsored by the Prevention, Education and Advocacy Center, the Department of Religion, the Women’s and Gender Resource Center, Dickinson Christian Fellowship and the Churchill Fund. It is also part of the Clarke Forum’s Leadership in an Age of Uncertainty Series.

Biography (provided by the speaker)

The Rev. Kristen Leslie, Ph.D., is a feminist pastoral theologian who addresses issues of resilience in survivors of sexualized violence on college campuses and in the military.  Read more

James McWilliams

McWilliams PosterTexas State University

Bringing Animal Welfare to 21st Century Agriculture

Tuesday, November 1, 2016
Stern Great Room, 7 p.m.

McWilliams will explore the many ways in which alternatives to industrial animal agriculture–pastured, cage-free, and grass fed systems, for example–do not live up to their promised welfare reforms, before outlining a future agricultural system that can more effectively attend to animal welfare concerns.

The event is sponsored by the Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues and co-sponsored by the Center for Sustainability Education. This program was initiated by the Clarke Forum’s student project managers. It is also part of the Clarke Forum’s semester theme, Food.

imgresBiography (provided by the speaker)

James McWilliams is an historian and writer based in Austin, Texas. His books include The Modern Savage: Our Unthinking Decision to Eat Animals (Thomas Dunne Books), Just Food: Where Locavores Get It Wrong and How We Can Truly Eat Responsibly (Little, Brown) and A Revolution in Eating: How the Quest for Food Shaped America (Columbia University Press). His writing has appeared in The Paris Review daily, The New Yorker.com, The New York Times, Harper’s, The Washington Post, Slate, The American Scholar, Texas Monthly, and The Atlantic. He writes Read more

Psyche Williams-Forson

Forson posterUniversity of Maryland College Park

Eating While Black: A Case Study on Food Shaming and Policing

Monday, October 10, 2016
Allison Great Hall, 7 p.m.

This talk will examine how the current changing food world affects and is affected by African American people. In particular, it will focus on how the legacies of surveillance that surround black people have now extended to our food cultures.

This program is sponsored by the Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues and co-sponsored by the Center for Sustainability Education, the Departments of Africana Studies, American Studies, Anthropology & Archaeology, English, Environmental Studies and Women’s, Gender & Sexuality Studies. It is also part of the Clarke Forum’s semester theme, Food.

Biography (provided by the speaker)Psyche

Psyche Williams-Forson is associate professor and chair of American Studies at the University of Maryland College Park. She is an affiliate faculty member of the women’s studies and African American studies departments, as well as anthropology/archaeology. She is an associate editor of Food and Foodways journal, co-editor (with Carole Counihan) of Taking Food Public: Redefining Foodways in a Changing World (Routledge 2011) and author of Building Houses Out of Chicken Legs: Black Women, Food, and Power (2006).  Her new book Read more

Jennifer L. Lawless

Lawless Final PosterAmerican University

Women on the Run

Wednesday, October 5, 2016
Stern Center, Great Room, 7 p.m.

A widely held belief – often encouraged by politicians and political commentators – is that that the political landscape is more challenging for women. Lawless argues that, for the most part, it’s not. When women run for office, they have very similar experiences to men. The problem is that women don’t run in the first place.

This event is sponsored by the Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues and the Women’s and Gender Resource Center and co-sponsored by the Churchill Fund. It is also part of the Clarke Forum’s Leadership in an Age of Uncertainty Series and the stream on the 2016 Presidential Election.

jen croppedBiography (provided by the speaker)

Jennifer L. Lawless is professor of government at American University, where she is also the director of the Women & Politics Institute. She received her Ph.D. in political science from Stanford University in 2003 and her B.A. from Union College in 1997. Professor Lawless’ research, which has been supported by the National Science Foundation, focuses on representation, political ambition, and gender in the electoral process.

Lawless is the author of Becoming a Candidate: Political Ambition Read more

Raj Patel

Patel PosterUniversity of Texas, Austin and Rhodes University, South Africa

The World That Food Made

Thursday, September 8, 2016
Anita Tuvin Schlechter Auditorium, 7 p.m.

We hear a great deal about the food system, about how it’s broken or – indeed – that it’s working exactly as it ought. But it’s not exactly clear what that system is. Once you learn to think systemically, it becomes clear that the most important things the food system has made are things you can’t eat.

This program is sponsored by the Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues and co-sponsored by the Churchill Fund, First Year Seminars, the Center for Sustainability Education and the Departments of Environmental Studies, International Business & Management, Anthropology & Archaeology, Biology and the Program in Policy Studies. It is also part of the Clarke Forum’s semester theme, Food and the Leadership in an Age of Uncertainty Series.

Biography (provided by the speaker)

Raj Patel is an award-winning writer, activist and academic. He is a research professor in the Lyndon B Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas, Austin and a senior research associate at the Unit for the Humanities at the university currently known as Rhodes Read more

Barry W. Lynn ’70 – “Constitution Day Address Lecturer”

Lynn PosterExecutive Director, Americans United for Separation of Church and State

Celebrating a Dead Letter or a Living Document?

Tuesday, September 6, 2016
Anita Tuvin Schlechter Auditorium, 7 p.m.

Watch Live Stream

“Originalism” in Constitutional interpretation is often characterized as the only legitimate way to understand the Constitution. If that were true, the “Constitution” would be a dead letter by now, unable to protect the rights of Americans in rapidly changing times.

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

Barry Lynn photoBiography (provided by the speaker)

Since 1992, the Rev. Barry W. Lynn has served as executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, a Washington, D.C.-based organization dedicated to the preservation of the Constitution’s religious liberty provisions.

In addition to his work as a long-time activist and lawyer in the civil liberties field, Lynn is an ordained minister in the United Church of Christ, offering him a unique perspective on church-state issues.

An accomplished speaker and lecturer, Lynn has appeared frequently on television and radio broadcasts to offer Read more

Karen Nakamura

NakamuraposterfinalHaas Distinguished Chair of Disability Studies and professor of anthropology, University of California Berkeley

Disability Rights in Global Perspective

Wednesday, April 13, 2016
Anita Tuvin Schlechter Auditorium, 7 p.m.

Grassroots disability movements such as mad pride and crip pride have pushed themselves to the forefront of conversations across the world about diversity and inclusion, but there has also been considerable setbacks in recent years. Nakamura discusses disability rights social movements and how they have fundamentally changed the social contract and fabric in various countries.

This event is sponsored by the Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues and co-sponsored by the Office of Global Study and Engagement and the departments of East Asian studies and women’s,  gender and sexuality studies.  It is also part of the Clarke Forum’s semester theme, Disability.

Biography (provided by the speaker)

Karen Nakamura is the Haas Distinguished Chair of Disability Studies and professor of anthropology at the University of California Berkeley. Her first monograph was tiNakamura Picturetled Deaf in Japan: Signing and the Politics of Identity (2006). Her next project resulted in two ethnographic films and a monograph titled, A Disability of the Soul: An Ethnography of Schizophrenia and Mental Illness in Contemporary Japan (2014). She is Read more

David Paternotte

Paternotte Poster PDFLecturer in Sociology at the Université libre de Bruxelles

From the Vatican to Madrid, Paris and Warsaw: “Gender Ideology” in Motion

Tuesday, April 12, 2016
Stern Center, Great Room, 7 p.m.

After decades of steady progress in terms of gender and sexual rights, several parts of Europe are facing new waves of resistance. These oppose the so-called ‘gender ideology,’ and unveil a crucial role of the Roman Catholic Church. This talk will give an overview of anti-gender movements in Europe.

The program is sponsored by the Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues and co-sponsored by the Women’s and Gender Resource Center and the Departments of Sociology and Italian Studies.

David PaternotteBiography (provided by the speaker)

David Paternotte is a lecturer in sociology at the Université libre de Bruxelles. After many years of research on same-sex marriage, his work concentrates the processes of Europeanisation, globalisation and NGOisation of LGBTQI activism. He has recently started a project on new forms of opposition to gender, feminist claims and LGBTQI rights, with a focus on the Catholic Church. In addition to articles in journals like the Canadian Journal of political science, social politics, sexualities, or social movement studies, he is the author of Revendiquer le “mariage Read more

Breaking Issue – iPhone vs. the FBI: Government Surveillance in the Post-Snowden Era

iPhone FBI PosterTuesday, April 5, 2016
Allison Great Hall, 7 p.m.

Panelists:

Amy Gaudion, Penn State Dickinson School of Law
John MacCormick, (panelist and moderator) Dickinson College
Tony Williams, Dickinson College

Should Apple help the FBI unlock the iPhone used by the shooter in the recent San Bernardino attack?  These panelists will address this question and the significant security, legal, and technological issues it raises, particularly those connected to privacy and security.

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

Biographies (provided by the panelists)

gaudion eAmy C. Gaudion is the director of Graduate & International Education and a visiting assistant professor of law at Penn State’s Dickinson Law. Her scholarly and teaching interests focus on national security law, homeland security law and civilian-military relations. Her recent works have appeared in the Penn State Journal for Law & International Affairs, The New York Times, The Daily Beast, and the Western State Law Review. Recent presentations have included The Constitutionality and Consequences of America’s Use of Drones and the NSA Spying Program (2014, Western State College of Law), Beyond Print: New Models for Scholarly Publishing in Law (2014, Annual Conference of the American Association Read more

Lance Wahlert

Wahlert PosterAssistant Professor of Medical Ethics & Health Policy, University of Pennsylvania

Disability Studies and Contemporary Bioethics for HIV-Positive Persons

Wednesday, March 23, 2016
Stern Center, Great Room, 7 p.m.

In this talk, Wahlert will discuss the prominence of HIV-positive persons in the history of medicine, paying special attention to their impact by the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990.

This event is sponsored by the Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues and co-sponsored by the departments of women’s and gender studies, American studies, biology and the health studies certificate program. It is also part of the Clarke Forum’s semester theme, Disability.

Biography (provided by the speaker)

An historian of medicine and literary/cinema/queer studies scholar by training, Dr. Lance Wahlert is assistant professor of medical ethics & health policy and director of thelance wahlert image e Master of Bioethics (MBE) program in the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania.   He also holds affiliated standing-faculty appointments in Penn’s departments of: Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies; English; Cinema Studies; and, the History and Sociology of Science.

Dr. Wahlert’s scholarly interests include narrative medicine, clinical ethics, the history of LGBTQ medicine, disability theory, cinema studies, and Irish and Norwegian literature.  Accordingly, he has held residential Read more

Manju Banerjee

BanerjeePosterFINALVice President and Director of Landmark College Institute for Research and Training (LCIRT) and Associate Professor at Landmark College

Universal Design and Diverse Learners

Thursday, March 3, 2016
Holland Union Building, Social Hall West, 7 p.m.

This presentation will address issues, experiences, challenges and alternatives in pedagogical practice for today’s diverse population of college students. Starting with an overview of neurodiversity and learner differences, the presenter will share practical hand-on techniques, eTools, and strategies as guided by the Universal Design mindset.

This program is sponsored by the Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues and co-sponsored by the Department of Women’s and Gender Studies, American Studies, Kappa Delta Pi, the Wellness Center and the Office of Disability Services (ODS).  It is also part of the Clarke Forum’s semester theme, Disability.

Manju Banerjee pic distributionBiography (provided by the speaker)

Manju Banerjee, Ph.D., is vice president and director of Landmark College Institute for Research and Training (LCIRT) and associate professor at Landmark College. Dr. Banerjee has over 29 years of experience in the field of learning disabilities and postsecondary education, and is a certified diagnostician and teacher-consultant on learning disabilities. She has published and presented extensively, both nationally and internationally, on topics including Universal Design Read more

Perri Klass

Klass PosterProfessor of Journalism and Pediatrics, New York University

Poverty as a Childhood Disease

Thursday, February 25, 2016
Stern Center, Great Room, 7 p.m.

This talk will look at what poverty does to children, through lenses ranging from fairy tales to health statistics, and discuss the ways in which we can look at childhood poverty as a disease, stunting and depriving children’s minds and bodies–and use that perspective to find ways to think about mitigating the damage and reducing the disease itself.

This program is sponsored by the Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues  and co-sponsored by the Churchill Fund, department of economics, educational studies and the health studies program. It was initiated by the Clarke Forum’s student project managers and is part of the Clarke Forum’s Leadership in an Age of Uncertainty Series.

A children’s book drive is associated with this program and it runs from February 18 – February 25. New and gently used children’s books are being accepted. Bins are located at the Clarke Forum, Waidner-Spahr Library and the Whistlestop Bookshop (Whistlestop is offering a 10% discount on books being donated for this drive.)

klass headshotBiography (provided by the speaker)

Perri Klass, MD, is professor of journalism and Read more

John Englander ’72

Englander PosterOceanographer

Melting Ice, Rising Seas, Shifting Shorelines…The New Reality

Tuesday, February 16, 2016
Stern Center, Great Room, 7 p.m.

Sea level rise is now unstoppable. Englander will explain the latest science, put sea level rise into historic perspective, and explain what we can expect and how we should plan for the future.

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 Churchill Fund, the Center for Sustainability Education and the departments of earth sciences, biology, international business and management, international studies and policy studies. It is also part of the Clarke Forum’s Leadership in an Age of Uncertainty Series.

John Englander PhotoBiography (provided by the speaker)

John Englander is an oceanographer, consultant and leading expert on sea level rise. He brings the diverse points of view of an industry scientist, entrepreneur and CEO to this critical issue. For over 30 years, he has been a leader in both the private sector and the non-profit arena, serving as CEO for such noteworthy organizations as The Cousteau Society and The International SeaKeepers Society.

Englander graduated Dickinson College with a double major in geology and economics. His bestselling book, Read more

Emma Kaufman

Kaufman PosterResearcher, University of Oxford Border Criminologies Project

Prisons Built to Expel

Monday, February 15, 2016
Stern Center, Great Room, 7 p.m.

Kaufman will examine the rise and consequences of the “all-foreign” prison in the U.S. Is it legal to segregate American prisons by citizenship status? How are non-citizens treated inside prison systems in the US and Europe? What can we learn—about punishment, ethics, and immigration policy—by studying prisons that are built to expel?

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.

BiogKaufman photoraphy (provided by the speaker)

Emma Kaufman received her J.D. from Yale and her Ph.D. from Oxford, where she was a Marshall and Clarendon Scholar. Her new book, Punish and Expel, draws on a year of research inside men’s prisons to examine the treatment of incarcerated non-citizens. Emma has published articles on American immigration imprisonment, the relationship between gender and punishment, and British prison policy.

  Read more

Lennard Davis – “Morgan Lecturer”

Davis Final PosterDistinguished Professor of Liberal Arts and Sciences, Professor of English, Disability and Human Development, and Medical Education at the University of Illinois at Chicago

 

Morgan Lecture

The Americans with Disabilities Act:  Civil Rights Then, Now, and in the Future

Wednesday, February 10, 2016
Stern Center, Great Room, 7 p.m.

Live Stream Link

The Americans with Disabilities Act recently reached its 25th year anniversary.  This lecture looks at the history of how the most encompassing civil rights act of the 20th century, affecting the largest US minority, came to be passed; what its effects were and are; and what more work remains to be done. A book sale and signing will follow.

This program is sponsored by the Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues and the Morgan Lecture Fund and co-sponsored by the Churchill Fund and the Department of History.  It is also part of the Clarke Forum’s semester theme, Disability and the Leadership in an Age of Uncertainty Series.

lennarddavisBiography (provided by the speaker)

Lennard J. Davis is a Distinguished Professor of Liberal Arts and Sciences and teaches in the English Department at the University of Illinois at Chicago, where he had also served as the department’s Head.  In Read more

Sandra L. Steiner Ball ’84 – “Wesley Lecturer”

SteinerBallPosterBishop, West Virginia Conference of the United Methodist Church

Tuesday, February 9, 2016
Stern Center, Great Room, 7 p.m.

Wesley Lecture

We Are More Than We Have Become:

John Wesley’s Call to Holiness and Service

In this lecture, the first woman bishop of the United Methodist Church’s West Virginia Conference, Sandra Steiner Ball, will address Wesley’s desire to reform the Church and to move women and men from a passive connection with the Divine, to an active, relational, and accountable life of holiness and service to God. This subject is relevant for today as it was in the 18th Century.

This lecture is sponsored by the Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues, the Center for Service, Spirituality and Social Justice, and the Office of the President, and co-sponsored by the Department of Religion, Women’s and Gender Resource Center, Dickinson Christian Fellowship and the Churchill Fund. It is also part of the Clarke Forum’s Leadership in an Age of Uncertainty Series.

BishopSteinerBallBiography (provided by the speaker)

Sandra L. Steiner Ball, the daughter of Edward J. and Marjorie W. Steiner, was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts and raised in Milford, Delaware. She is a graduate of Dickinson College, (B.A. in Religion, 1984), Read more

Zach Leverenz ’01

Leverenz Final PosterFounder and CEO, EveryoneOn

Wednesday, February 3, 2016
Allison Great Hall, 7 p.m.
(Reception to follow)

Launch for New Social Innovation and Entrepreneurship (SINE) Certificate

Business as Unusual: Shared Strategies for Accelerating Change

Leverenz will apply a practitioner’s lens to examine how social entrepreneurs can design shared-value strategies and build cross-sector partnerships that accelerate social impact with immediate scale and sustained success.

The event is sponsored by the Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues, the Social Innovation and Entrepreneurship (SINE) Certificate Program, and the Office of Provost and co-sponsored by the Churchill Fund. This program is also part of the Clarke Forum’s Leadership in an Age of Uncertainty Series.

IMGBiography (provided by the speaker)

Zach Leverenz serves as founder and CEO of EveryoneOn, and has led the growth of the organization into a national force for social impact and inclusion.

With a singular focus on providing access to opportunity for all, the organization has adopted a broad, integrative agenda that harnesses the collective expertise and scale of more than 250 cross-sector partners to accelerate meaningful technology adoption for all segments of the unconnected population, including students, families, adults, and seniors.

Through the work of EveryoneOn, Leverenz has become a Read more

Elizabeth Hinton

Hinton Poster FinalHarvard University

Federal Policy, Urban Policing, and the Roots of Mass Incarceration

Thursday, November 19, 2015
Stern Center, Great Room, 7 p.m.

Shedding light on the devastating outcomes and the deep racial disparities within American law enforcement and penal institutions, Hinton traces the development of the War on Crime from its origins in the War on Poverty through the rise of mass incarceration and the War on Drugs in the 1980s. Hinton’s historical account situates the punitive policies of Ronald Reagan not as a sharp policy departure but rather as the full realization of the shift towards surveillance and confinement implemented by previous administrations.

This program is sponsored by the Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues and co-sponsored by the departments of American studies, history, philosophy and sociology. It is also part of the Clarke Forum’s semester theme, Inequality and Mass Incarceration in the United States.

Biography (provided by the speaker)

ehintonimageElizabeth Hinton is assistant professor in the Department History and the Department of African and African American Studies at Harvard University. Hinton’s research focuses on the transformation of domestic social programs and urban inequality in the 20th century United States. She is the author of a forthcoming history Read more

Doris Fuller

Doris Fuller PosterTreatment Advocacy Center, Arlington, VA

The New Asylums: Mentally Ill and Behind Bars

Thursday, November 5, 2015
Stern Center, Great Room, 7 p.m.

Live Stream Link

In the 1930s, barely one in 100 jail inmates had a serious mental illness. Today, the most conservative estimates are one in five jail inmates and even more of the prison population. With video, personal story and professional insight, Fuller will discuss the role of mental illness in turning the U.S. into the world leader in incarceration and discuss practical measures to curb this trend.

This program is sponsored by the Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues and co-sponsored by the Division of Student Life, health studies and the department of psychology. It is also part of the Clarke Forum’s semester theme, Inequality and Mass Incarceration in the United States. 

Biography (provided by the speaker)

Doris Fuller SeriousDoris A. Fuller is chief of research and public affairs, where she conducts and directs the Treatment Advocacy Center’s original studies abd research-driven communications, including public education related to mental illness.

Fuller has co-authored several recent studies from the Treatment Advocacy Center, including:

Read more