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Thursday, October 15, 2020

IG Open Forum DePasqualeVirtual program on YouTube live, 7 p.m.

Open Forum with Auditor General Eugene DePasquale
Democratic Candidate for Pennsylvania’s 10th Congressional District

As we find ourselves in the midst of a global pandemic, our foremost priority must be to find a vaccine for COVID-19 and stem the pain of its current economic impact on families and businesses. But as we get past the immediate challenges posed by the virus and its economic fallout, it is critical we begin to think about how we rebuild. Our world, pre-coronavirus, already faced another existential danger, one that is revealing the potential scope of the danger it presents with California suffering from its worst fire season in memory, climate change.

As policy makers, movement leaders, private industry and everyday citizens think about how we rebuild, we can and must factor sustainability and green technology into that equation. Eugene DePasquale, candidate for Pennsylvania’s 10th Congressional district will be speaking about how we can use 2021 and beyond as a moment to set our economy and the world on a sustainable path by addressing climate change, structural economic challenges like income inequality, and setting the stage for future prosperity.

This event is also an open forum where Read more

Global Pandemic: What it Reveals About Prospects for a Sustainable World

Global Pandemic Poster scaledTuesday, April 21, 2020 – 7 p.m.
Live Stream Event

Dickinson Panelists

Heather Bedi, assistant professor of environment studies
Michael Beevers, associate professor of environmental studies
Neil Leary, director of the Center for Sustainability Education

The effects and responses to the COVID-19 pandemic are making visible stark differences in who and what are vulnerable and resilient to its widespread disruptions and dislocations. In this panel discussion, we will explore what the pandemic is revealing about existing inequities and vulnerabilities and implications for pursuing sustainable development goals.

This event is sponsored by the Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues and the Center for Sustainability Education and is part of Dickinson’s Earth Day Teach-in.

Biographies (provided by the panelists)

Heather Bedi is an assistant professor of environmental studies at Dickinson College. Funded by the Cambridge Political Economy Society Trust, she completed a Ph.D. in human geography from the University of Cambridge. Bedi’s research examines how civil society and socio-environmental movements experience and adapt to natural resource and landscape modifications related to energy processes, climate change, industrialization, and agricultural transitions. Her broader research and teaching interests include environmental and social justice, political ecology, development, planning, and low carbon futures. Her current Read more

Marie Helweg-Larsen

we wont get corona scaledDickinson College

Why Are We Optimistically Biased About Our Risks?: Applications to the Coronavirus Pandemic

Monday, April 6, 2020
Live Stream Event, NOON – 1 p.m.

The optimistic bias (thinking you are less at risk than other people) is well documented. This talk will explain why it is so pervasive and how it can help us understand complacency in following coronavirus precautionary behaviors.

Biography

helwegmMarie Helweg-Larsen is a social psychologist who examines why smart people do dumb things. Helweg-Larsen has examined the causes, consequences, and correlates of optimistic bias (thinking you are less at risk than others) as well as other health-related behaviors and cognitions. Most recently she has examined cross-culturally how moralized beliefs about smoking affect risk perceptions and willingness to quit smoking. In her current NIH-funded research she is examining the effects of stigmatization on smokers’ willingness to quit smoking. Last week Helweg-Larsen began a research project with two Dickinson alumni (Laurel Peterson ’06 and Sarah DiMuccio ’15) in which they are examining the gendered and political factors in the link between coronavirus risk perceptions and preventive behaviors.

Related Links

https://blogs.dickinson.edu/helwegm/

https://theconversation.com/in-battling-the-coronavirus-will-optimistic-bias-be-our-wrongdoing-134476

Video of the Presentation

  Read more

Update on this Semester’s Programming

Due to the global coronavirus pandemic, Dickinson College has made the decision to complete the semester online. The college is following federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) guidance that all gatherings of 50 or more people should be suspended for eight weeks. In accordance with this guidance, all Clarke Forum /programs on campus are postponed. We are, however, organizing more live-streaming events so stay tuned. You can take advantage of past programming by viewing our lecture videos or listening to interviews of our guest speakers. Read more

Denise Sekaquaptewa (Event Cancelled*)

University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

* The event was cancelled due to the college’s response to COVID-19.

Effects of Stereotyping and Implicit Bias on Underrepresented Minorities in STEM

Thursday, April 16, 2020
Anita Tuvin Schlechter Auditorium, 7 p.m.

This talk will describe social science research findings regarding the experiences of White women and underrepresented racial/ethnic minority (URM) people in STEM fields.

This program is sponsored by the Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues and co-sponsored by the departments of earth sciences; educational studies; mathematics & computer science; environmental studies; biology; physics & astronomy; and  women’s, gender & sexuality studies, the Women’s & Gender Resource Center, the Inclusivity in STEM committee, the Neuroscience Club, the Anthropology Club and the Women of Color Summit. This event is initiated by the Clarke Forum student project managers.

Biography (provided by the speaker)

dsekaquaptewaDr. Denise Sekaquaptewa is University Diversity and Social Transformation Professor of Psychology at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, USA.  Her research program in experimental social psychology focuses on stereotyping, implicit bias, and the experiences of women and underrepresented minorities in science and engineering.  Her research program has been supported by the National Science Foundation, and the National Center for Institutional Diversity.  Read more

Environmental Scarcity and Instability in the West African Sahel and the Lake Chad Basin (Event Cancelled *)

Thursday, April 2, 2020
Anita Tuvin Schlechter Auditorium, 7 p.m.

* The event was cancelled due to the college’s response to COVID-19.

The Bechtel Lecture

Panelists:

Michael Beevers, Dickinson College
Guy Feldman, former Israel Ambassador to Nigeria and ECOWAS (The Economic Community of West African States)
Jacob Udo-Udo Jacob (moderator and panelist), Dickinson College
Other Panelists: TBD

The West African Sahel and the Lake Chad Basin currently face two major threats: increasing environmental degradation and violence. This forum discusses the destabilizing interactions between declining renewable natural resources (such as fresh water and arable soil), ecological marginalization, resource capture, population growth, the rise of violent extremist networks and weakened governing institutions in the region.

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

Biographies (provided by the panelists)

IMG rotatedMichael Beevers is an associate professor in the Department of Environmental Studies, and contributing faculty in the Department of International Studies at Dickinson College.  Beevers specializes in global environmental politics with an emphasis on the linkages between the environment, security, conflict and peace. Beevers was a peace scholar at the U.S. Institute of Peace in Washington DC, and has served as a research associate at Princeton University and Read more

David Nirenberg – “The Molly and Wayne Borges Memorial Lecture” (Event Cancelled *)

Nirenberg Poster scaled

* The event was cancelled due to the College’s response to COVID-19.

University of Chicago

The Molly and Wayne Borges Memorial Lecture

What the History of Anti-Semitism Tells Us about Hate Today

Monday, March 23, 2020
Anita Tuvin Schlechter Auditorium, 7 p.m.

From their earliest origins to the present moment, Christians and Muslims have given shape to their faiths by interacting with and thinking about Jews and Judaism.  How has that long history of thought contributed to anti-Semitism in the past and present?  And what can the study of that history offer the future?”

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

Biography (provided by the speaker)

Nirenberg HeadshotDavid Nirenberg has written widely about the ways in which Jewish, Christian, and Islamic cultures interrelate with each other.  He is the author of, among other books, Communities of Violence: Persecution of Minorities in the Middle Ages;  Anti-Judaism: The Western Tradition; Neighboring Faiths: Christianity, Islam, and Judaism Medieval and Modern; and Aesthetic Theology and its Enemies: Judaism in Christian Painting, Poetry, and Politics.  His essays have appeared in the London Review of Books, the Read more

Bread and Puppet Theater (Event Cancelled *)

* The event was cancelled due to the college’s response to COVID-19.

Bread and puppet poster scaledDiagonal Life: Theory and Praxis

Tuesday, March 17, 2020
Allison Great Hall, 6 p.m.

Vermont’s Bread and Puppet Theater returns to Dickinson College with a new show examining humanity’s current precarious (diagonal) condition: on the verge of collapse, yet always capable of uprising. This show animates the humorous, tragic and bewildering possibilities of diagonality with song, dance, magic, mechanism, and stunning cardboard and paper maché puppets painted in Peter Schumann’s exuberant expressionist style.

After the show Bread and Puppet will serve its famous sourdough rye bread with aioli, and Bread and Puppet’s “Cheap Art” – books, posters, postcards, pamphlets and banners from the Bread and Puppet Press – will be for sale.

This program is sponsored by the Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues and the Department of Theatre and Dance. It is also part of the Clarke Forum’s Leadership in an Age of Uncertainty Series.

Information about the Theater (taken from their website)

Bread and PuppetThe Bread and Puppet Theater was founded in 1963 by Peter Schumann on New York City’s Lower East Side. Besides rod-puppet and hand puppet shows for children, the concerns of the first productions Read more

Zaneta Thayer

Thayer Final PosterDartmouth College

The Biology of Inequality

Tuesday, September 24, 2019
Anita Tuvin Schlechter Auditorium, 7 p.m.

This talk will describe the hormonal and molecular mechanisms through which environments can become embodied, with a particular focus on how social inequalities can create health inequalities.

This event is sponsored by the Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues and co-sponsored by the departments of philosophy, American studies, sociology and anthropology and the Health Studies Program.  The program was initiated by the Clarke Forum’s student project managers.

Biography (provided by the speaker)

Thayer head shotZaneta Thayer is an assistant professor in the Department of Anthropology at Dartmouth College. She is interested in understanding how stress exposures, particularly in early life, shape patterns of human biology and health, as well as the evolutionary basis for that sensitivity. Much of her research has explored the health impacts of exposures such as poverty, discrimination, acculturative stress, and historical trauma in both New Zealand and among Native American communities in the United States.

Video of the Presentation

  Read more

Constitution Day Program

Tuesday, September 17, 2019
Apfelbaum Auditorium
Penn State Dickinson School of Law

In celebration of Constitution Day on September 17, 2019, the Commonwealth Court of  Pennsylvania will be hold a court session at Penn State Dickinson Law (Apfelbaum Auditorium). The court will hear oral arguments in seven cases. This special court session offers an opportunity for students to learn about appellate practice, administrative law and constitutional law. Following the court session there will be a special CLE/CJE program.

This program is sponsored by the Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues and Penn State Dickinson Law.

SCHEDULE

9:00 – 11:30 a.m.
Apfelbaum Auditorium

Constitution Day Program: Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania Opening Ceremony and Oral Argument Session
Observers may come and go during the court session, please enter and exit quietly. Please note that no backpacks or bags will be permitted in the Auditorium (absent health or other accommodation needs) and hats must be removed.

12:00 – 1:00 p.m.
Apfelbaum Auditorium

CLE/CJE Constitution Day Program: The Role of the State Judiciary in Our Constitutional System
A panel discussion featuring judges of the Commonwealth Court and moderated by Professor Amy Gaudion.

** These events are open to the Dickinson Law and Dickinson College Read more

Macarena Gómez-Barris

Gomez Barris PosterPratt Institute

Extractive Zones + Decolonial Praxis

Monday, January 28, 2019
Anita Tuvin Schlechter Auditorium, 7 p.m.

Based on her book, The Extractive Zone, this talk explores the old and new sites of land and water defense, and artistic and activist responses to these issues. Gómez-Barris will discuss work from the Américas to argue for alternative modes of living, being, and doing from within and outside of the extractive zones.

This program is sponsored by the Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues and a Civic Learning and Engagement Initiative Grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and co-sponsored by the departments of Latin American, Latino & Caribbean studies; Spanish & Portuguese; environmental studies; art & art history; and anthropology & archaeology. It is part of the Clarke Forum’s semester theme, Sustainability.

Biography (provided by the speaker)

Gomez Barris picMacarena Gómez-Barris is chairperson of the Department of Social Science & Cultural Studies and director of the Global South Center (GSC) at Pratt Institute. She is author of three books including The Extractive Zone: Social Ecologies and Decolonial Perspectives that theorizes social life, art, and decolonial praxis through five extractive scenes of ruinous capitalism upon Indigenous territories (Duke University Press, 2017). Gómez-Barris’s recent book  Read more

A snapshot of our upcoming programs is listed below. Check back soon for the full programming schedule for spring 2019

Monday, January 28, 2019
Anita Tuvin Schlechter Auditorium, 7 p.m.
The Extractive Zone + Decolonial Praxis
Macarena Gómez-Barris, Pratt Institute

Wednesday, January 30, 2019
Stern Center, Great Room, 7 p.m.
Wesley Lecture
Church of the Wild: A New and Old Way of Experiencing Spirituality
 Beth Norcross, The Center for Spirituality in Nature

Monday, February 4, 2019
Anita Tuvin Schlechter Auditorium, 7 p.m.
The Bruce R. Andrews Lecture
Why People Believe Conspiracy Theories
Joanne Miller, University of Delaware

Tuesday, February 5, 2019
Anita Tuvin Schlechter Auditorium, 7 p.m.
The Morgan Lecture & MLK Symposium & KDP Spring Forum
Understanding the Impact of Modern Day Segregation
Nikole Hannah-Jones, award-winning investigative reporter

Wednesday, February 6, 2019
Anita Tuvin Schlechter Auditorium, 7 p.m.
Resilience for All: Striving for Equity Through Community-Driven Design
Barbara Brown Wilson, University of Virginia

Tuesday, February 12, 2019
Anita Tuvin Schlechter Auditorium, 7 p.m.
Part of Love Your Body Week
Young, Gifted and Fat
 Sharrell Luckett, acclaimed theatre director, professor, actor, and scholar

Tuesday, February 19. 2019
Anita Tuvin Schlechter Auditorium, 7 p.m.
Blackness in the Dominican Americas
 Dixa Ramírez, Brown University

Friday, February 22. 2019
Location: TBD, 5:45 p.m.
Part of the Read more

Rick Smolan ’72

Smolan Poster Flag

New York Times Best-Selling Author and National Geographic Photographer

The Good Fight: America’s Ongoing Struggle for Justice

Friday, April 27,  2018
Althouse Hall, Room 106, 4:30 p.m.

Smolan will share images and stories from his new book The Good Fight. The book captures the sporadically violent, often triumphant, always risky struggles of Americans who have experienced hatred, oppression or bigotry because of their gender, skin color, country of origin, religion, sexual orientation, disability or beliefs over the past 100 years. A book sale and signing will follow the presentation.

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

Biography (provided by the speaker)

Rick SmolanRick Smolan, CEO of Against All Odds Productions is a New York Times best-selling author   with more than five million copies of his books in print.  A former Time, Life, and National Geographic photographer, Smolan is best known as the co-creator of the “Day in the Life” book series.  His global photography projects, which feature the work of hundreds of the worlds leading photographers and combine creative storytelling with state-of-the-art technology, are regularly featured on the covers of prestigious publications around the globe including Fortune, Time, and GEO. His latest book, Read more

Emma Howard

Howard PosterPerformer and Writer

I’m Smiling Because I’m Uncomfortable

Friday, February 16, 2018
Adams Hall, Basement Kitchen, 4:30 p.m.

Why do we eat? Why do we stop eating? This one woman show is an autobiographical story traveling from early childhood experiences of queerness and lessons on body image, to a college eating disorder, to the present challenges of eating and living in a human body.

This program is sponsored by the Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues and is part of Love Your Body Week programming.

Biography (provided by the guest)

Howard HeadshotEmma Howard (Performer, Writer) is a recent graduate from the Experimental Theatre Wing at Tisch School of the Arts. Most of her work addresses eating and mental illness. When not writing or performing, she works for a non-profit theatre organization called The Possibility Project. To pay rent, she works at an overpriced vegan fast food restaurant that caters to a lot of men at JP Morgan. She is interested in one day becoming a medical and humanitarian clown and using physical comedy to tackle body image issues. Her favorite food to binge on is peanut butter granola.

  Read more

A snapshot of our upcoming programs is listed below. Check back in mid-January for the full programming schedule for spring 2018

Monday, January 29. 2018
Glover Lecture
Einstein, Black Holes and Gravitational Waves
Gabriela Gonzalez, Louisiana State University

Monday, February 5, 2018
Donald Trump, Race, and the Crisis of American Democracy
Christopher Sebastian Parker, University of Washington, Seattle

Thursday, February 8, 2018
Food Access & Poverty Panel
Alyssa Feher, Tapestry of Health
Becca Raley (moderator), Partnership for Better Health
Robert Weed ’80, Project Share
Risa Waldoks ’12, The Food Trust

Wednesday, February 14, 2018
Program is Part of Love Your Body Week
The Adipositivity Project
Substantia Jones, founder of and photographer for The Adipositivity Project

Friday, February 16, 2018
Program is Part of Love Your Body Week
I’m Smiling Because I’m Uncomfortable
Emma Howard, performer and writer

Tuesday, February 20, 2018
A Strange Career of the Jim Crow North: A Dickinson Story
Komozi Woodard, Sarah Lawrence College

Wednesday, February 21, 2018
Pink Precariat:  LGBT Workers in the Shadow of Civil Rights
Margot Canaday, Princeton University

Tuesday, February 27 or Wednesday, February 28, 2018
An Evening with Yoko Tawada
Yoko Tawada, award-winning writer

Wednesday, March 7, 2018
The 1001 Black Men Online Sketchbook and the Art of Social Justice
Ajuan Read more

A snapshot of our upcoming programs is listed below. Check back in mid-August for the full programming schedule for fall 2017

Wednesday, September 6, 2017♦
The Power of Big Social Media Data
H. Andrew Schwartz, Stony Brook University

Thursday, September 7, 2017
Breaking Issue
North Korea: Panel Discussion
Jina Kim, Dickinson College
Richard Laquement, U.S. Army War College
Jeff McCausland, Dickinson College
Doug Stuart (moderator), Dickinson College

Tuesday, September 12, 2017
Morgan Lecture
The Genocidal Foundation of the United States
Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, American historian, writer and feminist.

Monday, September 18, 2017
Constitution Day Address
​The Future of Civil Discourse​
Alexander Heffner, host of The Open Mind on PBS

Tuesday, September 26, 2017
Joseph Priestley Award Celebration Lecture
The Good News on Energy, Environment and Our Future
Richard Alley, Evan Pugh University Professor of Geosciences, Pennsylvania State University

Tuesday, October 3, 2017
Everything is Connected
Peterson Toscano, theatrical performance activist

Wednesday, October 4, 2017
Rethinking and Remixing the American Dream: Saving Ourselves and Our Sisters from the Margins
Raquel Cepeda, journalist, critic, filmmaker, autobiographer

Thursday, October 5, 2017
Republican Politics Today
Panel Discussion
Renee Amoore, deputy chair of the Republican Party of PA
Luke Bernstein ’01, senior vice president of external relations, PA Bankers Association
Robert Borden ’91, deputy Read more

Jenny Lee

Lee PosterVictoria University, Melbourne, Australia

Fat Activism Down Under

Thursday, December 1, 2016
Althouse Hall, Room 106, 7 p.m.

This talk explores the fat activist movement in Australia and New Zealand including fat  femme synchronized swim, fat burlesque, and the “plus size” fashion industry.  Lee will discuss the challenges of doing fat activism and scholarship, the complexities of dealing with the media and organizations that discriminate, the personal cost of fat activism, and the white privilege of prominent fat activists.

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

J LeeBiography (provided by the speaker)

Jenny Lee researches in the interdisciplinary fields of Fat Studies and Creative Writing at Victoria University, Melbourne, Australia. She is also a Research Associate of the Centre for Cultural Diversity and Wellbeing in ‘Culture and values in health’ at Victoria University.

She is a Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing and Literary Studies and has published in academic journals and books, literary journals and magazines. She has presented her research at conferences in Spain, Portugal, Italy, South Africa, New Zealand and Australia, and published work in England, Ireland, the U.S, and Australia. Her academic publications include, ‘Not just a type: diabetes, fat and fear’, in Somatechnics Read more

Winona LaDuke – “Morgan Lecturer” – Rescheduled to Spring 2017

Executive Director, Honor the Earth

Morgan Lecture

Native Harvest: The Politics, Health, Culture, and Economics of Food

Thursday, October 27, 2017
(Rescheduled from Fall 2016)
Anita Tuvin Schlechter Auditorium, 7 p.m.

Future generations rely upon our wisdom and actions today. LaDuke will share stories from her work in local food, energy justice, intergenerational and interspecies equity, and the front lines of food sovereignty. A book sale and signing will follow the presentation.

This program is sponsored by the Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues and the Morgan Lecture Fund and co-sponsored by the Center for Sustainability Education, the Churchill Fund and the Departments of Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies, Environmental Studies, American Studies, Anthropology & Archaeology and Political Science.  It is also part of the Clarke Forum’s  Leadership in an Age of Uncertainty Series and part of the Clarke Forum’s Fall 2016 semester theme, Food.

laduke winonaBiography (provided by the speaker)

Winona LaDuke is an internationally renowned activist working on issues of sustainable development renewable energy and food systems. She lives and works on the White Earth reservation in northern Minnesota, and is a two-time vice presidential candidate with Ralph Nader for the Green Party.

As executive director of the Honor Read more

Yair Teller

TellerPosterFinalChief Scientist and Founder, HomeBiogas

The Business of Peace through Green Energy: The HomeBiogas Story

Thursday, March 31, 2016
Stern Center, Great Room, 7 p.m.

Teller will discuss how he is using his company, HomeBiogas, as a mechanism for peace building, sustainable development, women’s empowerment, and improvement of the quality of health and life for citizens of developing countries.

Yair Teller is chief scientist and co-founder of the HomeBiogas Company based in Netanya, Israel.  HomeBiogas produces a household renewable energy appliance that recycles kitchen waste into cooking gas and organic fertilizer.  Profits from sales to suburban customers and a successful crowd-funding campaign are used to support donation of HomeBiogas units to economically disadvantaged Bedouin, Palestinian, and Ugandan families for alleviation of poverty.  The work of HomeBiogas has been recognized by the UN and the Peres Center for Peace.

This event is sponsored by the Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues and Student Senate, and co-sponsored by the departments of Judaic studies, Middle East studies and earth sciences, the Center for Sustainable Education, the Treehouse, J Street U, and the Geology Club.

Biography (provided by the speaker)

origYair Teller is a visionary and entrepreneur committed to the cause of sustainability, and driven Read more