Past Programs

Thursday, March 7, 2024

Stern Center, Great Room, 7 p.m.

 

Gender Week Keynote

Breaking Barriers: A Journey of Empowering Women through Self-Discovery, Equality, and Resilience

Hagir Elsheikh,  author and entrepreneur

Gender inequality is not an isolated phenomenon; we need to analyze the social, cultural, and political factors that contribute to the subsequent oppression of women’s rights and, in turn, affect how women view, interact with, and love themselves and the world around them. It calls for the recognition of women’s rights as human rights and challenges the pervasive societal belief that women are to be regulated and kept under men’s supervision, perpetuated through politics, education, and cultural norms. The interconnected challenges of gender equality, feminist movements, patriarchy, authoritarian regimes, and reproductive rights are highlighted, urging a directional shift in societal progress. 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 Women’s & Gender Resource Center, the Middle East Studies Program and the Department of Africana Studies. It is also part of the Clarke Forum’s Leadership in an Age of Uncertainty Series.

Biography (provided by the speaker)

Photo of Hagir ElsheikhHagir Elsheikh, is chairwoman and CEO of Hagir Network, serial entrepreneur, Read more

Monday, March 4, 2024

Anita Tuvin Schlechter Auditorium, 7 p.m.

Livestream Link 

Race and the Origins of Modern Policing

Matthew Guariglia ’12, Senior Policy Analyst at Electronic Frontier Foundation

This talk will show how the modern police department, rather than originating as a “colorblind” institution, was built to explicitly consider race, ethnicity, gender, and sexuality when enforcing laws and repressing individuals and communities. From searching for formerly enslaved African Americans, managing imagined Irish Catholic criminality, surveilling Jewish, Italian, and Chinese communities—police departments look and act the way they do because their early encounters with race and ethnicity led to periods of experimentation and growth. Central to the story of policing in the United States are the tactics and technologies cultivated by colonialism as oppressive tactics traveled home from the U.S. occupation of the Philippines, Cuba, and Puerto Rico as well as from British and French imperialism in African and Asia. This history reveals the deep-rooted fault lines in American policing and the thinking that produced them in the first place. 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 Division of Diversity, Equity & Inclusion, the departments of American Read more

Thursday, February 29, 2024 – The Morgan Lecture

(Event rescheduled from 11/14/23)

Anita Tuvin Schlechter Auditorium, 7 p.m.

This event is in-person only. It will not be livestreamed or recorded.

Morgan Lecture

Savage States: Settler Governance in an Age of Sorrow

Audra Simpson, Columbia University

How is the past imagined to be settled? What are the conditions that make for this imagining, this fantasy or rather, demand of a new beginning? In this lecture, Professor Audra Simpson will consider the making of ‘new time’ in light of histories of wrongdoing – residential and boarding schools and the dispossession that is tied to this in recent history – 1990 to the near present in Canada. This is a time of apology, and a time in which Native people and their claims to territory are whittled to the status of claimant in time with the fantasy of their disappearance from a modern and critical present. How has settler governance adjusted itself in line with global trends and rights paradigms away from overt violence to softer and kinder, caring modes of governance? This lecture will ask not only in what world we imagine time to stop, but will also take up the ways in which those that survived the time stoppage Read more

Thursday, February 22, 2024

Anita Tuvin Schlechter Auditorium, 7 p.m.

Black History Month Keynote

The Ethics of Anti-Racism

Eddie Glaude Jr., James S. McDonnell Distinguished University Professor at Princeton University

What does it mean to commit oneself to deconstructing the idea of whiteness and the way in which it determines the distribution of advantage and disadvantage? How does one do that when the language of racism comes to us as naturally as language itself? For Dr. Eddie Glaude Jr., anti-racism isn’t about making a list of action items and then checking off some boxes. It is a highly ethical position — the reflection of a committed, moral choice to reject the idea that some people should be valued more than others. Calling on audiences to engage in an ongoing critique of racism’s manifestations, he challenges all of us to work together to create the conditions for people to think more carefully and systematically about the issues that we confront. As James Baldwin wrote in 1962: “The trouble is deeper than we think, because the trouble is in us.” According to Glaude, eliminating racism will take a lot more work than checking off some boxes. It’s going to take nothing less than a moral reckoning. Read more

Monday February 12, 2024

Eunji Kim Poster Anita Tuvin Schlechter Auditorium, 7 p.m.

 

Bruce R. Andrews Lecture

Unseen Politics: Hidden Impact of Entertainment Media in Unequal America

Eunji Kim, Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at Columbia University

There is a simple and uncomfortable truth about the nation still recovering from the scars of a reality TV presidency: given the dazzling array of media choices, Americans are not watching news. If our media diet primarily consists of entertainment media, how does it shape politics? In this hyper-politicized world full of partisan news media, it might seem implausible that something as frivolous as entertainment media could possibly affect people’s political attitudes. Defying such conventional wisdom, Kim theorizes and describes the unique power of entertainment media in shaping political attitudes and behaviors. In particular, this talk introduces a puzzle in American politics that can be addressed by bringing entertainment media to the table. In this age of intensifying income inequality, the concerns about the fading American Dream from politicians on both sides of the partisan aisle are omnipresent. Nevertheless, many Americans continue to view the United States as the land of opportunity. Why do beliefs in economic mobility persist despite the raft of empirical evidence to Read more

Tuesday, February 6, 2024

Linguistic Justice: Black Language, Literacy, Identity, and Pedagogy

April Baker-Bell,  Associate Professor of Language, Culture, and Justice in Education at the University of Michigan in the Marsal Family School of Education

In this talk, Dr. April Baker-Bell will discuss how anti-Black linguistic racism and white linguistic supremacy get normalized in teacher attitudes, curriculum and instruction, pedagogical approaches, disciplinary discourses, and research, and she will discuss the impact these decisions have on Black students’ language education and their linguistic, racial, and intellectual identities. Dr. Baker-Bell will introduce a new way to forward through Antiracist Black Language Pedagogy, a pedagogical approach that intentionally and unapologetically places Black Language at the center to critically interrogate white linguistic hegemony and anti-Black linguistic racism. 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 Center for Teaching, Learning and Scholarship (CTLS), the Faculty Success Center, and the departments of English and sociology.

Topic overview written by Ella Layton ’26

Biography (provided by the speaker)
Dr. April Baker-Bell  is an award-winning transdisciplinary teacher-researcher-activist and associate professor of Language, Culture, and Justice in Education at the University of Michigan in the Marsal Family Read more

Wednesday, January 31, 2024

Anita Tuvin Schlechter Auditorium – 7 p.m.

 

Gender Based Violence and Women’s Education

Sister Rosemary Nyirumbe, Sewing Hope Foundation

Sister Rosemary Nyirumbe will speak on the effects of gender-based violence and how she uses “Learn and Earn” to help her students overcome the trauma they’ve suffered in the violent civil wars of Northern Uganda and South Sudan. Amidst the war, armed with sewing machines and love, Sister Rosemary provided a safe place for women and children fleeing and recovering from the war. Join Sister Rosemary, named one of Time Magazine’s most 100 influential people, as she discusses her work with St. Monica’s Girls’ Tailoring Center and the Sewing Hope Foundation, and how we can find hope amid trauma and pain.

This program is sponsored by the Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues and co-sponsored by Dickinson Catholic Campus Ministry (a Senate sponsored club), Saint Patrick Church, Office of the President, the Center for Civic Learning & Action, the Popel Shaw Center for Race & Ethnicity,  the Center for Spirituality & Social Justice, and the departments of Africana studies, history, religion, women’s, gender & sexuality studies, and educational studies. This program was initiated by the Clarke Forum’s student project managers. It Read more

Thursday, November 30, 2023 – The President’s Award and Celebration

Poster Advertising Lives of Leadership event Anita Tuvin Schlechter Auditorium, 7 p.m.

The President’s Award and Celebration

Lives of Leadership: A Conversation with David Petraeus P’04 and Holly Petraeus ’74, P’04

The Dickinson College President’s Award is a symbol of excellence and distinction. The award is bestowed by President John E. Jones III ’77, P’11, to individuals who lead lives of service, forge new paths in their respective fields, contribute meaningfully to the betterment of the world and inspire future generations. The inaugural recipients of the President’s Award are David Petraeus P’04 and Holly Petraeus ’74, P’04, in recognition of their exemplary lives of service, both to their nation and to their community. This conversation will be facilitated by President Jones.

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

Biographies (provided by the speakers)

David Petraeus HeadshotGeneral David Petraeus, US Army (Ret.) P’04 is one of the leading battlefield commanders and strategists of our time.  He served over 37 years in the US military culminating his career with six consecutive commands as a general officer, five of which were in combat, Read more

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 9, 2023 (Postponed from Wednesday, November 8) – The Glover Memorial Lecture

Anita Tuvin Schlechter Auditorium, 7 p.m.

Livestream Link

The Glover Memorial Lecture

Uncertainty in Climate Change Research:  An Integrated Approach

Linda Mearns,  Senior Scientist in the Research Applications Lab of the National Center for Atmospheric Research

Uncertainty is a factor in all phases of climate change research regarding the future from projections of regional climate change, to the various impacts of climate change, through the economics of climate change. All these uncertainties need to be considered when approaching the complete problem of climate change. We start from the consideration of decision making under uncertainty, and then consider the nature of uncertainty in the different parts of the problem.

This program is sponsored by the Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues and the Glover Memorial Lecture Fund and co-sponsored by the Department of Physics & Astronomy,  the Center for Sustainability Education, 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)

Linda Mearns PhotoLinda O. Mearns is a senior scientist in the Research Applications Lab of the National Center for Atmospheric Research, Boulder, Colorado. She previously served as director of the Weather and Climate Impacts Assessment Science Program (WCIASP) for Read more

Thursday, November 2, 2023

Carlisle Theatre, 40 W. High Street, 7 p.m.

Film Screening of Retrograde

Baktash Ahadi, Filmmaker
Chris Mason, U.S. Army War College
Farida Mohammadi, Afghan Female Tactical Platoon
Asem Shukoori, Film Subject

Retrograde captures the final nine months of America’s 20-year war in Afghanistan from multiple perspectives: one of the last U.S. Special Forces units deployed there, a young Afghan general and his corps fighting to defend their homeland against all odds, and the civilians desperately attempting to flee as the country collapses and the Taliban take over. From rarely seen operational control rooms to the frontlines of battle to the chaotic Kabul airport during the final U.S. withdrawal, this Oscar-Shortlisted film offers a cinematic and historic window onto the end of America’s longest war, and the costs endured for those most intimately involved. The screening will be followed by a Q&A session with the panelists.

The film showing is sponsored by the Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues and the Carlisle Theatre.

Topic overview written by Ella Layton ’26, Clarke Forum Student Project Manager

Biographies (provided by the speakers).

Headshot of Baktash Ahadi

Baktash Ahadi is an award-winning documentary filmmaker, storyteller, and executive leadership coach. He was born in Kabul in 1981, and his Read more

Monday, October 30, 2023

Anita Tuvin Schlechter Auditorium, 7 p.m.


Program is Part of the Dialogues Across Differences Project 

Creating a Calling In Culture within the Reproductive Health, Human Rights, and Justice Movements

Loretta Ross, Smith College

Professor Ross will speak on transforming the Calling Out Culture into a Calling In Culture within the Reproductive Health, Rights, and Justice movements. She is committed to changing our national dialogue and improving our work on human rights by inviting us to deeply explore how we can most effectively affect change in our society to protect women’s human rights.

This program is sponsored by the Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues and is part of the Dialogues Across Differences Project, which is funded by a grant from the Arthur Vining Davis Foundations. The program is also co-sponsored by the Women’s & Gender Resource Center, the Department of Women’s, Gender & Sexuality Studies, and the Churchill Fund.  In addition, it is part of the Clarke Forum’s Leadership in an Age of Uncertainty Series.

Topic overview written by Phuong Hoang ’26, Clarke Forum Student Project Manager

Biography (provided by the speaker)

Loretta J. Ross is an Associate Professor at Smith College. As a 2022 recipient of the MacArthur Foundation Read more

Thursday, October 26, 2023

Stern Center, Great Room, 7 p.m.

Livestream link 

The Bechtel Lecture

Know-Do Gap: A Fallacy for Scale-Up & Sustainability 

Malabika Sarker, Brown University

Implementation Research (IR) is a systematic process of causal analysis, bottlenecks of implementation identification, and optimum strategy selection in a particular context. IR refers to understanding know-do gaps; what, why, and how an intervention works in real-world settings and testing approaches to improve them, introduce potential solutions to a system, or promote their large-scale use and sustainability. Bridging the know-do gap is crucial for the successful implementation of any public health intervention especially in pertinent to scalability and sustainability. This presentation will showcase the fallacy in addressing the know-do gap as a simple linear two-dimensional strategy. In addition, it will illustrate with examples from Sarker’s research in Sub-Saharan Africa and Bangladesh, that the know-do gap is a continuum, not a binary theme.

This program is sponsored by the Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues and co-sponsored by the Bechtel Lectureship Fund and the Department of International Studies.

Biography (provided by the speaker)

Dr. Malabika Sarker is a Professor of the Practice of Behavioral and Social Sciences at Brown School of Public Health, Brown University.  Professor Sarker is an Read more

Thursday, October 5, 2023

Anita Tuvin Schlechter Auditorium, 7 p.m.

Livestream Link

In Celebration of 150 Years of The Dickinsonian

A Conversation on Corrections in Ink

Keri Blakinger, Los Angeles Times
Renée Ann Cramer, Dickinson College

In this program, Blakinger will discuss her memoir which traces her journey from competitive figure skating, to struggles with an eating disorder and addiction, to eventually a two-year sentence in New York’s prison system. Blakinger will reflect on her experiences and how they have influenced her work as an investigative reporter covering mass incarceration. The discussion will be facilitated by Dickinson’s Provost Renée Ann Cramer. A book sale and signing will follow the presentation.

This program is sponsored by the Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues and The Dickinsonian and co-sponsored by the Department of Sociology.

Topic overview written by Isa Mester ’26, Clarke Forum Student Project Manager

Biographies (provided by the speakers)

Keri Blakinger is a staff reporter at the Los Angeles Times, where she covers the sheriff’s department and jails. Previously, she was an investigative reporter at The Marshall Project where she focused on incarceration and prior to that she covered the death penalty and prisons for the Houston Chronicle. She’s been featured on PBS News Read more

Thursday, September 28, 2023

Stern Center, Great Room, 7 p.m.

Livestream Link

Bodega Poetics: Classics and Caribbean Diaspora

Dan-el Padilla Peralta,  Associate Professor of Classics at Princeton University

Beginning with a reflection on the history of the word “bodega,” this lecture will look at the significance of ancient Greece and Rome to modern Caribbean communities. The focus will be on thinking through the shifting relationship of “classics” to Afro-Caribbean diasporas, and on several forms of interpretation useful for charting that relationship: historical, poetic, autobiographical. 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 First-Year Seminar Program and the departments of classical studies, Spanish & Portuguese studies, Africana studies, educational studies and the Latin American, Latinx & Caribbean studies program.

Topic overview written by Bella Lapp ’26, Clarke Forum Student Project Manager

Biography (provided by the speaker)

Dan-el Padilla Peralta is associate professor of classics at Princeton University, where he is associated with the Department of African American Studies and affiliated with the Programs in Latino Studies and Latin American Studies and the University Center for Human Values. He researches and teaches the religious history of the Roman Republic and Read more

Tuesday, September 26, 2023 – Winfield C. Cook Constitution Day Conversation

Anita Tuvin Schlechter Auditorium, 7 p.m.

Livestream Link

Winfield C. Cook Constitution Day Conversation

Citizenship and Immigration Law in American History

Amanda Frost, University of Virginia

John E. Jones, III, Dickinson College

To commemorate Constitution Day in 2023, Dickinson College will feature President John E. Jones III, a retired federal judge, in a wide-ranging constitutional conversation with noted legal historian Amanda Frost from the University of Virginia. Jones and Frost will discuss how various landmark cases and developments from the American past have helped shape several recent controversies in citizenship and immigration law.

This program is sponsored by the Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues and the House Divided Project.

The first 40 students who arrive at ATS for this presentation will received a free, signed copy of Amanda Frost’s book.

Biographies (provided by the speakers)

Photo of Amanda FrostAmanda Frost is the John A. Ewald Jr. Research Professor of Law at the University of Virginia School of Law.  She writes and teaches in the fields of immigration and citizenship law, federal courts and jurisdiction, and judicial ethics. Her scholarship has been cited by over a dozen federal and state courts, and she has been invited to testify on the topics of her articles Read more

Thursday, September 21, 2023

Anita Tuvin Schlechter Auditorium, 7 p.m.

Video of the Presentation is Available on House Divided’s YouTube Channel

The Beirut Barracks Bombing of 1983: The Stories that America Needs to Hear

Panelists

James Breckenridge, U.S. Army War College
Michael Gaines, Beirut Veterans of America
Mireille Rebeiz, Dickinson College

In 1975, civil war erupted in Lebanon and opposed the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and Muslim fighters to Lebanese Christian militias. The PLO was launching military attacks on Israel from Lebanese soil. On June 6, 1982, Israel Defense Forces, under the orders of the Defense Minister Ariel Sharon, launched Operation Peace for Galilee and invaded Lebanon to end these attacks and eliminate the PLO. Upon Lebanese request, a Multinational Peacekeeping Force (MNF) was created to oversee the departure of the PLO from Lebanon. The MNF was composed of American, French, Italian, and British military. Iran responded to Israel’s invasion of Lebanon and the MNF’s arrival by training Shiite fighters whose immediate goal was to expel all foreign forces out of Lebanon.

On October 23, 1983, witnesses reported seeing a yellow Mercedes speeding toward the barracks. Loaded with over ten thousand pounds of explosives, it flattened a concrete building that housed American troops. Two Read more

Thursday, September 14, 2023

Anita Tuvin Schlechter Auditorium, 7 p.m.

Livestream Link

It’s Time to Talk about Women’s Brains and the Birth Control Pill 

Sarah E. Hill, Texas Christian University

The majority of women in the US will use the birth control pill at some point in their lives. Yet, there is very little information out there for women or their partners about what the pill does to the brain. This is critical information to have because – although women go on the pill for a small handful of targeted effects sex hormones simply can’t work that way. Sex hormones impact the activities of billions of cells in the body at once, many of which are in the brain. This means that being on the birth control pill makes women a different version of themselves than when they are off of it. In this talk, Hill will discuss what we know and don’t know about the pill and women’s brains and behavior. She will also talk about why this information matters for men and for those who care for women’s mental and physical health. Lastly, Hill will urge researchers to conduct better, more inclusive science that Read more

Tuesday, September 12, 2023

Stern Center, Great Room, 7 p.m.

Livestream Link 

Counting Lost Stars: Fiction Inspired by History

Kim van Alkemade, Author

In this program, the author will discuss the facts that inspired her latest novel, and how a writer’s imagination transforms history into fiction to tell a human story. The Nazis’ use of punched card computer technology to orchestrate the Holocaust becomes the thread that weaves together the fictional story of Cornelia Vogel, a computer operator in WWII Netherlands who uses her knowledge to save the woman she loves, and Rita Klein, a pioneering woman in the new field of computer programming in 1960s New York whose education is derailed by an unexpected pregnancy. Through the stories of a diverse cast of characters, Counting Lost Stars explores the coerced adoptions of the Baby Scoop Era, the unique horrors of transit Camp Westerbork in the Netherlands, the generational impact of trauma, the dangers of information technology, and individual courage in the face of systemic injustice. A book sale and signing will follow.

This program is sponsored by the Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues and co-sponsored by the departments of American studies, data analytics, English, history and women’s, gender & sexuality studies.

Biography (provided Read more

Thursday, September 7, 2023

Poster for Myisha Cherry program

Anita Tuvin Schlechter Auditorium, 7 p.m.

Livestream Link

The Case for Rage: Why Anger Is Essential to Anti-Racist Struggle 

Myisha Cherry, University of California, Riverside

Anger has a bad reputation. Many people think that it is counterproductive, distracting, and destructive. It is a negative emotion, many believe, because it can lead so quickly to violence or an overwhelming fury. And coming from people of color, it takes on connotations that are even more sinister, stirring up stereotypes, making white people fear what an angry other might be capable of doing, when angry, and leading them to turn to hatred or violence in turn, to squelch an anger that might upset the racial status quo.

In this lecture, professor and philosopher Myisha Cherry will argue that anger is powerful, but its power can be a force for good, especially a form of anti-racist anger, which Cherry calls “Lordean rage.” For Cherry, “Lordean rage” can use its mighty force to challenge racism: it aims for change, motivates productive action, builds resistance, and is informed by an inclusive and liberating perspective. Cherry will make her argument for anti-racist anger by putting Aristotle in conversation with Audre Lorde and James Baldwin in conversation with Read more

Saturday, April 29, 2023

Poster to advertise Celebrating Community-Based Scholarship & Learning Celebrating Community-Based Scholarship & Learning
A Symposium in Honor of Susan Rose

Special Film Showing with Susan Rose – The Sociological Lens: Framing Social Research

Althouse Hall, Room 106, 3 p.m.

 

Panel Discussions

Stern Center, Great Room, 4:30 – 6:30 p.m.

This symposium includes three panels comprised of students, alumni, and collaborators. Each panel will highlight one aspect of Professor Rose’s intellectual contributions to the Dickinson community, including the Community Studies Center, the Mosaics Program and the Department of Sociology.

This symposium is sponsored by the Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues, the Office of the Provost, the Department of Sociology, Community Studies and Mosaics.

Reception to Follow in Rector Atrium

 

About Susan Rose

Headshot of Susan RoseSusan D. Rose has served as Professor of Sociology at Dickinson College since 1984. An alumna of Dickinson (class of 1977), Professor Rose has been a leading scholar and teacher at the College for more than four decades. She is the author (or co-author) of four scholarly books, covering a wide range of topics. Her most recent book, powerful and still on the leading edge of social change across the United States and beyond, is titled The Carlisle Indian Read more