Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues Announces Spring Schedule
Seminar series hosts discussions focusing on the theme of failure
Failure has been so widely embraced in the start-up business culture that it seems now a commonplace: You need to fail to succeed! Is there not a paradox at play here? If failure is but a phase on a path to success, is it really “failure”? Along similar lines, in the context of contemporary art, Susana Martins observes that “There is tension between (non)fulfilment and expectation, and so failure becomes a far more complex notion, carrying connotations, symbolic charges and cultural roles, which are often diverse and contradictory.”
In short, failure can be a complex notion. In its spring 2022 series based on this theme, the Clarke Forum will explore the role of failure in contemporary culture while examining the concept through multiple disciplinary lenses.
Keynote for Love Your Body Week
Boys, Biceps, and Body Image
Jason Nagata, University of California, San Francisco
Virtual Presentation in Anita Tuvin Schlechter Auditorium, 7 p.m.
Livestream Link
Nagata will review state-of-the-art research on gender differences in the presentation of eating disorders in adolescents and young adults. In particular, he will highlight characteristics of muscle-enhancing behaviors and disordered eating behaviors in adolescent boys and young men.
Breaking Issue
Crisis Over Ukraine: Causes and Consequences
Panel Discussion
Anita Tuvin Schlechter Auditorium, 7 p.m.
Livestream Link
Dickinson faculty panelists will offer insights and expertise to help understand the situation in Ukraine beyond today’s headlines. They will discuss the historical, political and social contexts that underlie current realities in both Ukraine and Russia.
Vice Patrol: Revisiting the Policing of Gay Life before Stonewall
Anna Lvovsky, Harvard Law School
Anita Tuvin Schlechter Auditorium, 7 p.m.
This lecture examines the tactics used to criminalize and suppress gay life from the 1930s through the 1960s, and the often-surprising debates those campaigns inspired in court—debates over not just the law’s treatment of queer people, but also the limits of ethical policing, the authority of experts and the nature of sexual difference itself.
Winfield C. Cook Constitution Day Address
Democracy Stress Test: Analysis of Attempts to Overturn the 2020 Election Results
Mary McCord, Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection
David Thornburgh, Committee of Seventy
Jonathan Winer, Law Offices of Jonathan M. Winer
Anita Tuvin Schlechter Auditorium, 7 p.m.
In this program, panelists will discuss some of the weaknesses of democracy and how we might address them moving forward.
Wesley Lecture
The Racial Muslim: When Racism Quashed Religious Freedom
Sahar Aziz, Rutgers University Law School
Anita Tuvin Schlechter Auditorium, 7 p.m.
Comparing discrimination against immigrant Muslims with the prejudicial treatment of Jews, Catholics, Mormons and African American Muslims during the 20th century, Aziz explores the gap between America’s aspiration for and fulfillment of religious freedom.
Part of the J. Sherwood McGinnis War, Peace and Justice Symposium
Transforming Conflict: Rethinking War, Peace, and Justice
Danielle Conway, Penn State Dickinson Law
Margee Ensign, American University of Nigeria
James Dubik, Institute for the Study of War
David Hill, USAWC
John E. Jones, Dickinson College
Anita Tuvin Schlechter Auditorium, 7 p.m.
This program is the prelude event to the J. Sherwood McGinnis, Jr. War, Peace and Justice Symposium scheduled for March 25 through April 9, 2022. The symposium will explore the complex interrelationships between war, peace, and justice.
Joseph Priestley Award Celebration Lecture
How Duolingo Uses AI to Assess, Engage and Teach Better
Luis von Ahn, Duolingo
Anita Tuvin Schlechter Auditorium, 5 p.m.
This program is part of the Clarke Forum’s Leadership in an Age of Uncertainty Series.
In this talk, von Ahn will describe all the different ways in which we use AI to improve how well we teach and how to keep learners engaged.
Respiratory Health Disparities: Asthma as a Case Study
Juan Carlos Celedón, UPMC Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh
Allison Hall, 7 p.m.
This lecture will first provide an overview of known and potential risk factors for asthma, focusing on psychosocial stressors such as exposure to violence and violence-related distress and their impact on biology through epigenetics and regulation of gene expression. This will be followed by a review of the need for a multipronged approach to eliminate respiratory health disparities and achieve health equity.
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Published January 28, 2022