Julianne Malveaux

Julianne Malveaux is an author, labor economist, commentator and president of Bennett College for Women in North Carolina. On March 23 at 4:30 p.m., she will be the featured speaker for Case Western Reserve University’s Power of Diversity Lecture Series. Her free, public talk is “The Economic Case for Diversity.” The lecture is co-sponsored by KeyBank, Cleveland Airport System and the university’s Office of Inclusion, Diversity and Equal Opportunity. It will be held at the Iris and Bert S. Wolstein Research Building.

Surviving and Thriving: 365 Facts in Black Economic History is Malveaux’s latest book. For nearly a decade, Malveaux regularly informed the public of current issues in her weekly newspaper column, which appeared in such venues as the Los Angeles Times, Charlotte Observer, Detroit Free Press, San Francisco Examiner and many others. She also has commented as a host or guest on programs at CNN, BET, PBS, NBC, ABC, Fox News, MSNBC, CNBC and C-SPAN.

Currently Malveaux, the 15th president of Bennett College for Women, has focused on changes for one of the oldest historic black colleges for women. Her leadership has ignited a 10-year accreditation affirmation from the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools and a $21-million capital improvements campaign, the first in 25 years for the college, to advance women’s education to meet the challenges as 21st century leaders and global thinkers.
  
While the event is free and open to the public, reservations are recommended. Email diversity-rsvp@case.edu. For information, contact Liz Roccoforte at 216.368.3206.

Orville Schell

How does the United States’ role change as China rises to one of the world’s foremost powers? Author and journalist Orville Schell will discuss how China’s economic rise is influencing U.S. and China relations and the global balance of political and military power during his free, public talk, “China’s Rise and Its Impact on Almost Everything,” sponsored by Case Western Reserve University’s Baker-Nord Center for the Humanities. The program begins at 6 p.m., Thursday, Feb. 24, in the Wolstein Auditorium.

As the director of the Asia Society’s New York-based Center on U.S.-China Relations, Schell leads programs on the environment, media and foreign policy reforms in order to promote U.S.-China dialogues rooted in a mutual respect toward one another’s cultural and political traditions and values, 

The expert on China and Tibet will provide insights into China’s rise and how the United States’ response to it will have worldwide ramifications. He contends that a possible, well-guided co-operation between China and the U.S. will have a tremendous positive economic and environmental impact on the world.

In a Newsweek article he wrote: “What happens next will depend in large part on how Washington leads. China and the United States could easily become antagonistic. But things could unfold much more positively—if leaders on both sides recognize how many interests they share.”

Schell is also the former dean of the University of California at Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism and is currently a Fellow at the Weatherhead Institute of Asian Studies at Columbia University.

His work has received several recognitions including the Overseas Press Club of America Award, Page One Award and the Shorenstein Journalism Award from Stanford and Harvard Universities for best coverage of Asia.

In his talk, Schell will draw from his vast experiences as a veteran journalist, who has reported for The New York Times Magazine, Harper’s, The New Yorker, TIME, Wired and Foreign Affairs and contributed on topics related to China for PBS, NBC and CBS, where he won an Emmy Award for a 60 Minutes program.

He is also a prolific author of 15 books, including Virtual Tibet, Mandate of Heaven, Discos and Democracy and the five-volume China Reader.

Schell’s visit contributes to the Baker-Nord Center’s yearlong dialogue on “Globalism and its Origin” and how the exchange of arts and ideas over time is central to the process of globalism as a multicultural, worldwide phenomenon.

Registration is recommended by visiting case.edu/humanities. For information, contact Maggie Kaminski at the Baker-Nord Center at 216.368.2242 or maggie.kaminski@case.edu.

A new lecture series at Case Western Reserve University— “India: the Migration of Religion, People and Ideas”—offers an opportunity for the public to understand the growing importance of the social, cultural and political forces of South Asian cultures in shaping the global landscape.

Charlotte Ikels, professor of anthropology and director of the Asian Studies Program, said this year’s focus is on the rise of India. “India's population is on the move, and the United States is one of its prime destinations,” Ikels said, adding India is also one of the world's most rapidly developing economies.

Prema Kurien, associate professor of sociology at Syracuse University, will give the first of three lectures over the next months with her talk, “Who Speaks for South Asian Americans? Religion, Ethnicity and Political Formation.” The free, public event begins at 4:30 p.m. Tuesday, Feb. 22, in 309 Clark Hall.

How will the flow of people, trade and ideas shape American perceptions of India? What will be the impact of these global flows on India itself? “These are the questions that our distinguished lecturers will help us answer,” Ikels said.

Kurien will draw from her research on how the influences of South Asian religions have emerged directly and indirectly in the public sphere. She looks at the intersection between first and second generations and how the interplay of their homeland nations and ethnic backgrounds shapes this group’s involvement in politics.

She has extensively explored these topics in her books:  Kaleidoscopic Ethnicity: International Migration and the Reconstruction of Community Identities in India (2002) and A Place at the Multicultural Table: The Development of an American Hinduism (2007).

For more information, call Taylor Hall at 216.368.0528 or email taylor.hall@case.edu.

Jean Donovan

The Social Justice Institute at Case Western Reserve University will examine issues of human rights, liberation theology and historical memory by revisiting the Dec. 2, 1980, murders of university alumna Jean Donovan and three other churchwomen killed by militant death squads in El Salvador. The SJI will honor Donovan during the 2011 Jean Donovan International Social Justice Conference, “Repression, Resistance and Transformation in Central America,” Feb. 25 and 26, at the Inamori International Center for Ethics and Excellence in Crawford Hall.

The free, public event is cosponsored by the Inter-Religious Task Force on Central America and campus organizations, including the Flora Stone Mather Center for Women, Hallinan Project for Peace and Social Justice, the Inamori Center, Inter-Religious Council and Share the Vision.

Donovan, who was from Connecticut, was murdered while volunteering through a Cleveland church mission program. An outcry emerged against U.S. support in Central America after Donovan and three Catholic nuns were discovered in a shallow unmarked countryside grave.

The program begins Friday evening with the showing of filmmakers Ana Carrington and Bernard Stone’s 56-minute documentary, Roses in December, at 6 p.m. A discussion with responses follows.

A visual investigation into the story of Donovan, who was 27 at the time, and sisters Ida Ford, Maura Clarke and Dorothy Kazel (an Ursuline nun from Cleveland), sets the stage for Saturday’s human rights and liberation theology discussions.

The event continues on Saturday from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. with several panel discussions—“God, Power and Revolution: Politics of Liberation Theology,” at 10 a.m. and “Confronting History and State Violence, Then and Now,” at 1:30 p.m. Marixa Lasso, an associate professor who specializes in Latin American history and politics, will moderate the afternoon session.

Contributing guest speakers are:

• Susan Fitzpatrick-Behrens, associate professor of history at California State University, Northridge, researches the intersection of missionary work and indigenous people and offers perspectives on liberation theology and progressive Catholicism.
• Michael E. Lee, assistant professor of theology in the Latin American and Latino Studies Institute at Fordham University, is the author of the monograph, Bearing the Weight of Salvation: The Soteriology of Ignacio Ellacuría, SJ. Interested in liberation theology and U.S. and Latino theologies, Lee has undertaken an investigation of the life and theology of Archbishop Oscar Romero of El Salvador, with a focus on U.S. Latino theology.
• Sister Sheila Marie Tobbe (O.S.U.) is the executive director of the Thea Bowman Center in Cleveland. The center is devoted to creating a safe community in Cleveland’s Mt. Pleasant neighborhood.
• Jeffrey L. Gould, the Rudy Professor of history and director of Indiana University’s Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies, works in the area of Central American movements, ethics conflicts and political violence. His first book focused on labor and peasant movements in Nicaragua. Currently he has turned to the massacres of Indians and peasants in El Salvador.
• Elizabeth Oglesby, an associate professor in geography and the Center for Latin American Studies at the University of Arizona, brings an interdisciplinary background of Latin American studies, geography and sociology—particularly in Guatemala—to the discussion. She also will discuss her personal experiences of working for nongovernmental organizations in Central America.
• Adrienne Pine, the author of Working Hard, considers herself a working militant medical anthropologist. The assistant professor of anthropology at American University, Pine has working experiences in Honduras, Mexico, Korea, the United States and Egypt.

For more information and registration, go online.

Stephen Gardiner. Photo courtesy
of University of Washington.

What does great literature have to teach us about today’s global problems such as climate change?

During a tour for his new book, A Perfect Moral Storm: The Ethical Tragedy of Climate Change, environmental ethicist Stephen Gardiner will visit Case Western Reserve University to give the inaugural Issa Lecture as part of the Baker-Nord Center for the Humanities’ yearlong exploration of globalism.

Considered one of the distinctive voices in contemporary ethical debates about climate change, Gardiner will address the topic, “Climate Policy and Wise Literature in a Perfect Moral Storm,” on Thursday, Feb. 17, at 6 p.m. in 309 Clark Hall. The event is free and open to the public. 

He will draw from great works of literature to demonstrate how these writings can raise awareness of this critical issue facing all life on earth. And he will address how ethical action on climate change is made more difficult by global, intergenerational and theoretical challenges.

In a review about Gardiner’s new book, Peter Singer from Princeton University commented: “Stephen Gardiner takes to a new level our understanding of the moral dimensions of climate change. A Perfect Moral Storm argues convincingly that climate change is the greatest moral challenge our species has ever faced—and the problem goes even deeper than we think.”

Gardiner, a University of Washington associate professor in the Department of Philosophy and the Program on Values in Society, said the public has undergone a willful self-deception in ignoring this profound issue and has endangered future generations and the world they will inhabit.

The Baker-Nord Center theme for academic year 2010-2011 is “Globalism.” “As we have learned from our theme for the previous academic year, ‘Cultures of Green: Nature and the Environment,’ today’s environmental issues are global in scope,” said Anne Helmreich, director of the Baker-Nord Center. “Stephen Gardiner’s work addresses the concept of the ‘commons’ with respect to climate change, helping us to recognize the environment as a shared resource and to consider the ethical implications of this realization.”

While open to the public, registration is recommended at case.edu/humanities.

Peter Gleick

Turn the tap on and get a glass of water. The future of that simple action is in danger. Freshwater resources are declining, according to Peter Gleick, co-founder and president of the Pacific Institute and one of the world’s experts on water. Gleick will be the guest speaker for a free, public event sponsored by the Year of Water Committee at Case Western Reserve University on Wednesday, Feb. 16, at 4:30 p.m. in Strosacker Auditorium.

The advocate for understanding peak water—the tipping point between enough, and not enough good water to support human and animal life, agriculture and industry—will speak about the state of the world’s water problems, whether we are approaching the point of “peak water,” and innovative and effective solutions for the coming decades.

By 2025, the United Nations estimates that 1.8 billion people will be living in regions where water is scarce, and two out of three people in areas where they are under water stress.

Before access to water becomes limited to those with the ability to buy and control it, Gleick works through the Pacific Institute to raise public awareness and create a more sustainable and healthier environment. While the Institute’s headquarters are in Oakland, Calif., its work on real-world solutions extends around the world, with a focus on water management, climate change, international conflict and meeting basic human needs. Gleick is also the author of the new book, Bottled and Sold: The Story Behind Our Obsession with Bottled Water (Island Press).

Gleick and Meena Palaniappan, director of the Institute’s International Water and Communities Initiative, have reported in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that the U.S. passed the peak water about 30 years ago—and since that time, U.S. water withdrawals have declined and water use per person has decreased over this time period.

They report that these tipping points have seen flow constraints from natural water sources, the draining of groundwater supply from over pumping or contamination and the costs where cleaning up the ecological damage exceed the value of human use of the water or where water has been diverted from its natural flow and disrupts the natural environment.

Gleick’s invitation to speak came as part of The Year of Water, a yearlong series of activities and events focused on water. It is sponsored by the University’s Alumni Association, Climate Action Plan, Plant and Facility Services, Engineers Without Borders, Squire Valleevue Farms, Student Sustainable Council and the Sustainability Alliance to raise awareness about this valuable and at-risk natural resource. For more information about the Year of Water celebration and related events, visit http://studentaffairs.case.edu/events/yearofwater/.