Mike McCurry, former press aide, to talk at Law School

Mike McCurry, who recently stepped down as White House press secretary and assistant to President Bill Clinton, will present a talk titled "A View from the White House Podium: Communicating Under Pressure" on Tuesday, Feb. 2, at 4:15 p.m. in Rm. 127 of the Law School, 127 Wall St. The event, which is free and open to the public, is sponsored by the Law School's Knight Journalism Fellows.

McCurry served in the Clinton White House as assistant to the president and press secretary from January 1995 until October 1998. Prior to joining the White House staff, he was spokesman for the Department of State and principal deputy assistant secretary for public affairs. Previously, he was director of communications for the Democratic National Committee. He also has served as national press secretary during Senator Lloyd M. Bentsen's vice presidential campaign, as spokesman and political strategist in the Democratic presidential campaigns of Senator John Glenn, Governor Bruce Babbitt and Senator Bob Kerrey, and as a communications adviser to the Clinton-Gore campaign in Colorado in 1992. He was senior vice president in the Washington, D.C. office of the public relations consulting firm of Robinson, Sawyer, Lake, Lehrer & Montgomery 1990-93.

Lawyer/sociologist to present Law School Dean's Lecture

Richard O. Lempert, the Francis A. Allen Collegiate Professor of Law and professor of sociology at the University of Michigan, will discuss "(Criminal) Law as Resource" on Tuesday, Feb. 2, at noon in the faculty lounge of the Law School, 127 Wall St. His talk, part of the Dean's Lecture Series, is free and open to the public.

Lempert has written widely on a range of legal and sociological issues, and is particularly noted for his work on DNA evidence and on the jury system. His books include two editions of "A Modern Approach to Evidence." A member of the faculty at the University of Michigan Law School since 1974, Lempert is currently a fellow at the Russell Sage Foundation. He has received several major awards for his socio-legal scholarship.

Harvard literary scholar will be guest at master's tea

Yale alumnus Stephen Greenblatt, a noted scholar of Renaissance literature and the Henry Levin Professor of Literature at Harvard University, will be the guest at a tea on Tuesday, Feb. 2, at 4:30 p.m. in the Calhoun College master's house, 434 College St. The event is free and open to the public.

After earning B.A., M.Phil. and Ph.D. degrees from Yale, Greenblatt taught for more than two decades at the University of California, Berkeley. He joined the Harvard faculty in 1997. His six books include "Marvelous Possessions: The Wonder of the New World," which has been translated in five languages; "Shakespearean Negotiations: The Circulation of Social Energy in Renaissance England," which won the Modern Language Association's Lowell Prize and "Renaissance Self-Fashioning: from More to Shakespeare," winner of the British Council Prize in the Humanities. Greenblatt was general editor of "The Norton Shakespeare" and "The Norton Anthology of English Literature," among numerous other volumes.

Bioengineer will explore use of plants in ecological restoration

Wendi Goldsmith, a bioengineer and restoration expert, will discuss "Bioengineering to Restore Riparian Plant Communities" on Wednesday, Feb. 3, 11:30 a.m.- 1 p.m. in Bowers Auditorium at Sage Hall, 205 Prospect St. Her talk is part of the School of Forestry and Environmental Studies' semester-long Distinguished Lecturer series titled "The Restoration Agenda: Focus on Plants." A discussion will follow the talk, and participants are invited to bring a brown-bag lunch. For registration information, contact Aimlee D. Laderman at 432-3335 or e-mail aimlee.laderman @yale.edu.

Goldsmith's talk will feature case studies that include applications of plants for selective uptake of heavy metal contaminants from soils, creating wetlands for storm water mitigation, historically authentic planting plans, and river restoration projects using plants as engineering structures. She is affiliated with The Bioengineering Group Inc., and has promoted local familiarity and acceptance of bioengineering methods.

The series is cosponsored by the Society for Ecological Restoration and the New Haven Land Trust, with additional support from the Watershed Fund of the Regional Water Authority and Roots, Inc.

Environmentalist/entrepreneur to open lecture series

Paul Hawken, a noted environmentalist, author and entrepreneur, will open the 1999 spring lecture series on business and the environment sponsored by the Yale Industrial Environmental Program (IEM) at the School of Forestry & Environmental Studies. This year's series, titled "Corporate Redesign: Approaches to Sustainability," will examine the efforts of companies to redesign themselves to make the pursuit of environmental sustainability possible.

Hawken's talk, titled "Natural Capitalism: Creating the Next Industrial Revolution," will take place on Thursday, Feb. 4, at 4:15 p.m. in Bowers Auditorium in Sage Hall, 205 Prospect St. A reception will follow in the Sage Hall lounge. The public is invited, free of charge.

Hawken founded several companies, including Smith & Hawken, a retail and catalog company. He is the author of five books, including "The Next Economy" and "The Ecology of Commerce." He serves as cochair of TNS-International, a nonprofit educational foundation, and works with approximately 40 different corporations on sustainability issues.

The IEM Spring Lecture Series is supported by the Joel Omura Kurihara Fund. Joel Kurihara, a member of the Class of 1992 at the Forestry School, was committed to improving business and environmental relations. For more information, call 432-6197.

Yale Review hosts readings by Pulitzer Prize-winning poets

Poets Carolyn Kizer and Gary Snyder will read from their recent work on Thursday, Feb. 4, at 5 p.m. in Rm. 208 of the Whitney Humanities Center, 53 Wall St. The event, which is free and open to the public, is sponsored by The Yale Review.

Kizer won the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry for her collection "Yin" in 1985, and has received the Theodore Roethke Award and an Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Her other books include "Harping On," "Mermaids in the Basement," "Carrying Over," "The Nearness of You" and "Proses." She founded Poetry Northwest in 1959 and served as its editor until 1965. She was the first director of the literature program at the National Endowment for the Arts 1966-70, and has been poet-in-residence at many universities. She presently lives in Sonoma, California.

A writer of both poetry and prose, Snyder won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1975 for his book "Turtle Island." "No Nature," a volume of selected poems, was a finalist for the National Book Award in 1992. His other books of poetry include "Riprap and Cold Mountain Poems," "The Back Country," "Regarding Wave" and "Left Out in the Rain." A mountaineer, Zen Buddhist and environmentalist, Snyder currently lives on a farm in the northern Sierra Nevada. Since 1985 he has taught at the University of California at Davis, where he was instrumental in starting the Nature and Culture program.

Ford Foundation president to discuss her work in SOM lecture

Susan Berresford, president of the Ford Foundation, will discuss her work as part of the School of Management's Perspectives on Leadership Series on Friday, Feb. 5, 10-11:30 a.m. in Rm. 114 of Sheffield-Sterling-Strathcona Hall, corner of Grove and Prospect streets. The public is invited to attend her free talk, titled "Managing the Ford Foundation: The Global Challenge."

Berresford was elected president of the Ford Foundation in 1996. She previously served as executive vice president and chief operating officer of the foundation. She has held increasingly responsible positions since joining the Ford Foundation in 1970, including officer in charge of the foundation's women's programs, vice president for the U.S. and international affairs program, and vice president of the program division in charge of worldwide programming for the foundation.

Author will read from his forthcoming novel at library

The Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library and the Fund for Gay and Lesbian Studies will sponsor a reading by Matthew Stadler on Friday, Feb. 5, at 4 p.m. in the mezzanine of the library, corner of Wall and High streets. Stadler will read from his forthcoming novel, "Allan Stein," which will be released by Grove Press on Feb. 15. The reading is free and open to the public.

A blending of history and fiction, "Allen Stein" tells the tale of the search for lost Picasso drawings of Gertrude Stein's nephew, Allan. The protagonist, a teacher dismissed from his Seattle job on account of a sex scandal involving a student, travels to Paris under a false identity. There, he is haunted by memories of his own boyhood as he discovers the sad childhood of Allan Stein. Ultimately, he absconds to southern France with a 15-year-old boy. Stadler's research for the part of the story involving Allan Stein was conducted among the Gertrude Stein papers and memorabilia at the Beinecke Library. The author of three previous books, Stadler has received a Guggenheim Fellowship and the Whiting Writer's Award.

Scholar of poverty and inequality will present Hollingshead Lecture

Erik Olin Wright, the Vilas Distinguished Professor at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and a scholar of poverty and inequality, will deliver the Hollingshead Lecture on Friday, Feb. 5, at 4 p.m. in Rm. 211 of the Hall of Graduate Studies, 320 York St. His talk, titled "Class, Exploitation and the Shmoo," is free and open to the public. The event is sponsored by the department of sociology.

Wright is the author of eight books, most recently "Class Counts: Comparative Studies in Class Analysis," which was published by the Cambridge University Press in 1997. He has held both the C. Wright Mills Distinguished Professorship and the John D. MacArthur Professorship at the University of Wisconsin, where he has taught since 1976.

Summer literacy program is topic of Bush Center talk

Laura Altshul and Saylor Heidmann, codirectors of the Footebridge summer literacy program at Foote School in New Haven, will talk about their program on Friday, Feb. 5, at noon in Rm. 119 of the Hall of Graduate Studies, 320 York St. The event, which is free and open to the public, is sponsored by the Bush Center in Child Development and Social Policy.

Footebridge, a collaboration with the New Haven Public Schools, was founded three years ago to bring kindergarten and first-grade children from local public elementary schools to Foote School, a private school, for an intensive six-week summer program. The program focuses on literacy instruction for children and curriculum instruction for teachers.

Altshul was head kindergarten teacher at Foote School for 23 years before becoming director of admissions there in 1993. She developed an innovative collaboration between Head Start and the Foote School summer program, a forerunner of the Footebridge program, in 1995. Heidmann has been the director of the learning support program at Foote School and a learning disabilities consultant and lecturer at the Yale Child Study Center for 25 years. Last year she helped formulate the training component of Yale's America Reads Challenge, a federally funded children's literacy program.

For further information, call 432-9935.

Noted oceanographer to give keynote address at conference

Oceanographer, explorer and marine conservationist Sylvia Earle, who holds a depth record for solo diving, will deliver the keynote address at the 15th Annual Doctoral Research Conference of the School of Forestry and Environmental Studies on Friday, Feb. 5. Her lecture, which is free and open to the public, will begin at 5:30 p.m. in Bowers Auditorium of Sage Hall, 205 Prospect St.

Earle is the National Geographic Society's 1998 Explorer in Residence and is the spokesperson for Sea Web. She also chairs Deep Ocean Exploration and Research, which she founded in 1992 to design, operate and consult on manned and robotic sub sea systems. The leader of the first team of women aquanauts during the Tektite Project in 1970, she has directed more than 50 expeditions worldwide involving more than 6,000 hours underwater in connection with her research. Her honors include the Bal de la Mer Foundation's Sea Keeper Award, the Lindbergh Award and the Explorers Club Medal, among others.

Theologian to deliver annual More House Lecture

"Developments Toward a New Christology" is the title of the annual St. Thomas More House Lecture, which will be given on Tuesday, Feb. 9, by the Reverend Roger Haight, S.J., chair of the department of theology at the Weston School of Theology. His talk, which is free and open to the public, will begin at 4 p.m. at Saint Thomas More House, 268 Park St.

In his lecture, Haight will describe how the process of understanding Jesus Christ has evolved within the context of religious pluralism. Cyril O'Regan, associate professor of religious studies, will respond.

Haight is the author of the books "The Experience and Language of Grace," "An Alternative Vision: An Interpretation of Liberation Theology" and "Dynamics of Theology." He has also written dozens of articles for Catholic scholarly journals and newspapers, recently focusing on liberation theology and social justice. He has served as president of the Catholic Theological Society of America and has actively participated in the American Academy of Religion and the Society for Values in Higher Education.

Gordon Grand Fellowship hosts visit by Ogilvie & Mather CEO

Shelly Lazarus, chair and chief executive officer of Ogilvy & Mather (O&M) Worldwide, will visit the campus Tuesday and Wednesday, Feb. 9 and 10, as a Gordon Grand Fellow.

On Tuesday, she will be the guest at a master's tea at 4 p.m. at the Silliman College master's house, 71 Wall St. The event is open to members of the Yale community. At 11:45 a.m. on Wednesday, Lazarus will deliver the Gordon Grand Lecture on the topic "360 Degree Branding: A Personal Odyssey." The lecture, which is free and open to the public, will take place in the General Motors Room of Horchow Hall, 55 Hillhouse Ave.

During her 26-year career at Ogilvy & Mather, Lazarus has worked in every product category, from computers to hair care. She has played a role in the management of the company for nearly a decade, and was named chair and chief executive officer in 1996. Lazarus has been recognized by Advertising Women of New York, which named her "Advertising Woman of the Year" in 1994. She is also a recipient of Women in Communications' Matrix Award, and was named "Business Woman of the Year" by the New York City Partnership.