Yale Bulletin and Calendar

April 25, 2008|Volume 36, Number 27

Visiting on Campus

Noted economist to give Arthur M. Okun Lectures

Lawrence H. Summers, the former president of Harvard University, will speak in the Arthur M. Okun Lecture Series on Tuesday and Wednesday, April 29 and 30.

Titled “Learning from and Responding to Financial Crisis,” Summers’ talks will take place 4-5:30 p.m. in Rm. 114, Sheffield-Sterling-Strathcona Hall, corner of Grove and Prospect streets. The talks, sponsored by the Department of Economics and Yale University Press, are free and open to the public.

Summers, the Charles W. Eliot University Professor at Harvard University, was the 27th president of that university from 2001 to 2006. From 1999 to 2001 he served as secretary of the U.S. Treasury following his earlier service as deputy and under secretary of the Treasury and as chief economist of the World Bank. Prior to his years in Washington, Summers was a professor of economics at Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Summers’ many honors include the John Bates Clark Medal, given every two years to an outstanding American economist under the age of 40, and the National Science Foundation’s Alan T. Waterman Award for outstanding scientific achievement — the first ever given to a social scientist. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences.

Among his other activities, Summers writes a monthly column for the Financial Times, co-edits the Brookings Papers on Economic Activity and serves as a managing director of D.E. Shaw, an alternative investment firm. He also serves on a number of not-for-profit and for-profit boards.

Litowitz Lecture will focus on Islam and democracy

Benjamin R. Barber, Distinguished Senior Fellow at Demos, will deliver the Robert H. Litowitz Lecture in Ethics and Public Policy on Tuesday, April 29.

Barber’s lecture, “Can Islam Accommodate Democracy? Can Democracy Accommodate Islam?” will take place 4-5:30 p.m. in Rm. 211, Linsly-Chittenden Hall,

63 High Street. Sponsored by the Program in Ethics, Politics and Economics, the talk is free and open to the public. A reception will follow the lecture. For additional information, contact David Leslie at david.leslie@yale.edu.

In his lecture, Barber will pose the question: Do globalizing trends towards democratization and the burgeoning of secular democratic practices inexorably lead to an internecine “clash of civilizations” in non-Western, Islamic contexts?

Barber’s 17 books include “Strong Democracy,” reissued in 2004 in a 20th anniversary edition; the recent international best-seller “Jihad vs. McWorld,” which was translated into 20 languages; and “Consumed: How Markets Corrupt Children, Infantilize Adults, and Swallow Citizens Whole.”

Chemist to be honored with 2008 Kirkwood Medal

On May 1, the Department of Chemistry and the New Haven Section of the American Chemical Society will honor Joanne Stubbe, the Novartis Professor of Chemistry and professor of biology at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), as the 2008 recipient of the Kirkwood Medal.

Stubbe will give the 2008 John Gamble Kirkwood Lecture on “Ribonucleotide Reductases: Harnessing the Reactivity of Radicals with Exquisite Specificity” at 4 p.m. in Rm. 110, Sterling Chemistry Laboratory, 225 Prospect St. An awards banquet honoring Stubbe will follow the lecture. The event is open to members of the Yale community only.

She is being recognized for her work in mechanisms of enzymatic reactions and regulation of biosynthetic pathways. A faculty member at MIT since 1987, Stubbe previously was a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison from 1980 to 1987. Prior to that she was an assistant professor in the Department of Pharmacology at Yale School of Medicine.

Stubbe is the author of over 250 peer-reviewed papers. Her honors and awards include the 2008 National Academy of Sciences’ Chemical Science Award.

The Kirkwood Medal, which is presented biennially “for outstanding contributions to the field of chemistry,” honors the late professor John Gamble Kirkwood, former Sterling Professor of Chemistry and chair of the department at Yale.

T H I SW E E K ' SS T O R I E S

U.S. governors call for federal action on climate change . . .

Law School boosts support for careers in public service

City youths to flex their mathematical muscles in contest

Fertility expert finds genetic markers that are linked with . . .

Divinity student’s books pay homage to architectural marvels

United Way honors the University and staff member . . .

Ways to curb ovarian cancer’s resistance to chemotherapy . . .

Yale Rep stages world premiere of ‘Boleros for the Disenchanted’

Program seeks to build bridges of religious environmentalism

Conference aims to spark ‘new American conversation’ . . .

Reading will feature recent winners of Yale Series of . . .

Photography exhibit highlights culture of Uyghur people of China

Dr. Gerald Shulman lauded for his pioneering work on insulin resistance

Amy Arnsten wins national grant for research on . . .

Yale hosts delegation from China’s Food and Drug Administration

New director of development for School of Music is appointed

IN MEMORIAM

Dr. Steven Hebert: Discoveries illuminated kidney processes

G.K. Hunter: Was a scholar of Renaissance literature