Constitutional lawyer to discuss 'technologies of speech'
Kathleen M. Sullivan, the Stanley Morrison Professor of Law at Stanford Law School and a specialist on constitutional law, will deliver the Ralph Gregory Elliott Lecture on Tuesday, March 25, at 4:30 p.m. in Rm. 127 of the Law School, 127 Wall St. Her talk, titled "Technologies of Speech," is free and open to the public.
Professor Sullivan has published articles on affirmative action, abortion, unconstitutional conditions, federalism, freedom of speech and religion, and constitutional jurisprudence. She is coauthor with Gerald Gunther of the forthcoming 13th edition of the casebook "Constitutional Law" and coauthor of "The New Federalist Papers," a forthcoming book of essays on current challenges to the federal constitutional structure. She has served as counsel in a number of Supreme Court cases and testified before several committees of Congress. In addition, Professor Sullivan has commented on legal issues on the "MacNeil Lehrer News Hour," "Nightline," "Crossfire" and "This Week."
A member of the faculty at Stanford Law School since 1993, Professor Sullivan formerly taught at Harvard Law School. She is the recipient of awards for excellence in teaching from both schools.
Korean ambassador to deliver Sorensen Lecture
The Honorable James T. Laney, U.S. ambassador to the Republic of Korea, will deliver the 1996-97 Margaret Lindquist Sorensen Lecture on Wednesday, March 26, at 4 p.m. in the Yale Divinity School's Marquand Chapel, 409 Prospect St. His topic will be "Interests and Ethics." The lecture, which will be followed by a reception in the Divinity School Common Room, is free and open to the public.
Ambassador Laney is a graduate of Yale, holding bachelor's degrees in economics 1950 and divinity 1954, as well as a Ph.D. 1966. He has been awarded honorary degrees from 12 institutions, including Yale in 1993, and received the Wilbur Lucius Cross Medal, Yale's highest honor, at Commencement in May 1996.
Before becoming ambassador to Korea in October 1993, Mr. Laney was president of Emory University for 16 years. During that time, Emory emerged as a major teaching and research university with an endowment that placed it sixth among colleges and universities in the U.S. Ambassador Laney has published and spoken widely on issues of higher education and ethics in the professions. A collection of his addresses, "The Education of the Heart," was published in 1994.
Ambassador Laney served in Korea 1947-48 in Army counterintelligence and again 1959-64 under the Methodist Church, teaching at Yonsei University. Since then, he has maintained close ties to Korea, returning often to present lectures.
The Margaret Lindquist Sorensen Lectureship was established in 1978 by a gift from her son, Dr. Andrew A. Sorensen B.D. 1962, M.Phil. 1969, Ph.D. 1971, to provide an annual series of lectures on politics and ethics. Dr. Sorensen, president of the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa, will attend the lecture with his wife and mother.
Noted chemist to visit as Sternbach Lecturer
J. Fraser Stoddart, a professor at the University of Birmingham in England who has received international awards for his research, will present two talks on campus as the eighth Sternbach Lecturer. His lectures, titled "Molecular and Supramolecular Self-Assembly Processes" and "The Nature of the Mechanical Bond," will take place Wednesday and Thursday, March 26 and 27, respectively, at 4 p.m. in Rm. 110 of Sterling Chemistry Laboratory, 225 Prospect St. They are free and open to the public.
Mr. Stoddart has been professor of organic chemistry at the University of Birmingham since 1990 and was appointed head of the School of Chemistry there in 1993. Previously, he was a reader in chemistry at the University of Sheffield for eight years, where he was also a lecturer 1970-82.
His numerous awards include the International Izatt- Christensen Award in Macrocyclic Chemistry in 1993. He has lectured at universities around the world. Most recently he was the Miles Bayer Lecturer at Cornell University, the Abbott Lecturer at the University of Bristol and the Regents Memorial Lecturer at the University of Texas at Austin.
The Leo Sternbach Lecture Series was established by Hoffmann-La Roche Company of Nutley, New Jersey, to honor the contributions of Dr. Leo H. Sternbach to human health. Dr. Sternbach is one of the pioneers of the medicinal chemistry industry; his major contributions arose from his discovery of the 1,4-benzodiazepins, a class of neuro-psychopharmaceuticals.
Author and philanthropist to speak at Slifka Center
"Jewish Imperatives for Social Justice" is the title of a talk being presented on Wednesday, March 26, by Leonard Fein, an author and philanthropist. His talk will take place at 8 p.m. in the Silvia Slifka Chapel at the Slifka Center for Jewish Life at Yale, 80 Wall St. The event, sponsored by the Yale Hillel Education Committee, is free and open to the public.
Mr. Fein is the author of "Where Are We? The Inner Life of America's Jews," which was a Book-of-the-Month Club selection, and "Israel: Politics and People," which for 10 years was a required text in all Israeli universities. He has written more than 700 articles and essays, and writes a syndicated weekly op-ed column for Forward.
In 1974, Mr. Fein founded Moment magazine, which became America's leading independent magazine of Jewish affairs. He served as editor and publisher of the magazine until 1987. In 1985, he founded Mazon: A Jewish Response to Hunger, which is considered the American Jewish community's principal vehicle for participation in the campaign against world hunger.
Mr. Fein previously taught at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Brandeis University. He has been invited to testify before a number of Congressional committees and has been an adviser in four presidential campaigns. He served for two years as chair of the Policy Committee of the National Jewish Democratic Council. More recently he was appointed director of the Commission on Social Action of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations and the Central Conference of American Rabbis.
Panel discussion will examine the topic 'Gender and the Bench'
The Law School's Women in Practice Speaker Series will feature a panel discussion on the topic "Gender and the Bench" on Thursday, March 27, at 6 p.m. in Rm. 127 of the Law School, 127 Wall St. The event, sponsored by Yale Law Women, is free and open to the public. Participating in the discussion will be The Honorable Bernice B. Donald of the U.S. District Court, Western District of Tennessee; the Honorable Margaret H. Marshall '76 LAW, associate justice of the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts; and Penny White, a former justice on the Tennessee Supreme Court. Judith Resnik of the University of Southern California Law School will moderate the discussion.
Labor law and its relation to the public interest are topics of talk
"Living Like It's Paris or Zurich or Milan: Imagining the U.S. at $20 an Hour" is the topic of the Robert H. Preiskel and Leon Silverman Lecture, which will be given by labor law expert Thomas Geoghegan on Thursday, March 27. His talk, which is free and open to the public, will begin at 4:30 p.m. in the faculty lounge of the Law School, 127 Wall St.
Mr. Geoghegan, a partner in the Chicago law firm of Despres, Schwartz & Geoghegan, will argue whether labor law is "secretly the public interest law of our time." He will also explore whether it is possible to bring those in the lower echelons of America's work force up to the level of northern Europe's.
Mr. Geoghegan has represented steelworker groups in plant closings and Teamster members seeking union democracy. He continues to undertake public-interest lawsuits in areas such as child labor, tuberculosis and sweatshops. He is the author of "Which Side Are You On? Trying to Be For Labor When It's Flat On Its Back," which was nominated as one of the five best nonfiction books by the National Book Critics Circle in 1991. He has written cover stories on the topics of labor, the economy and law for The New Republic magazine, and has appeared on CNN and the news program CBS Sunday Morning. He also has been interviewed frequently on National Public Radio.
Philosopher to debate current scholarship on Jesus
In a talk titled "Is the Historians' Jesus the Historical Jesus?" on Thursday, March 27, Yale alumnus C. Stephen Evans, professor of philosophy at Calvin College, will challenge the assumptions and conclusions of much current scholarship that questions the historicity of the New Testament presentation of Jesus. The lecture, which is free and open to the public, will begin at 7:30 p.m. in Rm. 114 of Sheffield-Sterling-Strathcona Hall, corner of Grove and Prospect streets. It is sponsored by the Yale Student Chapter of Campus Crusade for Christ.
Professor Evans is the author of 10 books, the most recent of which is titled "The Historical Christ and the Jesus of Faith: The Incarnational Narrative as History." In this work Professor Evans explores and defends the possibility of historical knowledge of Jesus from the Gospel accounts.
A question-and-answer period will follow his talk. For more information, call 432-8753 or 773-1991.
Trumbull College sponsors talk by Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright
Tony Kushner, who won the 1993 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for his play "Angels in America," will give a talk on Thursday, March 27, at 8 p.m. in the lecture hall of the Yale University Art Gallery enter on High St.. His talk, sponsored by Trumbull College, is free and open to the public.
"Angels in America" also won two Tony Awards for best play and two Drama Desk Awards, the 1992 Evening Standard Award, the New York Drama Critics Circle Award, the Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle Award, and two Olivier Award nominations for best play. Mr. Kushner's other plays are "A Bright Room Called Day"; "The Illusion"; the two-part "A Gay Fantasia on National Themes" -- "Millennium Approaches" is part one and "Perestroika" is the subtitle for part two; "Slavs," which won a 1995 Obie Award; and "Thinking About The Longstanding Problems of Virtue and Happiness" -- which is also the title of a collection of Mr. Kushner's writings. The playwright also has adapted works by Brecht, Goethe and Ansky. His work has been produced at theaters around the United States and in over 30 countries around the world. His new play, "Henry Box Brown or The Mirror of Slavery," is debuting this year at the Royal National Theatre of Great Britain.
Policy analyst to speak on government food programs
Douglas Besharov, a lawyer and resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute AEI for Public Policy Research in Washington, D.C., will speak at a tea on Friday, March 28, at 4 p.m. in the Silliman College master's house, 71 Wall St. Mr. Besharov will talk about public policy and government food programs, including food stamps and school lunches.
Mr. Besharov, who was the first director of the U.S. National Center on Child Abuse and Neglect 1975-79, focuses his research on the relationship between family breakdown and poverty, child care and Head Start, child support enforcement, child abuse and neglect, and welfare reform, as well as the impact of legal policies on the poor. He is the author of "Recognizing Child Abuse: A Guide for the Concerned" and the editor of "When Drug Addicts Have Children: Reorienting Child Welfare's Response." He has also authored or edited a dozen other books.
Mr. Besharov first became affiliated with the AEI in 1983, and served 1991-92 as the administrator of the AEI-White House Working Seminar on Integrated Services for Children and Families, a project designed to improve the delivery of services to disadvantaged children and their families. Currently a visiting professor at the University of Maryland School of Public Affairs, he is also a frequent contributor to the op-ed pages of The New York Times, the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal, and is regularly interviewed on National Public Radio and various television news programs.
For more information, call 432-0700.
Chair of SEC to talk at SOM
Arthur Levitt, chair of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission SEC, will be the featured speaker in the School of Management's International Business Roundtable on Monday, March 31, 11:45 a.m.-1 p.m. His talk, titled "The SEC in a Global Economy," will take place in the General Motors Room of Horchow Hall, 55 Hillhouse Ave. The public is invited to attend the free event. Light refreshments will be served.
Mr. Levitt was nominated to chair the SEC by President Bill Clinton and was sworn in in1993. Once in the position, he established four priorities: improving investor protections, reforming the municipal debt markets, raising the standards of practice for brokers and strengthening the international preeminence of the U.S. capital markets. During his tenure the SEC has established the Office of Investor Education and Assistance and created the SEC's World Wide Web site, which allows the SEC to make all corporate filings available to the public free of charge.
Under his leadership, the SEC has also worked to sever ties between political campaign contributions and municipal underwriting business, as well as to improve the disclosure and transparency of the municipal bond market. The SEC has also worked with industry to develop the "Profile Prospectus" and other clear guidelines for investments products in an effort to make disclosure documents easier to understand.
Prior to his chairmanship of the SEC, Mr. Levitt owned "Roll Call," the newspaper of Congress. He formerly served as chair of the New York City Economic Development Corporation and of the American Stock Exchange.
Hebrew University scholar will compare Jewish identities
The Program in Judaic Studies will present a lecture titled "The Legitimacy of Being Different: A Comparison of Latin American and North American Jewry" on Monday, March 31, at noon in Rm. 208 of the Whitney Humanities Center, 53 Wall St. The featured speaker will be Haim Avni, professor of contemporary Jewish history and head of the Division for Latin America, Spain and Portugal at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem's Avraham Harman Institute of Contemporary Jewry. Sponsored by the David A. Oestreich Lecture Fund, the lecture is free and open to the public.
A specialist in the history of Latin American Jewry and the Jews of Spain, Professor Avni is the author of "Spain, the Jews and Franco" and "Argentina and the Jews: A History of Jewish Migration," as well as many other books and articles in Hebrew and Spanish. His talk is part of a larger project on the structural supports for Jewish cultural and political identity in North and South America.
Harvard professor to examine outcome of the 'War on Poverty'
Christopher Jencks, professor of public policy at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, will deliver the three- part Storrs Lectures Monday-Wednesday, March 31-April 2. "Did We Really Lose the War on Poverty?" is the topic of his lectures, which will take place each day at 4:30 p.m. in Rm. 127 of the Law School, 127 Wall St. A reception will follow the talk on Tuesday, April 1, in the faculty lounge of the Law School.
Professor Jencks has researched changes in the material standard of living over the past generation, homelessness, the effects of growing up in a poor neighborhood, welfare reform and poverty measurement. He is currently writing a book with Susan Mayer that is tentatively titled "Did We Really Lose the War on Poverty?" His earlier books include "The Academic Revolution" with D. Riesman, "Inequality," "Who Gets Ahead?" "The Urban Underclass with P. Peterson, "Rethinking Social Policy," and most recently, "The Homeless."
Professor Jencks has taught at Harvard and Northwestern universities, the University of Chicago and the University of California, Santa Barbara. He previously was a fellow of the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, D.C., and an editor of the New Republic. He is currently a member of the editorial board of The American Prospect.