Last Week at Tufts...
A famed environmental activist, an ex-pollster for a former presidential candidate and two renowned economists came to campus.
Medford/Somerville, Mass. [12.01.08] There is so much that happens at Tufts that it can be hard to keep up. Check out this roundup of the past two weeks of campus happenings.
- Nov. 17: Erin Brockovich, the environmental activist known for her work on the largest toxic injury settlement case in American history (as depicted in the Hollywood movie bearing her name), delivered the 2008 Merrin Distinguished Lecture sponsored by Tufts Hillel.
- Nov. 17: Jose Antonio Ocampo of Columbia University and Robert Wade of the London School of Economics, winners of the 2008 Leontief Prize for Advancing the Frontiers of Economic Thought, each delivered a lecture at the award ceremony on the topic "Beyond the Washington Consensus: New Visions for Trade and Development."
- Nov. 17: Pam Fraker, professor of biochemistry at Michigan State University, spoke as part of the Jean Mayer USDA Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging (HNRCA) Seminar Series. Her talk was entitled "Impact of Obesity on Immune Defense."
- Nov. 17: Maria Judge, former associate dean of The Fletcher School before her diagnosis with cancer in 1997, spoke at Tisch Library about her experiences as a cancer survivor. She also signed copies of "A Cup of Comfort for Breast Cancer Survivors: Inspiring Stories of Courage and Triumph," a recently published collection of personal essays to which she contributed.
- Nov. 17: Dr. Jacob Foster, director of science and technology/engineering for the Massachusetts Department of Education, spoke as part of the Center for Engineering Educational Outreach Seminar Series on "Engineering as a State Standard: Successes and Difficulties of Pre-College Engineering."
- Nov. 18: Dr. Robert Stavins, co-director of the Harvard Project on International Climate Agreements and director of the Harvard Environmental Economics Program, gave a talk entitled "Architectures for Agreement: Addressing Climate Change in A Post-Kyoto World." The event was presented by the Tufts Energy and Climate Initiative.
- Nov. 18: Frank Warren, author of the popular website PostSecret and the books that have compiled the artistic postcards of personal secrets published there, was the fall speaker in the student-run Lecture Series. Read more about his visit from the Tufts Daily.
- Nov. 18: Dr. Leroy Hood of the Institute for Systems Biology in Seattle, Wash., delivered the Department of Chemistry's Max Tishler Award Lecture on "Systems Biology, Chemistry and the Coming Revolution in Medicine."
- Nov. 18 and 19: The Fares Center for Eastern Mediterranean Studies hosted two installments of its lecture series. François Burgat, director of the Institut Français du Proche-Orient (IFPO), spoke on "Islamism in the Shadow of al-Qaeda," while André Raymond, professor emeritus at Université de Provence in France, spoke on "The Traditional Arab City and Urban Modernization in the 19th and 20th Centuries."
- Nov. 19 and 20: Mark Mellman, CEO of the Mellman Group and a pollster for John Kerry's 2004 presidential campaign, and former U.S. Rep. Jim Leach (R-Iowa) participated in informal brown bag lunch conversations with the Tufts community as a part of two weekly speaker series hosted by Alan Solomont (A'70) and Ambassador John Shattuck. Mellman spoke on the 2008 election while Leach spoke on "The Role of Congress in Foreign Policy.
- Nov. 20: Scott Kurashige, associate professor at the University of Michigan andcurrent fellow at the Charles Warren Center for Studies in American History at Harvard University, spoke on "The New American Majority: Los Angeles and the Rise of Multiethnic Community." The talk was sponsored by the Arts, Sciences and Engineering Office of Diversity Education and Development and the Office of Institutional Diversity.
- Nov. 21: Business strategist Partha S. Ghosh of Tufts' Gordon Institute spoke on "Advancing the Power of Innovation."
- Nov. 21: Peter Ryan, executive vice president of global sales and services for Sun Microsystems, gave a talk entitled "Innovation, Global Communities and Emerging Markets" as part of The Fletcher School International Business Program Global Speaker Series.
- Nov. 24: Tarun Khanna, Jorge Paulo Lehman Professor at Harvard Business School and author of "Billions of Entrepreneurs: How China and India are Reshaping Their Futures-and Yours," spoke about the role of state-owned enterprises in today's competitive global business landscape. The talk was the latest in a series of The Fletcher School's Center for Emerging Market Enterprises Strategy Lectures.
- Nov. 24: Patrick Manning, the Andrew W. Mellon professor of world history at the University of Pittsburgh, delivered a lecture entitled "The Old World Diaspora from Africa" as part of the Pearson Prentice Hall Seminar Series in Global History at Tufts.