Putting Single-Payer Health Care into the Mix

Claudia Fegan, M.D. has spent her career tending to poor and elderly patients, and is an outspoken advocate for single payer health care and against for-profit managed care. She is immediate past president of Physicians for a National Health Program, which advocates a universal, comprehensive Single-Payer National Health Program and has more than 10,000 members and chapters across the U.S. Fegan is the Medical Director of Outpatient Care at Provident Hospital on the South Side of Chicago. She has lectured extensively on health care reform in the U.S. and Canada and is co-author of Universal Healthcare: What the United States Can Learn from Canada. Part of the How Class Works 2008 Conference.

Thursday, June 5, 2008, 7:30 p.m.
Student Activities Center Auditorium

Evolution for Everyone:
How Darwin's Theory Can Change the Way We Think About Our Lives

David Sloan Wilson is Distinguished Professor of Biological Sciences at Binghamton University. He is an evolutionary biologist with a wide range of interests, including natural selection as a hierarchical process, the nature of intraspecific variation, the evolution of ecological communities, and human evolutionary biology. His latest book Evolution for Everyone: How Darwin's Theory Can Change the Way We Think About Our Lives attempts to give an introduction to evolution for a broad audience, detailing the various ways in which evolution can be applied to everyday affairs. This lecture is part of Darwin Day 2008 at Stony Brook University.

Tuesday, February 12, 2008, 7:30 p.m.
Student Activities Center Auditorium

Africa: Ghosts of the Past, Demons of the Present, Vision for the Future

M. Nathaniel Barnes is Ambassador and Permanent Representative to the United Nations from the Republic of Liberia, serving his country in its bid to reenter the global community of nations while pursuing its strategic economic, social, and political objectives. Ambassador Barnes believes that "the thrust of our efforts at the UN will be rebuilding our traditional relationships and forging new ones on a foundation of trust, understanding, and mutual respect...and how we utilize these mutually beneficial relationships to serve Liberia's economic, social, and political interests." Ambassador Barnes' fundamental goal is singular: to make a positive impact on the lives of the Liberian people.

Tuesday, February 19, 2008, 4:00 p.m.
Student Activities Center Auditorium

All Hail the Alma Mater: Writing College Histories in the U.S.

Joel Rosenthal is Distinguished Professor Emeritus of History at Stony Brook University. In his career, he chaired the History Department, was president of the University Senate, served as faculty chair of the Affirmative Action Committee, the UUP grievance officer for academics, as well as a member of AAUP's national committee on Academic Freedom and Tenure. He has written and edited numerous books on medieval Europe, focusing mainly on England and on social structure, women, old age, and popular religion. He is also a fellow of the Royal Historical Society and wrote From the Ground Up: A History of the State University of New York at Stony Brook, 2004.

Thursday, March 27, 2008, 4:00 p.m.
Student Activities Center, Ballroom B

From Flapping Birds to Space Telescopes: The Modern Science of Origami

Robert J. Lang is recognized as one of the foremost origami artists in the world as well as a pioneer in computational origami and the development of formal design algorithms for folding. With a Ph.D. in Applied Physics from Caltech, he has, during the course of work at NASA/Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Spectra Diode Laboratories, and JDS Uniphase, authored or co-authored more than 80 papers and 45 patents in lasers and optoelectronics as well as 8 books and a CD-ROM on origami. He is a full-time artist and consultant on origami and its applications to engineering problems but moonlights as the Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE Journal of Quantum Electronics. Dr. Lang will also give a hands-on origami workshop on April 2 from 12:45 pm-2:00 p.m. in the Wang Center, Lecture Hall 2.

Wednesday, April 2, 2008, 4:00 p.m.
Student Activities Center Auditorium

Convivencia: Christians, Muslims, and Jews in Medieval Spain

Robert Chazan is S.H. and Helen R. Scheuer Professor of Hebrew and Judaic Studies in the Skirball Department of Hebrew and Judaic Studies at NYU. Dr. Chazan's most recent books are:God, Humanity, and History: The Hebrew First-Crusade Narratives (Berkeley, 2000); Fashioning Jewish Identity in Medieval Western Christendom (Cambridge, 2004); and The Jews of Medieval Western Christendom (Cambridge, 2006). He also has published articles in journals in the US, England, France, Germany, Spain, and Israel. He has served as President of the Association for Jewish Studies, the American Academy for Jewish Research, and currently serves as Director of Educational Outreach for the Center for Online Judaic Studies. Photo credit: Judith Petrovich.

Thursday, April 10, 2008, 4:00 p.m.
Student Activities Center Auditorium

What Accounts for the Loss of Trust in Science?

Paul Forman is Curator at the National Museum of American History, Division of Medicine and Science. His research specialty is the history of physics, especially in relation to environing society and culture, and characterization of the modern/postmodern transition in science, society, and culture. He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society for his research on the history and cultural background of modern physics, and for his development of museum exhibits presenting physics to the public. He is also a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Part of the Templeton Research Lecture Series.

Monday, April 14, 2008, 4:30 p.m.
Humanities Institute, Room 1006

Sustainability: A Mosaic of Many Small Steps in the Right Direction

Hans-Peter Plag is Research Professor, University of Nevada, Reno. His research interests include rheology of the Earth mantle; sea level fluctuations and global climate change; Earth rotation studies and integration of the solid Earth into Earth system models; space geodesy; and geodetic reference frames. Main professional activities are related to the Global Geodetic Observing System and the Group on Earth Observations. He is a member of the Editorial Board of the Journal of Geodynamics and Editor-in-Chief for geodesy for Physics and Chemistry of the Earth. Hans-Peter Plag is the keynote speaker for Earthstock 2008. Photo credit: Teresa Danna-Douglas, Univ. of Nevada, Reno.

Friday, April 18, 2008, 7:30 p.m.
Wang Center Theater

The Ground Truth from Iraq

Dahr Jamail has reported from occupied Iraq for eight months and has covered the Middle East for four years. His reports have been published with the Inter Press Service, The Asia Times, The Nation, The Sunday Herald, Foreign Policy in Focus, The Guardian, and The Independent, to name a few. His dispatches and hard news stories have been translated into 10 languages. On radio as well as television, Jamail reports for Democracy Now!, the BBC, and other stations around the globe, and is a special correspondent for Flashpoints, Pacifica. He is the author of Beyond the Green Zone: Dispatches from an Unembedded Journalist in Occupied Iraq.

Thursday, April 24, 2008, 4:00 p.m.
Student Activities Center, Ballroom B

The Public's Trust and the Public Trusts

Martin Marty is the Fairfax M. Cone Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus at the University of Chicago Divinity School, where he taught for 35 years and where the Martin Marty Center has since been founded to promote “public religion” endeavors. He writes the “M.E.M.O” column for the biweekly Christian Century, on whose staff he has served since 1956. He is also the editor of the fortnightly Context, since 1969, and writes the Marty Center’s weekly e-mail column, Sightings. He specializes in late eighteenth and twentieth-century American religion. The author of more than fifty books, Marty has written the three-volume Modern American Religion. His Righteous Empire won the National Book Award. Part of the Templeton Research Lecture Series.

Monday, April 28, 2008, 4:30 p.m.
Humanities Institute, Room 1006

Medical Ethics in the Shadow of the Holocaust

Michael Grodin is Professor of Health Law, Bioethics and Human Rights, and of Philosophy at Boston University. Dr. Grodin is a leading expert on medical ethics and the use of torture and inhumane treatment in the violation of human rights. He has advised international groups on the investigation of torture cases, has published over 200 articles and five books, and has received four national Humanism in Medicine and Humanitarian Awards. Presented as part of Holocaust Commemoration Day observances on campus. Dr. Grodin will also speak on "Mad, Bad or Evil–How Physician Healers Turn to Torture and Murder: From Nazi Germany to Abu Ghraib" at 11:30 am in Lecture Hall 6, Health Sciences Center. For more information, please visit www.stonybrook.edu/hillel.

Wednesday, April 30, 2008, 4:00 p.m.
Old Engineering Building, Room 145