PAST EVENTS

Spring 2006 Series


     Barbara Bennett Woodhouse

     Children's Rights and American Values

     Thursday, April 6, 2006
      6:30 to 8:00 pm, Skylight Room 9100
  
Many Americans distrust the concept of rights for children as, at best, unworkable and, at worst, a threat to American values.  Yet throughout American history, children and youth have been active participants in the struggle for justice and equality.  Woodhouse explores the meaning of children's rights through the eyes and actions of American children, both famous and anonymous.  She proposes a theory of children's rights, rooted in American values, that acknowledges both their capacity for autonomy and their needs for nurture and protection.

Barbara Bennett Woodhouse holds the David H. Levin Chair in Family Law at the University of Florida's Fredric G. Levin College of Law and is Director of its Center on Children and Families.  Author of numerous legal briefs, articles and book chapters, she was recognized in 2005 as a Human Rights Hero by the American Bar Association.  

Fall 2005 Series


     Joan Wallach Scott

     The Politics of the Veil

     Wednesday, September 28, 2005
      6:30 to 8:00 pm, Skylight Room 9100

      In 2003, the French government passed a law that prohibits Muslim girls who wear head scarves from attending public schools.  The debate about the law raised questions that are being addressed in many Western European countries about whether or not- and how- followers of Islam can be integrated into these societies.  In an illuminating and provocative talk, Professor Scott suggests that the stark oppositions that framed the debate- public versus private, secular versus religious, women's emancipation or subordination- are not the best way to understand or resolve the difficulties that the integration of Muslims pose for French society.

Joan Wallach Scott is Harold F. Linder Professor of Social Science at the
Institute for Advanced Study.  Among her books are: Gender and the Politics of History; Only Paradoxes to Offer: French Feminists and the Rights of Man; and Parité: Sexual Equality and the Crisis of French Universalism.   Professor Scott holds a Ph.D from the University of Wisconsin; she has been awarded honorary degrees by SUNY Stony Brook, Brown University, and the University of Bergen (Norway).  Her work has been influential in defending critical approaches to the writing of history and in theorizing gender as an analytic category.



Spring 2005 Series

.  Frances Fox Piven

     Globalization and Political Power

     Wednesday, April 6, 2005
      6:30 to 8:00 pm, Baisley Powell Elebash Recital Hall

      The common view is that the rise of international economic and political institutions undermines the possibilities for democratic influence.  The influence of this idea, that democratic publics are helpless, is undeniable, but it contributes to popular helplessness and resignation.  But the idea does not stand up to careful scrutiny.  Professor Piven shows that the complex and fragile economic and political arrangements associated with globalization are extremely vulnerable to dissent and disturbance, and thus actually increase the potential for popular influence.

Frances Fox Piven is Distinguished Professor of Political Science and Sociology at The Graduate Center of the City University of New York and author of Regulating the Poor: The Functions of Public Welfare and Poor People's Movements : Why They Succeed, How They Fail (with Richard Cloward) and, most recently, of The War at Home: The Domestic Costs of Bush's Militarism.


.  Andre S. Markovits

     Why Europe Dislikes America: Anti-Americanism in
     Historical Perspective

      Thursday, April 21, 2005
      6:30 to 8:00 pm, Sky Light Room (9100)

There can be absolutely no doubt that the Bush Administration's policies have created an atmosphere in which disliking America has become a sort of global lingua franca. While the antipathies towards the United States in Western Europe have -- on account of the Bush Administration's actions -- entered a hitherto unprecedented acuity and acerbity among many different social groups, antipathies towards America in Europe predate the establishment of the American Republic.  In addition to discussing the historical dimensions of European anti-Americanism, much attention will be given to topics such as food, sports, weather and other non-political phenomena, all highlighting the fact that European anti-Americanism goes much deeper than a legitimate criticism of, and even welcome opposition to, the policies of the Bush Administration, or that of any American government.

     Andrei S. Markovits is the Karl W. Deutsch Collegiate Professor of Comparative Politics and German Studies at the University of Michigan and the author of Offside: Soccer and American Exceptionalism (with Steven Hellerman) and, most recently, of Amerika, Dich Hasst Sich's Besser.


Fall 2004 Series

.  Jeff Madrick

     Changing Times: The Purpose of Government

     Thursday, October 14, 2004
       6:30 to 8:00 pm, Sky Light Room (9100)

      Change is at the heart of successful government.  But neither the right nor the left in America adequately recognize this.  They call on outdated views of what government should do to solve contemporary problems like income inequality, faltering health care, and child poverty.  In his address, Jeff Madrick will show how radically the nation has changed in the past twenty-five years, and how little the agendas of both the right and the left, so mired in misleading nostalgia, reflect this.  Finally, Madrick will propose a policy agenda suitable for these items. 

Jeff Madrick is an economics columnist at The New York Times, editor of Challenge, and the author most recently of How Economies Grow: The Forces that Shape Prosperity and How We Can Get Them Working Again.  

.  Martha Albertson Fineman

     When We Divorce

       Wednesday, November 10, 2004
       6:30 to 8:00 pm, Martin E. Segal Theatre (1218)

  What does marriage mean in modern America?  One way to understand its meaning is to explore what happens when marriage ends.  Three significant
revolutions - the sexual revolution, the no-fault divorce revolution, and the gender-equality revolution - have altered our way of thinking about family and intimate relationships.  Together these seismic shifts have transformed marriage into a relationship that is both egalitarian and tenuous.  Such a profound change also calls into question the state's interest in privileging marriage over other forms of family ties.

Martha Albertson Fineman, the Robert W. Woodruff Professor of Law at Emory University, is the Director of the Feminism and Legal Theory Project.  She is also the author of The Illusion of Equality: The Rhetoric and Reality of Divorce Reform; The Neutered Mother, the Sexual Family, and Other Twentieth Century Tragedies; and most recently, The Autonomy Myth: A Theory of Dependency.