CSS Events
CSS Monday Lunch Talks
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Click here for Spring 2024 CSS Monday Lunch Speakers
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Click here for Fall 2023 CSS Monday Lunch Speakers
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Click here for Spring 2023 CSS Monday Lunch Speakers
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Click here for Fall 2022 CSS Monday Lunch Speakers
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Click here for list of past CSS Monday Lunch Speakers
Fall 2024 Special Events Co-Sponsored by the CSS
Monday, October 28, 2024 at 4:30 pm in Frank Center 001
Liya Xie Talk: Eastern Elixir, Folk Wisdom, or Charlatanism? The Politics of Tibetan Medicine in Late Imperial St. Petersburg, 1890s-1910s
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Wednesday,October 9 at 5:00 pm in Fisk 208
The CSS is pleased to co-sponsor a talk by Brianna Nofil, Assistant Professor of History at College of William and Mary.
"The Migrant's Jail, An American History of Mass Incarceration"
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Monday, September 16, 2024 at 4:30pm in Frank Center 001
Kerry Wallach, Wes '02: "Recovering the Lost Worlds of Jewish Artist Rahel Szalit"
Spring 2024 Special Events Co-Sponsored by the CSS
Wednesday, April 17 at 12:15 pm in the Frank Center Room 101
"Will There Be Legal Accountability for Donald Trump" - A Conversation with Journalist Andrea Bernstein
Thursday, April 4 at 4:30pm in the Frank Center for Public Affairs 100
"Did It Happen Here?" Panel event organized by Danny Steinmetz-Jenkins. For additional information see the Wesleyan Connection piece dated 4/3/24.
Tuesday, February 27 at 4:30pm in Fisk 302, or on Zoom, Laura Wolf-Powers
Constructions of Community in the Era of the Innovation District: The Case of West Philadelphia
Fall 2023 Special Talks
Spring 2023 Talks
CSS Banquets
- Fall 2024
- Spring 2024
- Fall 2023
- Spring 2023
- Fall 2022
- Fall 2019
- Spring 2019
- Fall 2018
- Spring 2018
- Fall 2017
- Spring 2017
- Fall 2016
- Spring 2016
- Fall 2015
- Spring 2015
- Fall 2014
- Spring 2014 Banquet
- Fall 2013 Banquet
- Spring 2013 Banquet
- Fall 2012 Banquet
- Spring 2012 Banquet
- Fall 2011 Banquet
- Spring 2011 Banquet
- CSS 50th Celebrations
- Peter Kilby Retirement
CSS Fall 2024 Banquet
Ben Florsheim, CSS '14
"One CSS'ers Journey Through Politics, Pandemics, and the Absurd"
Tuesday, October 15, 2024
CSS Spring 2024 Banquet
Bruce Greenwald
CSS Fall 2023 Banquet
Shana Simmons, CSS '03
CSS Spring 2023 Banquet
Kirsten Delegard, CSS '90
CSS Fall 2022 Banquet
Nataly Kogan, CSS '98
"The Power of Emotional Fitness: How to Struggle Less and Thrive More, Even When Life Is Challenging"
The CSS Fall 2022 Banquet was held at the Inn at Middletown on October 11, 2022, after a hiatus due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
Nataly Kogan, CSS '98, gave the talk entitled "The Power of Emotional Fitness: How to Struggle Less and Thrive More, Even When Life Is Challenging".
A leading expert on emotional fitness, Nataly Kogan is an entrepreneur, best-selling author, and keynote speaker on a mission to help millions of people embrace their Awesome Human, struggle less and thrive more in work and life! See full bio here.
CSS Fall 2019 Banquet
Kristie L. Ebi
Health Risks of – and Responses to – Climate Change
The CSS Fall 2019 Banquet was held at the Inn at Middletown on Wednesday, October 30, 2019.
Kristie Ebi was introduced by Gary Yohe, Huffington Foundation Professor of Economics and Environmental Studies, Emeritus.
Kristie Ebi's talk was followed by remarks from Faculty Respondent, Brian Stewart, Professor of Physics.
Kristie L. Ebi is Professor in the Department of Global Health at the University of Washington. She has been conducting research and practice on the health risks of climate variability and change for nearly 25 years, focusing on understanding sources of vulnerability, estimating current and future health risks of climate change, and designing adaptation policies and measures to reduce the risks of climate change in multi-stressor environments. She has supported multiple countries worldwide in assessing their vulnerabilities and implementing adaptation policies and programs. She has edited four books on aspects of climate change and has more than 200 publications.
The Fifth Annual Brian Schorr CSS Spring Banquet 2019
Geoff Eley
The CSS Spring Banquet was held in Beckham Hall on Wednesday, April 17, 2019.
Geoff Eley gave a talk entitled:
Fascism and Anti-Fascism, 1920-2020
GEOFF ELEY is Karl Pohrt Distinguished University Professor of Contemporary History at the University of Michigan, where he has taught since 1979. He previously taught at the University of Cambridge (1975-79). Trained originally as a modern German historian, he also works in modern British history, as well as on a general European front. He is interested in both the history of the Left and the history of the Right; history and film; historiography; and history and theory. He has recently begun teaching a large new undergraduate course on the History of Terrorism. He is writing a general history of Europe in the twentieth century and a new study of the German Right, Genealogies of Nazism: Conservatives, Radical Nationalists, Fascists in Germany, 1860-1930.
CSS Fall Banquet 2018
Rashida Richardson
CSS 2008
Rashida Richardson gave a talk entitled:
What's Bias Got To Do With It: Big Data and Data-Driven Technologies Feedback Loops
Followed by:
CSS Student Respondent, Brian Barkman, CSS 2019
Rashida Richardson is the Director of Policy Research at the AI Now Institute at NYU, where she designs, implements, and coordinates AI Now’s research strategy and initiatives on the topics of law, policy, and civil rights. Rashida joined AI Now after working as Legislative Counsel at the New York Civil Liberties Union (NYCLU), the New York state affiliate of the American Civil Liberties Union, where she led the organization’s work on privacy, technology, surveillance, and education issues. Prior to the NYCLU, she was a staff attorney at the Center for HIV Law and Policy, where she worked on a wide-range of HIV-related legal and policy issues nationally, and she previously worked at Facebook Inc. and HIP Investor in San Francisco. Rashida currently serves on the Advisory Board of the Civil Rights and Restorative Justice Project and the Board of Directors of the College & Community Fellowship. She received her B.A. with Honors in the College of Social Studies at Wesleyan University in 2008, and her JD from Northeastern University School of Law in 2011.
The Fourth Annual Brian Schorr CSS Spring Banquet 2018
Judge Victoria Pratt
The CSS Spring Banquet was held in Beckham Hall on Tuesday, April 24, 2018.
Judge Pratt gave a talk entitled:
Judge Victoria Pratt has gained national and international acclaim for her commitment to reforming the criminal justice system. As the Chief Judge in Newark Municipal Court in Newark, New Jersey, she spent years gaining a deep understanding of how justice could be delivered to court participants in a manner that increased their trust in the legal system and change their behavior. A creative problem-solver, while presiding over Newark Community Solutions, a Community Court Program, she provided alternatives to jail to low-level offenders. These alternatives included community service, individual and group counselling sessions, and her signature assignment of introspective essays. Her respectful approach has had a positive effect on court participant’s court experience, and how the community viewed the court. Her TED Talk, How Judges Can Show Respect, has gone viral. It has been translated into 9 languages and is just shy of 1 million views.
By passionately articulating her ideas she leaves an indelible effect on the hearts and minds of her audience. Pratt is now serving as a Professor of Law at Rutgers Law School in Newark, New Jersey, an institution that has always been committed to social justice.
Pratt is licensed to practice law in both New Jersey and New York, and is admitted to the U.S. Supreme Court. She also facilitates Mountain Movers empowerment sessions through to help people live their best lives.
CSS Fall Banquet 2017
Darrin M. McMahon
Darrin McMahon gave a talk entitled:
The Pursuit of Happiness from the Paleolithic to the Present
Followed by:
Faculty Respondent, Sarah Wiliarty, Associate Professor of Government and CSS Tutor
&
CSS Student Respondent, Dom Vazquez, CSS Junior
Darrin M. McMahon is a historian and author, and the Mary Brinsmead Wheelock Professor at Dartmouth College. Born in Carmel, California, and educated at the University of California, Berkeley and Yale, where he received his PhD in 1998, he is the author of Enemies of the Enlightenment (Oxford University Press, 2001), Happiness: A History (Atlantic Monthly Press, 2006), and Divine Fury: A History of Genius (Basic Books, 2013). His work on happiness has been translated into twelve languages, and was awarded Best Books of the Year honors for 2006 by the New York Times, The Washington Post, the Library Journal, and Slate Magazine. McMahon is also the editor, with Ryan Hanley, of The Enlightenment: Critical Concepts in Historical Studies, 5 vols. (Routledge, 2009); with Samuel Moyn, of Rethinking Modern European Intellectual History (Oxford University Press, 2014); and with Joyce Chaplin of Genealogies of Genius (Palgrave, 2015).
He has taught as a visiting scholar at Columbia University, New York University, Yale University, the University of Rouen, the École Normale Supérieur, the École des Hautes Études, and the University of Potsdam, and his writings have appeared frequently in such publications as the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Boston Globe, New York Times Book Review, Slate, Washington Post, The New Republic, L’Histoire, Live Happy, and the Literary Review. The recipient of major fellowships from the Mellon, Humboldt, and Guggenheim foundations, he is currently writing a history of notions of equality, under contract with Basic Books, New York, and a history of illumination in the age of Enlightenment.
The Third Annual Brian Schorr CSS Spring Banquet 2017
Impact Entrepreneurship May Be the Most Powerful Tool We Have For Avoiding Planetary Disaster
Amir Alexander Hasson, CSS Class of 1998, is a serial social entrepreneur with expertise in international business, strategy, finance, IT, mobile applications, telecom, and distribution. He has started four companies, raised funding from a variety of investors, and built businesses impacting the lives of millions of people in the USA, Asia, Africa, and Latin America.
He was born in Chicago and completed his Bachelor’s with Honors from the College of Social Studies at Wesleyan University. He worked in marketing and production at leading new media companies in New York City during the “.com boom” and started the Web's first search engine for holistic health, webreathe.com. He then received his Master's in the Management of Technology from the MIT Sloan School of Management.
During the course of his study at MIT, Amir co-conceived and patented DakNet, a store-and-forward "drive-by" WiFi technology for rural connectivity. He worked with engineers at the MIT Media Lab to lead the development and deployment of WiFi networks in rural India, while managing business development for Media Lab Asia, an R&D lab started by MIT.
Based on this MIT research, Amir spun-out First Mile Solutions, which developed and implemented wireless Internet solutions for public and private organizations in developing countries. Amir led First Mile Solutions to profitability, managing product development and projects for NGOs, telcos, and multilateral institutions such as the United Nations Development Program in countries such as Cambodia, Rwanda, and Paraguay.
Amir then founded United Villages, Inc. (UV), a VC-funded company that later acquired First Mile Solutions and operates rural India's first mobile phone supply chain, enabling thousands of village retailers to procure and manage their inventory of products and services through UV's proprietary mobile platform. UV has been recognized as one of Top 20 Most Impactful Companies by Investors' Circle.
Amir has published several papers and has spoken at over 30 events internationally. He is the inventor of two issued and two pending patents and has been interviewed and cited by major media organizations including CNN, the BBC, the New York Times, and Le Monde. Amir was featured as one of the Top 25 [Entrepreneurs] Under 35 by Red Herring Magazine and one of the Top Young Innovators (the "TR35") by MIT Technology Review. He has participated in several Aspen Institute and Aspen Institute India "roundtables" and was sponsored as a Fellow in the inaugural 2009-10 Aspen Institute First Movers program.
Based in Cambridge, MA, Amir now serves as the Chief Happiness Officer of Oxigen USA, Inc, the US partner of India's largest payment solutions provider, Oxigen Services India (P) Ltd, which took over UV in 2012.
Amir also serves as an Entrepreneur In Residence for the MIT Trust Center for Entrepreneurship, as a Mentor for the MIT Venture Mentoring Service, as a Mentor for the Harvard University iLab, as a Reviewer for IEEE Communications Magazine, an Advisory Board Member for Wesleyan University's Patricelli Center for Social Entrepreneurship, and as a Charter Member of TiE Boston.
The College of Social Studies 2016 Fall Banquet
Storytelling in the Age of Snapchat
Followed by:
Faculty Respondent, Ying Jia Tan, Assistant Professor of History
&
CSS Student Respondent, Claudia Kahindi, CSS Junior
Hanna Ingber
Hanna Ingber is an assistant editor on the International desk of The New York Times. She is responsible for helping the desk experiment with new forms of storytelling. Since joining The Times four years ago, Hanna has also worked on the News Desk to develop the newsroom’s breaking news strategy and on the Interactive News Team to use social media in innovative ways.
Hanna’s first job after college was as the lifestyle editor of the Myanmar Times in Rangoon, Burma. She has also lived and worked as a reporter in India, Thailand and South Africa, built and managed GlobalPost’s team of breaking news writers, and was the founding World editor of the Huffington Post.
She was the recipient of SABEW’s 2013 Best in Business award for social media and was part of the GlobalPost team that won the Overseas Press Club award in 2012 for online coverage of breaking news.
Hanna graduated from Wesleyan University in 2003 with a major in the College of Social Studies. While at Wesleyan, she wrote a weekly column for the Argus called “A Little Bit Shady,” which analyzed social issues on campus like the dreaded walk of shame. She has a master’s degree in journalism from the University of Southern California.
The CSS Spring Banquet was held in Beckham Hall on Monday, April 18, 2016. This banquet is especially notable due to the generous contribution of financial support for the banquet by Brian Schorr, CSS ’79, for which we are extremely grateful.
Steven Greenhouse was the New York Times labor and workplace reporter from late 1995 through late 2014. In that position, he wrote about labor unions, farm workers, wage trends, immigrant workers, and child labor. He has done investigative exposés about Wal-Mart locking in its workers at night, poor housing conditions for the nation’s farm workers, companies engaging in wage theft by secretly erasing hours from workers’ time cards and the failure of Western companies to assure safety in apparel factories in Bangladesh and Pakistan. Steven’s book, The Big Squeeze: Tough Times for the American Worker (Alfred A. Knopf), won the Sidney Hillman Book Prize for nonfiction in 2009.
He began working at the New York Times in September 1983 as a business reporter, covering the steel industry and other basic industries. He next spent two-and-a-half years in Chicago, writing about the Midwest’s economy, plant closings and large-scale layoffs. From 1987 to 1992, he was based in Paris as the Times’ European economics correspondent. There he covered the Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia, the European Union, Western Europe’s welfare state, industrial giants like Nestle and Fiat, French culture, and Poland’s transition from Communism to capitalism. In 1992, he became a correspondent in the Times Washington bureau, first covering economic policy and the Federal Reserve, and then the State Department and foreign policy.
He is currently a visiting researcher at the Russell Sage Foundation in New York, where he is writing a book about the past, present and future of labor unions and worker voice in the United States.
He is a 1973 graduate of Wesleyan, having majored in government and in the College of Letters (and having served as editor-in-chief of the Argus). He is a graduate of the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism (1975) and the New York University School of Law (1982), where he was class valedictorian.
College of Social Studies 2015 Fall Banquet
Dr. Lawrence Mishel
“It didn’t have to be this way: wage and income stagnation in America”.
The CSS Fall 2015 Banquet was held Wednesday, October 21, 2015, at the Inn at Middletown.
Lawrence Mishel came to the Economic Policy Institute in 1987 as EPI’s first research director and later became vice president and then president (since 2002). He has played a significant role in building EPI’s research capabilities and reputation. He has written and spoken widely on the economy and economic policy as it affects middle- and low-income families. He is principal author of The State of Working America (published even-numbered year since 1988), which provides a comprehensive overview of the U.S. labor market and living standards. He also leads EPI’s education research program. Prior to joining EPI, Mishel worked as an economist for various unions and taught at Cornell’s Industrial and Labor Relations School. Mishel has a PhD in economics from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
CSS Spring 2015 Inaugural Brian Schorr Banquet
Branko Milanovic
Presidential Professor at the Graduate Center City University of New York
and senior fellow at Luxembourg Income Study
"Global income inequality: current trends and political implications".
The CSS Spring Banquet was held in Beckham Hall on Tuesday, April 14th. This banquet was especially notable due to the generous contribution of financial support for the banquet by Brian Schorr, CSS ’79, for which we are extremely grateful.
Professor Milanovic obtained his Ph. D. in economics at the University of Belgrade with a dissertation on income inequality in Yugoslavia. He was lead economist in World Bank Research Department for almost 20 years and senior associate at Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington (2003-2005). He held teaching appointments at University of Maryland (2007-2013) and School for Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University (1997-2007). Milanovic’s main area of work is income inequality, in individual countries and globally. He has published a number of articles on methodology and empirics of global income distribution and effects of globalization (Economic Journal, Review of Economics and Statistics, Journal of Political Philosophy etc.). His most recent book The Haves and the Have-nots: A Brief and Idiosyncratic History of Global Inequality, was published in 2011, translated in seven languages, and selected by The Globalist as 2011 Book of the Year.
Fall 2014 Banquet
The Annual CSS Fall Banquet was held on Wednesday, October 15th at the Inn at Middletown with Stephen Oleskey as the guest speaker presenting his talk entitled, “Reflections on Ten Years of Guantanamo Bay Habeas Representation: 2004-2013.”
Stephen Oleskey graduated from Wesleyan in 1964, Phi Beta Kappa and Magna Cum Laude. He is a proud alumnus of the College of Social Studies. He participated in the first Wesleyan-Tuskegee Institute Exchange in 1963. After teaching school in Brazil for a year, he attended New York University Law School where he held the Arthur T. Vanderbilt Scholarship. During law school, he interned with the New York City Legal Aid Office of Mobilization for Youth and for the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights under Law in Batesville, Panola County Mississippi in the summer of 1966.
Steve practiced in Boston with the law firm of Hale & Dorr from 1968 to 2013. He is presently Of Counsel in the Boston Office of the New York State law firm, Hiscock & Barclay.
In 1987-88 he was Massachusetts’ Deputy Attorney General and Chief of its Public Protection Bureau. During that period, among other responsibilities, he closely supervised and litigated the Commonwealth’s ultimately unsuccessful efforts to prevent the licensing of the Seabrook (NH) nuclear reactor.
He has argued two cases before the US Supreme Court, the first being his first appellate argument when he was 28. That appeal involved the Constitutionality of the then Massachusetts’ State Employees’ Loyalty Oath.
Steve has always had an active Pro Bono practice and in 2007 received the American Bar Association’s Lifetime Pro Bono Achievement Award. He served on the Board of the NOW Legal Defense and Education Fund (now Legal Momentum) for eight years, where he was outside General Counsel, is past President of Greater Boston Legal Services, of the Massachusetts Legal Assistance Corporation and is the immediate past chair of the international sustainable development NGO, Pact, Inc. He was an alumni-elected Trustee on the Wesleyan Board from 2000 to 2003 and in 2014 received Wesleyan’s Outstanding Service Award.
From 2004 to 2013, he was co-lead partner in the landmark case of Boumediene v. Bush (2008), in which the Supreme Court held that men such as his six clients held as detainees in Guantanamo Bay Prison were entitled to pursue the Constitutional remedy of Habeas Corpus. Most recently, Steve has co-chaired the Campaign of Democrat Maura Healey for Massachusetts’ Attorney General. Healey won nomination for that post on September 9 with 63% of the vote. If elected in November, Healey will be the first openly gay Attorney General in the country.
Spring 2014 Banquet
Noah Pickus, CSS '83
“Think and Do: Adventures in Immigration Policy”
The Annual Spring Banquet for CSS was held at the Inn at Middletown on Wednesday, February 26, 2014. Along with the talk given by Professor Pickus, the evening included CSS Co-chair and Tutor, J. Donald Moon as the faculty respondent and Ben Jacobs, CSS '14 as the student respondent.
Noah Pickus is Nannerl O. Keohane Director of the Kenan Institute for Ethics at Duke University and Associate Research Professor of Public Policy Studies at Duke University. He co-directs the Brookings-Duke Immigration Policy Roundtable and is the author of True Faith and Allegiance: Immigration and American Civic Nationalism, Becoming American/America Becoming, and Immigration and Citizenship in the 21st Century. Prior to joining the Kenan Institute for Ethics, he was the founding director of the Institute for Emerging Issues and taught at Duke and at Middlebury College. He has held fellowships from the Thomas J. Watson Foundation, the A.W. Mellon Foundation, and the H.B. Earhart Foundation. He earned a doctorate in politics from Princeton University and is currently working on immigration policy, academic integrity, and global ethical challenges.
Fall 2013 Banquet
Jan Svejnar
"The Impact of the Global Economy on Central-East Europe"
The CSS Fall Banquet for 2013 was held at the Inn at Middletown on Tuesday, October 15th. The evening's guest speaker, Professor Jan Svejnar, is the James T. Shotwell Professor of Global Political Economy and Founding Director of the Center on Global Economic Governance at Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs. He received his B.S. from Cornell University’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations and his M.A. and Ph.D. in Economics from Princeton University.
Professor Svejnar’s research focuses on (a) the effects of foreign investment and government policies on firms and workers, (b) corporate, national and global governance and performance, and (c) entrepreneurship. He is the author of several books; he has published widely in academic and policy journals. He serves as an advisor to governments, non-profit organizations and firms.
Professor Svejnar is a founder and Chairman of CERGE-EI in Prague, which is an American-style Ph.D. program in economics for students from Central-East Europe and the Newly Independent States. In 2008, he was one of two candidates for the Presidency of the Czech Republic. In 2012, he received a Neuron Prize for lifelong achievement from the Karel Janeček Endowment.
Spring 2013 Banquet
Coleman Bazelon, CSS '86
The Spring 2013 Banquet for CSS was held at the Inn at Middletown on Wednesday, April 17th without the weather challenges faced in the fall of 2012. The guest speaker was Coleman Bazelon presenting his talk entitled, “Ethics and Intellectual Entrepreneurship”. The evening also featured CSS Co-chair and Tutor, J. Donald Moon as the faculty respondent and Jake Eichengreen, CSS'13, as the student respondent.
Dr. Bazelon is an expert in regulation and strategy in the wireless, wireline, and video sectors. He has consulted and testified on behalf of clients in numerous telecommunications matters, ranging from wireless license auctions, spectrum management, and competition policy, to patent infringement, wireless reselling, and broadband deployment. He has also frequently advised legislative and regulatory bodies. He holds a Diploma in Economics from LSE and earned his PhD from the University of California, Berkeley.
Jeff Burns, M.D., CSS '80
Despite Ari, the Nor'easter, the annual CSS Fall Banquet was held on Wednesday, November 7th at the Inn at Middletown. Dr. Jeff Burns, a graduate of Tufts University School of Medicine, was the guest speaker. He completed his internship in pediatrics at Boston Children's Hopsital where he is Chief of the Division of Critical Care Medicine and is currently working on two research projects involving the improvement of care in the critically ill child. Dr. Burns presented his talk entitled "The Online Education Revolution: the future of CSS? One view from Harvard Medical School".
The 2012 Spring Banquet was held at the Inn at Middletown on April 17, 2012 with guest speaker David Garrow, CSS ’75, Research Professor of History and Law at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law and Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (HarperCollins, 1986), widely regarded as one of the best studies
of Martin Luther King, Jr. and the civil rights movement. Garrow received his Wesleyan BA magna cum Laude and Phi Beta Kappa in 1975, and then went on to earn both an MA and PhD from Duke University. He has published four books, most recently Liberty and Sexuality: The Right to Privacy and the Making of Roe v. Wade (Macmillan 1994), co-authored or edited numerous other volumes, and written scores of scholarly articles and book chapters on such topics as abortion law, affirmative action, school desegregation, the civil rights movement, and Supreme Court history. He has also written many journalistic essays and reviews on similar topics that have enjoyed a wide national readership in such magazines and newspapers as Newsweek, The New York times, The Washington Post and Los Angeles Times. He was a senior advisor to the noted PBS series Eyes on the Prize and has been the recipient of numerous awards and grants, among them from the Ford Foundation and The Twentieth Century Fund and in 1995 he received Wesleyan's own Distinguished Alumnus Award.
The annual CSS Fall Banquet was held on Tuesday, October 18th in the Daniel Family Commons in the Usdan University Center.
The guest speaker was Professor William Howell, CSS '93, of the University of Chicago. His talk was entitled “How the CSS Helped Me Write The Wartime President.”
Professor Howell is the Sydney Stein Professor in American Politics in the Harris School, co-director of the Program on Political Institutions, and a professor in the Department of Political Science and the College. He has written widely on separation-of-powers issues and American political institutions, especially the presidency. He is currently working on a book, tentatively entitled The Wartime President, that examines the impact of war on the power that U.S. presidents wield at home. Howell is the co-author (with Jon Pevehouse) of While Dangers Gather: Congressional Checks on Presidential War Powers (Princeton University Press, 2007); author of Power without Persuasion: The Politics of Direct Presidential Action (Princeton University Press, 2003); co-author (with Paul Peterson) of The Education Gap: Vouchers and Urban Schools (Brookings Institution Press, 2002); and editor, among other publications, of The Oxford Handbook on the American Presidency (Oxford University Press, 2009). His research also has appeared in numerous professional journals and edited volumes. Before coming to the University of Chicago, Howell taught in the government department at Harvard University and the political science department at the University of Wisconsin. In 2000, he received a PhD in political science from Stanford University.
Spring 2011 Banquet
The 2011 CSS Spring Banquet speaker was Emma Rothschild, the Jeremy and Jane Knowles Professor of History at Harvard University, and Director of the Joint Center for History and Economics at Harvard and the University of Cambridge. She is the author of Economic Sentiments: Adam Smith, Condorcet and the Enlightenment (2001), and has written extensively about the history of economic thought and economic history. She is a frequent contributor to The New York Review of Books and other publications. The Inner Life of Empires: An Eighteenth-Century History will be published in 2011. Spring Banquet was held on April 13, 2011.
CSS 50th Celebrations - Homecoming Weekend, November 6th - 8th, 2009
Friday, November 6thOn Friday evening, November 6th, at 8 p.m., a Public Lecture by John Goldberg (CSS 1983, Professor of Law, Harvard Law School) was held at the Center for the Arts Hall (Old Cinema). His talk was entitled "John Locke on Tort Reform (Really!): A CSS Parable." John Goldberg was introduced by Brian Fay, and Richie Adelstein gave a response following the lecture.
Almost Beer and Bull was held in the Daniel Family Commons, top floor of the Usdan Center, following the Public Lecture.
Saturday, November 7th
On Saturday, November 7th, there were two Alum Speaker Panels, in PAC 002, from 9:00 a.m.-12:00 noon. The first Panel was on CSS Entrepreneurs and was chaired by Peter Kilby, and the panelists were Steve Torok (CSS 1973), Donald Zilkha (CSS 1973), Lincoln Frank (CSS 1979), and Jonathan Bush (CSS 1993). The second Panel, from 10:45-12:00 noon, was on International Affairs. Andrew Crawford (CSS 1997) chaired, and the panelists were Bob Hunter (CSS 1962), John Stremlau (CSS 1966), Carl Robichaud (CSS 1999), and Michael Brotchner (CSS 1995).
Following the Alum Panels, in PAC 002, at noon, there was a Champagne Book Party honoring Bill Barber and the latest publication of his book, A History of Economic Thought (1967, 2009). Alan Gayer (CSS 1964) spoke at this event. David Morgan was the MC for these morning/early afternoon sessions.
A CSS Alum Reception, took place in the CSS Lounge, PAC Fourth Floor, from 3:00-5:00 p.m. that afternoon. There was well attended by CSS Alum as well as current and past CSS Tutors.
A Joint Reception with COL was held in the Daniel Family Commons, top floor of the Usdan Center, at 5:30 p.m. This event began with a Slideshow and Talk by Suzy Taraba (COL 1977), Head of Special Collections and University Archivist. Her talk was entitled "The College Plan: The Early Years."
The CSS Banquet was held at the Inn at Middletown, 70 Main Street, Middletown, CT 06457, at 7:30 p.m. Drinks and Dinner, followed by a program arranged by CSS alums, tutors, and current students, from 1959-2012.
Sunday, November 8th
A Coffee Meeting for Alums/Current CSS Students was held in the CSS Lounge from11:00 a.m.-noon.
CSS Tutors
In addition to the past and present CSS tutors noted above, many attended the CSS 50th as well, including Don Moon, Peter Rutland, Joyce Jacobsen, Gil Skillman, and Erik Grimmer-Solem.
Thank you to the many CSS'ers who helped with this Celebration!
Cheers.
Cecilia Miller
CSS Co-Chair (2008-2010)
Peter Kilby Retirement Events
Friday, May 22, 2009
A Symposium was held in honor of Professor Peter Kilby, who retired on June 30, 2009, after 44 years at Wesleyan, which included 17 years as Co-Chair of the CSS.
The Symposium was entitled "Issues in Economic Development."
Five papers were presented on the role of culture, entrepreneurship, and political configuration in China, Korea, and Africa. The Symposium was a celebration of Peter Kilby's research and teaching.
Program Speakers:
Loren Brandt "77, University of Toronto
"Explaining China's Growth Puzzle"
Respondent: John Bonin, Wesleyan University
Jung Ho Kim "85, Korea University
"The Role of IT in Korean Economic Growth"
Respondent: Masami Imai, Wesleyan University
Matthew Baker "93, Hunter College
"Human Capital and Hold-Up in Indigenous Societies"
Respondent: Richard A. Miller, Wesleyan University
Christopher Kilby, Villanova University
"Changing Foreign Aid Regimes: U. S. Foreign Aid from the Cold War to the War on Terror"
Respondent:Mark Eisner, Wesleyan University
Peter Kilby
"The Quiddity of Third World Entrepreneurship"
Respondent:Michael C. Lovell, Wesleyan University
Organizers: Cecilia Miller and Mickie Dame, Wesleyan University
There was a banquet in Peter Kilby's honor at the Inn at Middletown that evening. The Banquet was attended by many CSS alums some traveling from other countries as well as by many colleagues, friends, and family members. The group represented Peter's time at Wesleyan since 1966.