Recorded April 25, 2013, in Mayser Gymnasium.

Joe Queenan is the author of nine books, including, most recently, One for The Books. His memoir Closing Time was a New York Times Notable Book of 2009.

Queenan writes the Moving Targets column for the weekend edition of the Wall Street Journal. He has written thousands of stories for publications as varied as The New York Times, GQ, The Washington Post, People, The Guardian, The New Republic, Newsweek, Time, Forbes, Spy, Men’s Health, Barron’s, Rolling Stone, Vogue and TV Guide. He regularly writes and hosts radio features for the BBC. In 2005, he won a Sports Emmy for his work on HBO’s Inside the NFL.

Queenan is a native of Philadelphia, married, with two children, and currently lives in Tarrytown, N.Y.

Thursday, April 18, 2013
11:30 a.m.

Annie Leonard differs from many “environmental” spokespeople in that she radiates hope and optimism.

After traveling to 40 countries to explore environmental issues and meeting with communities, governments and businesses, she is absolutely convinced that it is possible to find a way to live on this planet, that is healthier, safer, fairer and more fun. In fact, fun is a huge part of Annie’s message, both in delivery and outcome. She realizes that people will not want to hear information, nor act upon it it if is cloaked in scolding, guilt or fear.

Annie inspires people to take action for a better world and ensures we all have fun doing it.

Sponsored by Wohlsen Center for the Sustainable Environment. This event is open to the public.

Recorded Thursday, April 11, at 11:30 a.m. in Mayser Gymnasium

Jill Tarter holds the Bernard M. Oliver Chair for SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) at the SETI Institute in Mountain View, California. Tarter received her Bachelor of Engineering Physics Degree with Distinction from Cornell University and her Master’s Degree and a Ph.D. in Astronomy from the University of California, Berkeley. She served as Project Scientist for NASA’s SETI program, the High Resolution Microwave Survey, and has conducted numerous observational programs at radio observatories worldwide. Since the termination of funding for NASA’s SETI program in 1993, she has served in a leadership role to secure private funding to continue this exploratory science. Prior to her retirement as Director for the Center for SETI Research last May, Tarter served on the management board for the Allen Telescope Array, located at Hat Creek Radio Observatory in northern California. When this innovative array of 350 6-m antennas is fully operational, it will simultaneously survey the radio universe for known and unexpected sources of astrophysical emissions, and speed up the search for radio emissions from other distant technologies by orders of magnitude.

Tarter’s work has brought her wide recognition in the scientific community, including the Lifetime Achievement Award from Women in Aerospace, two Public Service Medals from NASA, Chabot Observatory’s Person of the Year award (1997), Women of Achievement Award in the Science and Technology category by the Women’s Fund and the San Jose Mercury News (1998), and the Tesla Award of Technology at the Telluride Tech Festival (2001). She was elected an AAAS Fellow in 2002 and a California Academy of Sciences Fellow in 2003 (and CAS Scientific Trustee in 2007). In 2004 Time Magazine named her one of the Time 100 most influential people in the world, and in 2005 Tarter was awarded the Carl Sagan Prize for Science Popularization at Wonderfest, the biannual San Francisco Bay Area Festival of Science. In 2006 Tarter became a National Advisory Board member for the Center for Inquiry’s Office of Public Policy in Washington, DC. She is also a Fellow on the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (CSICOP). Tarter was one of three Technology, Education, Design (TED) prizewinners and named one of the Most Influential Women in Technology by Fast Company Magazine in 2009, and in April 2010 was a recipient of the Silicon Valley Women of Influence 2010 Award, in addition to becoming an elected fellow of WINGS WorldQuest.

Tarter is deeply involved in the education of future citizens and scientists. In addition to her scientific leadership at NASA and SETI Institute, Tarter has been the Principal Investigator for two curriculum development projects funded by NSF, NASA, and others. The first, the Life in the Universe series, created 6 science-teaching guides for grades 3-9 (published 1994-96). Her second project, Voyages Through Time, is an integrated high school science curriculum on the fundamental theme of evolution in six modules: Cosmic Evolution, Planetary Evolution, Origin of Life, Evolution of Life, Hominid Evolution and Evolution of Technology (published 2003). Tarter is a frequent speaker for science teacher meetings and at museums and science centers, bringing her commitment to science and education to both teachers and the public. Many people are now familiar with her work as portrayed by Jodie Foster in the movie Contact.

This event is open to the public.

The F&M Orchestra:

• Rimsky-Korsakov, Russian Easter Overture and
• the PREMIERE of Andrew Glennan ‘13, Rustic Travels.

The Symphonic Wind Ensemble:

• Boris Kozhevnikov, Symphony No. 3;
• Gustav Holst, Second Suite; and
• John Carbon, CCXXV, celebrating the 225th anniversary of Franklin & Marshall.

Recorded April 4, 2013, in Mayser Gymnasium.

Kerry Whiteside, the Clair R. McCollough Professor of Government, is the 2009 recipient of the Bradley R. Dewey Award for Outstanding Scholarship, Franklin & Marshall’s highest honor for scholarship.

There is nothing dry or monastic about research in Professor Kerry Whiteside’s experience. For him, research in political theory has meant delving into the archives of radio stations and retrieving records of French high school students in the 1930s. He has attended party congresses and interviewed philosophers. He collaborates with scholars across Europe. Prof. Whiteside will discuss the sometimes surprising joys of research as a human venture : one that begins in vague premonitions about potentially fruitful topics, that flourishes from unexpected connections, and that thrives on, well, doggedness.

Recorded March 28, 2013, in the Barshinger Center for Musical Arts.

Thursday, March 21, 2013
11:30 a.m.
Mayser Gymnasium

Lynn Nottage’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play Ruined, which involves the plight of women in the civil war-torn Democratic Republic of Congo, premiered at Manhattan Theatre Club and Goodman Theatre. It subsequently toured widely throughout US regional theatres and premiered internationally at the Almeida Theatre in London. The play has since been produced throughout the world, including Cambodia, Chad, The Caribbean, The Democratic Republic of Congo, and Germany. Her other plays include Intimate Apparel (American Theatre Critics and New York Drama Critics’ Circle Awards for Best Play); Fabulation, or The Re-Education of Undine (OBIE Award); Crumbs from the Table of Joy; Las Meninas; Mud, River, Stone;Por’knockers and POOF!.

Nottage is the recipient of the 2010 Steinberg Distinguished Playwright Award, the Dramatists Guild Hull-Warriner Award, the inaugural Horton Foote Prize for Outstanding New American Play (Ruined), Helen Hayes Award (Ruined), the Lee Reynolds Award, and the Jewish World Watch iWitness Award. Her other honors include the 2007 MacArthur Foundation “Genius Grant,” the National Black Theatre Festival’s August Wilson Playwriting Award, the 2005 Guggenheim Grant for Playwriting, the 2004 PEN/Laura Pels Award for Drama, as well as fellowships from the Lucille Lortel Foundation, Manhattan Theatre Club, New Dramatists and New York Foundation for the Arts. She is a graduate of Brown University and the Yale School of Drama, where she is currently a visiting lecturer. She is a co-founder and producer at Market Road Films LLC, a film production company.

This event is open to the public.

Petroleum hydrocarbons in the marine environment have been at the forefront of the news from the Exxon Valdez to the Deepwater Horizon disaster.

Reddy does research in the source, transport and fate of petroleum hydrocarbons in the marine environment. He has also advised the offices of Senator Edward Kennedy (MA), Senator John Kerry (MA), and Representative William Delahunt (MA) on oil spills and nanotechnology legislation (2008).

Co-sponsored by the departments of Chemistry, Earth and Environment and Biology.

This event is open to the public.

Thursday, February 28, 2013
11:30 a.m.-12:35 p.m.

No recording was made of this event.

Manuela M. Veloso is Herbert A. Simon Professor of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University. She researches in Artificial Intelligence and Robotics.

She founded and directs the CORAL research laboratory, for the study of multiagent systems where agents Collaborate, Observe, Reason, Act, and Learn, www.cs.cmu.edu/~coral. Professor Veloso is IEEE Fellow, AAAS Fellow, and AAAI Fellow. She is the current President of AAAI. Professor Veloso was recently recognized by the Chinese Academy of Sciences as Einstein Chair Professor. She also received the 2009 ACM/SIGART Autonomous Agents Research Award for her contributions to agents in uncertain and dynamic environments, including distributed robot localization and world modeling, strategy selection in multiagent systems in the presence of adversaries, and robot learning from demonstration.

Professor Veloso is the author of one book on “Planning by Analogical Reasoning” and editor of several other books. She is also an author in over 250 journal articles and conference papers.

Veloso says of this lecture:

“We envision ubiquitous autonomous mobile robots that coexist and interact with humans while performing assistance tasks. Such robots are still far from common, as our environments offer great challenges to robust autonomous robot perception, cognition, and action. In this talk, I present symbiotic robot autonomy in which robots are aware of their limitations and proactively ask for help from humans, access the web for missing knowledge, and coordinate with other robots. Such symbiotic autonomy has enabled our CoBot robots to move in our multi-floor buildings performing a variety of service tasks, including escorting visitors, and transporting packages between locations. I will describe CoBot’s fully autonomous effective mobile robot indoor localization and navigation algorithms, its human-centered task planning, and its symbiotic interaction with the humans and with the web. I will further discuss our ongoing research on knowledge learning from our speech-based robot interaction with humans. The talk will be illustrated with results and examples from many hours-long runs of the robots in our buildings.”

Sponsored by Department of Computer Science

This event is open to the public.

Recorded Feb. 21, 2013 in Mayser Gymnasium.

Cornel West is a prominent and provocative democratic intellectual.  He is a Professor of Philosophy and Christian Practice at Union Theological Seminary and Professor Emeritus at Princeton University.  He has also taught at Yale, Harvard, and the University of Paris.  Cornel West graduated Magna Cum Laude from Harvard in three years and obtained his M.A. and Ph.D. in Philosophy at Princeton.  He has written 20 books and has edited 13.  He is best known for his classics Race Matters and Democracy Matters, and his memoir, Brother West:  Living and Loving Out Loud.  He appears frequently on the Bill Maher Show, Colbert Report, CNN and C-Span as well as on his dear Brother, Tavis Smiley’s PBS TV Show.

On the occasion of Civil Rights Week at F&M.the Black Student Union has invited Dr. Cornel West to provide the broader historical perspective and context on the struggle for Civil Rights in the United States, and then to critique this idea of a post-racial America. The BSU’s intention is that his lecture will spark and invigorate honest and open discussions about race and racial equality throughout the entire week.

Sponsored by Department of Government

This event is open to the public.

February 14, 2013 at 11:30 a.m.
Mayser Gymnasium

This week’s Common Hour is organized and run entirely by students.  The theme as planned had been Stand-Up Comedy, particularly as informed by the liberal arts experience.  Given our community’s recent loss, the students organizing the event have decided to restructure the hour in a way that honors Eric Phillips and the intellectual values of our College. We will begin with a moment of silence and a song by the Poor Richards. Following that, members of the Jesters, will present (and perform) an exploration of how comedy relates to tragedy.

The Jesters is Franklin and Marshall’s only student run organization dedicated to writing, performing, and observing stand-up comedy. Since the club’s formation in January 2011, the Jesters have performed at a myriad of venues both on and off the college campus. The largest performances include “Shamrock”, “Huckfest”, and New York Comedy Club. The Jesters are committed to improving the overall morale of the campus through comedy and affirm that a successful liberal arts experience is not complete without laughing every once in awhile.

On the occasion of Valentine’s Day, “Taste of Chocolate” accompanies the performance with the sweetness of Lancaster’s best chocolatiers to break the winter doldrums and celebrate Cupid’s day. Oranges will also be served.

This event is open to F&M students and FPS only.