Amherst College Events Multimedia Podcast

If ever there was an opportune time to be teaching an economics course titled "Consumption and the Pursuit of Happiness," it would be during the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression. The course is being taught this semester by Daniel P. Barbezat, a professor of economics at Amherst College who designed the course with the aim of openings students’ eyes about the link between well-being and consumption. He’s also introducing elements mindfulness into the course, and leading meditation exercises as well.

Christine Todd Whitman, former governor of New Jersey and head of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and Bill McKibben, environmentalist and writer, participated in a discussion titled “Containing Carbon: Markets, Morals and Mobilization” at a forum at Amherst College on Wednesday, Feb. 4. The event, which took place on campus at 4 p.m. in Johnson Chapel, was part of the Amherst College Colloquium Series (ACCS).

Veteran civil rights activist Rev. Walter E. Fauntroy, pastor of the New Bethel Baptist Church in Washington, D.C., and former U.S. Congressman, lead the annual multifaith service in celebration of the life of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. at 7:30 p.m. on Friday, Feb. 6, in Johnson Chapel at Amherst College.

The Amherst College Colloquium Series on Public Education featured Jay P. Greene, Endowed Chair and Head of the Department of Education Reform at the University of Arkansas and Jennifer Hochschild, the Henry LaBarre Jayne Professor of Government and Professor of African and African American Studies at Harvard University.

Amherst Reads aims to connect community members, both on and off campus, to the intellectual life of the college. The intellectual life of the college lives not just on campus in our students and faculty, but it is carried to the world beyond in the work and lives of alumni as well. We hope to shed light on the vast array of publications offered by Amherst authors in our reading list and we aim to connect readers to some of these authors through our Featured Book.

Amherst Reads aims to connect community members, both on and off campus, to the intellectual life of the college. The intellectual life of the college lives not just on campus in our students and faculty, but it is carried to the world beyond in the work and lives of alumni as well. We hope to shed light on the vast array of publications offered by Amherst authors in our reading list and we aim to connect readers to some of these authors through our Featured Book.

Debby Applegate '89 and David Reynolds '70 discuss "The Most Famous Man in America"

Listen to the full length interview between Lawrence Douglas, professor of Law, Jurisprudence and Social Thought and Cullen Murphy '74, author of Are We Rome? The full length interview is available in two parts.

Listen to the full length interview between Lawrence Douglas, professor of Law, Jurisprudence and Social Thought and Cullen Murphy '74, author of Are We Rome? The full length interview is available in two parts.

Description: Richard Todd '62 and Catherine Newman '90 discuss Richard's book The Thing Itself.

Michael Sandel, the Anne T. and Robert M. Bass Professor of Government at Harvard University, and Peter Singer, the Ira W. DeCamp Professor of Bioethics at the University Center for Human Values at Princeton University, opened the 2008-09 Amherst College Colloquium Series (ACCS) with a lecture titled “The Ethical Use of Biotechnology: Debating the Science of Perfecting Humans” on Friday, Oct. 17, at 4:30 p.m. The talk, which took place in Cole Assembly Room of Amherst’s Converse Hall, was free and open to the public.

“The story we have all been following … is one of competing narratives,” Philip Bennett, managing editor of The Washington Post, told an engaged audience in the Babbott Room of Amherst’s Octagon Wednesday, Oct.1, during a discussion of the presidential election.

George J. Marlin is the author/editor of ten books including Squandered Opportunities: New York’s Pataki Years (2006), The American Catholic Voter: Two Hundred Years of Political Impact (2004) and Fighting the Good Fight: A History of the New York Conservative Party (2002). In 1993, Mr. Marlin was the Conservative Party nominee for mayor of the City of New York, and in 1994 he served on Governor-elect Pataki's transition team. His articles have appeared in numerous periodicals including The New York Times, New York Post, National Review, Newsday, The Washington Times and the New York Daily News. Mr. Marlin is also general editor of The Collected Works of G.K. Chesterton.

George Nash served as president of the Philadelphia Society from 2006-2008, the nation’s oldest organization of conservative intellectuals. He is the premier historian of the American conservative movement and is the author of The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America Since 1945. Dr. Nash is also an authority on the life of President Herbert Hoover. Between 1975 and 1995 he lived in Iowa near the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library, where he prepared three volumes of a definitive, scholarly biography under the general title The Life of Herbert Hoover (New York: W.W. Norton & Co.).

May a president, with a memo on an international agreement, override the verdict of a court for rape or murder? Ted Cruz serves as the Solicitor General of Texas. Appointed by Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott in January 2003, he is the chief appellate lawyer for the State of Texas. Mr. Cruz is the first Hispanic Solicitor General in Texas and, when appointed, was the youngest Solicitor General in the United States. He has authored over seventy U.S. Supreme Court briefs and presented twenty-eight oral arguments, including seven in the U.S. Supreme Court.