Amherst College Events Multimedia Podcast

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.

“History is shaped by ordinary people doing ordinary things… So don’t be afraid to try and don’t be afraid to fail,” David Freudenthal, governor of the state of Wyoming and Amherst College alumnus, urged the members of the school’s Class of 2012, who packed Amherst’s Johnson Chapel the evening of Monday, Aug. 25. Freudenthal, who graduated 35 years ago, imparted this wisdom and some other words of encouragement about college, public service and life in the annual DeMott Lecture, which is directed toward first-year students and relates to their summer reading. The talk helped kick off a week of orientation activities for the new undergraduates on campus and beyond.

Diane Ravitch, former assistant secretary of education and current research professor of education at New York University and senior fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University and the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C., delivered a talk Monday, April 14, titled “The Perils of School Reform” in Paino Lecture Hall in Amherst College’s Earth Science and Museum of Natural History Building at 7:30 p.m. The event, the John J. McCloy ’16 Lecture, was free and open to the public.

David Mayhew '58, Sterling Professor of Political Science at Yale University, delivered a talk titled “American Presidential Elections: The Historical Perspective” at 8 p.m. on Tuesday, Feb. 26, at Amherst College’s Pruyne Lecture Hall. The discussion was free and open to the public.

Amherst College hosted a panel discussion titled “From Campus to Country: Why We Chose to Serve in the Military after Amherst” with alumni and members of the armed forces Matt Flavin '02, Todd Nichols '99, Michael Proctor '02 and Paul Rieckhoff '98 on Friday, Feb. 29, in Cole Assembly Room of Amherst’s Converse Hall at 4:30 p.m. The event, which was free and open to the public, was part of Amherst’s ongoing effort to promote meaningful discussion of the complex issues associated with the nation’s military, as well as honor those who serve. The discussion was dedicated to the memory of Navy lieutenant Joshua Walter “Max” Gross ’98, one of three crew members who died Jan. 16 in a helicopter crash in Corpus Christi, Texas. The event is sponsored by the college’s President’s Office.

Joseph E. Stiglitz ’64, winner of the 2001 Nobel Prize in economics and professor of economics at Columbia University, and William Easterly, former research economist at the World Bank, participated in a discussion titled “Reducing Global Poverty” at Amherst College on Thursday, April 3. The event, an open forum which took place on campus at 7 p.m. in Converse Hall’s Cole Assembly Room, was part of the Amherst College Colloquium Series (ACCS).

The Rev. Dr. Leon T. Burrows delivered the address during Amherst College’s celebration of the life of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on Friday, Feb. 8. Burrows serves as the Protestant religious advisor to Amherst College and the advisor to the Hermenia T. Gardner Bi-Semester Christian Worship Series and the Amherst College Gospel Choir.

Cristopher R. Hill, assistant secretary of state in the bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs, spoke on “The Ethics of Diplomacy: Conscience and Pragmatism in Foreign Affairs” on Wednesday, Jan. 30 at 8 p.m. in Johnson Chapel at Amherst College. Hill is a career member of the Senior Foreign Service whose most recent assignment was as ambassador to the Republic of Korea. On Feb. 14, 2005, he was named head of the U.S. delegation to the Six-Party Talks on the North Korean nuclear issue.

David Brooks, columnist for The New York Times, and E. J. Dionne Jr., columnist for The Washington Post, participated in a discussion titled “What Do We Mean by ‘America?’ Liberalism, Conservatism and the Future of the Culture Wars” at a forum at Amherst College on Monday, Jan. 21. The event, which took place on campus at 4 p.m. in Converse Hall’s Cole Assembly Room, was part of the Amherst College Colloquium Series (ACCS) and was free and open to the public.

Dee Dee Myers, former Clinton White House press secretary, and Nicolle Wallace, former Bush White House communications director, participated in a discussion titled “Hot Buttons—and Who’s Pushing Them” at a forum at Amherst College on Wednesday, Jan. 16. The event, which took place on campus at 4 p.m. in Fayerweather Hall’s Pruyne Lecture Hall, was part of the Amherst College Colloquium Series (ACCS) and was free and open to the public.

Former United Nations Ambassador John R. Bolton delivered a lecture titled “Dealing with Rogue States After Iraq” at 8 p.m. in the Cole Assembly Room of Amherst College’s Converse Hall on Monday, Dec. 3. Sponsored by the Committee for the American Founding, the talk was free and open to the public.

Paul Rice, founding president and CEO of TransFair USA, the only Fair Trade certification organization in the United States today, delivered a lecture titled “Harnessing Markets for Social Change: The Case for Fair Trade” at 8 p.m. Monday, Nov. 26, in the Pruyne Lecture Hall (Fayerweather 115) at Amherst College.

On Friday, Nov. 2, at 1 p.m. in Cole Assembly Room, Molly Mead, the new director of the Center for Community Engagement, discussed the vision of the center and the ways Amherst College will be a national leader in the community engagement movement.

On Saturday, Oct. 27, 2007, Maria Echaveste, Professor of Law, University of California, Berkeley and former Assistant to the President and Deputy Chief of Staff to President Bill Clinton, spoke on “Who Gets to Be An American, or Why Immigration Reform Failed” as part of the Colloquium on the Constitution and the Imagining of America at Amherst College

On Saturday, Oct. 27, 2007, Lucas Guttentag of the Immigrants' Rights Project of the American Civil Liberties Union Foundation, spoke on "Beyond the Shackles of History: Bringing Constitutional Rights for Non-Citizens Into the 21st Century" as part of the Colloquium on the Constitution and the Imagining of America at Amherst College.