January 22, 2008
William Garvelink, "U.S. Leadership in Responding to the World's Humanitarian Crises"
Calvin alumnus Ambassador William Garvelink spoke to the January Series audience today on the role of the United States government in responding to humanitarian crises all over the world.
January 21, 2008
Stages Theatre Company, "A Lion in Winter"
By James Goldman
Directed by Joanna Weir, London, England
A powerful and witty play exploring the dangerous and convoluted dynamics of royal family politics during the Middle Ages. Henry II, conqueror of much of Europe must dodge the internal warfare from his wife, Eleanor of Aquitaine, and his scheming and ambitious children. The Lion in Winter employs delightful dialogue and brilliant verbal swordplay to portray the dramatic irony of these complex familial relationships.
January 18, 2008
Dr. Douglas Diekema, "Love, Justice and Humility: A Bioethicist Meets the "Pillow Angel"
Dr. Douglas Diekema presented a lecture Friday on his involvement with the controversial case of a girl with severe mental and physical disabilities.
Because the “Ashley case” has been distorted and misrepresented, Dr. Douglas Diekema, pediatrician and ethicist at the Children’s Hospital and Regional Medical Center in Seattle, Wash., began with a full explanation of the case.
"Ashley’s been explained as being ‘frozen in time’ or having received the ‘Peter Pan’ treatment, where she never leaves childhood,” he said. “Neither of those is correct.”
January 17, 2008
Michael Griffin, "Human Space Exploration: the Next 50 Years"
NASA opens new frontiers through space exploration and creates new economic opportunities, a critical driver of innovation. Today, space capabilities are pervasive in our lives, critical to a range of activities that create and provide value to human beings, and America's annual investment in NASA is less than one penny out of every federal dollar spent.
January 16, 2008
Timothy George, "Theology in an Age of Terror"
Timothy George admitted when he started to speak Wednesday that he was going to be addressing a big topic: theology in an age of terror. Still, he was able to approach the gargantuan matter by reaching back into history and drawing on the wisdom of Saint Augustine from The City of God.
The Roman Empire at the time of The City of God was in a state of flux after the fall of Rome to the Visigoth Aleric in 410. The early 5th century was a time of great instability and fear for those living in an empire that hadn’t seen this kind of threat in 800 years. Augustine’s great tome was written to teach Christians how to live in a world in which such terror reigned.
January 15, 2008
Margaret Lowman, "It's a Jungle Up There: An Exploration of the Treetops"
On Tuesday, biologist Margaret Lowman, better known as “Canopy Meg,” spoke to the January Series audience about her fascinating work studying the biodiversity present in treetops all over the world.
January 14, 2008
James Abbington, "100 Years of Black Gospel Music in an Hour"
Dr. James Abbington, a long-time friend of Calvin College, came on Monday to share a brief 100-year history of black gospel music in the United States. He gave his presentation in part by way of sound and video clips, show-casing the gifts of artists from Mahalia Jackson and Rosetta Tharpe to Andre Crouch and Kirk Franklin.
January 11, 2008
Ishmael Beah, "A Long Way Home: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier"
What does war do to the human spirit?
This is the question that Ishmael Beah, widely known author of the New York Times bestseller, A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier, tried to answer for the large January Series audience that came to hear him speak Friday.
In his quiet and measured tone, he explained why he was compelled to write his memoir during his last year at Oberlin College, a time when he could have been having fun and trying to forget what happened to him as a boy in his native Sierra Leone when a civil war erupted and he was forced to join in the violence. Beah knew he needed to do something with what had happened to him—he couldn't allow it to sit inside of him and make him perpetually angry. So with the help of a creative writing teacher, he set out to tell the story of his boyhood. He did so not only to tell his own story, but also to tell the story of so many others who were not as lucky as he was to escape from Sierra Leone and be adopted by a family in New York. He did so also to tell the world about Sierra Leone, and to show the humanity of these people who got sidetracked by anger and thirst for vengeance.
January 10, 2008
Debra Rienstra, "Words Wear Out: How Religious Writers Help Us Renew Language"
Sometimes words just get tired, said Thursday’s January Series speaker and Calvin English professor Debra Rienstra. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that we get tired of words. Either words get used too much and start to make us roll our eyes when we hear them or meanings of words get shifted so that we forget their true meaning (e.g. “ironic”). Or sometimes the true meanings of words we use with relative frequency are so remote from us that we have no idea what we’re talking about when we say them.
January 9, 2008
Eleanor Clift, "Countdown to Election 2008"
Eleanor Clift described the show she is most known for appearing on—the McLaughlin Group—as a men’s locker room with lots of towel-snapping. In other words, it’s not a place where a woman would typically feel comfortable. It was with this kind of wit and perception that Clift addressed the January Series audience on Wednesday regarding the current political season in the United States—primary season.
January 8, 2008
Chris Seiple, "Stewarding American Power: Recommendations for the Next President
Sitting down to talk with religious leaders in the Northwest Frontier Province of Pakistan—the mountainous stronghold of the Taliban and al-Qaeda—Chris Seiple has set foot where few evangelicals dare to tread.
As the president of an organization he describes as a “think tank with legs,” Chris Seiple advocates religious freedom in some of the most difficult regions of the world. He is there to engage in “Christ-infused relational diplomacy,” a model of diplomacy that humbly and holistically engages the person, culture, religion and political powers.
January 7, 2008
Sonia Nazario, "Enrique's Journey"
When there are as many as 150,000 undocumented immigrants in the state of Michigan at the same time that the unemployment rate is among the highest in the nation, Sonja Nazario notes that it isn’t difficult to demonize illegal immigrants.
The lecture made it difficult for anyone to maintain that view with Nazario’s story of Latin American mothers who come to the United States in order to feed their children at home, and the children who risk injury and death to reach their working mothers in the U.S.
Until ten years ago, Nazario had little knowledge about the immigrant situation in the United States. She did know that her usually-cheerful housekeeper was an immigrant from Guatemala, and that she had one child—or so she thought...
January 4, 2008
Bill McKibben, "Deep Economy"
Is more really better?
This is the main question that January Series speaker Bill McKibben asked in his talk titled “Deep Economy.” He began by talking about global warming and his experience in Vermont leading awareness campaigns urging Congress to cut carbon emissions by 80% by 2050, but that was only his introduction. What McKibben really wanted to get to was the way in which Americans have become accustomed to living in the past fifty years—with increasing amounts of material wealth. Promising to return to global warming and environmental awareness later, he plunged into a talk that explored more existential matters.
Are Americans really happier now that they drive SUVs and live in houses twice the size of homes...
January 3, 2008
Michael Mandelbaum, "Democracy's Good Name"
Is there any hope for democracy to be successful in nations where the United States has recently tried to promote it, namely in nations like Iraq, Somalia and Bosnia?
Michael Mandelbaum answered this question by elaborating on the historical conditions under which democracy has historically grown.
Democracy in recent times (the last two hundred years) has flourished where two previously incompatible ideals are present...
For more on democracy and its development, read Michael Mandelbaum's Democracy's Good Name, available at the Calvin Campus Store.
