Rabban ’71 to Deliver Constitution Day Lecture Sept. 17

David Rabban '71 will speak on “Free Speech, Academic Freedom, and the American University” during Wesleyan's annual Constitution Day Lecture. The event will take place at 7 p.m. Sept. 17 in the Smith Reading Room inside Olin Memorial Library. The lecture, hosted by the Friends of the Wesleyan Library is free of charge and open to the public. This talk will cover the judicial treatment of free speech and academic freedom at American universities from the 1950s to the present. It will explore the First Amendment rights of professors, students and universities as institutions, and the tensions that arise when these rights conflict. (more…)

Over the past decade, a new approach to the study of mobilities has emerged involving research on the combined movement of peoples, animals, objects, ideas and information. This can be viewed through the lens of complex networks, relational dynamics, and the redistribution or reification of power generated by movement. This fall, Wesleyan's Center for the Humanities will offer 10 lectures on the theme of "Mobilities" as part of its lecture series. Five of the speakers are from Wesleyan. All talks begin at 6 p.m., are open to the public, and are held at Daniel Family Commons. The dates, topics and…

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Aharon Barak, former president of the Israeli Supreme Court Interdisciplinary Center, in Herzliya, Israel will deliver the 23rd annual Hugo L. Black Lecture on Freedom of Expression at 8 p.m. Oct. 8 in Memorial Chapel. His talk is titled, “Human Dignity and Free Speech." Barak served as a justice on the Supreme Court of Israel from 1978 to 1995 and as president of the Court from 1995 to 2006. Earlier, he was Attorney General of the State of Israel and Dean of the Law Faculty at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. In 1978, Barak traveled to the United States as…

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Geoffrey Stone, the Edward H. Levi Distinguished Service Professor at the University of Chicago, delivered the 22nd annual Hugo L. Black Lecture on Freedom of Expression on April 18. The topic of this year's event was "Justice Alito’s First Amendment.” Stone explored the current state of constitutional jurisprudence, with a particular eye on the approach of the most "conservative" of the current justices. How they undertake the challenge of interpreting the often vague and open-ended guarantees of the Constitution? What explains their decisions in the most controversial cases, involving such issues as the constitutionality of campaign finance regulation, affirmative action, and gun control?…

Gun laws in the United States need to be changed to protect thousands of lives, but meaningful change is not a sure thing, even in the wake of the tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary School, three experts told a packed house at Wesleyan on Feb. 6. The seminar, “Guns and Gun Violence: Crisis, Policy and Politics” featured three specialists in the legal, social and political aspects of firearms regulation, and drew a capacity crowd at the Center for the Arts Hall. “The United States is not more violent, but more lethally violent (than other developed nations who have stricter gun…

Wesleyan hosted the 10th Annual Shasha Seminar for Human Concerns on April 19-20. The Shasha Seminar is an educational forum for Wesleyan alumni, parents, faculty and friends that provides an opportunity to explore issues of global concern in a small seminar environment. Endowed by James J. Shasha ’50 P’82, the seminar supports lifelong learning and encourages participants to expand their knowledge and perspectives on significant issues. The 2012 theme was The Political Economy of Oil. Photos of the two-day event are below: (Photos by Olivia Drake and Bill Tyner '13) (more…)

On Monday, April 23, Wesleyan will receive a visit from Reverend Billy (Bill Talen), the anti-consumerism activist and performance artist, who has tried to “exorcise” so many Starbucks cash registers, he’s been banned from the coffee shop chain. He will speak at 7 p.m. in Memorial Chapel. The event is free and open to the public. Talen is best known as the subject of the 2007 documentary, What Would Jesus Buy?, produced by Academy Award-nominated filmmaker Morgan Spurlok and directed by Sundance Film Festival Award-winner Rob VanAlkemade. In his performance art, Talen takes on the persona of an evangelical preacher…

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Rabban ’71 to Deliver Constitution Day Lecture Sept. 17

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