February 2010

Friday, February 12th

• Convocation: Todd Larson '83
  • Todd Larson (Carleton Class of 1983) is Senior Counselor at the New York Coordination Office of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). Based at United Nations Headquarters, Larson undertakes extensive outreach throughout North American on behalf of WIPO. He has beenwith the United Nations system for nearly two decades, previously serving in the field with both the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees and the U.N. Department of Peacekeeping Operations. He has been influential in the international community, including spearheading the recognition of civil unions for same-sex partners in the U.N. system.
  • 10:50 am, Skinner Memorial Chapel

Friday, February 19th

• Convocation: Lisa Dodson
  • A research professor in Boston College’s Department of Sociology, Dr. Lisa Dodson has spent the last twenty-five years listening to everyday people talk about their lives and their place in the society. She is widely known for her policy research on low-wage families and has testified in U.S. Congressional hearings and to the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, arguing for better work and family policies. Her newest book The Moral Underground examines the profound harm of a deeply stratified economy. (Note: Rudolph Byrd's lecture initially scheduled for this slot was postponed for medical reasons.)
  • 10:50 am, Skinner Memorial Chapel

Friday, February 26th

• Convocation: Patrice Gaines
  • Patrice Gaines is an award winning journalist and former Washington Post reporter who has proven that you cannot judge a book by its cover. She grew up a self-hating young woman, entering one abusive relationship after another. She became a heroin user, went to prison for possession of the drug and was raped and beaten before she began her long contemplative journey to change. She later began her journalism career at the Miami News, and worked for sixteen years as a reporter with the Washington Post, where she carved a niche for herself focusing on human-interest stories that reflected current issues. During this time she spent six years researching a notorious Washington, D.C. murder for which eight young men remain incarcerated. Her work on the story raised serious doubts about the guilt of the youths and showed readers the absolute power wielded by police and prosecutors. This story plus her own experience with the judicial and penal systems sparked her to begin speaking on the states of those systems today, including the high rate of incarceration among minorities and the poor, questionable police practices, prosecutors with too much power, and the weeding out of bad lawyers. She also offers an engaging look at the power of the press, told from an insider point of view. The title of her presentation is "How We Can All Be Free: Prison Reform in the 21st Century."
  • 10:50 am, Skinner Memorial Chapel

April 2010

Friday, April 2nd

• Convocation: Daniel Seddiqui
  • Daniel Seddiqui has recently completed his mission to work 50 different jobs in 50 states. He has been everything from a rodeo announcer in South Dakota, a model in North Carolina, a marine biologist in Washington, to a border patrol agent in Arizona. Why would anyone put themselves through such a grueling experience? Seddiqui's goal was to help Americans understand each other's lives, respect each other's hard work and stimulate peoples' curiosity about different lifestyles. Unaware of what life was like outside his "bubble", he was on a mission to explore the many careers, environments, and cultures that America has to offer. To explore the lifestyle that each state has to offer, he chose one career per state – a career that is popular and represented that state. Through his website Livingthemap.com, Seddiqui chronicled his cross-country adventure, as he worked as an insurance broker in Connecticut, a golf caddie in Hawaii, a sugar maker in Vermont, and an auto mechanic in Michigan, just to name a few of his many 'professions'. The title of his presentation is "Crossing Borders."
  • 10:50 am, Skinner Memorial Chapel

Friday, April 9th

• Convocation: Joshua Aronson
  • Joshua Aronson is Associate Professor of Applied Psychology at NYU’s Steinhardt School of Culture, Education and Human Development. He has been studying stereotypes, self-esteem, motivation, and attitudes for the past 13 years. His work seeks to understand and remediate race and gender gaps in educational achievement and standardized test performance. Often, the low performance of blacks in particular, but other minorities as well, gets casually chalked up to genetic or cultural differences that supposedly block acquisition of skills or values necessary for academic achievement. In sharp contrast, Aronson has uncovered some exciting and encouraging answers to these old questions by looking at the psychology of stigma - the way human beings respond to negative stereotypes about their racial or gender group. What he has found suggests that being targeted by well-known cultural stereotypes ("blacks are unintelligent", "girls can't do math", and so on) can be very threatening, a predicament that has been termed "Stereotype Threat."
  • 10:50 am, Skinner Memorial Chapel

Friday, April 16th

• Convocation: Ronald Heifetz
  • Ronald Heifetz is one of the world's leading authorities on leadership. In contemporary America, a traditionally respectful and idealistic view of people in positions of power is changing. High-profile scandals and abuses of power have undermined the public’s perception of his leaders in both the political and business worlds, realigning the very ideal of leadership. What sort of behavior makes for effective leadership in today’s world? The work of Heifetz provides insight into this question. The founding director of the Center for Public Leadership at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, Heifetz is renowned worldwide for his seminal work on both the practice and teaching of leadership. Co-founder and principal of Cambridge Leadership Associates, Heifetz consults extensively in the United States and abroad, with clients who include senior executives at major corporations, leaders of non-profits, and heads of nations. His widely acclaimed book, Leadership Without Easy Answers, is currently beyond its thirteenth printing and has been translated into many languages.
  • 10:50 am, Skinner Memorial Chapel

Friday, April 23rd

• Convocation: Cheryl Klein '00
  • Cheryl Klein (Carleton Class of 2000) is a senior editor at Arthur A. Levine Books, where she served as the continuity editor on the last three Harry Potter books. Assuming the role of the series' chief "Potterologist," as Time magazine dubbed her, Klein was responsible for ensuring that the elaborate world J.K. Rowling had created – with a complex cast of characters, a thorough set of magical rules, and a language of its own – was as consistent as possible. A former Carletonian copy editor, Klein is in her dream job, working with a diverse and talented group of authors and illustrators on an equally diverse array of projects.
  • 10:50 am, Skinner Memorial Chapel

Friday, April 30th

• Convocation: Richard Moss '77
  • Richard Moss (Carleton Class of 1977) is Vice President and Managing Director for Climate Change at the World Wildlife Fund. But his passion for the environment began long before he joined WWF. From turning his mother’s kitchen into an environmental research lab as a teen to being a member of the 2007 Nobel Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) team, Moss brings over 20 years of experience to WWF. He is at the forefront of WWF’s efforts to develop conservation plans that account for our changing climate and contribute to rapid reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. He ensures that the best science and information is used in WWF’s planning, and that solutions to climate change are a global priority. As a science-driven, global thinker, Moss is shaping WWF’s leadership role to focus on adapting to climate changes we can no longer avoid and getting real reductions in emissions as soon as possible.
  • 10:50 am, Skinner Memorial Chapel

May 2010

Friday, May 7th

• Convocation: Oliver Wang
  • Oliver Wang writes on pop music, culture, and politics for a variety of publications and outlets including: NPR, Vibe, Wax Poetics, LA Times, Oakland Tribune, Village Voice, SF Bay Guardian, URB, LA Weekly, Scratch, SJ Metro and Minneapolis City Pages, amongst others. He also maintains a separate site, ChasingChan.com, for his writing on Asian American cinema. In 2003, he edited and co-authored the book, Classic Material: The Hip-Hop Album Guide. Wang has a PhD in Ethnic Studies from UC Berkeley. His dissertation, a social history of the Filipino American mobile DJ community in the Bay Area, has since been turned into a community research project called "Legions of Boom" and currently being adapted into a manuscript to be published by Duke University Press. As Assistant Professor of Sociology at CSU-Long Beach, Wang teaches courses in popular culture, social issues and race/class/gender.
  • 10:50 am, Skinner Memorial Chapel

Friday, May 14th

• Convocation: Kevin Clements
  • Kevin Clements is the Foundation Chair of Peace and Conflict Studies and Director of the New Zealand Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies at the University of Otago in New Zealand, and Secretary General of the International Peace Research Association. Prior to taking up these positions he was the Professor of Peace and Conflict Studies and Foundation Director of the Australian Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies at the University of Queensland in Australia. He had previously served as Secretary General of International Alert, one of the world’s largest NGO's working on conflict transformation in Africa, the Caucasus, Asia and Latin America. He has also been Professor of Conflict Resolution and Director of the Institute for Conflict Analysis and Resolution at George Mason University in Virginia and head of the Peace Research Centre at the Australian National University. Clements' career has been a combination of academic analysis and practice in the areas of peace building and conflict transformation. He was formerly Director of the Quaker United Nations Office in Geneva and a member of the New Zealand Delegation to the Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference. Clements has been an advisor on defense, security and conflict issues to a range of governmental and non-governmental organizations in Australasia, the United States and Europe. Over the past two decades, he has served as chairman, facilitator and keynote speaker at many international peace and conflict resolution conferences.
  • 10:50 am, Skinner Memorial Chapel

September 2010

Monday, September 13th

• Opening Convocation
  • Opening convocation will be held in the Skinner Memorial Chapel. More information will be forthcoming from the Office of College Relations.
  • 3:00 pm, Skinner Memorial Chapel

September 2011

Monday, September 12th

• Opening Convocation
  • Opening convocation will be held in the Skinner Memorial Chapel. More information will be forthcoming from the Office of College Relations.
  • 3:00 pm, Skinner Memorial Chapel

September 2012

Monday, September 10th

• Opening Convocation
  • 3:00 pm, Skinner Memorial Chapel

September 2013

Monday, September 16th

• Opening Convocation
  • Opening Convocation
  • 3:00 pm, Skinner Memorial Chapel