Convocation Recordings

Annual all-college assembly celebrating the beginning of the academic year, with the address given by Jonathan Capehart '89.

Ebony Utley, associate professor of communication studies at California State University Long Beach, is an expert in popular culture, race, and romantic relationships. Her critically-acclaimed book, Rap and Religion: Understanding The Gangsta’s God, addresses all of the above by closely examining the juxtaposition—and seeming hypocrisy—of references to God within rap music. Rap music has been condemned for inciting violence, promoting misogyny, perpetuating racial stereotypes, and encouraging religious blasphemy. Despite these assessments, Utley asserts that religion has always been part of the urban environments that birthed rap music, and she shows exactly how a God-sanctioned gangsta identity can be empowering. The title of her presentation is "The Rap on Rap and Religion." This Black History Month Convocation is sponsored by the Office of Intercultural and International Life.

Helene York is a food activist who has managed product sourcing for a large restaurant company, an advocate for humane meat production systems who happens to be vegetarian, a teacher, and a writer who has thought a lot about what Americans eat.

Conscientious consumers who want to "chew the right thing" can head for their local farmers market. But what about a corporation that serves 135 million meals a year in 32 states? From 1999, when Bon Appétit Management Company launched its Farm to Fork program, to February 2012, when it announced it was entirely phasing out pork from pigs confined in gestation crates and eggs from hens in battery cages, Bon Appétit has pioneered socially and environmentally responsible practices. The company's first director of purchasing strategy, and the architect of many advances for which the company is known, York will talk about the complexities and ethical challenges of how Carleton's food service provider influences our food system and works to make more sustainable food available for everyone. The title of her presentation is "Supporting Consumer Activism: The Role of Corporate Change Making to Affect a Sustainable Food System."

Anita Sarkeesian is a pop culture media critic and the creator of Feminist Frequency, a video webseries that explores the representations of women in pop culture narratives. Her work focuses on deconstructing the stereotypes and tropes associated with women in popular culture as well as highlighting issues surrounding the targeted harassment of women in online and gaming spaces. Over the past few decades there has been a significant increase in the number of television shows and movies that showcase female action heroes. These roles have helped transform and challenge historical representations of women in the mass media. But are these examples of strong female characters or are they just replicating traditional masculine archetypes in a sexualized, female body? Sarkeesian argues for a new character archetype that supports feminist values and breaks out of traditional oppressive gender binaries in order to promote, encourage, and envision a more just society. The title of her presentation is "I'll Make a Man Out of You: Redefining Strong Female Characters."

Ronald Henkoff '76, the editor of the award-winning Bloomberg Markets magazine and an executive editor of Bloomberg News, has been a business journalist for more than three decades. Before joining Bloomberg News as global features editor, Henkoff worked at Fortune magazine where he was Chicago bureau chief and a member of the board of editors. Prior to that he worked for Newsweek magazine in New York, Houston, and London and was Newsweek's European economics editor. Bloomberg Markets, the world's leading financial magazine with 375,000 readers in 150 countries, provides comprehensive, in-depth coverage of the global financial markets and is the go-to source of information on the most essential, can't-miss financial news.

A graduate of Carleton College, Henkoff holds an M.S. from Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism and an M.A. in international history from the London School of Economics and Political Science. Taking a look at how the economy has been affected by scandals within financial institutions, the title of his presentation was "Money, Power and Trust."

Anthony DeCurtis is a contributing editor at Rolling Stone, where his work has appeared for more than thirty years. He has also written for The New York Times, Relix and other publications as a respected author and music critic. DeCurtis is the author of In Other Words: Artists Talk About Life and Work and Rocking My Life Away: Writing About Music and Other Matters. He is editor of Present Tense: Rock & Roll and Culture and Blues & Chaos: The Music Writing of Robert Palmer, and he co-edited the third editions of the Rolling Stone Illustrated History of Rock & Roll and the Rolling Stone Album Guide.

DeCurtis holds a PhD in American literature from Indiana University. He helped design the arts-and-culture curriculum at the City University of New York Graduate School of Journalism and currently teaches in the creative writing program at the University of Pennsylvania. A frequent member of the judging panel for the annual Independent Music Awards, DeCurtis has also appeared as a commentator on MTV, VH1, the Today Show and many other news and entertainment programs. The title of his presentation is “The Music of Social Protest.”

Leslie Harper is keeping the Ojibwe culture alive and well in northern Minnesota. On the Leech Lake Indian Reservation, it has been decades since anyone has heard Ojibwe children routinely speaking their native tongue. Harper is one of the founders of an elementary school program there designed to revive the language. Its young students hear only Ojibwe in the classroom – all day, every day. Proponents say total immersion in the language is the best way to ensure its survival. That's what's happening every day at the tribally-run Bug-O-Nay-Ge-Shig School east of Cass Lake. Ojibwe language is not the subject in this classroom. It's the vehicle for teaching everything – reading, writing and arithmetic. The four-year-old language immersion program is called Niigaane, which in Ojibwe means "the ones who lead."

Harper, who is Ojibwe, learned her native language in a university setting and through self-directed instruction. Her passion for ensuring others learned the native language came partly from the realization that she had no one to talk to outside of a few senior citizens. But, primarily, Harper believes firmly that important cultural knowledge is embedded in the language, and that knowing it helps give children a stronger sense of their own identity. Harper speaks about the importance of indigenous languages and language revitalization in contemporary times, including aspects of inclusion, re-creation of space for indigenous languages, and some new policy initiatives being undertaken in Minnesota to support indigenous language revitalization. This Native American Heritage Convocation is sponsored by the Office of Intercultural and International Life.

Sherry Turkle is a Professor of the Social Studies of Science and Technology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Her research and writing focuses on the "subjective side" of people's relationships with technology, especially computers. She is an expert on mobile technology, social networking, and sociable robotics. In addition to serving as the Abby Rockefeller Mauzé Professor of the Social Studies of Science and Technology in the Program in Science, Technology, and Society at MIT, Turkle is also the founder and current director of the MIT Initiative on Technology and Self. Turkle uses the metaphor of “necessary conversations” to describe where technology has brought us and to the questions we now must confront, such as: What does it mean to have a liberal arts education and how much of it can take place online? What is the difference between conversation and connection, and is technology eroding bonds of community? What is personhood, and can we have meaningful conversations with machines? We have a tendency to avoid these questions; we flee from conversation about them, part of a more general flight from conversation. But these conversations need to be embraced and we need a new vocabulary for embracing them. The title of her presentation was “Necessary Conversations: Technology as an Evocative Object.”

Phil Plait is an astronomer, lecturer and author. After earning his doctorate in astronomy from the University of Virginia, Plait was a NASA contractor at the Goddard Space Flight Center, working ten years on the Hubble Space Telescope. He then began a career in public outreach and education with the “Bad Astronomy” website and blog, debunking bad science and popular misconceptions. He is a skeptic and fights the abuse of science, but his true love is praising the wonders of real science. Plait takes a scientifically-based but fun look at asteroid impacts, comet debris, and fears of world extinction as he talks about how these events have shaped our history, how they may do so again, and why Hollywood always seems to get them wrong. And lest you think it’s all doom and gloom, he goes into details on how we might prevent the next great impact from ruining our whole day. The title of his presentation was “Death From The Skies!”

The president of Amazon Promise, Patty Webster has devoted her life to bringing medical aid and health education to the poorest and most remote communities of Peru. Since 1993, she has brought medical and non-medical volunteers to the Peruvian Amazon Basin, bringing essential healthcare to over 55,000 people. Named a CNN Hero for her work, she oversees Amazon Promise’s strategic operations and program development, managing all trip and volunteer logistics with the one goal of bringing sustainable health to Peru. Raised in a family that emphasized volunteerism, Webster founded Amazon Promise to encourage global citizenship and to promote a healthful blend of traditional and Western medicine.  Today, she is an expert on cultural preservation, and provides insight into the resourcefulness, self-reliance, and vision one must have to create a life of meaningful service.