Where can Scripps students and the community find a speaker series featuring lecturers ranging from an Emmy Award-winning news correspondent to the Executive Director of the Federalist Society? This fall, students and the Claremont community had to look no further than the Scripps College campus and the Humanities Institute fall lecture and film series, “The Politics of Knowledge Production.”
According to the Humanities Institute Program Director, Professor Julia Liss, the Institute selected the topic to facilitate dialogue during this important election year. She noted, “The fact that Scripps is in southern California, a center of diverse political activity and activism, compelled the Institute to develop a program that provided students and the community a forum for open discourse on the issues.”
The series of speakers, films, and question-and-answer sessions has indeed fostered debate and discussion relating to political issues. Professor Liss remarked about the fall program, “It’s a great example of what the Humanities Institute does best, which is to bring together people from different disciplines and from both inside and outside academics, to talk about issues that matter, and currently politics matters.”
Since the program’s opening symposium in September, the speakers and films featured have encouraged election discussion and debate on campus. Attendance by students and community members has been high. Nearly 150 were in attendance for the screening of the film Unprecedented: The 2000 Presidential Election. According to Professor Liss, the question-and-answer sessions following each event have been lively, stimulating, and reflective of the important political issues facing our country.
Lecturers for the series were chosen based on their innovative roles in different political spheres: Antonio Gonzalez, an expert on Latino voting trends; John Podesta, a former White House Chief-of-Staff and founder of a progressive think tank; Elizabeth Minnich, a philosopher who focuses on the consequences of knowledge constructs on a democracy; and Kent Wong, labor unionizer and director of the UCLA Center for Labor Research and Education.
The series continues on October 21 with a screening of the documentary film, “Orwell Rolls in His Grave,” including a discussion with the director, Robert Kane Pappas, at 7:15 p.m. in Boone Recital Hall and on October 25 with a luncheon lecture, “Su Voto es su Voz: Civic Engagement and Public Policy,” presented by Antonio Gonzalez at noon in the Hampton Room of the Malott Commons.
On October 28 Lee Cokorinos will speak on “Does Knowledge Matter?” He will be joined by Eugene Meyer on “The Federalist Society,” both in the Hampton Room of the Malott Commons at 4:15 p.m. The final lecture, “Transforming Knowledge: Refusing and Refuting Logics of Domination” by Elizabeth Minnich, is on November 11, at 7:00 p.m. in the Hampton Room of the Malott Commons. The final film screenings of the program are “Unconstitutional: The War on Our Civil Liberties” in a double-feature with “Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch’s War on Journalism” on November 4 at 7:15 p.m. in the Boone Recital Hall and, on November 18, also at 7:15 in the Boone Recital Hall: “Control Room.”