Pamplin Society of Fellows

Lately, I have been becoming familiar with streets in neighborhoods I’ve never walked, navigating regions of a country I’ve never known. In the weeks following the earthquake in Haiti, an organization called Ushahidi has been collecting, translating, evaluating, and mapping thousand of SMS text messages from those in need. Needing volunteers to map messages twenty-four house a day in wake of the crisis, the students of Lewis & Clark college were asked fill a gap not covered by those on the East coast or in Geneva. On the night pictured in this photo, over forty students from the Undergraduate, Graduate, and Law Schools were packed into the Pamplin room to be trained in message mapping. Over the course of the week, many more came to be trained, including some faculty members.

While the training room was full of long faces, dampened by the tragedy, it was also an inspiring scene. The overwhelming student response to the crisis was one of the largest gatherings of the institution-wide community that I have ever been a part of. This project, I think, is perfect for students. We have time to share, technological savvy, and a desire to share our compassion. I am continually amazed by the wonders of technology. Between our Skype chat, cinematically titled the “Portland Situation Room,” online mapping resources, and Google Earth, we were able to be part of a chain which facilitates meaningful aid in Haiti. Maybe someday I will walk the streets whose satellite images I have surveyed. In the meantime, I and many other faithful volunteers will continue tracing them from our own homes, hoping to support Haitians in rebuilding theirs.

Maddie Cole

This past Sunday, I, along with my fellow Fellows Nikki Myoraku (’12) and Warren Kluber (’12), volunteered with the Albertina Kerr Center, a non-profit group dedicated to helping children and adults with developmental disabilities. The Center helps to integrate people with developmental disabilities into their communities, both vocationally and recreationally. This is a cause that is especially close to my heart because I have grown up with two brothers with developmental disabilities, and I have seen how they and other people with developmental disabilities are often isolated from their communities, so it is pretty amazing to see an organization so dedicated to helping people like this!

As a part of our commitment to service, we decided to spend the afternoon helping out Albertina Kerr in any way that they needed. It turns out that they are currently promoting a new campaign, Army of Angels, which is an attempt to build a larger community of dedicated volunteers in the Portland area. Many of the people who receive the Center’s services are younger, so they are hoping to reach out to a new young generation of volunteers who can better relate to and with the Center’s clients (sounds kind of like us!). We helped out by putting up posters for the Army of Angels campaign in the NE Alberta and Mississippi neighborhoods. Luckily, it was a sunny day, so we were able to get in some sightseeing and exercise along with our volunteering.

This is our lovely volunteer team (minus me). From left: Warren, Nikki, and fellow volunteer Yoko

This is Nikki doing some intense postering!

Our handiwork in action!

This activity was just one of the many exciting events we’ve been up to in Service committee this semester! We have also sponsored an Ivy Pull at Tryon Creek, and this upcoming Sunday we will be cooking dinner for volunteer medical workers at the Wallace Medical Center. I hope that you enjoyed my account of our excursion, and hopefully soon we will have pictures of the delicious dinner we’re cooking!

-Lili Pill-Kahan (’11)

The Economic Crisis: What Next? ~ 7:00 PM, February 18th, 2009 in the Pamplin Room

Featuring Professors of Economics Marty Hart-Landsberg and Harry Schleef

Angry at Wall Street?  Hate the bailout?  Wish we could all go back to hunting and gathering?  Come find out what exactly happened and talk about where we should go from here.  The evening will begin with an overview of the crisis by Drs. Hart-Landsberg and Schleef, then open to a discussion about the economy, the bailout, and everything else that comes up.

Don’t know a CDO from a CD-ROM?  These articles should help you on your path to enlightenment:

• Dr. Hart-Landsberg’s Recession Watch
• The Motley Fool ~ Why Should I Invest?
• Wikipedia ~ Liquidity Trap
• Paul Krugman at the Start of the Recession
• Paul Krugman ~ The Consumer Spending Paradox
• Becker and Murphy ~ Stimulus 2.0
• Wachovia ~ Buy American? (.pdf)
• Tyler Cowen on the Crisis
• John Taylor ~ Government Intervention Won’t Solve the Crisis
• Tyler Cowen on Moral Hazard
• Dane Stangler ~ Misinterpreting Keynes

As it does every year, the Pamplin Society of Fellows has invited a distinguished visiting scholar to speak at Lewis & Clark. This year, however, with generous financial support, the Society has organized a three-part-series on politics and the 2008 election:

“Wedge Politics: The Structure and Function of Racial Group Cues in American
Politics.”
Vincent Hutchings, Ph.D.
Thursday, February 12
7:30pm in Council Chamber

Dr. Hutchings is an Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science and a Research Associate Professor at the Center for Political Studies at the University of Michigan. The title of his lecture is “Wedge Politics: The Structure and Function of Racial Group Cues in American Politics.”

Professor Hutchings’ general interests include public opinion, elections, voting behavior, and African American politics. He recently published a book at Princeton University Press entitled “Public Opinion and Democratic Accountability: How Citizens Learn About Politics,” that focuses on how, and under what circumstances, citizens monitor (and consequently influence) their elected representative’s voting behavior.

“Preliminary Analysis of the 2008 Election”
Diana Mutz, Ph.D.
Tuesday, March 17
6:00pm in Council Chamber

Professor Diana Mutz, one of the country’s leading scholars of political
psychology and political communication, will be sharing her initial analysis of the 2008 election. The event is free and open to the public.

Professor Mutz is the Samuel A. Stouffer Professor of Political Science and
Communication at The University of Pennsylvania. She is also the director of the Institute for the Study of Citizens and Politics in the Annenberg Public Policy Center at The University of Pennsylvania, and currently serves as a Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution.

“The Uncertain Politics of Multiracial Identity”
Jennifer Hochschild, Ph.D.
Thursday, April 16
6:00pm in Bodine 300

Professor Jennifer Hochschild is currently the Henry LaBarre Jayne Professor Government and a Professor of African and African American Studies at Harvard University. She also holds lectureships in the Kennedy School of Government and the Graduate School of Education. Professor Hochschild studies the intersection of American politics and political philosophy — particularly in the areas of race, ethnicity, and immigration — and educational policy. She also works on issues in public opinion and political culture.

Her lecture at Lewis & Clark will detail her current book project, tentatively
entitled Blurring Racial Boundaries: Skin Color, Immigration, Multiracialism,
and DNA.

A prolific author with books out of the Princeton, Oxford, Harvard, and Yale presses, Professor Hochschild has also served as vice president of the American Political Science Association, has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the American Philosophical Society, and the Mellon Foundation, and has taught at Duke, Columbia, and Princeton.

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All three lectures are free and open to the public. These lectures were made possible by generous support from the Office of Multicultural Affairs, Arts & Ideas, the Dean of the College, and the Political Science Department.

Email questions to bbrysacz@lclark.edu

On Wednesday, April 16th, 2008, at a ceremony in Albany Smith Hall, the Pamplin Society honored the four finalists for Teacher of the Year 2007-2008. One student spoke on behalf of each of the four finalists: Greta Binford, Assistant Professor of Biology; Benjamin David, Assistant Professor of Art History; Orla McDonagh, Visiting Instructor in Music; and Mary Szybist, Assistant Professor of English. At the end of the ceremony, Pamplin Fellow Nora Germano announced that the title of Teacher of the Year 2007-2008 would go to Benjamin David.

Benjamin David has taught at Lewis & Clark since 2005. Though he specializes in Italian Renaissance painting, he has taught a range of courses on Western art from visual representations of Dante’s Divine Comedy to contemporary American art. His expertise, enthusiasm, and encouragement have impressed and inspired students from first-year core courses to senior seminars. He advocates a diversity of approaches to the material, but always emphasizes fun, compelling students, even non-majors, to take his courses again and again. In addition to being an excellent teacher, David has proven an influential administrator by serving as the art department’s chair, updating its major requirements, and increasing its faculty and course offerings.