Still Life
Commencement across Penn State: Spring 2012
Spring commencement 2012 under way
Penn State, Moroccan students problem-solve together
Finals Week Spring Semester 2012
Children explore career options at University Park
Painting the Lines at Beaver Stadium
Did They Get It Right? - RedTails
Iconic Penn State elm taken down over spring break 2012
We ... are Penn State (December 19, 2011)
Disease stricken matching elm tree slated for removal
Penn State's creamery, from the cow to the cone
The Penn State Forum Speaker Series is bringing a diverse lineup of speakers to the University Park campus this fall. Those attending will get to hear from a professor of American literature, a national investigative reporter, a singer/songwriter, a counterterrorism professional and others during the 2010-11 academic year. Stephen Lewis, co-director of AIDS-Free World, leads off the series on Sept. 3. Lewis will speak on "A Decidedly Sour View of the Progress of the Millennium Development Goals" in the President's Hall at the Penn Stater Conference Center Hotel. AIDS-Free World is an international advocacy organization that works to promote more urgent and more effective global responses to HIV/AIDS. (more)
"Back in 1900, there were about 2 million Catholics in Africa. By 2000, there were 130 million Catholics in Africa, which, as my colleague John Allen points out, represents a growth rate over the century of 6,700 percent.... By 2025 you're probably talking about 250 million, and by 2050 it should be around 330 million. It's around about the year 2035 that there are more Catholics in Africa than in Europe, and it's about 2060 that there should be more Catholics in Asia than in Europe. Why about that point? If you rank the continents in terms of number of Catholics, Europe is fifth in place ahead of Australia, oh, and Antarctica. Last year there were more Catholic baptisms in the Phillipines than in France, Spain, Italy and Poland combined, and that is going to increase, that kind of tendency. The Catholic Church is going south, but not in the sense that some of its critics think."
-- Philip Jenkins, Edwin Erle Sparks professor of humanities in the Department of History and Religious Studies at Penn State and distinguished senior fellow of the Institute for Studies of Religion at Baylor University, speaking on the topic of "The World's Religious Map in 2050" on Thursday, April 29, at the Penn State Forum, held at the Nittany Lion Inn, University Park, Pa. (more)
" 'Snow Flower and the Secret Fan' obviously was actually a life-changing experience for me, to write that book. It changed how I approached writing. 'Peony in Love' changed how I approached writing even more. This is about the 17th-century women writers in China, and one of the things they believed was that you have to cut to the bone to write. That really has inspired me to keep going to that deep, harder place to get to."
-- Author and Los Angeles City Commissioner Lisa See, speaking today (April 5) on the topic "The Secrets We Keep: Finding the Lost Voice of China, Women and Our Families" at the Penn State Forum luncheon, held at The Penn Stater Conference Center Hotel, University Park. (more)
"What is it that has power in this world? Putting aside military strength for the moment, power comes -- think about it -- from this very boring word of 'regulation.' What a dull word. People looked at me like, 'Man, you are writing a book about regulation -- that is like the dullest thing on the planet.' And to some extent, if you approach it a certain way, it can be very dull. But there is enormous drama in regulation because there's conflict. There is conflict. There are interests on each side, and if you can get at those interests you can find the essential conflicts of our time through this world of regulation."
-- Mark Schapiro, editorial director of the Center for Investigative Reporting, a nonprofit organization of journalists producing investigative stories for all media. Schapiro spoke today (Feb. 19) at the Penn State Forum on the topic of modern environmental power. His recent book, "Exposed: The Toxic Chemistry of Everyday Products and What's at Stake for American Power" investigates the response of U.S. business to the heightening of environmental standards in the European Union. (more)
"As we go forward, security must be integrated into our everyday thinking. But in our society, we have to ensure that that security does not undermine the very basic differences between our society and others, which is the sanctity of human life, the Constitutional rights that we as a society have established our country upon, and which we must maintain in order to differentiate a civilized society against that which is, in fact, intended to destroy the civilization that we know of, and to return to a very medieval form of control of religion, control of culture, control of literature and the virtual enslavement of half the population, meaning the female half of the population. Those are the stakes that are involved."
-- Oliver "Buck" Revell, global business and security consultant and former Marine and FBI special agent, who discussed "Terrorism, the Current and Future Threat to America," during the Penn State Forum today (Dec. 8) at University Park. Revell served for five years as an officer and aviator in the U.S. Marine Corps, leaving active duty in 1964 as a captain. He then served 30 years as a special agent and senior executive of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (1964-1994). In September 1987, Revell was placed in charge of a joint FBI/CIA/U.S. military operation (Operation Goldenrod) which led to the first apprehension overseas of an international terrorist. He is also author of the book "G-Man's Journal: A Legendary Career Inside the FBI -- From the Kennedy Assassination to the Oklahoma City Bombing." (more)
"A lot of people were looking the other way. The AMA (American Medical Association) was looking the other way. They were constantly, in their journal. A very well-recognized journal was constantly publishing articles by well-known academics and physicians using all sorts of different vulnerable test subjects -- going into mental hospitals, going into the institutions for retarded children, going into prisons -- and many of these articles would state who was being used. Somebody should have realized that this was wrong. I mean, we were the country that tried the Nazi doctors. We put them on trial -- 23 physicians and medical administrators -- and we said, 'What you did at Ravensbrueck, what you did at Dachau, at Bergen-Belsen and Auschwitz was horrendous, and that's not how you do research medicine.' At the end of that we executed seven of them; many others got long prison sentences. (We) came down with the Nuremberg Code, which in my mind is still one of the best codes that has ever come down. What happened? It was dispensed with. It's almost as if it was put on the Titanic over there in Nuremberg and it sunk in the Atlantic, because the '50s and '60s became the gilded age of research in American medicine."
-- Allen M. Hornblum, Penn State alumnus, researcher and author of the books "Sentenced to Silence" (published by Penn State Press) and "Acres of Skin," both of which chronicle disturbing medical experiments performed from the mid-1950s through the mid-1970s on inmates in Holmesburg Prison, the largest of Philadelphia's county jails, which closed in 1995 after 110 years of operation. Hornblum, a Penn State alumnus, spoke with former Philadelphia prison inmate and medical test subject survivor Edward Anthony on the topic "Cold War Prison Experimentation in America," Friday, Nov. 7, at the Nittany Lion Inn, as part of the Penn State Forum Speaker Series. (more)
"Sometimes you've just got to stop and really review your life. Surround yourself with the right people."
-- Michael Franzese, motivational speaker, who kicked off the Penn State Forum Speaker Series with his talk, "Life Choices, Life Stories." (more)
