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The Jewish Experience: A Template for Muslim Diaspora? - Sander Gilman
8:00 PM – Sun Room, Memorial Union - Sander L. Gilman is a distinguished professor of the Liberal Arts and Sciences at Emory University, where he is the director of the Program in Psychoanalysis and the university's Health Sciences Humanities Initiative. A cultural and literary historian, he is the author or editor of over seventy books. He has written on such diverse topics as aesthetic surgery, Albert Einstein's violin, sex and disease in George Bush's America, electrotherapy, art and the creation of the natural, and obesity. His Oxford lectures Multiculturalism and the Jews, appeared in 2006; his most recent edited volume, Race and Contemporary Medicine: Biological Facts and Fictions appeared in 2007. He is also the author of the basic study of the visual stereotyping of the mentally ill, Seeing the Insane. The 2007-08 Goldtrap Lecture. Sander Gilman will also join students and faculty on Thursday, October 25 for an afternoon seminar, "A Conversation on the History and Language of Mental Illness," in Ross 212 at 3:40 p.m.

The Soybean Menace: Cyst Nematodes - Thomas Baum
7:00 PM – Gallery, Memorial Union - Thomas Baum is Professor and Chair of the Department of Plant Pathology at Iowa State, where he has been a member of the faculty since 1995. His research focuses on the compatible interaction of cyst nematodes with their hosts, with the long-range goal of engineering novel plant resistances. Baum has served as interim director of the Center for Plant Responses to Environmental Stresses (CPRES). He was the recipient of the 2006 Ruth Allen Award of the American Phytopathological Society for research that changed a field of plant pathology. He received an M.S. in agricultural sciences from the Technical University of Munich in 1989 and a Ph.D. in plant pathology from Clemson University in 1993. Sigma Xi Lecture.

Listening to the Still Small Voice: The Life of George Washington Carver - Paxton J. Williams
8:00 PM – Great Hall, Memorial Union - Paxton J. Williams portrays George Washington Carver - scientist, educator and humanitarian. He takes the audience on a journey from Civil-war era Missouri, to Carver's laboratory, to the halls of Congress to witness the trials and ultimate triumph of the "Wizard of Tuskegee." Dr. Carver was the first African American student and faculty member at Iowa State University. Williams, like Dr. Carver, is a graduate of Iowa State University; he received his BA in political science and communication studies in 2000. This performance celebrates the 35th anniversary of the Council for Agricultural Science and Technology (CAST) and is part of the Iowa State 150th Anniversary Alumni Lecture Series.

Global Environmental Change: Technology and the Future of Planet Earth - Gene Takle
6:00 PM – Alliant Energy-Lee Liu Auditorium, Howe Hall - Gene Takle is a professor of atmospheric science and agricultural meteorology at Iowa State University. He is also faculty director of the University Honors Program. Technology, Globalization, and Culture Series.

Women and Public Leadership - Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton
5:30 PM – Stephens Auditorium, Iowa State Center - Doors open at 4:30 pm - New York Senator and presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton is the first First Lady of the United States elected to public office and the first woman elected independently statewide in New York State. She serves on the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, the Environment and Public Works Committee, and the Special Committee on Aging, and she is the first New Yorker ever to serve on the Senate Armed Services Committee. Senator Clinton is a graduate of Wellesley College and Yale Law School. The annual Mary Louise Smith Chair brings nationally renowned political leaders, scholars and activists to Iowa State to enrich the experiences of students and educate citizens about the role of women in the political process. Every woman who has sought the Republican or Democratic Party nomination for president since 1995, when the chair was established, has served as this distinguished lecturer. The Carrie Chapman Catt Center for Women and Politics Fall 2007 Mary Louise Smith Chair. The transcript of Senator Clinton's speech follows under "Learn more."

Hard Choices: How to Make the Right Decisions at Work and Keep Your Self-Respect - Jim Autry
7:00 PM – Sun Room, Memorial Union - James Autry coauthored The Book of Hard Choices after interviewing a variety of leaders about the tough decisions they've made on the job. An experienced executive himself, he was president of the magazine group of the Meredith Corporation and is the author of ten books, including The Servant Leader, Real Power, and the bestselling Love and Profit. He is currently a consultant with FORTUNE 500 corporations and a popular lecturer on leadership and business ethics. Reception and book-signing to follow.

The Agriculture-Public Health Connection - Robert Lawrence
7:00 PM – Curtiss Hall Auditorium, Rm 127 - Robert Lawrence, M.D., is the founding director of the Center for a Livable Future at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore, Maryland. He will speak about the obesity epidemic, the problems associated with antibiotic resistance, the problems of food security and the contribution of industrial agriculture to global climate change. Lawrence received the Albert Schweitzer Prize for Humanitarianism in 2002 for his lifelong efforts to improve health care, human rights and the environment. This is the Dennis Keeney Distinguished Lecture, which honors the Leopold Center's first director, and is part of the Center's 20th anniversary. Also part of the Iowa State 150th Anniversary Celebration.

The Hidden Destruction of the Appalachian Mountains - Dave Cooper
5:30 PM – Pearson Hall 1115 - Dave Cooper is a resident of Lexington, Kentucky. He graduated from Vanderbilt University and spent twenty years working in industry as a mechanical engineer. After seeing a mountaintop removal mine in operation, he became a full-time activist. Cooper is a member of the Sierra Club and Kentuckians for the Commonwealth, and worked for a year as a coalfield organizer for the Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition (OVEC). He is currently on a national speaking tour to educate people on the impacts of mountaintop removal on coalfield residents, communities and the environment.

Learning from the Civil Rights Movement: Current Concerns of African Americans in Iowa - Charles McDew
2:00 PM – Black Cultural Center - Charles McDew, one of the principal architects in the founding of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) of 1960, will discuss his experiences during the Civil Rights movement as well as current issues concerning African Americans in Iowa. SNCC was a fundamental organization of the American Civil Rights Movement, playing a major role in the Freedom Rides, the 1963 March on Washington and Mississippi Freedom Summer. McDew was the chairman of SNCC from 1961 to 1964. He recently retired from Metropolitan State University in Minneapolis.

Geo-Politics, Human Rights, and You - John Perkins
8:00 PM – Sun Room, Memorial Union - John Perkins detailed his former role as an economic hit man in a book by the same name. His job was to convince Third World countries to accept enormous loans for infrastructure development - loans that were much larger than needed - and to guarantee that the development projects were contracted to U.S. corporations like Halliburton and Bechtel. He contends that once these countries were saddled with huge debts, the U.S. government and the international aid agencies allied with it were able to control these economies and to ensure that oil and other resources were channeled to serve the interests of building a global empire. In his new book, The Secret History of the American Empire: Economic Hit Men, Jackals, and the Truth About Global Corruption, he draws on interviews with other hit men, jackals, reporters, government officials, and activists, to examine the current geopolitical crisis. Part of the World Affairs Series.