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Past Events
Monday, 21 Oct 2019
Town Hall with Elizabeth Warren
6:30 PM – Stephens Auditorium - Elizabeth grew up on the ragged edge of the middle class in Oklahoma and became a teacher, a law professor, and a US Senator because America invested in kids like her. Elizabeth is widely credited for the original thinking, political courage, and relentless persistence that led to the creation of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. She led the establishment of the agency, building the structure and organization to protect families from financial tricks and traps hidden in mortgages, credit cards, and other financial products. In the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, Elizabeth served as Chair of the Congressional Oversight Panel for TARP. Her efforts to protect taxpayers and hold Wall Street accountable won praise from both sides of the aisle. In 2012, Elizabeth became the first woman from Massachusetts elected to the United States Senate. As a Senator, she has fought to hold the wealthy and well-connected accountable and ensure our government works for everyone. Elizabeth and her husband Bruce have been married for 39 years. They have three grandchildren and a golden retriever named Bailey.
Doors open at 5pm with the event starting at 6:30pm
Address for Stephens Auditorium:
1900 Center Drive
Ames, IA 50011
The Evolving Identity of the Latino – Alfredo Mirande
6:00 PM – Hach Hall Atrium - Alfredo Mirandé is a Distinguished Professor of Sociology and Ethnic Studies at the University of California, Riverside, and a scholar of Chicano sociology, masculinity, the relationship among law, race, class, and gender. His talk is being hosted by Lazos, a group of Hispanic/Latino men in leadership positions at Iowa State who are actively engaging Latinx students and mentoring them in their college experience and beyond. Alfredo Mirandé, who was born in Mexico City and raised in Chicago, earned graduate degrees in sociology from the University of Nebraska and a JD from Stanford University. He was a National Research Council Fellow in ethnic studies at the University of California, Berkeley; a Rockefeller Fellow in sociology at Stanford University; and is the author of nine books, including Hombres y Machos: Masculinity and Latino Culture. [This event was originally scheduled for March 2019 but had to be rescheduled due to travel issues.]
Friday, 18 Oct 2019
Arab Voices - Dr. James Zogby
11:30 AM – Gold Room, Memorial Union - Dr. James Zogby is the founder and president of the Arab-American Institute and author of Arab Voices: What They are Saying to Us, And Why it Matters. He is also a founding member of the Palestine Human Rights Campaign, Arab-American Anti-Discrimination Committee, and Save Lebanon Inc. Dr. Zogby will be giving a talk on U.S. foreign and domestic policy and what it means for the upcoming 2020 presidential election, with special regard to the Bernie Sanders campaign.
Wednesday, 16 Oct 2019
Knowing How to Break the Rules: Set Design on Broadway - Rachel Hauck
7:00 PM – Great Hall, Memorial Union - Rachel Hauck is the 2019 Tony award-winning set designer for the Broadway musical Hadestown, which was awarded the 2019 Tony for Best Musical, and for the 2019 Tony-nominated play What the Constitution Means to Me. She will discuss her journey as a woman in the arts and ways to create more opportunities for women and people of color on Broadway. A native of California, Hauck now lives in New York City and designs sets for new plays and musicals on Broadway, Off Broadway, and for regional theater. She currently teaches at Princeton University.
Part of the Theatre Program's "HERoic: Gender Equity in the Arts" series, celebrating the centennial of women’s suffrage and a new commitment to the 50/50 by 2020 initiative promoting gender equity in the theatre.
Town Hall with Mayor Pete
6:30 PM – Scheman Building - Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg will be on campus for a town hall, which will include the opportunity to ask the South Bend, Indiana mayor questions. The doors open at 6pm and the event will begin at 6:30pm. Buttigieg was elected mayor of South Bend in 2011 at age 29; he won re-election in 2015 with 80 percent of the vote. Buttigieg served as a lieutenant in the U.S. Navy Reserve and took an unpaid seven-month leave during his mayoral term to deploy to Afghanistan. For his counterterrorism work, he earned the Joint Service Commendation Medal. He has more years of government experience than President Trumo, more years of executive government experience than Vice President Pence, and more military experience than any president since George H.W. Bush.
Tuesday, 15 Oct 2019
How to Find a Planet Without Leaving Your Couch – Dr. Chris Lintott
8:15 PM – Great Hall, Memorial Union - Chris Lintott is a professor of astrophysics at the University of Oxford, where he is also a research fellow at New College, working on topics from galaxy evolution, transient detection and machine learning. As Principal Investigator of the Zooniverse, he leads a team who run the world's most successful citizen science projects, allowing more than a million people to discover planets, transcribe ancient papyri or explore the Serengeti. Hunting for exoplanets - planets around stars other than the Sun - is a booming astronomical industry. Dr. Lintott will talk about what we know and don’t know, explain how you might find a planet of your own using only a laptop, and discuss the progress of NASA’s TESS planet hunting mission.
#WhyIStayed: Domestic Violence as a Community Issue– Beverly Gooden
7:00 PM – Sun Room, Memorial Union - "Why I Stayed" is a revolutionary speech by Beverly Gooden, renown social activist and creator of the #WhyIStayed hashtag and global movement. In this radical talk, Gooden challenges the question “Why did he/she stay?†and reveals how the current way we interact with survivors is a house of cards. From faulty blame attribution, to designating only men as abusers, it’s easy to overlook the sheer volume of domestic violence when the issue has historically been framed as “them†and not “usâ€.
That’s why, as Beverly argues, domestic violence is a community issue. Victims of violence can be women and men, LGBTQ and heterosexual, or even children. Victims of violence may have fought back, or remained silent. There is no perfect victim and no specific type of abuser. Beverly discusses her personal domestic violence story, reveals the most important questions to ask victims, and outlines how we all can help.
A lecture about intimacy, compassion, and equality, Beverly invites the audience to look beyond the surface and into the complexities of domestic violence.
Monday, 14 Oct 2019
First: The Seed - The 2019 Norman Borlaug Lecture - World Food Prize Laureate Simon Groot
8:00 PM – Great Hall, Memorial Union - A reception and student poster display will precede the lecture from 7 to 8 p.m. in the South Ballroom, Memorial Union. Posters will address world food issues and are submitted by undergraduate and graduate students.
Join a conversation with the 2019 World Food Prize Laureate, Simon Groot, a sixth-generation seedsman and the founder and leader of East-West Seed. Having observed the many challenges facing poverty-stricken smallholder farmers in Southeast Asia, Groot founded East-West Seed in 1982 in the Philippines. It was the first market-oriented vegetable seeds breeding company with smallholders as the main client base and was based on the idea that a high-quality, well-adapted vegetable seed could change the lives of the poor. Over the past four decades Groot has focused on making vegetable seeds available to millions of smallholder farmers throughout Asia, Africa, and Latin America, allowing them to earn greater incomes and improve nutrition through enhanced vegetable production.
Sunday, 13 Oct 2019
Seeds! Diversity of Wonder - Film Screening & Speaker Thor Hanson
6:00 PM – Pioneer Room, Memorial Union - This special event includes a 60-minute film screening, followed by a presentation and Q&A
Biologist Thor Hanson is a Guggenheim Fellow, a Switzer Environmental Fellow, and the award-winning author of The Triumph of Seeds. He is featured in the new 6-part documentary Seeds: Diversity of Wonder, produced by the Iowa State University Seed Science Center. The film takes viewers on a journey around the world to discover the grand collaboration between nature and humanity to feed, clothe, and beautify the world. It covers a range of topics, including the role seeds play in everyday life, how seed technology can lead to more nutritious food, and the importance of preserving seed diversity. Following the film, Hanson will discuss his research and writing on the natural and human history of seeds. Hanson was the science host of the PBS Nature series American Spring Live and is the author of several award-winning books, including Buzz: The Nature and Necessity of Bees and Feathers: The Evolution of a Natural Miracle.
Thor Hanson’s presentation is in partnership with the Seed Science Center’s 2019 Everson Global Seed Symposium, October 14-15. More information about the symposium is available on the Seed Science Center website.
Thursday, 10 Oct 2019
Gender and Communication on the Campaign Trail - Kelly Winfrey
8:00 PM – Great Hall, Memorial Union - Kelly Winfrey, an assistant professor in the Greenlee School of Journalism and Communication, will discuss the unique challenges women candidates face and the communication strategies they use in their efforts to win over voters. Winfrey serves as Coordinator of Research and Outreach at Iowa State's Carrie Chapman Catt Center for Women and Politics. She oversees the Ready to Run® Iowa campaign training program and the Archives of Women’s Political Communication. She also conducts research for the Women in Iowa Politics database and the Iowa Gender Balance Project. Winfrey earned her PhD in communication studies from the University of Kansas and is the author of Understanding How Women Vote: Gender Identity and Political Choices. College of Liberal Arts & Sciences Dean’s Lecture Series