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Where Is U.S. Foreign Policy Headed? - Stephen Walt
7:00 PM – Great Hall, Memorial Union - Stephen Walt is Belfer Professor of International Affairs at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government and a former academic dean. He also taught at Princeton and the University of Chicago and has been a resident associate of the Carnegie Endowment for Peace and a guest scholar at the Brookings Institution. A fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Walt is a contributing editor at Foreign Policy and co-chair of the editorial board of International Security. His books include The Origins of Alliances; Taming American Power: The Global Response to U.S. Primacy; and The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy. He is currently writing a book about why U.S. foreign policy keeps failing. Phi Beta Kappa Lecture

Is Sustainable Intensification of Agriculture Possible? - Sieg Snapp
7:00 PM – Sun Room, Memorial Union - Sieglinde Snapp is a professor of soils and cropping systems ecology at Michigan State University. She will discuss her work in Africa and the U.S. using agroecology as a framework for developing environmentally friendly, and farmer-relevant agricultural systems. Snapp’s research addresses harnessing biology in service of sustainable intensification, with innovations such as doubled up legumes and perennializing of field crops. She is committed to participatory research and extension programming to address farmer constraints. The mother-and-baby trial design she developed linking research trials with on-farm experimentation has been adopted by agronomists and plant breeders around the globe. Sustainable Agriculture Symposium Keynote A poster session and reception will precede the lecture, 5:30-7:00pm, in the South Ballroom.

Writing Science Fiction Thrillers in the Age of Climate Change - Paolo Bacigalupi
7:00 PM – Great Hall, Memorial Union - Paolo Bacigalupi is an award-winning science fiction and fantasy writer and author of several popular dystopian novels for young adults, including Ship Breaker and, most recently, Tool of War. His debut novel, The Windup Girl, received Hugo and Nebula Awards and was named one of the ten best novels of 2009 by TIME Magazine. A work of environmental science fiction, it explores the unintended effects of bioengineering and a future world in which fossil fuels are no longer viable. Bacigalupi’s latest novel for adults, The Water Knife, is a near-future thriller about climate change and drought in the southwestern United States. Pearl Hogrefe Visiting Writers Series

Why We Get Into Ethical Difficulty and How to Stop Ourselves - Marianne Jennings
7:00 PM – Great Hall, Memorial Union - Marianne Jennings is the author of The Seven Signs of Ethics Collapse and a professor of legal and ethical studies in business in the Department of Management at Arizona State University’s W.P. Carey School of Business. She will discuss a common pattern in ethical decline as well as steps that can be taken to prevent missteps. Jennings teaches graduate courses in the MBA program in business ethics and the legal environment of business and is the author of six text books and monographs. She has also done consulting work for law firms, businesses and professional groups, including Boeing, DuPont, Motorola, Blue Cross Blue Shield, and Hy-Vee Foods. Murray Bacon Center for Business Ethics Lecture

Talk Is Cheap, Free Speech Isn’t: Why the First Amendment Is Worth It - Paul Kix
8:00 PM – Benton Auditorium, Scheman Building - First Amendment freedoms are vital to democracy in the United States. Paul Kix knows that. The deputy editor of ESPN, The Magazine, just wrote a book about a daring French aristocrat who became a nightmare for the Germans during World War II. Fifteen years after helping with Iowa State’s first celebration of the First Amendment, Kix returns to Ames for the 16th-annual festivities. Kix will discuss why 2018 is a critical year for celebrating and using these five freedoms and that universities must embrace all sorts of speech, not just messages that support consensus views. First Amendment Days

Patagonia: Using Business as a Tool for Change - Patagonia Team
4:00 PM – Dolezal Auditorium, 127 Curtiss Hall - Patagonia is a maker of high-performance outerwear whose mission to protect and preserve the environment is at the core of its business operations. Three members of the company’s product development team have been selected as Guest Designers for The Fashion Show 2018 and will speak on the company’s history and business practices, including the challenges of using sustainable materials in apparel manufacturing. Rebecca Green Shank has worked in research and development at Patagonia for 30 years, and in her current position as Product Developer for Men’s and Women’s Sportswear she travels frequently to the company's international factories. She will be joined by fit specialist Kena Gonzalez Todd, who’s been with Patagonia for 22 years, and product designer Sarah Darnell.

Is Democracy Dying? - John Whyte
7:00 PM – Alliant Energy-Lee Liu Auditorium, Howe Hall - John Whyte, former director of Constitutional Law for the Government of Saskatchewan, will discuss the many challenges democracy faces today, including novel personalities, unequal distribution, poor manners, deep ethnic and social divisions, changes in communications systems and shifts in legal and political morals. Whyte’s distinguished career includes nearly thirty years on the Faculty of Law at Queen’s University, service as Saskatchewan’s Deputy Minister of Justice and Deputy Attorney-General, and participation in constitutional reform processes in the Republic of Georgia, Nepal, and Vietnam. He has appeared before the Supreme Court of Canada in a number of constitutional cases. First Amendment Days

Damned Lies and Statistics - Joel Best
6:00 PM – Sun Room, Memorial Union - Joel E. Best is a sociologist and the author of twenty books, including Damned Lies and Statistics, More Damned Lies and Statistics, and Stat-Spotting, all of which taught readers how to become critical consumers of quantitative information and debunked the use of statistical claims. His two most recent books, The Stupidity Epidemic and Everyone's a Winner, have respectively examined warnings about education and school quality and the proliferation of awards and honors in contemporary America. Joel Best is a professor of sociology and criminal justice at the University of Delaware. Graduate & Professional Student Research Conference Keynote

Internet of Food - Matthew Lange
4:00 PM – 2432 Food Sciences Building - Matthew Lange is a professional food and health informatician and research scientist at the University of California, Davis. Lange’s research program is helping to define and shape a new scientific discipline known as Food Informatics, while simultaneously enabling the engineering of a computable infrastructure for the Internet of Food, a platform with the objective of advancing the fields of Food Systems, Food, and Health Informatics. 2017-18 Helen LeBaron Hilton Endowed Chair Lecture Series

The Need for Racial Diversity in Donor-Matching Registries - Documentary & Discussion
8:00 PM – Gallery, Memorial Union - Join us for a screening of the documentary film Mixed Match, which chronicles the hardships and obstacles individuals of mixed race face when searching for a bone marrow donation. Bone marrow donations are used to cure bone and blood cancers and a multitude of other disorders from leukemia to sickle cell anemia. Unfortunately, the more ethnically unique one's genetic makeup, the more difficult it is to find a donor match. This 96-minute film explores the intersection of multiracial identities and medicine and the need to increase and diversify registrations to the National Bone Marrow Registry. Be the Match on Campus members Zoe Lambert, Billy Marshall and Edan Lambert will introduce the film and lead the post-film Q&A. Marshall and Lambert are both bone marrow donors themselves.