Dear Colleagues:

The subject for the final Friday Lunch discussion of the Spring is out of today’s headlines.

Associate Professor of French, and Vince McHale, Marcus Hanna Professor of Political Science, will lead a discussion on the upcoming French presidential election.  The brown-bag lunch discussion will be on Friday, April 27 in Crawford Hall, Room 9 from 12:30 – 1:30 p.m..  That is in the Inamori International Center for Ethics and Excellence, in the lower level of Crawford below the SAGES Café.

Coffee is provided by the Office of University Communications, and cookies by generous donors.

Usually I try to say something clever to introduce the topic.  But this time I’ll leave it to the International Herald Tribune.  The stakes are high and the choice quite difficult for many reasons.

Best wishes for a great end of the term and Summer break.  I’ll keep everyone posted on plans for next year.

Best regards,
Joe White

More About Our Guests

Christine Cano (Ph.D. Yale University), Associate Professor of French, joined the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures in 1999. Prior to her appointment at Case, she taught at Bates College and Virginia Tech. An alumna of Smith College, she spent her junior year in Aix-en-Provence and at the Sorbonne in Paris. Her research interests are in the French twentieth century, but she enjoys offering courses throughout the language and literature curriculum. Her book Proust’s Deadline (University of Illinois Press, 2006) concerns the relationship between writing and real time. She is currently researching the twentieth-century reception of the works of the Marquis de Sade. Dr. Cano is an active member of Case’s chapter of the Phi Beta Kappa national honor society, Alpha of Ohio.

Vincent E. McHale received his Ph.D. from the Pennsylvania State University in 1969. Although his dissertation dealt only with French politics, his research and publication foci since then have expanded to include politics, political systems, and socio-political change in all of Europe, with his most recent article being “Democratic Transition and the Evolution of Mass Politics in Post-Communist Central and Eastern Europe,” Historical Social Research (XX:2, 1995). His books include Vote, Clivages Socio-politiques, et Developpement Regional en Belgique (1974), Evaluating Transnational Programs in Government and Business (co-edited, 1980), and he currently is revising his 1983 two-volume edited work, Political Parties of Europe. Professor McHale joined the CWRU faculty in 1975, served as department chairperson from 1976 to 2003, and has formulated and directed the International Studies Program since 1991.

Spring Semester Schedule

Beginning on February 2, the Friday Lunch will move back to Crawford Hall, in ROOM 9. Room 9 is within the Inamori Center, on the basement level of Crawford.

It is very kind of Bill Deal, Director of the Inamori Center, to make this room available on a regular basis. Thank you, Bill!

Room 9 seats 35, with a central table and also chairs along the wall. It should be a better setup than Guilford. If we expect a large crowd, we may be able to open a partition and join up with Room 11.

There will, however, be a class in the room until 12:20. Therefore it will not be possible to get there much before the lunch begins. On the other hand, people who are a bit early should be able to hang out in the Tomlinson food court. I believe the underground passage from Tomlinson to Crawford will be restored when construction is finished.

Coffee will be provided from the SAGES Cafe’. Which should mean very good coffee.

The tentative schedule of speakers, so far:

January 26: Phil (Perkins Professor of Physics-Case Western Reserve University) and Sarah Taylor, Wind Power and All of It’s Aspects – Environmental, Energy,  Economic, Aesthetic, and Maybe More.

February 2: Ken Grundy, Marcus Hanna Professor Emeritus of Political Science, on subject to be determined

February 9: Paul Schroeder, Visiting Lecturer in Political Science and from Families of the Fallen for Change, on what to do in Iraq

February 16: Mark Turner, Professor of Cognitive Science, on cognition and politics

February 23: Mel Goldstein, Professor of Anthropology, on why the Chinese are winning in Tibet

March 2: Susan Helper, Professor of Economics, on strategies for American workers within the current global competition.

March 9: Baiju Shah, President, Bioenterprise Corporation, on the new economic prospects in Cleveland.

March 16: Break

March 23: Mike Aronoff of Cuyahoga County on the evaluation of sexual predators for the courts―are they really dangerous, and can we predict if they will reoffend?

March 30: Lewis R. Katz, John C. Hutchins Professor; Director of the Master of Laws in U.S. and Global Legal Studies program at Case Western Reserve University, on the Ups and Downs of Running for Congress.

April 6: Horst von Recum, Assistant Professor of Biomedical Engineering; Insoo Hyun, Assistant Professor of Bioethics; and Greg Eastwood, Interim President of Case Western Reserve University on Stem Cell Research.

April 13: Marixa Lasso, Assistant Professor of History: Drugs, War, and Coffee in Colombia

April 20: Mark Joseph, Assistant Professor, Mandel School of Applied Social Sciences: Mixed-Income Development as an Approach to Addressing Urban Poverty

April 27: Christine Cano, Associate Professor of French, on the French elections (this date falls between the first round and the runoff election)

Parking: Normally 6 parking spaces are reserved in the CWRU visitors lot off of Euclid Avenue for the Friday Public Affairs Discussion Group lunches.