Dear Friend of the Salisbury Forum:

I am writing to make sure you know that we have our second Forum of this year on Friday, October 15th, at 7:30 PM. The Forum topic is “THE U.S. and CHINA – A QUESTION OF OUR COMMON INTERESTS” and our great privilege is to present ORVILLE SCHELL as the speaker. His talk will be in the Katherine M. Elfers Hall of the Easter Eastman Music Center at the Hotchkiss School. A reception for the audience will follow sponsored by the Center for Global Understanding and Independent Thinking.

About the Speaker:

Orville Schell is a renowned China expert/journalist with a unique understanding of China and exceptional access to China’s next generation of leaders. The author of fourteen books, nine of them about China, and the contributor to numerous edited volumes, his most recent books are Virtual Tibet: Searching for Shangri la from the Himalayas to Hollywood, The China Reader: The Reform Years, and Mandate of Heaven: The Legacy of Tiananmen Square and the Next Generation of China’s Leaders.

In 2007, Orville Schell became director of the new Center on US-China Relations at the Asia Society. Prior to that, Schell served as Dean of the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California, Berkeley.

At Salisbury Forums experts provide their insight, followed by a question and answer period. All forums are free to the public.

We hope you will join us at this Salisbury Forum.

Walter DeMelle
President

Friday, April 20, 2012 7:30PM, Elfers Hall, Eastman Music Center, The Hotchkiss School. 

Paul M. Kennedy, J. Richardson Dilworth professor of British history at Yale University. Author of 19 books including The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, The Parliament of Man, and soon to be released The Engineers of Victory.

Who really won World War II? Was it Roosevelt or Churchill or Marshall or Eisenhower? It was none of the above according to British historian Paul Kennedy. They may have drafted the grand alliances or formulated the master strategies, but it was thousands of men and women assigned specific tasks who had to solve the problems of an incredibly complex worldwide endeavor and make feasible the efforts of millions of Allied soldiers, sailors and airmen. They weren’t the inventors of new weapons or systems. They were tinkerers. Like Steve Jobs in the modern era they had the imagination, vision and flexibility to learn from their mistakes and increase the value of existing technology to unheard of levels.

 Because of their build up of military power in the 1930s the Axis powers gained stunning successes in the early years of the war. The Allies may have had greater resources, but when they convened the Casablanca conference in January 1943 the Allies faced enormous challenges. However, in the next 17 months the tides were turned in the greatest conflict known to human history. What Kennedy examines is how those successes were engineered and by whom. “In this sense,” he says “engineers” are not strictly meant here as people possessing a B.Sc. or Ph.D. in Engineering (although the founder of the Seabees, Admiral Ben Moreell, and the inventor of the mine-detector, Josef Kosacki, certainly did), but as those falling into the Webster Dictionary’s wider definition: “a person who carries through an enterprise through skillful or artful contrivance”.

 Most of us have read about or seen movies about the breaking of the Enigma Code or the inspiration for the bouncing dam buster bombs or the creation of unusual tanks that could push through coastal minefields, barbed wire or hedgerows. But Kennedy says we have rarely stepped back and understood how their work surfaced, was cultivated or how these various eccentric pieces of the jigsaw-puzzle fitted into the whole. Think about the enormity of the tasks they faced. How to move millions of soldiers across oceans, how to plan five simultaneous landings on D-Day or create a powerful radar system that could be inserted in the nose of a long-range patrol aircraft and turn the tide in the Battle of the Atlantic.

This is the story Kennedy tells of how small groups of individuals and institutions, both civilian and military, succeeded in achieving victory in the critical middle years of the war. It is about what the military-operational problems were and who the problem solvers were, how they got things done and why their work constitutes an important field of study.

Sunday, February 26, 2012, Film Screening @ 11:30AM The Moviehouse, Millerton, NY

‘Human Terrain’ is an expose of the U.S. effort to enlist America’s best and the brightest in a global struggle for the hearts and minds of its enemies. After winning the short battle of ’shock and awe’ in Iraq, but losing the long war to bring democracy and peace to the Middle East, the U.S. military began a controversial program to ‘operationalize’ culture as an instrument of irregular warfare. With the ‘Revolution in Military Affairs’ that produced hi-tech, low-casualty victories in Panama, Bosnia, and Kosovo tarnished by long and costly counter-insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Army and Marine Corps enlist anthropologists, political scientists, historians, and other academics in ‘Human Terrain Systems’ for the global war on terror.

Filmmakers James Der Derian, David Udris and Michael Udris track this major shift in U.S. military policy as it ripples through American universities and civil society. Simultaneously a road-trip into the heart of the war machine and a critical investigation of academic collaboration with the military, ‘Human Terrain’ traces a new ‘revolution in military affairs’ after U.S. policies based on virtual technologies and virtuous ideologies fail to create peace, and foot soldiers are left to clean up the mess.

Anthony Kronman, Ph.D., Sterling Professor of Law, Yale University, presented a stimulating lecture December, 2, 2011, on disenchantment as defined by Max Weber, the German philospher where scientific understanding is more highly prized than belief. Dr. Kronman pointed out that during the first two hundred years of university education in America students were taught knowledge that had been accumulated in a classical context. The base of that education was religion. In the last hundred years, he said, universities have departed from the ideal of learning the great philosophies of the ages. Instead the emphasis is on finding new knowledge. For example, he pointed to the demand on doctrinal candidates to produce a body of new knowledge based on their research rather than demonstrating their grasp of all that has come before. The problem for students and for society is that striving for secular success leaves the individual with no grounding in the everlasting and no ties with the continuity of a divinity.

7:30PM, Seifert Theater, Salisbury School, Salisbury, CT

Anthony T. Kronman, J.D., Ph.D., Author, Sterling Professor of Law (Yale Law School) Visiting Global Professor (NYU) Teacher in the Directed Studies Program (Yale)

Why are we here? Anthony Kronman says our colleges and universities are ignoring life’s biggest questions and we all pay the price. Students today find an academic environment richer than any have known before. They will find courses devoted to every question under the sun. But the questions that are missing deal with the meaning of life, what one should care about and why and what living is for.

Dr. Kronman says that in a shift of historic importance. America’s colleges and universities have largely abandoned the idea that life’s most important question is an appropriate subject for the classroom. In doing so, he says, “They have betrayed their students by depriving them of the chance to explore it in an organized way before they are caught up in their careers and preoccupied with the urgent business of living itself.”

Our top universities have embraced a research driven ideal, he says. In the process they have badly weakened the humanities, the disciplines with the oldest and deepest connections to this question, leaving them directionless and vulnerable to being hijacked for political ends. “In the sciences the adoption of the research ideal has produced astounding results” he says. “Our knowledge of the natural and social worlds,and ability to control them, is a direct result of the modern system of academic research.”  He describes political correctness as a stifling culture of moral and political uniformity based on progressive ideals. But he says, “Political correctness is only a symptom, a discouraging response to a larger sense of directionlessness in the humanities.”

“America’s entire leadership class now goes to college. Infusing higher education with a new and vibrant humanism will produce benefits not only for the future leaders of business and government but for society at large,” he says. It will give us, he says, ”A richer and more open debate about ultimate values; an electorate less likely to be cowed into thinking that only the faithful have the right to invoke them; a humbler regard for the mystery of life in a world increasingly dominated by technocratic reason.”

At Salisbury Forums experts provide their insight, followed by a question and answer period. All forums are free to the public.

7:30PM,  The Hotchkiss School, Walker Auditorium, Lakeville, CT.

Mark J. Plotkin, Ph.D. Ethnobotanist, Author and President of the Amazon Conservation Team. .

Profile writers compare Mark Plotkin to Indiana Jones and some colleagues call him the Carl Sagan of the rain forest. Plotkin has followed tribal medicine men or shamans into the deep forests to learn about the herbs and vines they use. He has witnessed their amazing cures derived from bark, sap, and trail-side herbs. He is convinced the major threat to our species is from drug resistant bacteria, and that the source of almost all classes of antibiotics has been from natural resources.

Plotkin says we have to protect biodiversity and cultural diversity because we have a lot to learn from the thousands of years of experience passed on by the shamans. He talks about potential pain killers that may be developed from cone snails, snake venom, or frog skin poison, as well as treatments for cancer derived from marine organisms and new antibiotics from natural resources.

Mark Plotkin earned his academic credits at Harvard, Yale and Tufts. His books Tales of a Shaman’s Apprentice and Medicine Quest make fascinating reading about the search for new medicines in the jungles, coral reefs, deserts and deep sea vents of the world.

At Salisbury Forums experts provide their insight followed by a question and answer period. All forums are free to the public.

By
Leon Graham
leong@lakevillejournal.com
ROBIN KELSEY Photo Submitted

SALISBURY — The Salisbury Forum turns away from its usual sessions on global and national issues into the world of photography on Friday, April 8, at 7:30 p.m. when Harvard’s Robin Kelsey presents “How Photography Has Changed Our Lives — Performing for the Camera” at the Salisbury School’s Seifert Theater.

Kelsey, currently a visiting professor at Williams College, is the Shirley Carter Burden Professor of Photography in Harvard’s Department of History of Art and Architecture. Yet Kelsey followed an unusual, almost eccentric path to obtain that august title.

A child of two anthropologists teaching in Minnesota, he lived in a home where photographs were professional material for his parents: They told stories and documented field research in Mexico and among American Indians. But Kelsey intended to be an attorney. However, after receiving both undergraduate and law degrees from Yale, he found the study of law very different from its practice. He was unhappy, and he missed academia.

Kelsey became a doctoral student in art history at Harvard, where he planned a dissertation on American landscape painting. But when he was invited to speak at a professional meeting with no session on his subject, he chose instead to present a paper on 19th-century photographer Timothy O’Sullivan, a famous photographer of the Civil War and the American West.

“After I gave the talk, members of the audience said how happy they were I was working on this for my dissertation, which I wasn’t,” Kelsey said. “So I took this as a hint from the universe that I had perhaps stumbled upon a more promising topic” and switched gears.

His eventual dissertation covered O’Sullivan’s great photographic survey of the West.

When Harvard created a junior professorship in photography and offered it to him, Kelsey decided to accept rather than take a position at another school in more traditional areas of art history.

“I leapt into this professional formation of myself as a photo historian, which involved a steep learning curve since I had never done any graduate course work in the history of photography.”

Kelsey is especially drawn to the populist, democratic qualities of photography. Susan Sontag in her seminal 1977 collection of essays, “On Photography,” declared photography as important an art form as painting, particularly since the photographer “creates” by choosing to include — or eliminate — elements in his or her images. Whether Kelsey agrees with Sontag or not, he expresses “conflict” with the current practice of photography.

As a photographer himself, Kelsey says he suffers from “photographer’s block.” He feels “burdened by knowing all that has been done, the brilliant things that have been done.” But he is determined to “become more serious about the practice,” even as it means negotiating that past.

Why reform healthcare? What reforms were passed? How will it help me? To help us better answer these questions, The Salisbury Forum in collaboration with the Foundation for Community Health is excited to announce that Karen Davis, President and CEO of The Commonwealth Fund will be speaking on Friday, May 13th at 7:30 in the Katherine M. Elfers Hall, in the Esther Eastman Music Center at The Hotchkiss School in Lakeville, CT.

While much has been said and written about the federal Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) passed last year, the sheer size and complexity of the bill has been a major obstacle to understanding it. On May13th Dr. Davis will provide us with a picture of how the US healthcare system has performed to-date and compare this to the performance of health systems in other developed nations. She will then outline the basic components of the Affordable Care Act and share her thoughts on how the United States can use aspects of this law to set a path to improving the health of the American people as a whole.

Dr. Karen Davis, a health economist, has led the Commonwealth Fund since 1992. The Commonwealth Fund’s mission is to promote a high performing health care system that achieves better access, improved quality, and greater efficiency, particularly for society’s most vulnerable populations. Before joining the Commonwealth Fund, Dr. Davis served as chairman of the Department of Health Policy and Management at The Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, where she was also a professor of economics.

The Foundation for Community Health invests in people, programs and strategies that promote the health and well being of the residents living in the greater Harlem Valley in New York and the northwest hills of Connecticut.

Call to action to stop overfishing of the oceans
By Janet Manko
March, 03, 2011

MILLERTON — It takes something special to get hundreds of people out on a snowy Sunday morning in February.

The Salisbury Forum and Moviehouse FilmWorks Forum presentation of “The End of the Line,” hosted by actor Sam Waterston at The Moviehouse, proved to be just the thing. All three theaters were full for the screening of the documentary film detailing the effects of overfishing in the world’s oceans and the human population.

Waterston introduced the film at each showing.

He also spoke after the screening and moderated a question-and-answer session in the large upstairs theater.

Waterston is on the board of directors of Oceana, a global nonprofit organization whose mission is to protect the world’s oceans.

On hand to field the tougher science questions was Oceana advocate and marine biologist Anna Gowan.

“We’re looking to educate the public on overfishing,” she said of the goal of the film.

“The End of the Line” (based on a book by Charles Clover) was directed by Rupert Murray and narrated by actor Ted Danson, who is also an Oceana board member.

The film presents interviews with scientists and fishing industry professionals, among others, who warn that if overfishing is not stopped within 40 years there will be no fish left for humans to eat.

The screening was sponsored by the Salisbury Forum, whose president, Walter DeMelle Jr., introduced Waterston to the audiences.

Waterston commented on the “terrific turnout” for the screening and asked the audience how many were already aware of the dangers of overfishing, and how many were at the film to learn about them.

It was about a 50/50 split. He encouraged all to take in the information presented in the movie and use it as the impetus to act and do something to affect change.

“Put simply,” he said, “we’re taking too much sea life out of the oceans, and putting too much bad stuff into them. We can make change.

“Let your representatives in Washington know you get it, that the strains are more than the oceans can bear.”

There was advice given both in the film and during the discussion on what seafood to buy to follow sustainable practices.

When asked what he consumes, Waterston confessed that he and his wife hardly ever eat seafood anymore.

“For us, it’s just too hard to keep up with the changes and to know if the information made available to the consumer is correct,” he said.

But he was quick to note that his fellow Oceana board member, renowned marine scientist Dr. Daniel Pauly, does not advise complete abstinence from seafood.

Saving the life of the oceans means seeing the big picture, he says, and that includes responsible and informed consumption of seafood.

The screening of “The End of the Line” was the first of the spring programs for the Salisbury Forum.

The next one will be Friday, April 8, at 7:30 p.m. at Salisbury School, titled “How Photography Has Changed Our Lives.” The speaker will be Robin Kelsey, a professor of photography and chair of the Harvard University Committee on the Arts.

For more on overfishing, go to oceana.org. For more on the Salisbury Forum, go to salisburyforum.org. For more on the FilmWorks Forum, which Moviehouse owner Robert Sadlon noted is now in its 14th year, go to themoviehouse.net.

© Copyright 2011 by TCExtra.com