Room 122, Diamond Bldg., Colby College

Join us for a thoughtful talk with one of the nation’s top First Amendment litigators on free speech issues ranging from protest rights, Black student activism on campuses, and​the recent string of state classroom censorship bills. The event will be an open Q&A session where Colby students will have the opportunity to ask Mr. Sykes […]

Join the Goldfarb Center and the Goldfarb Student Engagement Committee for a panel discussion on infectious disease and policy management. Panelists include Gail Carlson, associate professor of environmental studies, Susan Childers, instructor of biology, Walter Hatch, associate professor of government, and Laura Seay, assistant professor of government, and the discussion will be moderated by GSEC […]

To engage the crises of grotesque inequality, social isolation, the demonization of anyone deemed “other,” and the existential threat to democracy itself, we must invest in institutions of the common good. Ernesto Cortés, Jr., will discuss the “hows” and “whys” of building diverse, broad-based relationships and organizations to exercise democratic power. The Compagna-Sennett Lecture sponsored […]

Natasha Goldman presents the 2019 Berger Family Holocaust Lecture. East and West Germany worked through Holocaust memory in the form of public memorials, in different ways. While East Germany favored socialist realist public sculptures, some artists by the late 1950s, incorporated elements of the pre-war avant-garde in their work — but not without controversy. Meanwhile, […]

Alejandro Mayorkas, Partner, WilmerHale, former Deputy Secretary, Homeland Security, and a Colby parent, rolled out DACA under President Obama. Before joining WilmerHale, Mr. Mayorkas served as Deputy Secretary of Homeland Security, where he managed some of the most complex and critical responsibilities of government, including preventing and responding to terrorist attacks on US soil, enhancing […]

Rob Richie, president and CEO of FairVote, will speak on ranked choice voting and efforts to make it apply to presidential primaries or caucuses (and the general election) in Maine. Richie has played a key role in advancing, winning, and implementing electoral reforms at the local and state levels. He has been involved in implementing ranked […]

Laurie L. Patton is president of the American Academy of Religion and the 17th president of Middlebury. Patton is a leading authority on South Asian history, culture, and religion, the author or editor of 11 books in these fields, and she has translated the ancient Hindu text, the Bhagavad Gita. She is also the author of three books of […]

Since its founding in 1948, Israel has played an important role in the Jewish-American imagination. But the Jewish state has come to mean very different things to different segments of the American-Jewish community. Perhaps not surprisingly, many 20th-century Jewish-American writers steered clear of the topic, focusing instead on the Holocaust or on Jewish life in […]

After building her own do-it-yourself “artificial pancreas,” Dana Lewis helped found the open-source artificial pancreas movement (known as “OpenAPS”), making of safe and effective artificial pancreas technology available (sooner) for people with diabetes around the world. She is part of the #WeAreNotWaiting movement and engages with patient communities globally to solve healthcare problems in new […]

A panel discussion with German General Consul Ralf Horlemann; Jennifer Yoder, Robert E. Diamond Professor of Government and Global Studies; Raffael Scheck, Katz Distinguished Teaching Professor of History, German and Russian Chair; Andreas Waldkirch, associate professor of economics and associate chair of Global Studies; and Johanna Pimpi, German language assistant and student at the LMU […]

All are welcome to this student roundtable discussion, which will be moderated by Rory Bradley, assistant professor of German. The winners of the poster competition will be announced and a reception in the Diamond Atrium will follow. This event is part of the German Campus Week “Germany Making Choices,” which is supported by a grant […]

The role of the media in the 2016 election was exceptional and will be studied for decades. Did the press underestimate Donald Trump’s support, or did it help fuel his ascent? The role of the press during the early stages of the Trump Administration has also become a hot topic. How will the press respond […]

Junya Yimprasert will present her new documentary film, Missa Marjat: Where the Berries Are, about farmers from Thailand trafficked to work in the wild berry harvest in Finland and who now struggle for justice. A Q&A with the filmmaker will follow. Yimprasert is a prominent human rights activist from Thailand and a long-time campaigner for the […]

Over the last couple of years, the Black Lives Matter movement has turned the nation’s attention to the too-often troubled relationship between black communities and the police. How do these encounters go so badly, so quickly? What role does race, gender, or bias play in these encounters? In this talk, Nikki Jones, associate professor of […]

Camden-based digital entrepreneur and founder of Foodlack Arif Shaikh spent three months going to every local food market he could to find out how farmers connect with buyers. He learned that farmers spend a lot of time they don’t have literally knocking on doors, making endless phone calls, or sending mass emails. By creating Foodlack, Shaikh […]

In this lecture, Eric D. Weitz, dean of humanities and arts and distinguished professor of history at The City College of New York, argues that we need to understand the Holocaust not as a singular, unique event but as one of a number of genocides carried out by states in the 20th century. To compare […]

In an election year in which controversies over trade, immigration, and job loss have dominated the presidential election campaign, Edward Alden will discuss how and why the U.S. government failed over the past half century to respond effectively to a more competitive global economy on issues such as trade, currency, investment and offshoring, worker re-training, […]

On Oct. 2, Colombians went to the polls for a historic vote: whether or not to accept the negotiated accord with the country’s largest and oldest guerrilla group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, the FARC. The accord promises to end the longest running insurgency war in the hemisphere, and put a definitive end to […]

Welcome Address by Dick Thomas Featured Speakers: Kevin Bright,  Colby College Sustainability Coordinator,“Colby College's Energy Management Strategy and Progress to Date” Dan Dixon, Climate Change Institute at the University of Maine,"Regional Climate Change: What Can We Expect in Maine?" Free and open to the public.

Dr. Victoria Rogers will explore the relationship between weight, health, and obesity and how environmental factors can influence all three. Over the last four decades, obesity rates have tripled for children and adults. Over the same time period our environment as changed—less green space, more concrete, less small farms, more mega food producers, less physical activity […]

Reginald Dwayne Betts will graduate from Yale Law School in May. This is a far cry away from May of 1997, when a sixteen-year-old Dwayne was sentenced to nine years in prison for carjacking. He knows the criminal justice system from both ends of the spectrum and describes his chosen field as “the business of […]

Dan Wasserman will show and discuss his cartoons from the current and past election campaigns. He will be joined by his images of all your favorite political characters, from Bernie and Hillary, to Jeb! and the Donald. Dan will discuss the role of satire in a democracy, his sources for cartoon ideas, conflicts with editors […]

Ari Berman, contributing writer, The Nation magazine, and investigative journalism fellow at The Nation Institute, charts both the transformation of American democracy under the Voting Rights Amendment and the counterrevolution that has sought to limit voting rights. The act enfranchised millions of Americans and is widely regarded as the crowning achievement of the civil rights movement. And yet, […]

How can the memory of violent pasts be mobilized for a more progressive and hopeful future? This talk responds to the renewed monumentality we find in memory museums, memorials and commemorative rituals that perpetuate nationalism and ethnocentrism. Connecting the memory of the Holocaust with that of other histories of political violence, the talk searches for […]

J. Cherie Strachan, professor of political science and public administration at Central Michigan University, and Michael Wolf, associate professor of political science at Indiana University–Purdue University Fort Wayne, will discuss how American politics has become increasingly polarized. Without dramatic change, rude politics is difficult to disrupt—and likely to characterize American politics for the foreseeable future.