Humanities & Society

Harold Ford Jr., once described by President Bill Clinton as “the walking, living embodiment of where America ought to go in the 21st century,” will give this year’s Elliot Stein Lecture in Ethics for the Assembly Series Oct. 7.

Chronic sleep deprivation in a mouse model of Alzheimer’s disease makes Alzheimer’s brain plaques appear earlier and more often, researchers at the School of Medicine report online this week in Science Express.

Harold Ford Jr., once described by President Bill Clinton as “the walking, living embodiment of where America ought to go in the 21st century,” will give this year’s Elliot Stein Lecture in Ethics for the Assembly Series. His talk will be held at 4 p.m. Wednesday, October 7 in Graham Chapel. The event is free and open to the public.

Amnon Rubinstein, a leading scholar on constitutional lawRubinsteinin Israel, will discuss Western culture and Israeli law in free public lectures Oct. 5 and Oct. 6 at Washington University in St. Louis. Rubinstein, a longtime member of the Israeli parliament and founding dean of the nation’s top-ranked law school, is a recipient of the prestigious “Israel Prize” for his work on constitutional law. 

Michael Adams, M.D., and Gyo Obata explore the impact of Japanese internment camps in World War II on their respective families on Oct. 2.

In the 1930s, the photographer Ansel Adams struck up a friendship with California painter Chiura Obata. Yet the arrival of World War II would set these two celebrated artists on radically divergent paths — paths that would, in very different ways, lead both to the now-infamous “war relocation centers” at which the U.S. government forcibly interred approximately 120,000 Japanese-Americans. Next month their sons, Michael Adams and Gyo Obata, will explore the impact of internment on their respective families in a public dialog at Washington University.

On Sept. 12, the Dance Program in the Performing Arts Department in Arts & Sciences will explore the role of ethnicity in contemporary dance with “Dancing Who I Am,” a panel discussion and informal concert featuring faculty performers and leading critics and choreographers from around the country.

Juvenile male chimpanzee in the Goualougo Triangle, Republic of Congo. Chimpanzees in the Congo have developed specialized “tool kits” to forage for army ants, reveals new research published Sept. 3 in the American Journal of Primatology. This not only provides the first direct evidence of multiple tool use in this context, but suggests that chimpanzees have developed a sustainable way of harvesting food. A team from the Goualougo Triangle Ape Project, led by Crickette Sanz, Ph.D., assistant professor of Anthropology in Arts & Sciences, studied several communities of chimpanzee throughout the Nouabalé-Ndoki national park in the Republic of Congo.

McBrideThe health reform debate to date has been characterized by a lot of confusion and misinformation. “The conclusion that most of the uninsured either are voluntarily uninsured or do not need assistance is erroneous,” says Timothy McBride, Ph.D., leading health economist and associate dean of public health at the George Warren Brown School of Social Work at Washington University in St. Louis. The Census Bureau will announce the official health insurance estimates on Thursday, Sept. 10. According to McBride, because of the economic downturn, the number of uninsured may top 50 million.

Around the world dance is often quite literally the physical embodiment of cultural identity and practice. Yet for individual dancers, the power of such traditions can give rise to certain expectations and even stereotypes based on perceived identity. On Sept. 12 the Dance Program in the Performing Arts Department in Arts & Sciences will explore the role of ethnicity in contemporary dance with “Dancing Who I Am,” a panel discussion and informal concert featuring faculty members as well as leading critics and choreographers from around the country. The event comes as part of the semester-long series “Ethnic Profiling: A Challenge to Democracy,” organized by the Center for the Study of Ethics and Human Values. Also as part of the series, the Kathryn M. Buder Center for American Indian Studies will screen Ancestor Eyes, an award-winning Native American short film, Sept. 13.