Humanities & Society

Washington University will host The Center for Academic Integrity’s 18th Annual International Conference Oct. 16-18, 2009. Several hundred students, faculty and staff from around the world will discuss the practice and philosophy of academic integrity, focusing on issues germane to both college and high school education. The conference theme is “Creating a Culture of Integrity: Research and Best Practices.”

An historian of politics and American institutions at Washington University in St. Louis says that there is a “profound” difference between the awarding of a Nobel Peace Prize to President Barack Obama and ones to Presidents Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson. And it has nothing to do with the fact that President Obama is only eight months into his first term as president and Presidents Roosevelt and Wilson were both near the end of their second terms when they received theirs, says Peter J. Kastor, Ph.D., an associate professor of history and of American culture studies in Arts & Sciences.

SciFest 09 is festival where everyone can engage in science. The St. Louis Science Center’s SciFest 09, which runs through Oct. 11, brings together world-renowned scientists and experts to help participants see science in a new way. Washington University students and faculty will present sessions exploring everything from the science of baseball and the healing power of puppies to images of a brain at work and the bionics of hip replacements.

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.