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Few family names around Hamilton’s campus are as instantly recognizable as Arthur Levitt’s. The Arthur Levitt Public Affairs Center honoring the late Arthur Levitt Sr. supports student-led research and hosts its own speaker series, among many other programs. The 15 members of Hamilton’s New York Program had the opportunity on Sept. 19 to meet with his son, Arthur Levitt Jr., a generous Hamilton benefactor and former chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

At a time when many consider climate change to be one of the most pressing challenges facing the world’s population, it remains unclear which course of action will do the most good for the planet and its inhabitants. Michael Greenstone, the 3M Professor of Environmental Economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and director of the Hamilton Project, discussed this issue during a lecture from The Sustainability Program of the Arthur Levitt Public Affairs Center.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Professor Michael Greenstone will deliver a lecture titled “Will Adaptation Save us From Climate Change?” on Tuesday, Oct. 2, at 7:30 p.m. in the Chapel. The lecture, which begins the Arthur Levitt Public Affairs Center’s Sustainability series, is free and open to the public.

In the opening lines of his Levitt Center-sponsored talk David Wisner expressed the true nature of his chosen topic by pointing out how the title of his presentation, “The Crisis of the European Union and the future of Greece” could easily be flipped around and still capture the subject matter as “The Crisis of Greece and the future of the European Union.” During his lecture, Wisner would expand upon the international relationships present in the European economic crisis and paint a grim short-term picture for those involved, especially for Greece.

Public policy advisor David Wisner will speak about the Euro-crisis on Thursday, Sept. 27, at 7:30 p.m., in the Red Pit, KJ. Wisner is the executive director of Greece Education Management at the Michael and Kitty Dukakis Center for Public and Humanitarian Service. His lecture, titled “The Crisis of the European Union and the Future of Greece,” is free and open to the public.

Psychology major Beril Esen ’13 spent the early months of this summer conducting a study on the recently discovered concept of defensive self-esteem. But when her psychology research ended in late June, her academic plans for the summer were hardly complete. Esen was also awarded a Summer Research Fellowship by the Levitt Center for Public Affairs to study the issue of domestic violence in her native city of Istanbul, Turkey.

Melissa Mann ’13 hopes to help alleviate the growing problem of brownfields by conducting research with an organization that utilizes federal and state grants to clean up and redevelop these vacant plots of land. She received a Levitt Summer Research Fellowship to work with the Southwest Brooklyn Industrial Development Corps. to complete the first of the Brownfield Opportunity Areas program three grant application steps.

The issue of human sex trafficking has long been on the radar of international lawmakers and humanitarian organizations, but the recently emerged problem of human labor trafficking is just now beginning to come under national and international scrutiny. Jasmina Hodzic ’13 is interning at the United Nations in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina with the support of a Levitt Center Public Service Grant.

Although Nicholas Yepes ’15 had traveled to Paraguay just three years ago, he was nonetheless surprised by the precarious state of the indigenous migrant population upon his arrival in the capitol city of Asunción this year. He is seeing some of the most economically depressed areas of Paraguay as he studies how best to meet the basic needs of indigenous migrants through a Levitt Research Fellowship.

Despite being the world’s oldest continuous democracy, the United States has one of the lowest voter turnout rates in the developed world. Peter Adelfio ’13 and Benjamin Anderson ’14 have been awarded a Levitt Group Research Grant to study this paradox by conducting a controlled experiment on methods of increasing voter turnout. They’re being advised by James S. Sherman Professor of Government Philip Klinkner.