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To conclude its program series on Security, the Levitt Center brought John Dehn to campus to present a lecture titled “War and the Constitution: Military Commissions, Targeted Killing of Citizens, and Other Hard Cases.” Dehn – a senior fellow at the West Point Center for the Rule of Law at the United States Military Academy – discussed the philosophical, constitutional and legal underpinnings of the doctrine and law of war and the implications they have on the international system, as well as on due process rights of American citizens and foreigners involved in war.

Author Michael Egan preceded his April 18 lecture, “The History of Now: Decoding Environmental Sustainability,” by taking a refreshing bike ride with Professor of English Onno Oerlemanns.  Later in his talk Egan mentioned that all five of his family members bike to work or school nearly every day.

“Today, more than 50 percent of humanity lives in cities,” said Edward Glaeser, professor of economics in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Harvard University.  And while Mohandas Gandhi once intimated that the strength of a country “lives in its villages,” Glaeser explained that he respectfully disagreed, and that “there is no future in rural poverty.”  Rather, it is the city, an urban development defined largely by “high proximity, closeness and density of people,” which enables the “creation of the chains of collaborative brilliance that drive success.”

In his Levitt Speaker Series lecture on April 5, Peter Demerath, a University of Minnesota professor of organizational leadership, policy and development, discussed educational inequality and the reproduction of class status. Demerath drew on four years of personal research experience at a public high school in a suburb of Columbus, Ohio.

Austin Walker ’12 was selected to attend the Clinton Global Initiative University conference, March 30 – April 1 at George Washington University in Washington, D.C.

Participants in the first Levitt Leadership Institute cohort headed to Washington, D.C. for the  second phase of the program during spring break. Led by Prudence Bushnell, former U.S. Ambassador to Kenya and Guatemala, the group continued their focus on the study of leadership, a program that was enhanced by daily meetings with Washington leaders. Funding for the entire program was provided by Arthur Levitt Jr.

Since gaining nationhood in the 18th century, the United States has been directly involved in dozens of armed military conflicts. The standard that the government has used and still uses to justify military engagements is the just war theory, which posits that a nation can, morally, only become involved in a military conflict that adheres to a set of ethical criteria. Andrew Fiala, professor of philosophy and director of the Ethics Center at California State University, Fresno, discussed the theory on March 1.

Eighteen students returned a week early to campus over winter break to take part in week one of a two-week pilot leadership program through the Arthur Levitt Public Affairs Center.  The program, called the Levitt Leadership Institute (LLI), was designed and led by Ambassador Prudence Bushnell with the assistance of Christine Powers and was intended to provide strong leadership training for students interested in working in public service. This program was made possible by a very generous gift from Arthur Levitt Jr.

American young people say that the top two causes of poverty are a lack of jobs (83.7 percent) followed by a lack of health insurance (64.3 percent) according to a new national survey of young Americans’ attitudes on poverty, released on Dec. 12 and conducted by Hamilton. More than two thirds (67.7 percent) also cited the growing incomes of the wealthiest people as negatively affecting the quality of life of those with lower incomes. The full results of this survey are available online and were presented by webcast at www.hamilton.edu/poverty.

American young people say that the top two causes of poverty are a lack of jobs (82.8 percent) followed by a lack of health insurance (69.4 percent) according to a new national survey of young Americans’ attitudes on poverty, conducted by Hamilton. The full results of this survey will be available online and presented by webcast on Monday, Dec. 12, at 11 a.m. EST at www.hamilton.edu/poverty. Questions during the presentation can be posed via Twitter using #povertypoll.