Tuesday, September 10

CAROL ANDERSON, Charles Howard Candler Professor and Chair, African American Studies; 2018-2019 John Simon Guggenheim Fellow in Constitutional Studies

"Jim Crow 2.0: Voter Suppression in the 21^st Century"

Emory historian Carol Anderson, whose previous book White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of Our Racial Divide won the National Book Critics Circle Award for criticism, will speak about her most recent book, One Person, No Vote: How Voter Suppression Is Destroying Our Democracy (longlisted for the National Book Award).  Focusing on the aftermath of the Supreme Court decision that eviscerated the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the book follows the astonishing story of government-dictated racial discrimination as more and more states adopted laws and practices that suppress votes. And via vivid characters, the book also explores the resistance: the organizing, activism, and court battles to restore the basic right to vote to all Americans. The paperback edition of the book, due out this month, contains a foreword by Senator Dick Durbin and an afterword in which Carol examines the repercussions of the 2018 midterm elections. If you don't own the book already, you may want to invest in this new edition now.  Just sayin'.

Monday, September 23

JAGDISH SHETH, Charles H. Kellstadt Professor of Marketing, Emory University

"The Seven Side Effects of the Internet Age"

The major technologies of the last two hundred years (railways, automobiles, telecommunications) were all transformative--in both good and bad ways. Like a potent drug, each has had great benefits, but also problematic side effects. Similarly, the digital technology of our internet age, so beneficial in so many ways, also has its dark side. Jag will discuss its side effects, including the rise of digital addiction (perhaps because so many find the virtual world more appealing than the real world), the emergence of a roommate lifestyle, the shift to a sharing economy (preferred over private ownership of property), and the challenge to existing jurisdictions organized around countries, markets, and currencies. As Jag will explain, the largest nation today isn't China or India. It's what he calls "The Facebook Nation"--a virtual place with more than two billion inhabitants and their own (also virtual) currency. Jag will help us consider whether we want to "live" there or not--if we have any choice in the matter at all. 

Tuesday, October 8

MARYN MCKENNA, Senior Fellow, Center for the Study of Human Health; TED speaker and author of Big Chicken (2017) and Superbug (2010)

"Agriculture, Antibiotics and the Future of Meat"

The development of antibiotics in the 1940s changed medicine forever--first by saving lives that had been lost to infectious diseases, and then by introducing the menace of antibiotic resistance, which undermined generations of the miracle drugs. But it's little known that agriculture adopted antibiotics as soon as they debuted, adding small doses to the diets of livestock--not to cure diseases, but to protect against them and to cause animals to put on weight more quickly. Those uses laid the foundation for modern intensive meat production, but they also fostered the emergence of additional resistant bacteria that moved through the food chain and the environment to further threaten human health. Reversing that historic mistake took decades of research and policy maneuvering, but what really turned the tide was neither better science not tougher regulations: It was the power of consumer coalitions forcing the meat industry to change.

Monday, October 21

REN DAVIS, Retired Administrator and Consultant, Emory Healthcare. Author of Caring for Atlanta: A History of Emory Crawford Long Hospital [2003]

"When Emory Doctors Went to War: Honoring the Centennial of the Emory Medical Unit's Service in the First World War"

Following the United States entry into the Great War in April 1917, the U.S. Army Surgeon General and the American Red Cross called on the country's medical schools and major hospitals to organize units to provide care to the soldiers deploying for combat in France.  Emory University School of Medicine Dean, William Elkin, MD, asked faculty member and military veteran Edward Campbell Davis, MD, the presenter's grandfather, to recruit physicians and nurses and to organize the Emory Medical Unit.  After training at Camp Gordon, the Emory Unit arrived in France in July 1918, and established Base Hospital 43 in the city of Blois.  The hospital would care for over 9,000 patients, earning praise from AEF commander, Gen. John J. Pershing, before returning home in March 1919.  This presentation also will highlight selected medical and surgical advances that arose from the war, and provide a brief overview of the second Emory Unit that served in North Africa and France during World War II.

Monday, November 4

ROBERT SCHAPIRO, Asa Griggs Candler Professor of Law, Emory University School of Law

"From Justice Kennedy to Justice Kavanaugh: The United States Supreme Court in a Time of Transition"

For most of his thirty years on the United States Supreme Court, and especially after the retirement of Justice Sandra Day O'Connor in 2006, Justice Anthony Kennedy stood at the center of a divided court.  Though he generally sided with his more conservative colleagues, on a range of important issues, from the death penalty to abortion to affirmative action, Justice Kennedy moderated the conservative trajectory of the Court.  His replacement by Justice Brett Kavanaugh opens a new chapter in the history of the Court.  The 2018-2019 Term of the Court gave some indication of the Court's new direction, with Justice Kavanaugh offering some surprising and unsurprising votes.  The Supreme Court Term beginning in October 2019 promises to be more revealing and more controversial, as the Justices grapple with topics including immigration, LGBT rights, and gun control, and they may well return once again to abortion and the Affordable Care Act. In today's Colloquium, Robert will review some of the key decisions from last year, preview some of the significant cases of this Term, and discuss the larger themes of the Court's evolving jurisprudence.

Monday, November 18

FRANS DE WAAL, C. H. Candler Professor of Psychology, Emory University, Emeritus; Director, Living Links Center at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center, Emeritus; Distinguished Professor Emeritus, University of Utrecht

"Mama's Last Hug: Animal and Human Emotions"

The title of Frans de Waal's most recent book pays homage to Mama, the alpha female of a famous chimpanzee colony in the Netherlands who died at the age of 59. Her last hug with Professor Jan van Hooff went viral on the Internet. Frans will discuss their encounter and then review evidence for animal emotions, starting with the incredible variety of primate facial expressions. Charles Darwin concluded long ago that if apes use expressions similar to ours under similar circumstances, the underlying emotions are probably similar, too. And it has indeed become increasingly clear that all of "our" emotions can be found in other species. The whole idea that there is just a handful of "basic" or "primary" emotions shared across species (fear, anger, joy), and that all other emotions (jealousy, guilt, love, hope) are uniquely human doesn't make sense. Although we may have emotions that go deeper or are more varied than in other species, none of them belongs to us alone. Frans will discuss empathy and disgust as examples of emotions as evident in animals as in us ourselves.

Tuesday, December 10

RUBY LAL, Professor of South Asian Studies, Department of Middle Eastern and South Asian Studies

"Empress: The Astonishing Reign of Nur Jahan"

As feminist historian Ruby Lal was growing up in northern India, her mother told her stories of many exemplary woman from the earliest days of the Mughal Empire, women she wrote of in her first scholarly book, Domesticity and Power in the Early Mughal World. In her second such book she wrote of Indian women of the nineteenth century. But in her third, winner of the 2019 Georgia Author of the Year Award in Biography (and also named a finalist in History for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize), Ruby returned to the earlier time to focus on the especially remarkable story of Nur Jahan, the young widow who became the twentieth and favorite wife of the Mughal Emperor Jahangir in 1611. Nur proved an astute politician (as well as a loving spouse), governing alongside her husband and in his stead as his health failed and his attention wandered from matters of state-the only woman ever recognized as Empress in her male-dominated world. How wonderful that Ruby's story-telling skills--skills we will enjoy today--are doing Nur justice after all these years.

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Perry Sprawls, PhD, FACR, FAAPM, FIOMP  

Distinguished Emeritus Professor, Emory University    

At the Annual Meeting of the Southeast Chapter of the American Association of Medical Physicists, EUEC member Perry Sprawls, PhD, received the award for the best scientific publication for the year. It was published in the journal Medical Physics International.  This paper along with other recent publications by Dr. Sprawls can be read from the website of the Sprawls Educational Foundation.

Since soon after joining the Emory faculty in 1960 in the Departments of Physics and Radiology, much of his research and development activities has been on enhancing the learning and teaching process to produce more effective knowledge for applied science in medical procedures.  This was first at Emory but is now an international effort to "take the Emory experience into classrooms all over the world."  Dr. Sprawls has received several national and international awards for his developments and contributions in the fields of medical science and radiology education.