Spring 2013 Speaker Biographies
Mike Kim
Mike Kim is an author, consultant, NGO founder, and North Korea specialist based in Washington DC. He is the author of the Wall Street Journal featured book "Escaping North Korea", a current events memoir about his experiences at the China-North Korea border helping North Koreans escape the regime. On New Year's Day 2003, Mike gave up his financial planning business in Chicago, Illinois and left for China on a one-way ticket carrying little more than two duffle bags. While living near the North Korean border, he operated undercover as a student of North Korean taekwondo, training and competing under two famous North Korean masters from Pyongyang—eventually receiving a second-degree blackbelt.
During his time in China, he learned of the hundreds of thousands of North Koreans fleeing to China through a 6,000-mile modern-day underground railroad, which runs from Pyongyang to Bangkok, in search of food and freedom. He founded Crossing Borders, a nonprofit dedicated to providing humanitarian assistance to North Korean refugees which has testified at a US congressional hearing and has been a long time contributor of the State Department's annual Trafficking in Persons Report. Mike frequently appears in the media: He has appeared on CNN Anderson Cooper 360 and it was after his interview on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart that there was interest from Hollywood in turning Escaping North Korea into a motion picture. A team of producers and writers are currently developing the script, with the book-to-film project represented by William Morris Endeavor.
Mike lectures to audiences worldwide about his experiences at the China-North Korea border and has now shared his stories of inspiration, courage, and hope on five continents. Mike resides in Washington DC where he is a consultant and term member of the Council on Foreign Relations.
from: http://moreheadwritingproject.org/news/?p=357
Michael C. Dawson
Michael C. Dawson is the John D. MacArthur Distinguished Service Professor of Political Science and the College at the University of Chicago, as well as the founding and current Director of the Center for the Study of Race, Politics, and Culture at the university. He has also taught at the University of Michigan and Harvard University. Dawson received his BA with High Honors from Berkeley in 1982 and doctorate degree from Harvard University in 1986. Professor Dawson was co-principal investigator of the 1988 National Black Election Study and principal investigator with Ronald Brown of the 1993-1994 National Black Politics Study.
In collaboration with a number of colleagues, Dawson has directed or co-directed a series of survey studies from 2000-2005, 2008, 2009 and 2010 that have probed racial attitudes in the United States. His research interests have included the development of quantitative models of African American political behavior, identity, and public opinion; the political effects of urban poverty, African-American political ideology, and democratic theory.
His newest book, Not In Our Lifetimes: The Future of Black Politics, will be published in the fall of 2011 by the University of Chicago Press. His previous two books, Behind the Mule: Race and Class in African-American Politics (Princeton 1994) and Black Visions: The Roots of Contemporary African-American Political Ideologies (Chicago 2001), won multiple awards including Black Visions winning the prestigious Ralph Bunche Award from the American Political Science Association. Dawson has also published numerous journal articles, book chapters and opinion pieces. Dawson’s strong interest in the impact of the information technology revolution on society and politics, as well as his research on race are both fueled in part from his time spent as an activist while studying and working in Silicon Valley for several years. Forthcoming are several books including Blacks In and Out of the Left: Past, Present and Future, and Reflections On Black Politics in the Early 21st Century.
He is, with Lawrence Bobo, the founding co-editor of the journal The Du Bois Review (Cambridge University Press). Dawson has also served as Chair of the Political Science Department of the University of Chicago. In 2006 Dawson was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Dawson has been a Fellow at both the Rockefeller Bellagio Center and the Center for the Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences. Dawson has been interviewed extensively by the print and broadcast media including the Washington Post, The Economist Magazine, The Los Angeles Times, New York Times, Chicago Tribune, NPR, BBC, CNN, National Geographic, CBC, BET, and ABC News.
from: http://www.michaeldawson.net/about/
Lee Alan Dugatkin
Dr. Dugatkin is a Professor and Distinguished University Scholar in the Department of Biology at The University of Louisville. His main area of research interest is the evolution of social behavior. He is currently studying the evolution of cooperation, the evolution of aggression, the interaction between genetic and cultural evolution, the evolution of disease virulence, the evolution of antibiotic resistance, the evolution of senescence and the evolution of risk-taking behavior.
Dr. Dugatkin is the author of over 125 articles on evolution and behavior in such journals as Nature, The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and The Proceedings of The Royal Society of London. He has published three books on the evolution of cooperation. The first, Cooperation among Animals: An Evolutionary Perspective (Oxford University Press, 1997), is a technical monograph on the subject. This book was awarded one of Choice Magazine’s "Outstanding Academic Books of the Year" for 1997. The second book, Cheating Monkeys and Citizen Bees (The Free Press, 1999), is a trade book and has recently been translated and published in Chinese, Korean and Japanese. Dr. Dugatkin’s other trade book on cooperation and altruism is The Altruism Equation: Seven Scientists Search for the Origins of Goodness (Princeton University Press, 2006: this book has been translated into German and Spanish). Dr. Dugatkin is the author of a textbook on animal behavior, entitled Principles of Animal Behavior (W.W. Norton, 2004). The second edition (2009) of Principles of Animal Behavior is currently available here. Dr. Dugatkin is also author of Mr. Jefferson and The Giant Moose, The University of Chicago Press in September 2009.
Dr. Dugatkin's newest trade book is "The Prince of Evolution: Peter Kropotkin's Adventures in Science and Politics," 2011.
Dr. Dugatkin has had the privilege of speaking at over sixty major universities all around the world including Harvard, Oxford University (England), Cornell, The University of Chicago, The London School of Economics, and Cambridge University (England), and is a contributing author to Scientific American, The New Scientist, Newsday. Cerebrum, BioScience and The Wilson Quarterly.
from: http://louisville.edu/faculty/laduga01/research-interests-dr-lee-alan-dugatkin.html
Eric Foner
Eric Foner, DeWitt Clinton Professor of History at Columbia University, is one of this country's most prominent historians. He received his doctoral degree at Columbia under the supervision of Richard Hofstadter. He is one of only two persons to serve as president of the three major professional organizations: the Organization of American Historians, American Historical Association, and Society of American Historians, and one of a
handful to have won the Bancroft and Pulitzer Prizes in the same year.
Professor Foner's publications have concentrated on the intersections of intellectual, political and social history, and the history of American race relations. His best-known books are: Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men: The Ideology of the Republican Party Before the Civil War (1970; reissued with new preface 1995) Tom Paine and Revolutionary America (1976); Nothing But Freedom: Emancipation and Its Legacy (1983); Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877 (1988) (winner, among other awards, of the Bancroft Prize, Parkman Prize, and Los Angeles Times Book Award); The Reader's Companion to American History (with John A. Garraty, 1991); The Story of American Freedom (1998); and Who Owns History? Rethinking the Past in a Changing World (2002). His survey textbook of American history, Give Me Liberty! An American History and a companion volume of documents, Voices of Freedom, appeared in 2004. His books have been translated into Chinese, Korean, Italian, Japanese, Portugese, and Spanish. His most recent book, The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery (winner, among other awards, of the Bancroft Prize, Pulitzer Prize for History, and The Lincoln Prize) was published in the fall of 2010.
Eric Foner has also been the co-curator, with Olivia Mahoney, of two prize-winning exhibitions on American history: A House Divided: America in the Age of Lincoln, which opened at the Chicago Historical Society in 1990, and America's Reconstruction: People and Politics After the Civil War, which opened at the Virginia Historical Society in 1995 and traveled to several other locations. He revised the presentation of American history at the Hall of Presidents at Disney World, and Meet Mr. Lincoln at Disneyland, and has served as consultant to several National Parks Service historical sites and historical museums.
Eric Foner is a winner of the Great Teacher Award from the Society of Columbia Graduates (1991), and the Presidential Award for Outstanding Teaching from Columbia University (2006). He was named Scholar of the Year by the New York Council for the Humanities in 1995. In 2006, he received and the Kidger Award for Excellence in Teaching and Scholarship from the New England History Teachers Association. He is an elected fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the British Academy, and holds honorary doctorates from Iona College and Queen Mary, University of London. He has taught at Cambridge University as Pitt Professor of American History and Institutions, Oxford University as Harmsworth Professor of American History, Moscow State University as Fulbright Professor, and at Queen Mary, University of London as Leverhulme Visiting Scholar. He serves on the editorial boards of Past and Present and The Nation, and has written for the New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, London Review of Books, and many other publications, and has appeared on numerous television and radio shows, including Charlie Rose, Book Notes, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, The Colbert Report, Bill Moyers Journal, Fresh Air, and All Things Considered, and in historical documentaries on PBS and the History Channel. He was the on-camera historian for "Freedom: A History of Us," on PBS in 2003. He has lectured extensively to both academic and non-academic audiences.
In 2007, a group of Professor Foner's former graduate students published Contested Democracy: Freedom, Race, and Power in American History, edited by Manisha Sinha and Penny Von Eschen, a collection of essays, or "festschrift," in his honor.
Foner's works have been highly praised in scholarly journals and by reviews in periodicals across the political spectrum. In The Nation, Theodore Rosengarten wrote that Reconstruction is "monumental in scope ... a feat of research and synthesis that is not likely to be repeated for a generation." Robert H. Ferrell, in the National Review declared that The Story of American Freedom "approaches brilliance." Of The Fiery Trial, Gordon Berg observed in Civil War Times, "looking for flaws in an Eric Foner book is like looking for flaws in the Hope Diamond; it is a fool's errand."
In a recent book review, Professor Steven Hahn of the University of Pennsylvania wrote of Eric Foner: "Like his mentor Richard Hofstadter, he has had an enormous influence on how other historians, as well as a good cut of the general reading public, have come to think about American history. This is the result of his voluminous scholarship and of his decades as a teacher. Indeed, when one considers the chronological and topical range of Foner's many books and essays--not to mention those of his doctoral students--only Hofstadter, C. Vann Woodward, David Brion Davis, and, in an earlier era, Charles Beard (who was also at Columbia) would seem to be his genuine rivals in impact and accomplishment."
from: http://www.ericfoner.com/
Catherine Clinton
Catherine Clinton came to Queen’s in 2006, having previously taught at Union College, Brandeis University and at Harvard University — in both the Department of African American Studies and the Department of History. She has recently stepped down from the executive council of the Society of American Historians and continues to serve on the Advisory Committee to the Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Commission, and her biography, Mrs Lincoln: a life was published in 2009. Her biography of Harriet Tubman was named one of the best non-fiction books of 2004 by the Christian Science Monitor and the Chicago Tribune. She now serves on the Advisory Council of Civil War History, of Ford's Theatre in Washington DC, and Civil War Times. She is a member of the Advisory Board for the Virginia Sesquicentennial Commission and in 2011, she is the editor of the Penguin Classic, Mary Chestnut's Diary.
Research Interests
Professor Clinton maintains strong research interest in US history, with specialization in women’s history, southern history, African-American history and the American Civil War. She edits a series for Oxford University Press entitled Viewpoints on American Culture.
Her current projects include
- The Fleming Lectures for 2012.
- Self-inflicted wounds: suicide, manhood and the American Civil War.
Tyrone B. Hayes
For biologist and herpetologist Tyrone Hayes, scientific breakthroughs don't begin and end in the laboratory. They also come from the field. Which is why, more often than not, you'll find Hayes wet, muddy, and knee-deep in an African swamp at 2 a.m., the time when the frogs come out.
Hayes grew up in South Carolina, and, as a boy, one of his favorite pastimes was tracking down the region's abundant turtles, snakes, and toads. That abiding fascination led Hayes to earn an undergraduate degree in organismic and evolutionary biology from Harvard University. He later received a Ph.D. in integrative biology from the University of California, Berkeley, where he currently serves as a professor.
Hayes says an interest in frog hormones, specifically those of a tiny reed frog common in Ethiopia and Uganda, sparked his interest in his current fieldwork. "Surprisingly, frog hormones are very similar, and in some cases identical, to human hormones," he says. "So what affects a frog may also affect humans."
It was during a night in the boggy African bush that Hayes's flashlight revealed an unexpected discovery: Several members of the reed frog genus had changed color. Males, which are normally green, had taken on the reddish background and white spots of females.
Seeking to understand why, Hayes arrived at a theory: During the metamorphosis from tadpole to adult, frogs are very sensitive to changes in their environment, including chemicals in the water or in their food supply. So the change in coloration indicated that the frogs' extremely thin, sensitive skin was reacting to contaminants in the water. Thousands of frogs later, Hayes and his research team have proved the theory correct.
Reed frogs, indeed, serve as tiny red flags that can warn when dangerous, even cancer-causing chemicals are present in a water source. These harmful substances may contain or act like hormones, triggering the color transformation. Contaminants include plastic by-products, pesticides in crop sprays such as DDT, and synthetic hormones such as DDS. Because they cannot be broken down during sewage treatment, the toxins flow into marshes and lakes.
"This is the same water people cook and bathe with," Hayes notes. "We've found developmental changes in tadpoles when water contains contaminants 50 times lower than what's allowed in U.S. drinking water. If chemicals in such low concentrations can impact amphibians, mammals may also be affected."
Hayes realized his simple observation could have enormous practical applications: Reed frogs could become a low-cost way to test for water pollution in developing countries. Local residents would only need to raise the frogs in questionable water sources and observe their color as adults to check for contaminants.
Hayes's findings reveal a crucial new link between conservation and health.
from: http://www.nationalgeographic.com/explorers/bios/tyrone-hayes/
N. Gregory Mankiw
N. Gregory Mankiw is Professor of Economics at Harvard University. As a student, he studied economics at Princeton University and MIT. As a teacher, he has taught macroeconomics, microeconomics, statistics, and principles of economics. He even spent one summer long ago as a sailing instructor on Long Beach Island.
Professor Mankiw is a prolific writer and a regular participant in academic and policy debates. His research includes work on price adjustment, consumer behavior, financial markets, monetary and fiscal policy, and economic growth. His published articles have appeared in academic journals, such as the American Economic Review, Journal of Political Economy, and Quarterly Journal of Economics, and in more widely accessible forums, such as The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, and Fortune.
He has written two popular textbooks—the intermediate-level textbook Macroeconomics (Worth Publishers) and the introductory textbook Principles of Economics (South-Western/Thomson). Principles of Economics has sold over a million copies and has been translated into twenty languages.
In addition to his teaching, research, and writing, Professor Mankiw has been a research associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research, an adviser to the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston and the Congressional Budget Office, and a member of the ETS test development committee for the advanced placement exam in economics. From 2003 to 2005 he served as Chairman of the President's Council of Economic Advisers.
Professor Mankiw lives in Wellesley, Massachusetts, with his wife, three children, and their border terrier Tobin.
from: http://scholar.harvard.edu/mankiw/biocv
Maureen Morehead
Maureen Morehead has published three collections of poetry: "In a Yellow Room" (Sulgrave Press, 1990), "A Sense of Time Left" (Larkspur Press, 2003) and "The Melancholy Teacher" (Larkspur Press, 2010). A fourth book, "Our Brothers’ War" (Sulgrave Press, 1993) with Pat Carr, is a collection of poems by Morehead and stories by Carr based on the lives of Kentucky women during the Civil War. A fifth book, "Late August Blues: The Daylily Poems," is forthcoming from Larkspur.
In addition to the collections, individual poems have appeared in magazines including America, The American Poetry Review, The American Voice, The Black Warrior Review, California Quarterly, The Greensboro Review, The Iowa Review, The Kansas Quarterly, The Louisville Review, The Southern Poetry Review, Poet and Critic, and Poetry Magazine.
Morehead’s work is featured in "The Kentucky Anthology: Two Hundred Years of Writing in the Bluegrass State" (University of Kentucky Press, 2005), "Conversations with Kentucky Writers II" (University of Kentucky Press, 1999) and "Kentucky Voices: A Bicentennial Celebration of Kentucky Writing" (Kentucky Arts Council, 1992). Her writings also appeared in "Place Gives Rise to Spirit: Writers on Louisville" (Publishers Printers, 2000) and "Savory Memories" (University of Kentucky Press, 1998).
She has won fellowships for her poetry from the Kentucky Arts Council and the Kentucky Foundation for Women. She has given numerous readings of her work and continues to do so in her position as a poetry faculty member in Spalding University's brief- residency MFA Program in Writing.
Early in her career, she was selected to the Bluegrass Poetry Circuit, a competition judged by Robert Penn Warren. She has taught at Western Kentucky University, the University of Louisville, and for the Jefferson County Public Schools from which she retired. In 2006, she was inducted into the duPont Manual High School Hall of Fame.
For several years, Morehead spent her summers on the faculty of the Kentucky Institute for the Arts in Education, a program designed to help educators integrate the arts into their curricula.
She earned an A.B. from Western Kentucky University, an M.A. in English from the University of Louisville and a Ph.D. in English, with a creative writing thesis, from the University of Louisville.
She is married to Robert Morehead, a lifelong Kentuckian whose mother, Ellen, taught in a one-room schoolhouse on Mill Branch in Knox County and she is the mother of Clint Morehead, a physician and 2010 winner of an Al Smith Fellowship for creative nonfiction.