Penn Association of Senior and Emeritus Faculty Previous Events 2016-2017

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Autonomous, or self-driving, vehicles appear to be around the corner, promising safe and efficient transportation for everyone regardless of their ability to drive. This would provide independence for aging or disabled individuals, and could relieve congestion and land use in urban centers. How are these autonomous systems designed, and what provides the intelligence or “brains” for these machines?

Prof. Lee’s research focuses on giving machines the ability to learn from experience and to process large amounts of data from sensors and communications. Daniel Lee is the UPS Foundation Chair Professor in Transportation for the Electrical and Systems Engineering Department in SEAS. He serves as Director of the General Robotics, Automation, Sensing and Perception (GRASP) Laboratory. He joined the Penn faculty in 2001 coming from the Theoretical Physics and Biological Computation departments at Bell Labs. 

The lecture will be held from 12:00-1:30 p.m. in the Hourglass Room in the University Club in the Inn at Penn. Lunch is available for a modest cost. 

SPECIAL FINANCIAL PLANNING FOR RETIREMENT SERIES
Co-sponsored by ASEF-PSOM and PASEF
John Rahmlow, Vanguard Group
"Successful Investing"

March 10, 2017, 12:00-1:30 PM
BRB II/III, Room 251
Lunch will be provided.

John H. Rahmlow is a Retirement Planning Counselor in Vanguard's Participant Education Department. His primary responsibilities include meeting with participants on a one-on-one basis and conducting group meetings on topics such as plan benefits, investment strategies and retirement readiness. Prior to becoming a Retirement Planning Counselor, Mr. Rahmlow spent more than 10 years as the Meetings Consultant in Participant Education. In that role he was responsible for providing consulting and content design services for custom presentations for institutional clients. Before joining Participant Education in 2005, Mr. Rahmlow was a team leader in Participant Services. Mr. Rahmlow has been with Vanguard since 1998.

Mr. Rahmlow earned a B.A. in Political Science from the University of Delaware; a JD from Widener University School of Law; an LL.M. in Taxation and an Employee Benefits Certificate from Villanova University School of Law; and currently holds FINRA series 6, 63 and 26 licenses as well as the Chartered Retirement Planning Counselor designation from the College for Financial Planning.

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The 2016 Presidential Election has led many people to believe that there is something wrong with a system where the losing candidate receives two million more popular votes than the winner. There is a widespread belief that any constitutional amendment to change the Electoral College is doomed to failure because it would not get the support of the small states that benefit from the current system. Jack will speak about “The National Popular Vote Interstate Compact” which would achieve the same result as a constitutional amendment without needing the votes of two-thirds of the Congress and three-fourths of the states. 

Jack Nagel is Professor of Political Science Emeritus. He has served the School of Arts and Sciences as Chair of the Political Science Department, Associate Dean for Graduate Studies and Associate Dean for the Social Sciences. He is a former President of the Penn Association of Senior and Emeritus Faculty. 

The lecture will be held from 12:00-1:30 p.m. in the Hourglass Room in the University Club in the Inn at Penn. Lunch is available for a modest cost. 

Beth Simmons is Andrea Mitchell University Professor of Law and Political Science.

She researches and teaches international relations, international law and international political economy. She is best known for her research on international political economy during the interwar years, policy diffusion globally and her work demonstrating the influence that international law has on human rights outcomes around the world.

Two of her books, Who Adjusts? Domestic Sources of Foreign Economic Policy During the Interwar Years (1994) and Mobilizing for Human Rights: International Law in Domestic Politics (2009) won the American Political Science Association’s Woodrow Wilson Award for the best book published in the United States on government, politics, or international affairs. The latter was also recognized by the American Society for International Law, the International Social Science Council and the International Studies Association as the best book of the year in 2010. She is a past president of the International Studies Association, and has been elected to the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

The lecture will be held from 12:00-1:30 p.m. in the Hourglass Room in the University Club in the Inn at Penn. Lunch is available for a modest cost.

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Gino Segrè is Professor of Physics Emeritus. In addition to Penn, he has taught at M.I.T. and Oxford, and was Director of Theoretical Physics at the National Science Foundation. Bettina Hoerlin served as Health Commissioner of Philadelphia, and has taught at Penn, Haverford College and Oxford.

Enrico Fermi is unquestionably among the greats of the world's physicists, the most famous Italian scientist since Galileo. Called the Pope by his peers, he was regarded as infallible in his instincts and research. His discoveries changed our world; they led to weapons of mass destruction and conversely to life-saving medical interventions. This unassuming man struggled with issues relevant today, such as the threat of nuclear annihilation and the relationship of science to politics. Fleeing Fascism and anti-Semitism, Fermi became a leading figure in America's most secret project: building the atomic bomb. The last physicist who mastered all branches of the discipline, Fermi was a rare mixture of theorist and experimentalist. His rich legacy encompasses key advances in fields as diverse as cosmic rays, nuclear technology, and early computers.

Signed copies of their book, The Pope of Physics: Enrico Fermi and the Birth of the Atomic Age, will be available for purchase following the talk.

Due to large attendance the lecture has been moved to the WOODLANDS BALLROOM A on the registration desk floor of The Inn At Penn, 3600 Sansom St, Philadelphia, PA. Lunch will not be available during the lecture. The University Club buffet is open until 2 pm.

The subject of this lecture is a manuscript of extraordinary importance to the history of science, the Archimedes Palimpsest. This thirteenth century prayer book contains erased texts that were written several centuries earlier still. These erased texts include two treatises by Archimedes that can be found nowhere else, The Method and Stomachion. The manuscript sold at auction to a private collector on the 29th October 1998. The owner deposited the manuscript at The Walters Art Museum in Baltimore, Maryland, a few months later. Since that date the manuscript has been the subject of conservation, imaging and scholarship, in order to better read the texts. The Archimedes Palimpsest project, as it is called, has shed new light on Archimedes and revealed new texts from the ancient world. These new texts include speeches by an Athenian orator from the fourth century B.C. called Hyperides, and a third century A.D. commentary on Aristotle’s Categories. The project, has generated a great deal of public curiosity, as well as the interest of scholars throughout the world. All the raw imaging data, as well as transcriptions of the unique texts in the manuscript have been published on the web. 

William Noel was the Project’s director, and he will give an account of the history of the book and the project, and discuss its discoveries. Dr. William Noel is Director of the Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscript, and Director of the Schoenberg Institute for Manuscript Studies at The University of Pennsylvania, positions he took up in September 2012.  Before that he was Curator of Manuscripts and Rare Books at The Walters Art Museum, Baltimore. He received his PhD in 1993 from Cambridge University England. 

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Kermit Roosevelt is Professor of Law at Penn. He works in a diverse range of fields, focusing on constitutional law and conflict of laws. His latest academic book, Conflict of Laws (Foundation Press 2010) offers an accessible analytical overview of conflicts. His prior book, The Myth of Judicial Activism: Making Sense of Supreme Court Decisions (Yale, 2006) sets out standards by which citizens can determine whether the Supreme Court is abusing its authority. His second novel, Allegiance (Regan Arts, 2015), pivots on the controversial World War II internment of more than 100,000 Japanese Americans. “It’s the experience of learning what your government has done for you—and thinking it should not have done this.”

Signed copies of his book will be available for purchase following the talk.

The lecture will be held from 12:00-1:30 p.m. in the Hourglass Room in the University Club in the Inn at Penn. Lunch is available for a modest cost.

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Why does the University of Pennsylvania, like its peer institutions, have a press—a largely independent publisher of scholarly books, most of them not written by Penn faculty or affiliates? What role have the university presses played in American intellectual and academic life over the course of the past century, and what are the factors—institutional, financial, and technological—that seem to be driving their transformation?

Jerry Singerman is Senior Humanities Editor at the University of Pennsylvania Press, where he is responsible for acquiring books in medieval, early modern, late ancient, literary, and Jewish studies and history of the book, among other fields. He holds a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from Harvard University and has taught at Bates College and the Maryland Institute College of Art. He is a past recipient of Robert L. Kindrick–CARA Award for Outstanding Service to Medieval Studies awarded by the Medieval Academy of America, the only editor to be so honored.

We look forward to greeting you at this first lecture of the 2016-17 academic year.

Vivian Seltzer, Chair ASEF-PASEF Library Committee

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Thursday October 6, 2016 at 3:30 PM

Class of '49 Auditorium, 2nd Floor Houston Hall

David Hollenberg has served as University Architect at the University of Pennsylvania since June 2006. In this role he is responsible for oversight of the design of the physical development and preservation of the campus. David has led an array of projects that reconcile the desire for architectural preservation and the drive for progressive design, ensuring that the campus continues to be distinctly "Penn." Previously, David oversaw all historic structures in the National Park Service's thirteen-state Northeast Region, including the implementation of the Independence National Historical Park General Management Plan. For the past 28 years, he has taught in Penn's Graduate Program in Historic Preservation.

Hollenberg's talk was followed by the Annual Reception for members of Penn's Twenty-Five Year Club.

A large bell hangs in the clock tower overlooking the now quiet campus of Morris Brown College. Its inscription reads, in part, Dedicated to the Education of Youth, Without Regard to Sex, Race or Color. Founded by African Americans in 1881, Morris Brown lost its accreditation to financial pressures and scandal in 2002. Today its campus is largely abandoned. Andrew Feiler is a 1984 Penn Graduate who was granted unique access to Morris Brown’s hauntingly silent campus. A book of his work was recently published by the University of Georgia Press.

Feiler, whose photographs will be on display in the University Club's Burrison Gallery, will speak about the proud past, challenging present and uncertain future for Morris Brown and for all of America’s historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs). His work offers a new way into the debate raging in our society about the essential role education has played as the foundation of the American Dream. That tradition and legacy are now at risk. Too many Americans cannot afford to go to college. Too many Americans are being crushed by college debt. Too many of these American dreams cannot be fully realized.

Feiler's talk is sponsored by PASEF, The Department of Africana Studies, The Center for Africana Studies, and the Office of the Vice Provost for Faculty Affairs.

The lecture will be held from 12:00-1:30 p.m. in the Hourglass Room in the University Club in the Inn at Penn and is open to the public. Lunch is available for a modest cost.

Signed copies of his book will be available for purchase following the talk.