Please join us for a free sneak preview of Beyond Borders before its national release and a brief Q&A afterwards. Viewers are invited to attend the 4pm rally at nearby Union Square after the screening.

This important new documentary takes an in-depth look at the issues of legal and illegal immigration. Beyond Borders tackles the immigration debate head-on, traveling across the U.S. and beyond to give voices to those on the front line of the issue, including candid interviews with Border Patrol agents, demographers, activists, potential migrants, and experts.

The screening will be followed by a Q&A with the filmmaker Brian Ging, NYIC executive director Ms. Chung-Wha Hong, and documentary interviewees Michele Wucker (senior fellow and executive director of World Policy Institute and author of Lockout), and Sandro St. Jean (featured Haitian painter and recent immigrant).

Please RSVP at www.beyondbordersfilm.com to reserve your ticket for the event. We encourage you to forward this invitation on to friends, colleagues, and family.

For more info . . .

Whimsy and playfulness with language, setting, and point-of-view can often be an effective way to address difficult topics. Young novelists Sasa Stanisic, born in 1978 in the former Yugoslavia, and Portuguese writer Gonçalo M. Tavares, who won the 2005 Saramago Prize for writers under 35, discuss literary technique and tackling the big issues. Cosponsored by Instituto Cervantes and the Consulate General of Spain.

In cooperation with the German Book Office, Deutsches Haus at NYU and the Consulate General of the Federal Republic of Germany.

For more info . . .

Participants: Sharon G. Flake, Jutta Richter, Pam Muñoz Ryan, and Peter Sis. Moderated by Elizabeth Levy.

"What did you do today?"
"Nothing"
"What are you thinking?"
"Dunno"
"What are you feeling?"
"Huh?"

What are children hiding when they answer questions this way? What is going on behind their one-word answers? Writers for children and young adults explore the emotional and often turbulent lives of children in their stories. Sometimes these stories are humorous, sometimes they can be tragic, but all of the distinguished writers on our panel realize that children often understand a lot more than they are willing to express. How do writers convey the difference between a child’s private and public persona? An international panel of writers draws on their imaginations and deep memories of life in the Czech Republic, in Germany, in the American West, and in this country’s inner cities and suburbs to explore the experiences and fantasy lives of children.

Presented by PEN’s Children’s Book Committee and with special thanks to Scholastic.

In cooperation with the German Book Office, Deutsches Haus at NYU and the Consulate General of the Federal Republic of Germany.

For more info . . .

Contact info: scps.global.affairs@nyu.edu / 212.992.8380.

For more info. . .

Amongst the participants of the World Social Forum, there are discussions and efforts to synthesize the wisdom of decades of progressive movements to produce a solidarity economy. Please join Jenna Allard and Michael Menser in a discussion on participatory budgeting and organizing in the United States to grow the solidarity economics movement.

For more info. . .

Specifying green building products requires considering not only the end product, but also the manufacturing process. Manufacturers, product testers, architects, and industrial designers may all influence the viability of a green product, as well transparency in product specification. This seminar will discuss the methods used to evaluate product and process, including product development & testing, process-based upgrades & certifications, corporate stewardship, and product specification education.

Moderator: Erika Hanson, Erika Hanson Design & Consulting

Panelists: Monica Becker, Pollution Prevention Institute
Chris Garvin, Cook + Fox; Amanda Clontz, One Bryant Park
John Howell, Island Architectural Woodwork

Contact: Tanu Kumar, 212.404.6990 x15

For more info. . .

Columbia's Ecology and Culture Seminar (CECS) is pleased to present: "Indigenous Peoples Networking at International Levels: the Case of the Francophone Indigenous Coordination," with Dr. Irene Bellier.

Dr. Bellier will present the recently founded Francophone Indigenous Coordination (Coordination Autochtone Francophone) a network of Indigenous Peoples organizations that share French language for historical reasons, mainly related to colonization. Based out of Quebec, it includes people in North America (Quebec), South America (French Guyana), Central, Northern and Sub-Saharan Africa and the Pacific. The CAF's formation as well as its cultural and political agenda are understood with regard to the many developments of transnational indigenous networking.
The evolving political context of different laws and patterns have altered the relationship between the State and Indigenous Peoples, recently reflected by the United Nation?s adoption of the Declaration for the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and the relative mobilization of UN agencies (Unesco, IFAD, UNDP) in favor of IPs.
As the upcoming 2008 session of the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues (New York - April 22-May 3) deals with the impact of climate change on Indigenous Peoples, lands and territories, we will discuss perceptions of environmental vulnerability, proposals for sustainability, the context in which indigenous peoples act and they series of changes they demand.

Contact Rachel Hermes: rah2126@columbia.edu

For more info. . .

Dr. Matloff and former NASA Faculty Fellow Bangs will discuss both the exhibit and their book of the same name co-authored with NASA manager Les Johnson. Published by Springer in 2007, the book presents a visionary concept for the future development of interstellar travel. It describes the enabling technology for advanced in-space propulsion systems and demonstrates how humankind will draw on the natural forces of the cosmos itself in its exploration and eventual settlement of nearby and more distance space. Hosted by the Ursula C. Schwerin Library at City Tech. For additional information, contact Professor Morris Hounion at mhounion@citytech.cuny.edu.

Contact: 718.260.5491

For more info. . .

Phoevos Panagiotidis (University of Cyprus)

Abstract

In the generative literature on grammatical category – with Chomsky 1970 and Jackendoff 1977 acting as pivots, the categorial features [N] and [V] are usually perceived as syntax-internal classificatory ones without an LF interpretation (see also the discussion in Haeberli 2002: Ch. 2). This is a serious problem for Full Interpretation and, more generally, for a conception of grammar as a system that manipulates interface-interpretable features (Chomsky 1995; 2001):

(1) What is grammatical category; what does it do in syntax and at LF?

Two paths have recently been opened towards answering this question:

A first one seeks to rid syntax from categories in the lexicon altogether, employing the mechanisms of Distributed Morphology: Halle & Marantz (1993), Marantz (1997; 2000; 2006a), Harley & Noyer (1998), Embick (2000), Arad (2003; 2007); Embick & Marantz (2006). In this programme, syntactic category is not the result of a categorial feature in a pre-syntactic lexicon: there is no pre-syntactic lexicon. Category is recast as the upshot of the existence of categorisers – a nominaliser (n), a verbaliser (v) and an adjectiviser (a), which combine with roots and whose projections constitute “word-internal” phases.

A second path is that of trying to reconceive categorial features as ordinary LF-interpretable features with a well-defined syntactic behaviour and a particular LF interpretation. This is what Baker (2003) sets out to do. He advances a theory of category where [V] and [N] are privative features. Verbs are specified as [V] and are interpreted at LF as predicates, while nouns are specified as [N] and are interpreted at LF as bearing a criterion of identity, making them referential. Although Baker’s is a straightforward and coherent theory, it is fraught with problems which prevent us from accepting it wholesale.

In this talk I wish to show that the two paths may converge, after all. The starting point will be the observation that, even if we get rid of nouns and verbs in the lexicon (I will largely ignore adjectives), we cannot eliminate the syntactic difference between the nominaliser n and the verbaliser v – a difference hopefully expressible in terms of features. Moreover, these distinctive features had better be interpretable, enabling us to recast the categorial features [N] and [V] of old as the LF-interpretable distinctive features on n and v...

For more info. . .

Acconci's early work was fiction and poetry; in the late 60's and early 70's, his first artworks used performance, photos, film, and video as instruments of self-analysis and person-to-person relationships. In the mid-80's the work crossed over into architecture, theoretical-design and building workshop. The workshop’s method is, on the one hand, to make a new space by turning an old one inside-out and upside-down; and, on the other hand, to insert within a site a capsule that grows out of itself and morphs itself. They treat architecture as an occasion for activity; they make spaces fluid, changeable, portable. www.acconci.com

Contact: Ken Conzelmann, 718.260.5262

For more info. . .

Corey McCorkle traveled to India in the latter part of 2006 as part of OCA's Off-Site Residency Programme to produce a short film around Le Corbusier's Chandigarh. This film, Tower of Shadows, 2006 will be screened at [OCA, NYC] on the 2nd and 3rd of May in tandem with the artist's presentation around the subject of his inquiry. The film, as a final meditation on the incontestable Utopian poster-city of 20th Century, in spite of and perhaps because of the abject state of its incompletion (even dilapidation to some extent), serves as a calm on Le Corbusier's perforated monolithic vision. Reflective of its intention — designed to fill the gap left in the Punjabi state after partition in 1947 (Punjab lost its then capital of Lahore to Pakistan), the new capital of Chandigarh was meant to be the inspiring city of the future — wide avenues flowing into expansive government plazas envision here future pageantry on an impressive scale, has yet to be finalized. Particularly, the Tower of Shadows at Chandigarh interests the artist as it is a structure to house nothing, a romantic pavilion ... purely an optimistic essay of light and dark more than any municipal place of assembly, any place of use-value. But more, McCorkle is drawn to it as another irresistible and unyielding new ruin in the folds of 20th Century urbanism (the emptiness).

Corey McCorkle is interested in the utopian ideas of nature and transcendence which he pursues in many of his installations. McCorkle's work has been included in the surveys Make It Now at Sculpture Center and Greater New York 2005 at PS1, and was featured in solo exhibitions in 2006 at Kunsthalle Bern in Switzerland and at the Marres In Maastricht, Netherlands. McCorkle's work has also been included in The Plain of Heaven by Creative Time in NYC and in Monopolis at Witte de With in Rotterdam. Most recently, his work was included in Just Kick It Till It Breaks at The Kitchen in NYC. Concurrently he has solo exhibitions at Maccarone, New York and Stella Lohaus Gallery, Antwerp.

About [OCA, NYC]:
[OCA, NYC] is an experimental platform launched by the Office for Contemporary Art Norway in Oslo to initiate projects, host seminars, talks and screenings in an effort to draw from the available resources in New York City. Physically lodged within the accompanying office of the architecture firm of Snøhetta within the historical Cunard Cruise Lines building (and former Police Museum), [OCA, NYC] acts as an alternative international venue for contemporary art, culture and discourse.

Fjellbekk and Hylleblomst to be served at all events.

For more info. . .

Anthropology Department Colloquium

Beyond 'Racial Democracy': Black Mobilization and State Response in Contemporary Brazil
Antonio Sergio Guimares Departamento de Sociologia Universidade de So Paulo.

For more info. . .

Department Of Biochemistry And Molecular Biophysics

Dr. Dwayne Miller, Institute for Optical Sciences University of Toronto presents: "Do we live in Quantum World? - A New Twist"

Contact Rachel Hernandez by sending email to rh2021@columbia.edu

For more info. . .

Contact Marilyn Astwood: mp20@columbia.edu

A light lunch and refreshments will be served prior to the talk.

For more info. . .

This one-day conference will explore the connection between domestic and global and economic and political forces that combine to constrain economic development in sub-Saharan Africa.

Keynote Speech on Necessary Reforms for African Development: Thandika Mkandawire, Director of the UN Research Institute for Social Development is the author of Our Continent Our Future.

Panelists:
Berhanu Nega, former Mayor of Addis Ababa and political prisoner, now Visiting Professor of Economics at Bucknell University.
Nicolas Van de Walle, professor of International Studies and Director of the Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies. He is the author of African Economies and the Politics of Permanent Crisis.
Richard Kozul-Wright, senior economist, UN Dept of Economic and Social Affairs and author of The Resistable Rise of Market Fundamentalism: Rethinking Development Policy in an Unbalanced World.
Carol Lancaster, associate professor of politics in the School of Foreign Service with a joint appointment in the Department of Government. She is also Director of the Mortara Center for International Studies. She is the author of Foreign Aid: Diplomacy, Development, Domestic Politics.
Leonard Wantchekon, professor of Politics and Economics, NYU, is author of The Paradox of 'Warlord' Democracy: A Theoretical Investigation.

For more info. . .

Julia Mello Neiva, a native from Sao Paulo, Brazil, has worked with human rights for over seven years. In May 2007, she received her LL.M. degree from Columbia Law School, where she was also granted a Human Rights Fellowship. From 2001 to 2006, she worked as a human rights lawyer in Conectas Direitos Humanos, an international human rights organization based in Sao Paulo, Brazil. Ms. Neiva coordinated advocacy, capacity-building and training programs for human rights activists, women and youth. Over the past three years, she has been working on gender and race discrimination topics and also on transparency in government. She has worked at the Center for Reproductive Rights, in the Affirmative Action Project coordinated by Columbia Law Professor Kimberle Crenshaw, in the Promotoras Populares Legais (a street law project that capacitates women to counsel other women victims of violence about their rights), among other projects. Since September 2006, Ms. Neiva is working for the São Tomé and Príncipe Advisory Project (a partnership between Columbia University’s Earth Institute and Human Rights Clinic) – a project to assist the government of that country in implementing laws establishing oversight and transparency in managing its oil revenues.

Lunch will be served.

To request a copy of the speaker's paper, please contact Jorge Contesse (646.312.8237).

For more info . . .

Focusing on bringing successful public art to subway stations, artists Jane Dickson, Daniel Hauben and Jean Shin will discuss the process behind their recent MTA Arts for Transit commissions. Amy Hausmann, assistant director of Arts for Transit, will moderate.

For more info . . .

Peter Osborne: Where is the Work of Art? Contemporary Art, Spatialization, and Urban Form and OCA Book Launch: Verksted No. 8.

Peter Osborne's talk considers spatial aspects of the ontology of post-conceptual art. It identifies the post-conceptual character of contemporary art as an artistic mediation of a dialectic of the "space of places" and the "space of flows" that constitutes the social space of the global capitalist present. In particular, it reflects upon two historical moments in the spatial constitution of contemporary art as a post-conceptual field: 1) a certain "architecturalization" of art associated with the works of Dan Graham, Robert Smithson and Gordon Matta-Clark, 2) the more recent "transnationalization" of art, for which certain works by The Atlas Group are taken as exemplary. The latter, it is argued, is premised upon the destruction of "architecture" by a new, radically abstract, type of urban form, from the standpoint of which, "place" appears as no more - but also no less - than a fiction.

Peter Osborne is a Professor of Modern European Philosophy and Director of the Centre for Research in Modern European Philosophy, Middlesex University, London and editor of the journal, Radical Philosophy. His books include The Politics of Time: Modernity and Avant-Garde (1995), Philosophy in Cultural Theory (2000), Conceptual Art (2002) and Marx (Grant, 2005). He is the editor of the 3 volume Walter Benjamin: Critical Evaluations in Cultural Theory (2005).

Verksted No. 8. ISMS: Recuperating Political Radicality in Contemporary Art, 1. Constructing the Political in Contemporary Art (editors: Marta Kuzma and Peter Osborne) reflects upon a seminar organized by OCA in 2006 that addressed the complex and problematic relationships between artistic movements, political movements, and individual works. Specific focus was placed on current dilemmas facing art production, how it is for a work to function "critically" today, and how this relates to or, in fact, neglects politics. The essays in take a step back from the immediate institutional context of recent attempts to reconnect contemporary art to the politics of 1960s and 1970s, in order to reflect upon some of the theoretical issues at stake: the critical structure of the artwork as a site of a dialectic of individuality and collectivity (Peter Osborne), the power of its indexical or "documentary" aspects (Hito Steyerl and Marius Wulfsberg), its use-value as an archive of "intensive life" (Eric Alliez), its "seam with the economic" (David Cunningham), the limits of its "relational possibilities" (Stewart Martin), and its role in making visible the "immaterial!" labour of "cognitive capitalism" (Ina Blom).

For more info. . .

While being held in an academic setting, the conference is intended to draw participants from the broader community as well, bringing in members of the general public as both presenters and attendees. In addition, there will be a special evening (7:30-10:30 pm) "multimedia" session in collaboration with Mitch McEwen's Superfront, an architect-run performance and multimedia space in Bedford-Stuyvesant (superfront.org).

"The conference will look at how new media is being used to make connections, to empower communities and/or control, colonize or dominate them," says Dr. Annie Seaton, who is organizing the conference with Dr. Aaron Barlow, both of whom are professors of English at City Tech.

"We will explore the question of whether race works differently in the 'new' media than it did in the 'old' media, where network news has always been a nearly diversity-free zone," Seaton adds.

"Race and New Media" will also focus on how video games, blogs, chat rooms and other forms of digital worlds create and represent race and racial identities. Is the "virtual" world a "racist" world? Or does race "disappear" when you can't "see" the bodies involved? These and other questions will be explored by the "Virtual Racism" panel. . .

For more info. . .

SkowheganTALKS, a new lecture series organized by the Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture, features conversations between some of the most influential visual artists working today. The first two talks in the series drew a full house at P.S.1. The series continues on Saturday, May 3, with a conversation between artists Sanford Biggers and Paul Pfeiffer. SkowheganTALKS features recent alumni of the residency program of the Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture in conversation with artists who have been faculty members at Skowhegan. While the association with Skowhegan is the common factor among the artists, the conversations are not intended to focus on the artists’ respective experiences at Skowhegan, but rather will address subjects of broader interest including the participating artists' current and past work and the challenges and opportunities that are characteristic of working as an artist today. An especially interesting aspect of SkowheganTALKS is that the conversations are also intended explore the mentor-student relationship, a model that is becoming increasingly important for young artists in New York and worldwide. Because most of the conversations will pair artists who met at Skowhegan when one was a participant and the other was a faculty member, the speakers have direct mentor-student experience with one another upon which they can draw.

Sanford Biggers attended Skowhegan in 1998. He creates multi-disciplinary artworks that integrate film/video installation, sculpture, music and performance. Influenced by his experiences living throughout the United States, Europe and Japan, and by Buddhism, hip-hop and urban culture, Biggers's work is known for its combination of meditative rigor and improvisatory edge. Biggers’ installations, videos, and performances have appeared in venues worldwide including the Tate Modern, London, Whitney Museum, New York, Studio Museum, Harlem, and the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco, as well as institutions in China, Germany, Hungary, Japan, Poland and Russia. He has had solo exhibitions at Grand Arts, Kansas City, Mary Goldman Gallery, Los Angeles, Triple Candie, New York, Contemporary Art Museum, Houston, Matrix/Univ.of Berkeley Museum, Berkeley, and Zamek Ujazdowski, Warsaw. He is the recipient of awards and grants from the Creative Capital Foundation, New York Percent for the Arts, Lambent Fellowship in the Arts, New York Foundation for the Arts, and the Rema Hort Mann Foundation.

Paul Pfeiffer was a Visiting Artist at Skowhegan in 2005 and is a member of Skowhegan's Board of Governors. His videos, photos, and sculptures address the many problematic aspects of present and future worlds dominated by astonishing revolutions in visual representation. His transformation of images and objects from televised sporting events, fashion photography, and Hollywood movies prompts us to reconsider conventional attitudes about issues of the body, race, identity, faith, and architectural space in contemporary society. Pfeiffer uses recent computer technologies to dissect the role that mass media plays in shaping consciousness and contemplates an uneasy dialectic of presence and absence through acts of erasure, camouflage, displacement and reconstruction. Pfeiffer is the recipient of numerous awards and fellowships, most notably becoming the inaugural recipient of The Bucksbaum Award given by the Whitney Museum of American Art (2000). In 2003, a traveling retrospective of his work was organized by the MIT List Visual Arts Center and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago. Pfeiffer's work has also been shown at the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney, the Guggenheim, P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, The Studio Museum in Harlem, The Project, Gagosian Gallery (New York), San Francisco Art Institute, the Walker Art Center, SITE Santa Fe, and many other venues in the United States and around the world. Skowhegan enjoys the benefit of having an exceptionally talented group of alumni and former faculty who maintain a strong connection to the School, and on whom it has drawn for speakers for SkowheganTALKS.

For more info. . .

Join Ingo Schulze in conversation with author Eliot Weinberger as they explore the intersection of private and public in their lives and in their work. Schulze is known as a chronicler of the multiple realities of East and West Germany of the late eighties and early nineties as they became one Germany again and, fittingly, Neue Leben (New Lives, Knopf, fall 2008) is several books in one. Schulze's "hero", Enrico Türmer, has almost as many lives as the proverbial cat - wannabe writer, dramaturge, newspaper editor, ad circular publisher, budding capitalist - lives told through the letters of this novel, collected and annotated by a character named Ingo Schulze.

In cooperation with the German Book Office, Deutsches Haus at NYU and the Consulate General of the Federal Republic of Germany.

For more info . . .

India's science and technology graduates are fanning out across the world, resulting in an exchange between India and the "global village." Satya Sharma, Center of Excellence for Wireless and Information Technology, Stony Brook University, and Marehalli G. Prasad, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Stevens Institute of Technology, explain how education and technology have contributed to India's globalization. A question-and-answer session follows.

For more info. . .

Third Annual Arthur Miller Freedom to Write Lecture by Umberto Eco
Introduced by Francine Prose, with an on-stage interview by Joyce Carol Oates

The third annual PEN World Voices Arthur Miller Freedom to Write Lecture is to be presented by Italian writer, philosopher, critic, and professor, Umberto Eco, whose body of work has made significant contributions to the fields of semiotics, aesthetics, medievalism, and literary theory. Umberto Eco is one of the most acclaimed writers of the last thirty years, winning a number of awards and receiving over thirty honorary doctorates from academic institutions across the world. We are honored to welcome Umberto Eco to deliver this prestigious lecture, which was established in collaboration with the Arthur Miller Estate. Umberto Eco will be joined onstage after his lecture for a discussion with three-time Pulitzer Prize-winning author Joyce Carol Oates. The evening will be introduced by PEN President, Francine Prose.

To purchase tickets over the phone: 212.868.4444.

For more info. . .

The Institute for Social and Economic Research Policy (ISERP) and the Workshop on Contentious Politics present, "The Politics of Childbirth; Contesting Medical Rationality in Advanced Industrialized Countries."

ISERP has been running in various guises at various universities for thirty years. In its current guise, it reviews work in progress on contentious politics, broadly defined, mainly by faculty and graduate students in history and social sciences at Columbia and other New York Area institutions.

Contact Sun-Chul Kim: sk840@columbia.edu

For more info . . .

Roundtable will be led by Joel Greenblatt (Managing Partner, Gotham Capital and Adjunct Professor of Finance and Economics, Columbia Business School).

For more info. . .

Floriano Filho, a fullbright/ American Political Science Association Congressional Fellow, will deliver the open lecture on U.S. and Brazilian relations.

Contact: 718-960-8470

For more info. . .

How are our lives reflected by our possessions and how has this changed through different times and cultures? Join an interdisciplinary panel of scholars and writers as they explore questions about collecting and collections. Leah Dilworth, Professor of English, Long Island University, and author of Acts of Possession: Collecting in America; Anne Higonnet, Professor of Art History, Barnard College, and author of Pictures of Innocence: the History and Crisis of Ideal Childhood; Judith Pascoe, Professor of English, University of Iowa, and author of The Hummingbird Cabinet: A Rare and Curious History of Romantic Collectors; and Bettina Carbonell, Assistant Professor of English at John Jay College, and editor of Museum Studies in Context: An Anthology. Moderated by Valerie Allen, Resident Mellon Fellow at the Center for the Humanities, 2007-2008.

Contact: 212-817-2005

For more info. . .

Gerry Kearns is University Senior Lecturer and Fellow of Jesus College, Cambridge University. He is Historical Geography Convenor for the European Social Science History Association and is currently working on Geopolitics and Empire, a book about the relations between the ideologies of Victorian-British and Neo-Conservative-American imperialism.

Center for Place, Culture & Politics: http://web.gc.cuny.edu/pcp

Contact: 212-817-1880

For more info. . .

Scholar Eve Sicular will speak on "Lesbian & Gay Subtext from a Cinema of Diaspora." Despite the taboo surrounding homosexuality, the topic was too intriguing to be left entirely out of the Yiddish picture. An exploration of lesbian & gay subtext in Yiddish cinema during its heyday, from the 1920's to the outbreak of World War II, reveals distinctly Jewish concerns of the time intertwined with a striking array of allusions to this highly-charged subject. Filmmaker/historian Eve Sicular has lectured throughout North America and Europe on Yiddish and Soviet cinema. A former curator of Film & Photography Archives at the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, she has also worked for the Department of Film at New York's Museum of Modern Art on the series "Bridge of Light: Yiddish Film Between Two Worlds."

Contact: 212-650-6388

For more info. . .

Distinguished Lectures Series in Computer Science

David Haussler, UC Santa Cruz

Evolutionary Genomics of the Human Genome

Abstract:

With our ability to sequence entire genomes, we have for the first time the opportunity to compare the genomes of present day species, and deduce the trajectories by which they diversified from a common ancestral genome. Starting with a small shrew-like ancestor in the Cretaceous period approximately 100 million years ago, the different species of placental mammals radiated outward, creating a stunning diversity of forms from whales to armadillos to humans. From the genomes of present-day species, it is possible to computationally reconstruct what most of the DNA bases in the genome of the common ancestor of placental mammals must have looked like. We can then deduce most of the changes that lead to humans. In so doing, we discover how Darwinian evolution has shaped us at the molecular level.

Because most random mutations to functionally important regions of DNA reduce fitness, these changes usually disappear over time in a process known as negative selection. From its unusually high conservation between species, it is immediately evident that at least 5% of the human genome has been under negative selection during most of mammalian evolution, and is hence likely to be functionally important. Protein-coding genes and structural RNA genes stand out among the negatively selected regions because of their distinctive pattern of restricted DNA base substitutions, insertions and deletions. However, most of the DNA under negative selection in mammalian genomes, and indeed vertebrate genomes in general, does not appear to be part of protein-coding genes, and shares no sequence similarity with any DNA in the genomes of invertebrates. Experimental evidence suggests that many of these unclassified functional elements serve to regulate genes involved in embryonic development.

Overlaid on the background of negative selection, we occasionally see a short segment of widely conserved DNA that has rapidly changed in a particular lineage, suggesting possible positive selection for a modified function in that lineage. The most dramatic example of this in the last 5 million years of human evolution occurs in a previously unstudied RNA gene expressed in the developing cerebral cortex, known as Human Accelerated Region 1 (HAR1). This gene is turned on only in a select set of neurons, during the time in fetal development when these neurons orchestrate the formation of the substantially larger cortex of the human brain. It will be many years before the biology of such examples is fully understood, but right now we relish the opportunity to get a first peek at the molecular tinkering that transformed our animal ancestors into humans.

Contact Prof. Itsik Pe'er: ip2169@columbia.edu

For more info. . .

Join John Esposito, University Professor, Professor of Religion and International Affairs, Professor of Islamic Studies, and Founding Director of the Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at the Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University, and Craig Calhoun, University Professor of the Social Sciences and Director of the Institute for Public Knowledge at NYU, for a discussion on "Who Speaks for Islam?"

Open to the public with photo ID. A light reception will follow the discussion.

For more info. . .

These programs celebrate the legacy of Charles Darwin with leading scientists in evolutionary biology.

Panelists:
David Kohn, Darwin historian, Darwin's Delight: The Man and His Botany; Michael Ruse, philosopher, Is Darwinism an Exhausted Paradigm?
Rita Colwell, environmental microbiologist, oceanographer, and former director of the National Science Foundation, Speciation in the Time of Microbes
Edward O. Wilson, two-time Pulitzer Prize winner, entomologist, and biologist known for his pioneering work on evolution and sociobiology, will introduce the session.

After the presentations, the panelists will engage in a lively question-and-answer period with the audience.

Please call 800-322-6924 for information and to purchase tickets.

For more info. . .

Between 1894 and 1915, the first generation of filmmakers produced more than 250 motion pictures with boxing and prizefighting as their subject. Fight pictures were among the most conspicuous, profitable and controversial productions of early cinema. From 1912 until 1940, U.S. law banned the interstate distribution of film recordings of prizefights. Congress enacted the law to suppress the celebrity of the first black heavyweight champion, Jack Johnson, titleholder from 1908 to 1915. Yet, only a few years after the start of the ban, fight pictures flourished again. Throughout the 1920s and 30s these supposedly criminal records were nearly ubiquitous in movie houses and other venues. In conjunction with his newly released book Fight Pictures: A History of Boxing and Early Cinema, Dan Streible presents glimpses of some of these ephemeral films, most of which no longer survive or exist only in fragments. Also on screen will be much of the ephemera – posters, photographs, cartoons, advertisements and the like – that accompanied these "moving fight pictures."

See the likes of:

Corbett and Courtney Before the Kinetograph (1894)
Corbett-Fitzsimmons Fight (1897)
A Scrap in Black and White (1903)
Squires vs. Burns, Ocean View, Cal., July 4th, 1907 (1907)
Jack Johnson: Der Meister Boxer der Welt (1911)

For more info . . .

The Earth Institute's Center for Sustainable Urban Development (CSUD) presents the premiere of the documentary film "Innovations for an Urban World: A Global Urban Summit," with a panel discussion titled, "Addressing the Vulnerabilities of the Urban Poor - Interdisciplinary Research and Education for Action."

Moderator: Steven A. Cohen, Executive Director and Chief Operating Officer, The Earth Institute at Columbia University.

Panelists:
Patricia Culligan, Professor, Department of Civil Engineering and Engineering Mechanics, Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science
Elliott Sclar, Director, The Center for Sustainable Urban Development, The Earth Institute at Columbia University and Professor of Urban Planning and International Affairs, School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation
Darren Walker, Vice President, Foundation Initiatives, The Rockefeller Foundation
Stephen Zebiak, Director General, International Research Institute for Climate and Society, The Earth Institute at Columbia University

Contact Jonathan Chanin: jac2115@columbia.edu

For more info. . .

Presidential Roundtable

Professor Steven Markowitz (Center for the Biology of Natural Systems) will deliver a lecture entitled "Cancer Screening: Who Decides? The Case of Lung Cancer." Beverages and cookies will be served; feel free to bring your lunch.

RSVP to the Presidents Office via email to Qc.Pres.EventsRSVP@qc.cuny.edu or by telephone at 718-997-5556. You may attend without an RSVP, but for space reasons, priority will be given to those who respond.

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Cristina Garcia has quietly become one of the most important Latin American writers of our time. Written in beautiful prose, and with a unique social insight, her novels explore the deeply charged political, personal and familial issues surrounding a dual cultural identity. Born in Havana, Cuba, and raised in New York City, Cristina Garcia uses her writing to examine critical questions close to the hearts of millions of Americans: What does it mean for someone with Hispanic roots to achieve comfort, familiarity and success within mainstream American culture? What are the benefits of this duality - and what are the drawbacks and penalties? Garcia's debut novel, the bestselling Dreaming in Cuban, was nominated for the National Book Award. The New York Times called it "remarkable," and pegged her as "a magical new writer. . .blessed with a poet's ear for language, a historian's fascination with the past and a musician's intuitive understanding of the ebb and flow of emotion."

Contact: 212-650-6731

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It is becoming more and more obvious that the process of architectural design and construction is broken. Construction technology evolves at a dizzying pace while knowledge of traditional construction devolves and contractors become brokers, subcontracting all work to others. There is additional risk in seeking an architecturally significant project as it is commonly understood that 'Architecture" leaks, does not work and does not conform to budgets. Owners are forced to spend large percentages of their budgets on risk management. The many talented, highly educated architects are frustrated by their inability to be effective. It is the lawyers, owner’s representatives and insurance companies who reap the benefits of this untenable situation. At the macro level, economists estimate that billions of dollars are lost to construction inefficiencies, risk avoidance and litigation.

Architects have reacted to this environment by attempting to avoid its inherent risk. The result has been a steady evolution of a profession doing less and less, and providing fewer and fewer critical services to its clients. This marginalization has created a cultural and technical wall between design and construction. Since architects are no longer responsible for the realization of their work they have lost the knowledge base that should inform their designs. For sure, they no longer drive the process and needless to say, they are compensated accordingly.

We seek to remedy this situation and propose a new model for practice; accepting rather than shedding responsibility and risk. Architects aught best to understand the intentions, details and technologies of their projects. They aught to provide totally coordinated drawings, schedules and construction sequences for construction. They aught to manage the construction process rather than shrink from it. There aught to be many more great buildings constructed. The talent and the will is there. This is our goal and we have put it into practice by both designing and constructing our projects. We hope the results speak for themselves in terms both of process and product.

Speaker: Peter Gluck, Peter L. Gluck and Partners

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Felix Adler made few institutional proclamations, focusing his considerable energies instead on a unique and inseparable joining of individual and social ethics. But in the above quoted advice he puts forth the formula that guided the Ethical Movement through its formative stages: What are the social wants, what are our capabilities, and how can we best give expression to our ethics toward social reform? How can we best make our strengths count in a world in desperate need of moral anchorage?

Contact: 212-874-5210.

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