University Lectures

Monday, October 9^th

4:30pm Gregg Hall, 100 Porter Hall

Current Immigration Issues in the United States

HISPANIC HERITAGE MONTH LECTURE

Sergio Arau and Yareli Arizmendi

Co-creators and Stars of the Film, “A Day without a Mexican”

Immigration from Mexico into the United States, one of the hottest topics in the country, will be the subject of this year’s Hispanic Heritage Month keynote lecture by the husband and wife team of Sergio Arau and Yareli Arizmendi. Arau and Arizmendi will address immigration issues and also discuss their critically acclaimed film, “A Day without a Mexican,” which they’ll screen at 4:00pm on Sunday, October 8^th in the Cooper Auditorium in the Tepper School. Arau, an MTV award-winning director, visual artist, musician and political cartoonist, and Arizmendi, an actress and writer, say their film “highlights the growing cultural presence and power of Latinos in the U.S. …and dissects what it means to be Latino in post 9/11 America.”

Arau received his master’s degree in film studies at the National School of Film in his native Mexico City. In 2001, he won the Coral de Plata Award at the Havana Film Festival for his animated short “El Muro/The Wall.” In 1983, Arau formed the musical group, Botellita de Jerez, which combines humor and Mexican traditional music with the contemporary sounds of rock ‘n’ roll. In 1998, he and his group won the MTV award for the song “Café Tacuba’s Alarmal.”

Arizmendi is a renowned actress and writer committed to social change. She has worked with Luis Valdez and Teatro Campesino and developed the “Watcha! Stage Café”, a social satire cabaret at the Centro Cultural de La Raza in San Diego. She earned her master’s degree in 1992 and became a professor at Cal State San Marcos after completing her thesis, “Whatever Happened to the Sleepy Mexican: Four Ways to be a Contemporary Mexican Artist.” She was a founding member of the theater arts component of the school’s interdisciplinary arts program.

Title: Crossing a Minefield: Current Problems with Internet Technology and Policy

Presenter: David Farber, Distinguished Career Professor of Computer Science and Public Policy, Carnegie Mellon.

Date: Thursday, October 12, 2006

Time: noon-1 p.m.

Place: Connan Room, University Center, Carnegie Mellon

ABSTRACT

There has been a raging argument in the U.S. over how Internet access should be priced and controlled. The players have often used emotional words to describe the issues. Rarely does debate focus on understanding the implications of proposed directions on future technologies and services that might be offered.

Recently the issues were debated in a event sponsored by the Center for American Progress, "The Great Debate: What Is Net Neutrality?" Speakers were Vinton G. Cerf, Vice President and Chief Internet Evangelist, Google; and Dave Farber, Distinguished Career Professor of Computer Science and Public Policy, Carnegie Mellon University.

This talk, based on the results of the debate, will address the following issues:

* Impact that networking has had on the world from both a technical and societal view

* Current chaos on the Internet e.g. spam and other nasty pests and what can be done

* Trade-offs across interconnections, privacy, government security and individual freedom

* Current wars over Net Neutrality

More

About the Digital Library Colloquium series:

http://www.sis.pitt.edu/updates/colloquia/DL.html

Thursday, October 12^th

4:30pm Adamson Wing, 136A Baker Hall

What’s Right with Electronic Voting?

Michael I. Shamos, Ph.D., J.D.

Distinguished Career Professor, School of Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon & Electronic Voting Examiner, Commonwealth of Pennsylvania

After the Florida election disaster in 2000, Congress voted over $3 billion to upgrade voting systems across the country. All states were required to implement electronic systems by 2006. Therefore, in the upcoming election vast numbers of people will be voting with new equipment. For example, in November 53 out of Pennsylvania’s 67 counties will vote on touchscreens. In many cases it will be the first time for voters to encounter such technology in a general election.

Electronic voting has been denounced by activist groups as a threat to democracy and by computer scientists as a security risk incapable of remedy even with voter-verified paper trails. However, when real elections have been held using electronic equipment over the past 20 years, no intrusions have been detected and voters are overwhelmingly satisfied that their votes have been recorded and counted faithfully. Where is the truth? Are the activists and computer scientists wrong, or has the public simply been fooled into accepting fatally deficient voting machines?

This talk will start with a quick review of the history of voting in the United States and why voting machines were introduced in the first place. We will look at how winners of elections are officially determined and then focus on the benefits and deficiencies of electronic voting, touching on user interface issues, foreign language ballots, assistive technology for voters with disabilities, paper trails, privacy and voting system security.

The speaker has been statutory examiner of computerized voting systems for Pennsylvania from 1980-2000 and 2004 to the present. He has done election work for the governments of Delaware, Maryland, Massachusetts, Nevada, Texas, Virginia, and West Virginia and conducted more than 115 voting system examinations. He testified before three Congressional committees on electronic voting in 2004 and has been an expert witness in four electronic voting cases, including Taylor v. Onorato, in which a federal judge in Pittsburgh earlier this year found that the ES&S iVotronic system used in Allegheny County conforms to both state and federal law.

Thursday, October 19^th

4:30pm Adamson Wing, 136A Baker Hall

The War in Lebanon: Win, Lose, or Draw – A Reporter’s Perspective

Elli Wohlgelernter

Television reporter for the Israel Broadcasting Authority

Co-sponsored by the Edward and Rose Berman Hillel Jewish University Center of Pittsburgh

Veteran journalist Elli Wohlgelernter, television reporter for IBA (Israel Broadcasting Authority) English News in Jerusalem, will be conducting a lecture tour in the United States from October 11^th through October 30^th. His topic is: “The War in Lebanon: Win, Lose, or Draw,” a reporter's inside look at the war he covered, and where the political process goes from here. An extended question-and-answer session will follow the lecture.

In addition to his work with the IBA, Elli Wohlgelernter is Sports Editor of the forthcoming second edition of the Encyclopedia Judaica. He has previously worked as an editor at Haaretz and was Diaspora Affairs Editor and Jerusalem reporter for The Jerusalem Post. Prior to moving to Israel in 1991, Wohlgelernter was Managing Editor of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, a reporter for the New York Post, and wrote and reported the news for the Fox and ABC-TV stations in New York and Seattle as well as radio stations in New York and Connecticut. Mr. Wohlgelernter, 52, has two daughters and lives in Jerusalem.

Monday, October 30^th

4:30pm Adamson Wing, 136A Baker Hall

The First Human: The Race to Discover Our Earliest Ancestors

Ann Gibbons

Correspondent, Science Magazine

“The First Human…this dynamic chronicle of the race to find the “missing links” between humans and apes transports readers into the highly-competitive world of fossil hunting and into the lives of the ambitous scientists intent on pinpinting the dawn of humankind. The quest to find where and when the earliest human ancestors first appeared is one of the most exciting and challenging of all scientific pursuits. The First Human is the story of four international teams obsessed with solving the mystery of human evolution and of the intense rivalries that propel them.”

Ann Gibbons has been a correspondent for more than a decade for Science magazine, where she has specialized in writing about evolution. With a name like Gibbons, it was perhaps inevitable that she would write about primate evolution, including the evolution of humans. Her research has included many hours observing highly evolved scientists in their familiar habitats, whether upright in the lab sequencing DNA or prone on the ground excavating fossils from ancient graves.

She has taught science writing in the English Department at Carnegie Mellon and has written articles for the New York Times, Discover, Insight travel guies, and other publications.