year students participate in lecture-discussions in groups of about 400 of their classmates. We have space in the Center for the arts (Building 1P) Williamson Theatre to accommodate individual guests (no permission needed) and can have as many as two additional classes at each of the weekday lectures. (There is no space available in the Lecture Hall where Saturday sections meet for their group lecture.) Permission is not needed for classes to attend, but please notify Donna Scimeca 718.982.3405 if you plan to bring a class.
The weekday lectures are 50 minutes in length and are all in the Williamson Theatre. They meet on the following days/times: Wednesdays at 1:25pm and 3:35pm; on Thursdays at 9:05am, 11:15am, 5:30pm, and 6:30pm; and on Saturdays at 10:30am in the Center for the Arts Lecture Hall.
Schedule of Lectures for the week of Mar. 3, 2014:
Wednesday, Mar. 5:
1:25pm Lecture: Donna Scimeca, Coordinator of the Core Program, will lead a group reading of a Mark Twain essay, which will be followed by an open forum discussion where we will try to determine just how free is free speech anyway?
In the summer of 1905, Mark Twain wrote a short essay, entitled “The Privilege of the Grave,” in which he charged that “out of fear, or out of calculated wisdom, or out of reluctance to wound friends,” the living don’t dare to say what they truly think. Such freedom of expression, he said, “ranks with the privilege of committing murder; we may exercise it if we are willing to take the consequences.” After resting for decades in the Twain archives at the University of California, Berkeley,”The Privilege of the Grave” made its first public appearance in The New Yorker magazine in December 2008.
3:35pm Lecture: “The Founding Fathers and Social Media,” presented by Victor Miller: This lecture will focus on how the founding fathers campaigned for and against the ratification of the new Constitution by using the press to their advantage. The presentation will then explore the infamous election of 1800, and how it compares to the politics of today. This presidential race was filled with muckraking, personal attacks, and slander, the results of which affected and shaped the future of the U.S. Finally, this lecture will discuss why the founding fathers would have loved modern social media.
Victor Miller earned his BA in History and MS in Education from the College of Staten Island. He has been teaching Core since 2012.
Thursday, March 6:
9:05am Lecture: “The Founding Fathers and Social Media,” presented by Victor Miller: This lecture will focus on how the founding fathers campaigned for and against the ratification of the new Constitution by using the press to their advantage. The presentation will then explore the infamous election of 1800, and how it compares to the politics of today. This presidential race was filled with muckraking, personal attacks, and slander, the results of which affected and shaped the future of the U.S. Finally, this lecture will discuss why the founding fathers would have loved modern social media.
Victor Miller earned his BA in History and MS in Education from the College of Staten Island. He has been teaching Core since 2012.
11:15 AM Lecture: “The Bill of Rights in Action,” presented by Martin Pasternak: The lecture will ask students to analyze five First Amendment Supreme Court cases and reach a decision before hearing how the court actually voted.
Martin Pasternak earned his PhD from the University of Massachusetts. His dissertation was a biography of the Black abolitionist Henry Highland Garnet entitled, Rise Now and Fly to Arms: The Life of Henry Highland Garnet. It was published by Garland Press in 1995. He has taught at CSI for both the History Department and the Core Program for more than ten years.
5:3pm and 6:30pm Lectures: “A Constitution for the United States of America,” presented by Rosemary McCall, will discuss some of the basic tenets of republican democracy. A particular focus will be the landmark 1963 case, Gideon v. Wainwright.
Rosemary McCall earned a JD degree from George Washington University in 1991, and an MS in Geology from University of South Carolina in 1980. She has been an adjunct member of the Core 100 Program at CSI since 2008.
