The Empire State College Alumni Student Association and UNAR hosts:
Historical Voices Lecture Series 2009-2010
at UNARTuesday, March 9, 2010
5:30 – 7:00pm Networking with the Dean Reception
7:00 pm LectureDr. Wayne Willis: A New Deal for the 21st Century?
The Obama Agenda in Historical PerspectiveMany are comparing the current economic and political turmoil to the challenges faced during the Great Depression of the 1930s. How useful are these comparisons? What was the New Deal and how well did it work? Can President Obama become the Franklin Roosevelt of our time? Is that what America needs? This lecture will explore these questions by placing the Obama agenda in historical perspective.
Wayne Carr Willis is Professor of Historical and Cultural Studies at SUNY Empire State College, and ESC “Scholar Across the College” for 2009-2010. He holds a B. A. degree in Political Science from Washington University in St. Louis and M. A. and Ph.D. degrees in History of American Civilization from Brandeis University. A recipient of the ESC award for Excellence in Mentoring, his scholarship in American cultural history examines the interplay of the arts with politics and intellectual life since the late 1800s. His current projects include a study of George Bernard Shaw’s views on America and an intellectual biography of the architect/ critic/stage designer/mystic Claude Bragdon.
Tuesday, May 9, 2010
5:30 – 7:00pm Networking with the Dean Reception
7:00 pm LectureDr. Michael Keefer: Rochester's Global Alliance: an AIDS vaccine in our lifetime
The HIV/AIDS pandemic is an unprecedented public health problem that has affected millions of people over the past quarter century and has touched the lives of essentially everyone in some way. Work on the development of a vaccine to prevent the spread of infection has been underway since HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, was discovered in 1984. Progress has been made, although it has become clear that the virus is a much more formidable foe than originally thought. Dr. Keefer will describe the successes and disappointments that have occurred over 20 years of HIV vaccine research and show how the struggle has opened up new insights on how the immune system works that can lead to previously unforeseen advances in public health and medicine.
Dr. Keefer is an Infectious Diseases specialist at the University of Rochester who "grew up" professionally with the HIV pandemic and the HIV vaccine research effort. Initially attracted to the UR in 1987 because of its established reputation in research on anti-viral vaccines and medications, in 1989 he was the first to show cellular immune responses to HIV among recipients of the first HIV vaccine candidate studied by the NIH. In 1991 he became the Director of the UR HIV Vaccine Trials Unit, a position he holds to this day, and has worked closely with scientists, clinicians and communities from around the world. Dr. Keefer offers a unique perspective upon what has become one of the most important scientific challenges of our day.
