Another Semester of Lackluster Ath Speakers?

Last semester, Scripps College clearly brought the better speakers to campus. (Excepting, of course, the offerings of the Salvatori Center, which brought far fewer speakers than it usually does to campus.)

For my money, I think it's fair to say that Ayaan Hirsi Ali was one of the best speakers I have ever seen, especially when she demolished those Muslim radical students who hijacked the question of answer period.

In any event, the Ath this semester looks to be as boring as it was last semester. The list isn't up yet, but here's what I have found from looking around on the schedule.

Here's who we have in September.

Before I tear it what I consider to be one of the worst semesters ever, here are some of the Ath talks I'm looking forward to.

There's CalTech Professor Edward C. Stone, who has written on the universe and our role in it. (I'm a sci-fi geek what can I say?)

And as much as I find a lot of what Steven L. Spiegel has to say to be somewhat dated and wrong on the Middle East. (He famously suggested that Iraq would become just like Aghanistan before 9-11 and he was very wrong, thanks to the efforts of our military forces.)

I'm most looking forward to Roxana Saberi, a former Miss North Dakota and freelance journalist who was imprisoned by the Iranian regime and released after a grueling ordeal. She's got a book in the works about her experiences dealing with Iranian censorship. (Did I mention she's a fox?) I'll definitely be going to this talk.

I could go either way on these talks.

• There's a promised CMC student Debate. The topic hasn't been announced yet, so here are a few suggestions likely to get shot down: affirmative action (always relevant at a college campus) or health care. Given how left leaning John Meany, the head of the Claremont Debate Union is, I'd be willing to bet that it'll be a topic where the majority of students are on one side -- say, "gay marriage" (which Ilan Wurman argued against as a freshman) -- provided he has anything to do with it.

• (September 10) Adam Gopnik of The New Yorker is a good get, but I don't understand why he's the Class of 2013's speaker. Hasn't the tradition been to have a CMC professor do the talking so as to acquaint students? I thought that tradition worked, but maybe I'm mistaken and just generalizing too much from the past few years. Still, I would pay to see Professor Jaffa give him a dressing down on his book that compares Darwin and Lincoln. The idea that America wouldn't be a democracy or a good republic if it didn't free the slaves is simply historicism.

• Because the Roberts Environmental Center is ideological rather than empirical, you can bet that Professor David Rutledge's talk on peak oil will be depressing and an appeal to mitigate against so-called global warming. Just watch his YouTube video. Instead, the Roberts Environmental Center should have invited Professor Vaclav Smil who gave a great talk on oil and its future here (audio only.) Smil has studied, modeled, and predicted oil markets and biogeochemical cycles. He's advised China on environmental options and energy. By contrast, Rutledge has no background in climate research, but then Smil might say things that make Roberts uncomfortable.

But here are some of the more lackluster talks.

• The paragraph describing Francisco Vazquez CMC '72 is just another example of how the diversicrats have taken over the attention and the funds of the academy. The title of the talk? "Latinos in the United States: A Continental Quest for Democracy." I quote,
  
  Francisco Vazquez '72: professor of liberal studies; director, Hutchins Institute for Public Policy and Community Action, Sonoma State University; co-author,Latino/a Thought: Culture, Politics, and Society (2003)

• And yes, the rumors are true. Claremont McKennan will be embarassing and disgracing the reputation of the Athenaeum by bringing RuPaul Charles. Yeah, we're bringing a drag queen radical to campus. Best quotation? Wikipedia says that s/he/it/xe is "noted" among drag queens for his indifference towards the gender-specific pronouns used to address him. He says, "You can call me he. You can call me she. You can call me Regis and Kathie Lee; I don't care! Just as long as you call me."