Hall has run the quasi-governmental Missouri Technology Corp. since 2009. According to the Post-Dispatch, he’s “been one of the state’s pointmen on efforts to grow high-tech and science jobs. He also helped to craft MOSIRA, the fund recently approved by lawmakers to spark investment in those areas.”

Jason Hall ’97 makes a point during a 2010 Bates Homecoming panel discussion on LGBT career issues as Bates PRIDE founder Larry Handerhan '05 looks on. Hall is the new director of the Missouri Department of Economic Development. Photograph by H. Lincoln Benedict '09.

“Jason Hall is exactly the type of bright, energetic leader we need to help create jobs and move Missouri’s economy forward,” Missouri governor Jay Nixon said in a statement.

• View story from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Dec. 30, 2011.

Newly appointed as assistant professor of politics, Stephen Engel’s research interests include American political development, constitutional development, relations among the branches of government, and social movements, particularly gay and lesbian mobilization for social change.

He is the author of American Politicians Confront the Court: Opposition Politics and Changing Responses to Judicial Power, published in June by Cambridge University Press. The book examines hostilities directed toward the federal judiciary by Congress or the president, exploring the evolution of such antagonism, the forms it takes and the purposes it serves.

A key theme is the relationship between the prevailing understanding of political opposition and the way elected politicians regard the judiciary. When opposition is broadly viewed as inimical to the political system or the Constitution, Engel finds, hostilities toward the judiciary — where opposition may be entrenched due to lifetime appointments — can be aggressive.

But when opposition is considered a healthy part of political and civic life, elected officials instead seek to harness the judiciary for political gain. “This finding raises the issue of whether we’re currently in a moment where we view our political opposition as legitimate,” Engel explains.

“In recent years, political rhetoric and behavior have become highly partisan, and some might claim that levels of political violence have increased. While I’m skeptical of the possibility, it’s an open question whether our politics are returning to a context in which politicians view their opposition as ultimately disloyal and threatening to the Constitution.”

Engel is also the author of The Unfinished Revolution: Social Movement Theory and the Gay and Lesbian Movement (Cambridge University Press, 2001). His recent research into social-movement politics explores how changes in one aspect of a social movement’s agenda might affect other aspects, with potentially disruptive results to the strategies of interest groups.

What drew Engel to Bates? In addition to the quality of the Bates liberal arts education, he says, the politics department has an innovative approach that aims to create an integrated understanding of political theory and practice — something “particularly appealing given my own interdisciplinary undergraduate and graduate work.”

Finally, he notes that he has been active in improving the campus climate for LGBT and queer-identified students. “I was highly attracted to Bates’ stated commitments to diversity and equity that stem from its abolitionist tradition.”

This fall, Engel will teach a 100-level course on American political institutions and processes, and a 200-level course on constitutional law and the balance of powers in the U.S. government.

Engel received three advanced degrees in political science at Yale — a master’s of arts, a master’s of philosophy and a doctorate. He previously earned an interdisciplinary master of arts in social thought at New York University, and a BA in social studies at Wesleyan University.

The debate will be webcast and broadcast live by MPBN on radio and television 8-9 p.m. from the Olin Concert Hall at Bates, 75 Russell St., Lewiston. Because seating is limited, admission will be by ticket only, reserved in advance — but tickets are free and a limited number of them are still available on a first-come, first-served basis, via e-mail at yourvote2010[at]bates[dot]edu. There is a limit of one ticket per e-mail address. While all tickets must be reserved prior to the debate, any tickets not claimed by 7:30 p.m. at the reservation table in Olin will be offered to the general public.

A RELATED EVENT:
Beside the gubernatorial debate, Bates’ Brooks Quimby Debate Council and students in the Presidential Campaign Rhetoric class will offer a two-part program from 4:15 to 5:15 p.m. in the Mays Center, near Central Ave. and Russell St. The debaters will outline the candidates’ stances on key issues and talk about areas of divergence and overlap. The Rhetoric students will then discuss strategies of political debates. Both these associated events are open to all at no charge.

DEBATE BACKGROUND:
While no questions will be taken from the audience during the live debate, MPBN welcomes questions received prior to the debate for consideration by its moderator and two questioners. Those questions should be submitted by e-mail to talk(at)mpbn(dot)net before noon Oct. 28.

All five candidates on the state ballot committed to participating in the Oct. 28 debate at Bates: independent candidate Eliot Cutler, Republican nominee and Waterville Mayor Paul LePage, Democratic nominee and Senate President Elizabeth Mitchell and independent candidates Shawn Moody and Kevin Scott.

However, late Wednesday afternoon Oct. 27 LePage notified MPBN he will not be participating in the Bates debate.

This and prior debates will all be available on demand at www.mpbn.net as part of MPBN’s “Your Vote 2010″ election coverage, and will be rebroadcast over the weekend.

MPBN gubernatorial debate broadcast times:
10/28 Thursday 8 p.m. LIVE – Also live radio simulcast, and webcast at www.mpbn.net
10/29 Friday 1 p.m. – Radio
10/29 Friday 8:30 p.m. – TV
10/31 Sunday 11 a.m. -TV
10/31 Sunday 4:30 p.m. – TV
11/1 Monday 3 p.m. – Radio
The debate will also be available on demand at www.mpbn.net following the live event.

The debate will be webcast and broadcast live by MPBN on radio and television 8-9 p.m. from the Olin Concert Hall at Bates, 75 Russell St., Lewiston. Because seating is limited, most seating will be by advance invitation by MPBN and Bates College. A limited number of non-invitation free tickets will become available on a first-come, first-served basis at 10 a.m. Oct. 25, available  at  yourvote2010@bates.edu <yourvote2010[at]bates[dot]edu>.

While no questions will be taken from the audience during the live debate, MPBN welcomes questions received prior to the debate for consideration by its moderator and two questioners. Those questions should be submitted to talk@mpbn.net <talk[at]mpbn[dot]net> before noon Oct. 28.

All five candidates on the state ballot have committed to participating in the Oct. 28 debate at Bates: independent candidate Eliot Cutler, Republican nominee and Waterville Mayor Paul LePage, Democratic nominee and Senate President Elizabeth Mitchell and independent candidates Shawn Moody and Kevin Scott.

This and prior debates will all be available on demand at www.mpbn.net as part of MPBN’s  ”Your Vote 2010″ election coverage, and will be rebroadcast over the weekend.

MPBN gubernatorial debate broadcast times:

10/28 Thursday 8 p.m. LIVE – Also live radio simulcast, and webcast at www.mpbn.net

10/29 Friday 1 p.m. – Radio

10/29 Friday 8:30 p.m. – TV

10/31 Sunday 11 a.m. -TV

10/31 Sunday 4:30 p.m. – TV

11/1 Monday 3 p.m. – Radio

The debate will also be available on demand at www.mpbn.net following the live event.

Here are speaker biographies for African Refugee Health: Best Practices.  The conference’s nearly three dozen presenters include healthcare workers from across the country and beyond; faculty in diverse disciplines from Bates and other colleges; and interpreters, social workers, counselors and other experts in breaching cultural factors that impede refugee access to healthcare (*indicates keynote speaker).

Aden Hersi Ahmed: Trained by Medicines Sans Frontiers; has eight years of experience as head auxiliary nurse in Hagadera Hospital, Dadaab Refugee Camp, Kenya, where he lived as a refugee. Currently works as an interpreter for C.A.L.L., Lewiston, Maine.

Omar Ahmed, M.A.: A refugee from Somalia, where he worked for the Ministry of Education, he has co-authored papers on Somali immigrant and refugee mental health and substance abuse in the Journal of International Psychology Bulletin. Holder of a master’s in leadership and organizational studies, he is a Somali elder and poet-playwright who mediates conflict in the Somali diaspora.

Fozia A. Abrar, M.D., M.P.H.: Practices occupational medicine at HealthPartners Clinics in Minnesota. Also board-certified by the American Board of Preventive Medicine in public health and general preventive medicine, she lectures on Somali health beliefs.

Fadumo O. Ali, B.S.: Certified community health worker for WellShare International, Minnesota which has developed numerous health education materials that are culturally appropriate for Somali patients. She has extensive experience with counseling on child-spacing methods and has been a family advocate for 10 years.

John Bernardo, M.D.: Medical director, Division of Tuberculosis Prevention and Control, Massachusetts Department of Public Health. Professor of medicine at Boston University School of Medicine.

Catherine Besteman, Ph.D.: Anthropologist and Colby professor, she completed field work in the late 1980s in Somalia and has published several works on the Somali Bantu refugees who have settled in the U.S. Editor of The Struggle for Land in Southern Somalia: The War Behind the War and author of Transforming Cape Town (California Series in Public Anthropology).

Nina Bacaner, M.D., M.P.H., D.T.M&H: Faculty member at the University of Minnesota Medical School, where she is on the Global Health Pathway Mentor List because of her interest in the chronic health concerns of immigrants.  She has 25 years of experience in immigrant medicine and has published articles on travel, tropical and immigrant medicine.

*Martin Cetron, M.D.B.: Director for the Division of Global Migration and Quarantine at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).  He has authored or co-authored more than 100 publications and received numerous awards for his work since joining CDC in 1992, including the 2009 Public Health Hero Award. His primary research interests are international health and global migration with a focus on emerging infections, tropical diseases and vaccine-preventable diseases in mobile populations. He holds faculty appointments at the Emory University School of Medicine and the Department of Epidemiology at Rollins School of Public Health.  As a graduate of the Harvard School of Public Health and Kennedy School of Government’s National Preparedness Leadership Institute, he has led several domestic and international outbreak investigations and has played a leadership role in CDC responses to intentional and naturally acquired emerging infectious disease outbreaks, including the 2001 anthrax bio-terrorism incident, the 2003 global SARS epidemic the 2003 U.S. monkeypox outbreak and recent 2009 H1N1 influenza pandemic.

Jennifer Cochran, M.P.H.: Director, Refugee and Immigrant Health Program, Massachusetts Department of Public Health.

Susan Cote, R.D.H., M.S.: Dental hygienist who is program manager for From the First Tooth, Portland, Maine. She was previously program coordinator for cross-cultural oral health at the Program for Refugee Oral Health at the Boston Center for Refugee Health and Human Rights at Boston Medical Center. She has published articles on refugee oral health and on survivors of torture, and contributed the chapter “Dental Diseases and Disorders” in the medical text Immigrant Medicine. She lectures at national and international conferences on refugee oral health.

Warren Dalal, L.C.S.W.: Public health analyst for the CDC Division of Global Migration and Quarantine. After seven years of working on the HIV epidemic in Kenya he has returned to DGMQ, where he serves on the domestic team as well as providing programmatic support to the Refugee Health team in Kenya.

Asmo Dol, B.S.: An ethnic Somali from Ethiopia, she is a medical interpreter who has just completed her degree in biology of human health and illnesses. She also has six years of experience working for a refugee resettlement service organization doing employment counseling and cultural-skills training. Has worked on female genital mutilation issues for Save the Children, USA.

Mohamed Duale, M.Sci.: Consultant to the Minnesota Institute of Public Health, for which he does drug counseling for the East African community in the Twin Cities and is a researcher and speaker on effects of khat on human health.  He is also senior community health worker for Hennepin County Child and Teen Checkups Program, Minnesota.

Heidi Ellis, Ph.D.: Clinical psychologist and assistant professor of psychiatry at Children’s Hospital Boston/Harvard Medical School, and director of the Children’s Hospital Center for Refugee Trauma and Resilience. Her expertise lies in developing interventions for traumatized youth.

Paul Geltman, M.D., M.P.H.: Medical director of Refugee and Immigrant Health Program, Massachusetts Department of Public Health. He is associate professor of pediatrics at Boston University School of Medicine, and pediatrician with Cambridge Health Alliance.

Alice Haines, M.D.: Family physician, and community preceptor at Central Maine Medical Center Family Medicine Residency, she has done primary care and international health clinic for federally qualified health center clinics in Maine that serve a large population of East African refugees. She does asylum exams for HealthRight International and has worked for the German Technical Organization in the Dadaab Refugee Camp, Kenya.

Susan Jacoby, C.N.M., D.N.P.: Nurse-midwife at Central Maine Obstetrics-Gynecology, Lewiston, Maine, where she has assisted African immigrants and refugees with their deliveries for the last five years. Her recent dissertation for Massachusetts General Hospital Institute of Health Professions was Certified Nurse Midwives’ Obstetrical Management of Women with Female Genital Mutilation/Cutting.

Jean Kahn, R.N., C.N.M.: Nurse-midwife at Women’s Health Pavilion, St. Mary’s Regional Medical Center, Lewiston, Maine. Has extensive experience with well-woman and maternity care for East African immigrants and refugees.

Mursal Khaliif, R.N., M.A.: Senior director of Multilingual Service and Patient Transport at Cambridge Health Alliance, Cambridge, Mass. Originally from Somalia, he has worked and lived in Minnesota, where he served as the director of Community Health and Language Services for the University of Minnesota Medical Center. He is a cultural-competency fellow with the American Hospital Association and regularly presents at national conferences on cultural and linguistically appropriate services in the delivery of care to all patients.

Christina Khaokham, M.S.N., M.P.H.: Epidemic intelligence service officer for the CDC, assigned to the County of San Diego Epidemiology and Immunizations Services Branch and CDC Division of Global Migration and Quarantine’s U.S.–Mexico Unit to work on health issues, including Somali migration via that border.

Georgi V. Kroupin, M.A.: Director of mental health and lead psychologist at HealthPartners Center for International Health, St. Paul, Minn., he came to the U.S. to pursue a doctorate in family social science and family therapy. He has lectured extensively on the mental health needs of refugees.

Susan Lee, R.N.: As health coordinator for Maine Childhood Lead Poisoning Prevention, Maine Center for Disease Control, Maine Department of Human Services, she oversees case management of children identified with elevated blood lead levels for the state of Maine and has been active in ensuring that elevated leads in the Somali community are appropriately addressed. She also has been a public health nurse, visiting families with young children in homes in central Maine.

Heather Lindkvist, M.A.: Anthropology instructor at Bates College and member of its Public Health General Education Concentration.  Has published on female genital mutilation, and on elevated lead levels in Lewiston’s Somali population.

Abdirahman Mahamud, M.D.: Now with the Division of Viral Disease at the CDC, he was most recently the medical officer at the Dadaab refugee camp in Kenya as part of the Refugee Health Team for the CDC.  His work included surveillance activities as well as outbreak investigation and management for camps in Kenya.

*Richard Mollica, M.D.: Harvard Medical School professor and director of the Harvard Program in Refugee Trauma, he writes on issues pertaining to global mental health, social healing, personal healing, human rights and the obstacles and pathways to peace. His book Healing Invisible Wounds: Paths to Hope and Recovery in a Violent World won the Creative Scholarship Award of the Society for the Study of Psychiatry and Culture in 2010. His many honors include the Human Rights Award and the Kun-Po-Soo Award (2010) of the American Psychiatric Association.

Mary Naughton, M.D., M.P.H.: Medical officer, Division of Global Migration and Quarantine, CDC. Wrote the technical instructions for tuberculosis screening of persons changing status in the U.S. (green card applicants) and contributed to the “Yellow Book,” the CDC Health Information for International Travel 2010. As lead physician for panel physician training, she trains physicians who perform medical screening of immigrants and refugees and performs on-site evaluations of their work.

Douglas Pryce, M.D.: Participated in the advisory committee that oversaw the development of the Minnesota Refugee Health Provider Guide. For five years he has taught in the CDC-sponsored Global Health Course at the University of Minnesota, and lectures on Vitamin D, cancer screening in immigrants, participatory research, travel advice for pilgrims to the Hajj and chronic hepatitis B. As a physician at Hennepin County Medical Center, he has had 15 years’ experience caring for Somali patients in a Somali clinic. As a civil surgeon, he certifies medical exams needed for the immigration paperwork for refugees and asylees. His research into Somali health has included Vitamin D, cardiovascular disease risk factors and tobacco cessation.

Julie M. Schirmer, L.C.S.W., M.S.W.: Director, Behavioral Medicine and Assistant Family Medicine Clerkship Director, Family Practice Residency Program, Maine Medical Center, Portland, Maine. Editor of and contributor to Behavioral Medicine in Primary Care: A Global Perspective.

Reshid Shankole, M.D.: Has 10 years of experience working for the Ministry of Health in his native Ethiopia, including a working relationship with the Refugee Health Unit, which coordinates refugee care with international nongovernmental organizations.

William Stauffer, M.D., M.S.P.H., C.Trop.Med.: Associate professor of internal medicine and pediatrics, infectious diseases, University of Minnesota (UMN).  Medical consultant, CDC, Division of Global Migration and Quarantine, Immigrant and Refugee Health.  Facilitating development of the domestic refugee medical screening guidelines.  Course director, eight-week UMN/CDC Global Health Course that focuses on care of globally mobile populations, including immigrants and refugees. He is lead author of “Pre-departure and Post-arrival Management of P. falciparum Malaria in Refugees Relocating from Sub-Saharan Africa to the United States.”

Eyasu Teshale, M.D.: Medical officer, Division of Viral Hepatitis, CDC. Research has ranged from hepatitis E epidemics in sub-Saharan Africa to hepatitis patterns in drug abusers in the U.S. He is author of the article “Hepatitis A Among International Adoptees and Their Contacts.”

*Patricia Walker, M.D., D.T.M.&H.: Medical director at Center for International Health, HealthPartners, St. Paul, Minn., and associate medical director of the Global Health Pathway at the University of Minnesota. She is co-editor of the recent medical textbook Immigrant Medicine. She and her clinic are featured in “My Heart It Is Delicious”: Setting the Course for Cross-Cultural Health Care, a book about the inception and workings of the Center for International Health, Minnesota’s international medicine clinic, which has served refugees for more than 30 years.

Michelle Weinberg, M.D., M.P.H.: Medical officer, Division of Global Migration and Quarantine, National Center for Emerging Infectious Disease, CDC. She is a pediatric infectious disease specialist who has worked on refugee health issues with CDC for more than 10 years.

Sergut Wolde-Yohannes, M.Ed., M.P.H.: Member of senior staff at the Refugee and Immigrant Health Program, Massachusetts Department of Public Health. Has extensive experience working with refugees and lecturing and presenting on female genital mutilation. Has also presented to the American Public Health Association on Refugee Resettlement and Public Health Challenges: The Experience of Somali Bantu Refugee Resettlement.

Ana Zea, D.D.S.: Innovator for Oral Health Program at Boston Center for Refugee Health and Human Rights, which offers screening, education and referrals for follow-up care, enhancing access to culturally sensitive dental care for refugees and asylum seekers.

The talk is sponsored by the social sciences division chair and the departments of economics, history and sociology.

The talk critically examines American political and economic development and its engagement with the world through the lens of illicit trade, from molasses smuggling in Colonial times to cross-border bootlegging during Prohibition to “cybersmuggling” in the digital age.

Andreas will look at the little-studied role of illicit commerce in the country’s early economic development and industrialization, westward expansion and international influence, including the East Asian opium trade and opium wars.

He will also examine how prohibitions and anti-smuggling campaigns have stimulated the growth of the federal government’s internal and external policing powers. The focus is on the clandestine movement of people (illicit slave trading, migrant smuggling, sex trafficking) and of goods (prohibited, stolen and untaxed commodities).

Andreas has written, co-written or co-edited eight books. Prior to Brown, he was an academy scholar at Harvard University, a research fellow at the Brookings Institution and an SSRC-MacArthur Foundation Fellow on International Peace and Security. He holds a master’s degree and doctorate in government from Cornell University and a bachelor’s in political science from Swarthmore College.

Bates College Trustee Emeritus Frank M. Coffin ’40, LL.D ’58, a widely admired judge on the 1st Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals for four decades and one of few individuals ever to serve in all three branches of the federal government, died Dec. 7 at age 90.

In a Dec. 9 story in the Portland Press Herald, Judge Kermit Lipez of the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals described Coffin as  a “national treasure. In his combination of great talents, accomplishments, humanity and decency, and in the respect and love he inspired in so many people, he was unique.”

The New York Times praised Coffin for his “writings on the techniques and obligations of a federal appeals court judge” that have guided judges everything from judicial decision making to interactions with colleagues. In her Dec. 31 blog entry for The New York Times, Linda Greenhouse describes Coffin as a judge who believed “that federal judges, while independent, would also be accountable to the public and constantly obliged to demonstrate the legitimacy of the judicial enterprise.”

During his lifetime, Coffin conducted three interviews for the Edmund S. Muskie Oral History Collection at Bates. Transcripts are available here.

Energy entrepreneur Paul Fenn ’88 and his bates brain trust are at the front of Northern California’s green-power revolution

By Bryce Hubner ’00

Fifteen years ago, as a young, idealistic, and naive aide to a Massachusetts state senator, Paul Fenn ’88 had a big idea: Allow local governments to bypass traditional utilities to create their own electricity purchasing collectives.

He called it Community Choice Aggregation, and he hoped CCA would give municipalities the power to pursue greener electricity options.

So he wrote up a bill — which was quickly laughed out of the Massachusetts State House. “It was an awkward moment,” Fenn says.

Today, Fenn is still idealistic but far less naive. As founder and president of San Francisco-based Local Power Inc., he is smack in the middle of a Northern California electricity revolution that could change the way power is generated and delivered to millions of citizens in the San Francisco area.

Right now, two influential California communities — the city of San Francisco and Marin County — are swiftly moving to adopt the state’s first CCA policies. These green energy agreements, supporters say, will deliver never-before-seen levels of renewable energy: 51 percent in San Francisco and 75 percent in Marin County, respectively.

Meanwhile, the agreements would meet or beat the electricity rates offered by current electricity provider Pacific Gas & Electric.

“If successful, these programs will be world leaders in climate action and green-power development,” Fenn recently told The New York Times.

The CCA concept in California owes its existence to Fenn and Local Power, whose Bates-flavored corporate brain trust includes, among others, co-founder and CFO Julia Peters ’86, who is married to Fenn; co-founder and COO John Cutler ’86; and adviser Bradley Turner ’87 of Booze Allen Hamilton, a lawyer and contract expert in public-sector projects.

A decade ago, in the wake of crippling energy shortages blamed in part on utility company mismanagement, California sought ways to improve the state’s electricity market. Fenn, by then in California, wrote another CCA bill, and this one was embraced and adopted in 2002.

Basically, a CCA replaces the traditional investor-owned utility with a local organization that can control the types of power it procures, explains Severin Borenstein, co-director of the Energy Institute at Berkeley’s Haas School of Business.

“A CCA is usually established by a community that feels its big power company isn’t buying the types of green power it wants,” he says. Enter progressive-minded Marin County and San Francisco.  CCAs are uniquely positioned “integrators,” Fenn recently told the Times. “They don’t…have conflicts like [owning] old power plants and transmission lines.”

In Marin County, Fenn’s Local Power competed with the big boys in bidding to provide new, local, and green electricity. As of mid-winter, Shell Energy North America was the lead bidder for the Marin CCA.
In San Francisco, where Fenn authored the local CCA ordinance, the stakes are perhaps higher for Local Power. In October, the city officially hired Local Power to coordinate the city’s CCA effort, known as CleanPowerSF. Thanks to Fenn, the CCA has some financial oomph: a bond authority mechanism to allow more than $1 billion in green power investment.

“The idea is to create some investment strength and leverage,” he says, “so that the CCA doesn’t just negotiate to buy power, but also issues bonds, builds renewable energy infrastructure, and then buys power from it.”

Why has the CCA movement gotten the incumbent utility, Pacific Gas & Electric, so steamed?

In response, Pacific Gas & Electric is now sponsoring a statewide ballot initiative that would require two-thirds voter approval before a local government could form a CCA involving public investment. Considering that the time of day might not win a two-thirds majority in any state, the California ballot measure, if passed, would effectively kill the CCA movement. (In fact, the Sierra Club of California has sarcastically suggested that the ballot measure be renamed “The Utility Monopoly Protection Amendment,” or “ThUMPA.”)

Why has the CCA movement gotten the incumbent utility, Pacific Gas & Electric, so steamed? Just follow the money. The Marin Energy Authority estimates that its CCA will cost PG&E as much as $94 million annually in Marin County alone. PG&E has already spent $3 million to acquire signatures to send the initiative to ballot in June, and some reports suggest PG&E is ready to spend up to another $100 million to bull the initiative through.

Fenn, meanwhile, tries to remain equal parts Zen master and Erin Brockovich. “You know how it is,” Fenn says. “First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they attack you, and then you win. We’re in the attacking stage now, which is nice.”

More than a decade ago, Paul Fenn and Local Power arrived on the Bay Area scene in what amounts to a fascinating amalgamation of scholarship, activism, politics, and business.

A history major at Bates, Fenn was so consumed by his thesis on the “medicalization of madness” that he shaved half his head and half his beard for six months just so he could “see how people responded to someone who looked mad.” His method went beyond madness, as Fenn’s thesis won highest honors and the Ernest P. Muller Prize as the outstanding history thesis.

After Bates he traveled to Berlin, where he was a rabble-rousing civil rights activist with the left-wing (and often militant) Autonomen movement. Later, he earned a master’s in intellectual history at the University of Chicago, where he got interested in energy policies.

Particularly interesting to Fenn was emission credit trading, at the time just beginning at the Chicago Board of Trade. Fenn says he arrived at studying commodity structures as an historical phenomenon by way of a “Marxist-Hochstadtian” perspective (“Hochstadtian,” he explains, being a reverent nod to former Bates history professor Steve Hochstadt), further informed by the Marxist philosopher Georg Lukács, “who basically said that the problem with the world is the commodification of everything.” That is, we want everything to be tradeable.

Fenn’s first real job came in 1994, when he joined the staff of a Massachusetts state senator, Mark Montigny, who had just been appointed chair of the Committee on Energy. Fenn took the job so he could write a bill on energy policy that treated electricity as a “physical and local thing rather than simply a commodity.”

The nation’s first-ever CCA bill, Massachusetts Senate Bill 447, was submitted by Montigny in December 1994. But shortly after the bill was filed, Montigny was stripped of his chairmanship after a losing political battle with then-Senate President Billy Bulger.

A bitter political lesson followed. Fenn learned what happens when a legislator submits legislation that no one wants. “Everybody was really pissed off,” Fenn says. “I mean, I just cooked up the bill. Nobody was asking for it, no cities wanted to aggregate, no environmental groups wanted city government involved, and the utilities were obviously against it.”

He was quickly out of a job, but the idea didn’t die. Two years later, with deregulation being encouraged at the federal level, CCA was part of sweeping deregulation of Massachusetts utilities. Several communities on Cape Cod later established the Cape Light Compact, the nation’s first CCA.

“I felt like the only openly Republican, and Paul was an eccentric socialist,” Cutler says. “But we appreciated each other’s candor.”

Fenn soon headed to California, where he began his environmental and energy advocacy and, at times, worked for good friend John Cutler ’86, who recalls their initial interactions at Bates. “I felt like the only openly Republican, and Paul was an eccentric socialist,” Cutler says. “But we appreciated each other’s candor.”

Cutler was involved with a San Francisco startup that eventually became T-Mobile USA. In the late 1990s, he needed help executing a massive wireless effort in the Czech Republic, and turned to his cerebral friend Fenn. “Paul could be injected into almost any situation and get the job done,” Cutler says.
The Czech project required competitive bidding for an operating license plus infrastructure work at more than 700 sites — just the kind of logistical nightmare Local Power will face if they hope to bring large-scale green energy to the Bay Area.

CleanPowerSF proposes to bring 360 megawatts of green power into San Francisco, and Fenn knows he’d be laughed into Nevada if he promised to deliver the goods with just one sustainable source.

“The complexity of our venture has to do with a decentralized model,” he explains. “The energy we’re trying to bring to San Francisco would normally equal one big power plant. We’ll have to build a thousand small, green generators to hit that number. This is why our experience with telecommunications and wireless networks has been invaluable: Those companies deal with thousands of sites to deliver a product, and so will we.”

Fenn initially founded Local Power in the 1990s as a nonprofit to advance green energy at the grassroots and government level. Fenn, joined by Cutler, decided to incorporate in 2007 to provide consulting services and “energy intelligence tools” to aid the CCA movement. “The private sector moves a lot faster because money is the bottom line,” Fenn says. “Government, by nature, is risk-averse, slow, and conservative. But the planet’s running out of time.”

Nationally, the CCA concept is applauded for empowering communities to make decisions about what types of energy they procure. (CCAs are in place in Massachusetts and Ohio and, while not technically a CCA movement, Maine’s utility deregulation a decade ago has allowed Bates and other Maine entities to buy their own green power.)

But Fenn’s vision of large-scale CCAs offering green power at “meet-or-beat” utility rates is met with skepticism. Conventional wisdom says that delivering green power on a massive scale and as cost-effectively as traditional utilities is impossible. Renewable energy sources, like wind and sun, are too site-specific and only intermittent. Power grids are fragmented, so you can’t transport energy over long distances with any real efficacy.

“CCAs can be organized as amazing opportunities to purchase green energy,” says Borenstein of Berkeley’s Haas School. But, he adds, when a CCA decides to ramp up on more expensive technology and power, like solar or wind, prices will go up just as they would for a major utility. “Meet-or-beat rates are implausible,” he argues.

Fenn says critics fail to appreciate how bond financing is not like a typical business loan. “Bonds change the economic equation profoundly,” he says. “The cost of power can be brought down to reasonable levels based on a long-term investment approach.”

For example, he says, private banks once said it was too expensive to build massive bridges like the Golden Gate Bridge and that the paybacks were too slow. “That’s why public finance authorities were created to build them. The same argument applies to solving climate change. We need brick and mortar and hardhats — not just market transaction windfalls and commodity fetishism.”

Fenn knows what’s at stake for the emerging green CCAs in Marin and San Francisco. Victory in Northern California could presage a national green-power revolution. But if the two CCAs fail — quite possible if the PG&E–supported statewide ballot measure passes in June — it could mean death for the entire CCA movement.

Fenn is now older and wiser but still no politician.

Speaking before a San Francisco energy commission last year, Fenn raised eyebrows by saying that installing a tidal-power turbine in San Francisco Bay was worth it, even if it meant the potential deaths of construction workers. “Consider how many people your current energy supply is killing right now,” he told the commission.

“It’s funny,” Fenn says now, “how a country that prides itself on innovating sometimes maintains an intense cultural resistance to innovation. It’s what killed the auto industry in Detroit and it’s what will sink the power industry.”

Fenn’s ideals, however, are intact. “Our biggest challenge, by far, is helping people understand that it’s possible.”

Bryce Hubner ’00 is a freelance writer and photographer based in Northern California.

Maine Gov. John E. Baldacci drove from state budget battles that continued into the early morning Friday to a breakfast presentation at the Edmund S. Muskie Archives on The Creative Economy and Maine’s Future.

Baldacci was introduced at the breakfast seminar by Bates President Elaine Tuttle Hansen to about 130 guests from the Lewiston-Auburn community. Baldacci reminded the group that he will be returning next month for a two-day conference on the same topic at the nearby Bates Mill Complex.

The term “creative economy” is a broad one, Baldacci said. “It captures everything that’s magical about economic growth. The creative economy is what exists when we recognize that every individual in our community is an economic engine. Every individual has the potential to be an entrepreneur. Every individual has the right to fully explore his or her potential as a productive member of a vibrant community.”

He said that the state’s role in the creative economy is removing impediments to growth, investing in communities, investing in laptops and education and training for youth and workers.

The roots of the creative economy are in the arts community, Baldacci said. “The Maine Arts Commission has helped me develop next month’s conference, with a core conviction that jobs in the arts and investments in the arts are good for everyone – the arts float everyone’s boat. Not only do people work for L-A Arts or the Bates Dance Festival – actors, producers, dancers – but also people move to Lewiston-Auburn because they want to live in a community with theaters and festivals and music.”

Baldacci noted that one of the panels in the May conference on the creative economy will be on cultural tourism. He said people are drawn to Maine by its many craftsmen and for visits to Maine’s historic sites, villages and museums, such as Lewiston’s Franco-American Heritage Center and the majestic architecture of its Saints Peter and Paul Church.

Baldacci said that the rejuvenation of the Lewiston-Auburn community “is showing the way, frankly, to the entire Maine economy.” He said that when a community develops the arts, it creates a synergy that builds on itself. “Architects are attracted to communities that have a creative base. They help renovate downtown buildings, they help fill up downtown restaurants, the multiplier effect creates even more jobs. And entrepreneurs are attracted to that vibrancy – bringing jobs in software and small businesses and more.

“Recognizing the creative economy is recognizing that Maine is becoming a magnet, and we can grow by becoming a place that people want to live. We want our youth to live in Maine – we want to invest in arts and culture that will make them want to live here. Entrepreneurs move to Maine because of our lakes and our ocean – we want to invest in natural resources so that we will always be a magnet for those individuals who will become economic engines themselves. We are excited to be a magnet for immigration.”

For more than 17 years, the president of Bates has sponsored a Breakfast Seminar that has brought leaders of Lewiston and Auburn together for presentations and discussion of local, national and global issues. As a theme for this academic year’s seminars, Hansen selected “Paths to Economic Growth and Opportunity in Maine.” Baldacci was the capstone speaker in this year’s series.

Sponsored by the English department, the Emily Carroll Carleton Lecture at Bates is open to the public at no cost. A reception will follow.

Smith’s lecture at Bates is titled after his book The Prison and the American Imagination (Yale University Press, 2009), which gives special attention to an inmate’s figurative passage from civil death to a secular rebirth.

Smith is an assistant professor of English at Yale University. His teaching interests range from American, African and Native American literature to law, historicism, prison studies and the critique of power.

“I am interested in how literary texts of various genres have involved themselves with such problems as punishment, secular justice, human rights and legal personhood,” Smith writes in his Yale bio.

Smith is working on his second book, which explores the public culture of justice in the Revolutionary and antebellum periods. The book considers legal, religious and literary texts in which speakers call upon a higher law as a source of their authority. Smith argues that such invocations enacted new ways of summoning public power in the era of print and popular sovereignty.

The Emily Carroll Carleton Lecture is funded by the King Family Charitable Lead Trust in honor of Emily Carroll Carleton ’99.