Todd Gitlin. Photograph by The Associated Press.

Todd Gitlin, a social historian, activist and professor of journalism and sociology at Columbia University, offers a talk titled Will There Be An Occupy 2.0? The lecture will draw on his recent book, Occupy Nation: The Roots, the Spirit, and the Promise of Occupy Wall Street (HarperCollins).

Open to the public at no charge, the event is part of the Civic Forum Series at Bates, sponsored by the Harward Center for Community Partnerships. The series invites audiences to contemplate civic, political and policy issues significant to Maine and beyond.

For more information, please call 207-786-6202. Gitlin’s appearance is presented in partnership with the Machiah Center, a New Gloucester organization that brings writers, activists and citizens together for programs that promote democracy and social justice.

At Bates, Gitlin will address the strengths and weaknesses of the Occupy movement, the ways it has helped shape the presidential campaign, and how the movement might proceed within a political environment it has helped transform.

The author of 15 books, Gitlin has also published in mainstream periodicals like The New York Times, The Washington Post, The New Republic, Harper’s and The Chronicle of Higher Education. He frequently speaks and writes about the globalization of popular uprisings; movements and parties in American politics; continuity and changes between the 1960s and the 2010s; the future of journalism, fiction and writing in the digital age; and new media.

In the 1960s, Gitlin was the third president of Students for a Democratic Society and helped organize the first national demonstration against the Vietnam War and the first American demonstration against corporate aid to the apartheid regime in South Africa.

The panel will seek to clarify the pros, cons and points of confusion and contention in the policy debate over climate change. The event is open to the public at no cost. For more information, please call 207-786-6202.

Panelists are Ted Koffman, executive director of Maine Audubon and former chair of the Natural Resources Committee of the Maine Legislature;Pete Didisheim, advocacy director of the Natural Resources Council of Maine;Melissa Carey, climate change policy specialist with the Environmental Defense Fund;and Tom Tietenberg, Mitchell Family Professor Emeritus of Economics at Colby College, where he taught environmental and natural resource economics.

Climate change is an issue of longstanding interest and concern at Bates. This year, the college asked its 470 arriving first-year students to join together in taking action on carbon emissions and climate change. They were given suggested summer reading related to the topic, and the annual orientation period included a presentation by Franke James, an artist known for her environmental activism.

In October, the first-years and other Bates students will take part in the International Day of Climate Action sponsored by the advocacy organization 350.org.

The Civic Forum is an interactive lively series that invites the audience to wrestle with and explore civic, political and policy issues significant to the Bates community, Maine and beyond.

The Harward Center leads Bates’ efforts in community involvement, including programs in service-learning, community volunteerism and environmental stewardship. The center works with community partners to meet community needs and, in the process, to integrate civic engagement with the Bates educational experience.

About Bates College

Bates College is widely regarded as one of the finest U.S. liberal arts colleges. Alumni frequently cite the capacities they developed at Bates for critical assessment, analysis, expression, aesthetic sensibility and independent thought. About 40 percent of students participate in career internships, and more than two-thirds of recent graduates enroll in graduate study within 10 years after graduation.

Bates was founded in 1855 by Maine abolitionists, and Bates graduates have always included men and women from diverse racial, ethnic and religious backgrounds.

The Harward Center for Community Partnerships continues its 2008-09 Civic Forum series, “Maine in a Transnational World, ” with a presentation on women’s rights through the international perspective of female activists.

Debra Schultz, an historian and human rights consultant; Jael Silliman, a women’s rights program officer for the Ford Foundation; and Shalom Odokara, executive director of Women in Need Industries, offer a presentation titled “Women’s Rights and Women’s Activism: An International Perspective” at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, Jan. 21, in the Edmund Muskie Archives, 70 Campus Ave.

The event is open to the public free of charge. For more information, please contact the Harward Center at 207-786-6202.

Schultz is the author of Going South: Jewish Women in the Civil Rights Movement (New York University Press, 2002). The director and founding board member of the Open Society Institute’s international women’s program, she is co-author of  Memory and Justice: Confronting Past Atrocity and Human Rights Abuse, a Ford Foundation-commissioned report. Schultz has taught history and women’s studies at the New School, Rutgers University and LaGuardia Community College.

An activist in both the U.S. and international women’s health and reproductive rights movements, Silliman was a program officer at the Jessie Smith Noyes Foundation program and an early supporter of organizations of women of color. A program officer concerned with reproductive rights at the Ford Foundation, she is the author of  “Policing the National Body: Race, Gender and Criminalization,” co-edited with Anannya Bhattacharjee. As a professor of women’s studies at the University of Iowa, she wrote about social movements, reproductive rights and women’s health.

One of six children of Nigerian educators who helped build a university in her native country, Odokara, is executive director of Women in Need Industries. Founded in Washington, D.C., in 1995, WINI moved to Maine in 2002, where it helps women who have become homeless or victims of domestic violence. The program also teaches such women to help themselves. WINI makes efforts internationally to help stem the tide of AIDS in Africa and treats those infected. The group also works on projects in Maine, including a temporary home for women released from prison, as well as a spice and beauty products factory that will include a health clinic, day-care facility and educational programs.

The Harward Center forum is a lively series that invites the audience to explore civic, political and policy issues significant to the Bates community, Maine and beyond. The Harward Center leads Bates’ efforts in community involvement, including programs in service-learning, community volunteerism and environmental stewardship.

The center works with community partners to meet community needs and, in the process, to integrate civic engagement with the Bates educational experience.

Theodore Sutherland, a sophomore from Accra, Ghana; Rachel Kurzius, a junior from Ridgewood, N.J.; Marshall Hatch, a junior from Chicago; and Emily Grady, a junior from Littleton, Mass., offer a presentation titled “Why November 4 Matters: Student Voices on the Stakes of the Presidential Election” at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 22, in Chase Hall Lounge, 56 Campus Ave.

The event is open to the public free of charge. For more information, please contact Kristen Cloutier at the Harward Center, at 207-786-6202.

“We are excited to be sponsoring this student panel on the presidential election,” says Harward Center director David Scobey. “Our Civic Forum series presents advocates and activists on important civic and political issues, and the voices of students and young voters could not be more important in this campaign.”

The discussion is not intended as a back-and-forth debate among the candidates’ supporters, Scobey says, but instead a chance to hear students speak for themselves on the stakes of this historic election.

The panel represents a variety of backgrounds and political interests. “I’m eager to hear the panelists’ thoughts and take part in the wider conversation they’ll spark with the audience,” says Scobey.

The forum is a lively series that invites the audience to explore civic, political and policy issues significant to the Bates community, Maine and beyond.

The Harward Center leads Bates’ efforts in community involvement, including programs in service-learning, community volunteerism and environmental stewardship. The center works with community partners to meet community needs and, in the process, to integrate civic engagement with the Bates educational experience.

The Harward Center for Community Partnerships hosts the third and final installment of its Civic Forum series at 7:30 p.m., Wednesday, Feb. 27, in the Edmund S. Muskie Archives, 70 Campus Ave., with a panel titled ” Reimagining the North Woods: The Changing Environment of Maine.”

The event is free and open to the public. For more information, please contact the Harward Center at 207-786-6202.

The Harward Center’s Civic Forum series explores issues of significance to the Bates community, Maine and beyond.

Maine is at a crossroads as it faces major decisions concerning the future of its North Woods. Pending decisions about development could have significant implications for the environment and growth management both in Maine and nationwide.

The three featured panelists have been thinking creatively about these issues for some time. They are Ted Koffman, director of government relations and summer programs, College of the Atlantic and legislator in the Maine House of Representatives; Matt Polstein, entrepreneur and town councilor from Millinocket; and David Vail, Adams-Catlin Professor of Economics, Bowdoin College.

The Harward Center leads Bates’ efforts in community involvement, including programs in service-learning, community volunteerism and environmental stewardship. The center works with community partners to meet community needs and, in the process, to integrate civic engagement with the Bates educational experience.

– Office of Communications and Media Relations