Michael Sattinger is a Professor of Economics at the State University at Albany. He presented a review of a book by Joseph Stiglitz, The Price of Inequality. Stiglitz is a Nobel-laureate economist and former World Bank official.

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Our April 1880 speaker was Ulysses S. Grant. For those with short memories, General Grant, as he is usually known, commanded the Union forces in the recent unpleasantness with the southern states, and subsequently served two terms as president.

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Rosemary Armao is a journalism professor at SUNY Albany, and also works as an investigative editor in Eastern Europe and other foreign locales. She is a regular panelist on WAMC’s Media Project. Her talk was titled “Media Ethics in Covering Controversial Issues.” It was an interactive presentation, with much back-and forth with audience members.

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Dr. Alice Green- "Mass Incarceration and the Criminal Justice System" January, 2013

Alice Green has a doctorate in criminal justice, and in 1985 founded the Center for Law and Justice in Albany, which she still runs. She is also an adjunct professor at SUNY, and has long been a vocal advocate on the issue of African-American incarceration. To explain what she does, and why, Dr. Green cited three major influences.

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Paul & Mary Liz Stewart- "The Underground Railroad History Project" December, 2012

Paul and Mary Liz Stewart have spent 14 years on their “Underground Railroad History Project,” which has included the discovery and restoration of a previously unknown Underground Railroad site in Albany. Their presentation focused particularly on the story of Stephen and Harriet Myers; Stephen was born a slave in 1800, gained his freedom at 18, and was active for many years in Albany aiding “freedom seekers” – a term the Stewarts used in preference to “fugitive slaves.”.

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Mike Sofka is a systems programmer at RPI, in charge of its e-mail service. This means dealing with spam. Lots and lots of spam. His talk was titled, “Does Anybody Fall For This?” (Apparently, the answer is yes, or he wouldn’t have been giving the talk.)
He promised to go light on jargon, but a certain amount was necessary. While my dictionary defines jargon as “incoherent speech; gibberish,” for these purposes it is actually a way of describing and labeling things.

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Jenness Cortez is an artist working out of Averill Park (and married to our January speaker, Leonard Perlmutter, of the American Meditation Institute). Her book of recent paintings, Homage to the Creative Spirit, won the 2012 Independent Publishers’ “Outstanding Book of the Year” Award.

Dr. Jeffrey Berman is a Distinguished Teaching Professor in SUNY’s English Department, and author of several books; his talk focused on his latest, Death Education in the Writing Classroom.
Dr. Berman’s pedagogy seeks to relate literature with personal experience and feelings. He explained that his career has been heavily influenced by two tragedies.

Dr. Gary Brill, who teaches psychology at Rutgers University, was born and raised in Albany. He is president of the New Jersey Humanist Network, and campus coordinator of the Rutgers Humanist Chaplaincy. His talk was titled “Truth or Happiness: Must Humanists Choose?”

Dr. Sheldon Solomon- discusses C. Rogers' book- "On Becoming A Person" July, 2012

Sheldon Solomon, making an encore CDHS appearance, is a Professor of Psychology at Skidmore, concentrating on the nature of self, consciousness, and social behavior. His talk was an exegesis of Carl Rogers’s classic book, On Becoming a Person, as a humanistic approach to personality theory and psychotherapy.

Paul Grondahl is an award-winning journalist whose work has been carried in the Albany Times-Union since 1984; he is also the author of several books, including a landmark biography of Mayor Erastus Corning.

The theme of his talk was finding humanity in inhumane situations. He focused on his experiences reporting on four of them: September 11, AIDS in Malawi (in 2006), the 2010 Haiti earthquake, and 2005’s Hurricane Katrina. He showed video footage of all these (featuring work by Times-Union photographer Steve Jacobs), and read from his reportage.

Dr. Michael Murphy- "Ethical Concerns of Genetically Modified Organisms" May, 2012

A major part of Dr. Murphy's presentation concerned public perceptions, and how to combat irrationality with rational argument. A common idea is that genetic modification entails putting strange genes into organisms – and then feeding them to us. Thus the scare term “frankenfoods.” As an example, Dr. Murphy showed a picture of the bananafish (entirely imaginary). Thus the subject evokes strong emotion, and GM is often the target of irrationally vitriolic attacks. The climate of hostility to GM foods led Zambia, during a 2002 famine, to reject U.S. food donations in fear that they were “contaminated” by GM. Many thousands starved to death in consequence.

Patricia A. McGeown has been President and CEO of Upper Hudson Planned Parenthood for the past 18 years. The organization provides medical services to over 15,000 people annually. Her talk was titled “The Escalating War on Women’s Health Care.”

Gerald Fierst is a story teller and humanist celebrant, authorized to perform marriages. He is author of the book, The Heart of the Wedding. While a student at NYU Law School in the late ‘60s (as I was), Fierst got involved with the New York Free Theater, an improvisational street theater group, and from there grew into story telling as a kind of performance art.

Dr. Ricki Lewis discusses her new book- "The Forever Fix: Gene Therapy and the Boy Who Saved It." February, 2012

Ricki Lewis is a longtime CDHS member and prolific writer on science topics. Her new book, published by St. Martin’s Press, is The Forever Fix: Gene Therapy and the Boy Who Saved It. This is the first general book on the important subject of gene therapy. A “gene” is a segment of the very long molecule DNA (part of a chromosome; this is the mechanism of inheritance). What a gene actually does is to instruct the manufacture of a specific protein; that, in turn, is the basic building block for the whole complex system that constitutes a living organism.

Leonard Perlmutter is head of the American Meditation Institute, headquartered in Averill Park, where he teaches meditation and Yoga. The Institute has published his book, The Heart and Science of Yoga. Perlmutter’s talk was about what he calls “the Science of Yoga,” which has little to do with the common picture of Yoga as bodily contortion exercises. He began by likening Yoga to the principles of humanism, entailing a constant search for truth, focusing upon this earthly life and its betterment.

Our December speaker was Curran Streett, Program Director for the Pride Center of the Capital Region. Founded in 1970, it was originally called the Capital District Gay Community Center. With three paid staff and relying mainly on volunteers, the Center offers meeting and activity space to the LGBT community (estimated to be between 4 and 10% of the total population) in a 9-county region. LGBT” stands for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender.

Dr. Bruce W. Dearstyne: “New York Remembers . . . Or Does It?” November, 2011

Dearstyne casts himself as an advocate for New York History – making him something of a rara avis. But he holds that history is not dry and dull, but really full of more entertaining stories than in fiction. Further, he says, the way we think about our past shapes our progress into the future.

Marc Adams is – let’s see – a direct descendant of John Adams; child of a fundamentalist Christian minister; a former student at Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University; gay; an ordained Humanist minister; author of 9 books; and founder of HeartStrong, which provides help for LGBT students in religious schools. Adams explained that already in kindergarten he felt “different,” and by age 7 realized that while teachers were pushing the boy-girl thing, he was instead attracted to male classmates.

Dr. Steven A. Leibo is a Professor at the Sage Colleges and SUNY and frequent commentator on Northeast Public Radio. He previously addressed us on climate change. Leibo’s September 11 talk was titled “Ten Years Later.”

His focus was on the Middle East, covering both the historical background and the current situation. Leibo identified several distinct stages, starting with the postwar “secular nationalist movements” exemplified by Egypt’s Nasser.

Colin Donnaruma: The Continuing Struggle to Defend Civil Rights: the NYCLU's Priorities for 2011-2012. Aug 2011

Donnaruma began by noting that with the election of Barack Obama we had "overly high expectations". Here in NYS, however, same-sex marriage equality passed fast this year. NYS is now the sixth and the third-most-populous state in the U.S. to do so. Many more – 44 – are yet to follow suit. We have Marriage Equality in NY but not at the Federal Government level.

Matt Cherry: The Right to Blaspheme -- Why an atheist defends religious freedom at the UN. July, 2011

Matt Cherry, formerly with the Institute for Humanist studies, is currently the UN representative for the International Humanist and Ethical Union (IHEU), a global federation of humanist and atheist groups. His talk was entitled, “Why an atheist defends religious freedom at the UN – the right to blaspheme.”

Our June speaker, Christopher Chabris, is the co-author with Daniel Simons, of The Invisible Gorilla: How Our Intuitions Deceive Us.

The book (and his talk) discusses what he calls “everyday illusions” – intuitive commonsense beliefs about how our minds work, that often tend to be systematically wrong, hard to overcome, and can get us into big trouble if we’re not aware of them.

Dr. Lawrence Wittner has written extensively on the history of peace movements. His most recent book is titled Confronting the Bomb.

His theme was the danger of nuclear weapons, and complacency about it. There are 22,000 nuclear weapons in the world. If the U.S. attacked Russia with 300 nukes, the earth would be left a smoldering ruin...

Charles Nalle was a slave owned by Blucher Hansborough of Culpeper, Virginia (actually, he was also Hansborough’s half brother.). Charles was married to Kitty – itself a privileged situation for a slave – but she was on a nearby plantation – it was common to keep slave families from living together. When Kitty’s owner died, his will freed her; but Virginia law required freed slaves to leave the state. Kitty went to Washington, DC, still slave territory, in order to remain near Charles. Then, in October 1858, aided by a local white agent of the Underground Railroad, Charles managed to escape north.

He began with the premise that people are unequal, some having more access to power and decision-making, and the ability to make – and interpret – history. Due to shifting sands in these regards, an historical event’s meaning is always unstable. Kuritz further held that history always has its “silences” – things not talked about.

Dr. Smith saw the global warming debate turning into more of a political issue than a scientific one; a “manufactured controversy” in which deniers base their positions on what they’d like to be true, and are impervious to facts. Thus he observed that even as data comes in confirming that global temperatures are rising, public belief in this is falling. Dr. Smith noted the obvious parallels to the evolution “debate.”

Dr. Janny Venema- Kiliaen van Rensselaer, New Netherland, and the New Netherland Research Center, December, 2010

Dr. Janny (pronounced “Yanni,” like that Greek schmaltz musician) Venema has been with the New Netherland project for 25 years and is Assistant Director. The Society, under the auspices of the State Library and the Holland Society, is engaged in translating and publishing surviving documents from the Dutch colonial period. Dr. Venema is the author of two books, one about Beverwijck (the Dutch name for Albany) in the 1650s, and one about Kiliaen van Rensselaer, the “first Patroon” of what is now Albany and Rensselaer counties.

Dr. Sherrie Lyons- Species, Serpents, Spirits and Skulls: Science at the Margins of the Victorian Age, November, 2010

At the November 14 meeting of the CDHS, Dr. Sherrie Lyons (BA in Genetics (Berkley)) and Ph. D in the History of Science (University of Chicago), treated a large and enthusiastic audience to a summary of her latest book, Species, Serpents, Spirits and Skulls: Science at the Margins of the Victorian Age. Her presentation was preceded by an interactive session that attempted to answer the question, “How many humanists does it take to get a Mac laptop to communicate with the digital projector?” Dr. Lyons’ presentation described the explosion of scientific investigation and discoveries in the fields of biology, chemistry and geology during the Victorian Age and the coincident proliferation of all sorts of pseudoscience and false science.

Marilyn Sassi has a degree in Fine Arts from Russell Sage, has taught at various local colleges, and has been involved with antiques for over 40 years. Her talk was on the history of toys. Sassi first started with antiques when furnishing an apartment; she would encounter antique toys but resisted their allure, thinking toys are for children. Then one day a publication she wrote for sent her to cover a toy auction. The toys were in glass cases; champagne was served; and not a child was in sight. She was soon hooked.

Stephen D. Solomon teaches First Amendment law at New York University and is Associate Director of NYU’s Carter Journalism Institute. His topic was “Kids and Prayers – the Misunderstood Conflict over God in the Classroom,” based on his recent book, Ellery’s Protest: How One Young Man Defied Tradition and Sparked the Battle over School Prayer.

Dr. Jason Wiles teaches biology at Syracuse Univerity. Having become mindful how misunderstandings about evolution hamper many students in studying biology, Dr. Wiles has focused attention on the teaching of evolution. His presentation was a photo tour of Kentucky’s Creation Museum. Actually located near Cincinnati, this 70,000 square foot, $30 million facility was opened in 2007 by “Answers in Genesis Ministries.” Dr. Wiles’s photos showed it to be no cheesy joke but, in its way, an impressive and seductive attraction.

Nancy Marie Payne, our July speaker, has ten years of experience as a professional storyteller. She presented a first-person narrative of a ten-year-old girl, Jenny, who traveled on the first “orphan train” out of New York City in 1853. While Jenny was fictionalized, everything else about the story was fact-based. ”

Dr. Michael J. Murphy is a Distinguished Teaching Professor Emeritus from the Department of Natural Sciences at SUNY Cobleskill. His topic was “The Immorality of Coerced Sexuality: Lessons from the Biology of Intersex Conditions.” Dr. Murphy’s key premise was that it is indeed immoral to interfere with formation of loving relationships, including those involving sexual intimacy, by rational adults.

Stephen Andersen- Surviving Motherhood in Africa, May, 2010

Our Mother’s Day program was about Motherhood in Africa, presented by Stephen Andersen, who took a leave from his IBM job to serve as a Peace Corps volunteer in Mali, 2005-07. The Peace Corps is a US government program, begun in 1961, aimed at promoting world peace and friendship, through better understanding of Americans by other peoples, as well as better understanding of other peoples by Americans.

Flynn stressed that throughout history, “people like us” have been very much in the minority; and if you think the societal climate is hostile, it was way worse in past times. But nevertheless, Flynn avowed, it’s such people who have been in the vanguard of civilizational progress, with an impact greatly disproportionate to their numbers.

Connie Frisbee Houde is a photojournalist who has traveled to Afghanistan 4 times since 2003; her last trip, in late 2009, was with “Code Pink,” an activist women’s organization, spending 10 days in Kabul.

She began with a slideshow of a visit to Kabul’s street of music stores, focusing on one musician in particular, whom she labeled “the essence of Afghanistan.”

Dr. Frank Wind- Awash in Tales- Noah's Flood and Other Flood Myths, February, 2010

Dr. Frank Wind, a professional geologist and storyteller, has been an active member of CDHS. His talk was entitled “Awash in Tales – the Biblical Story of Noah’s Flood and Other Flood Myths.” Dr. Wind began by citing the famed 17th century calculation by Bishop Ussher that, based on the Bible’s chronology, the creation occurred in 4004 BCE – to be exact, on October 23....

Our January program featured Dr. John Delano, from the University at Albany. Professor John W. Delano is a Distinguished Teaching Professor at SUNY’s Department of Atmospheric and Environmental Sciences, and Associate Director of NASA’s New York Center for Astrobiology. He discussed the search for life beyond Earth, focusing upon the Kepler space telescope, launched last March.

Past Events at CDHS 2010, 2011, 2012

This page lists recent lectures and events. It includes a brief description plus a link to a complete summary.

Stephen Andersen- Surviving Motherhood in Africa, May, 2010

Dr. Frank Wind- Awash in Tales- Noah's Flood and Other Flood Myths, February, 2010