Pulitzer Prize-winning Novelist, European Bioethicist, Expert on Political Protest Among Speakers at Yale University

The following talks at Yale University during the week of Sept. 29-Oct. 5 are free and open to the public.

Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist will be guest at master’s tea

William Kennedy, who won the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award for his 1983 “Ironweed,” will be the guest at a tea on Wednesday, Oct. 1, at 4:30 p.m. in the master’s house of Calhoun College, 189 Elm St. Mr. Kennedy will discuss his latest book and his other writings.

Mr. Kennedy is director of the New York State Writers Institute and an English professor at the University of Albany. He has written five other novels that, together with “Ironweed,” form the Albany Cycle, a series of books that revolve around life in Mr. Kennedy’s home city of Albany, New York. The other books in the Albany Cycle are “The Ink Truck,” “Legs,” “Billy Phelan’s Greatest Game,” “Quinn’s Book” and “Very Old Bones,” which have been translated into two dozen languages.

His other works include “O Albany,” an impressionist history of the city; “Riding the Yellow Trolley Car,” a collection of his journalism and essays; the 1996 novel “The Flaming Corsage”; and the play “Grand View.” He and his son, Brendan, coauthored two children’s books “Charlie Malarkey and the Belly Button Machine” and “Charlie Malarkey and the Singing Moose.”

Mr. Kennedy wrote the screenplay for the 1987 movie “Ironweed” and coauthored the screenplay for “The Cotton Club” with Francis Coppola. In 1994 Mr. Kennedy’s life and work were the subject of the documentary film “William Kennedy’s Albany,” which was aired nationally on the PBS television network.

Biomedical ethics and the European Union

Ludger Honnefelder, a member of a committee that drafted the Council of Europe’s Convention on Biomedical Issues, will speak on the topic “Bioethics in Europe: Defining Human Rights” on Thursday, Oct. 2, at 4:30 p.m. in the common room of the Divinity School, 409 Prospect St. His talk is sponsored by the Divinity School and the Alexander von Humboldt Association of Connecticut.

Mr. Honnefelder, a professor at Bonn University, is a member of the Council of Europe’s Steering Committee on Bioethics, which drafted the Convention on Biomedical Ethics. Last April, 22 of the 40 member states of the Council of Europe approved the internationally binding convention, which defines human rights for research subjects, medical patients and organ donors.

Mr. Honnefelder will discuss the principles established by the convention, which include preserving human dignity and identity, giving priority to the interests of the individual rather than those of science or society as a whole, and requiring consent for legitimate medical interventions. The latter requirement, for example, makes it illegal for children to donate organs to a sibling, since minors cannot give consent. The convention, which already governs research funded by the European Union, will have legal force when the parliaments of the member states ratify it. For further information, contact Rega Wood at 432-5671.

Role of political protest to be explored in Hollingshead Lecture

Doug McAdam, professor of sociology at the University of Arizona and a leading theorist of social movements, will deliver the department of sociology’s 1997 A.B. Hollingshead Lecture on Friday, Oct. 3, at 4 p.m. in Rm. 211 of the Hall of Graduate Studies, 320 York St. His topic is “Do Movements Matter? Toward a Systematic Understanding of the Role of Political Protest in Social Change Processes.”

Professor McAdam pioneered the development of a social psychological approach to social movements that is considered free of sentimentality, and a political theory approach that emphasized power and group interests rather than the standard rational choice viewpoint. He has linked social movements to larger national and international settings, as well as to the latest developments in organizational theory, political theory and cognitive psychology. His results appear in his four books.