Jefferson Scholar, NBA Basketball Player, Wildlife Expert, Microsoft Executive and More to Speak at Yale

The following talks at Yale University Oct. 26-Nov. 2 are free and open to the public, unless noted otherwise.

Scholar to discuss Jefferson in first Bosworth Lecture

Joseph J. Ellis Ph.D., the Ford Foundation Professor of History at Mount Holyoke College and author of an award-winning book on Thomas Jefferson, will deliver the history department’s first Frank K. Bosworth Jr. ‘45 Memorial Lecture in American History on Monday, Oct. 26. His lecture, titled “What Jefferson Did,” will begin at 4 p.m. in Rm. 211 of the Hall of Graduate Studies, 320 York St.

Ellis is a nationally recognized scholar of colonial and early national American history. His book “American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson” won the 1997 National Book Award for Nonfiction. His other books include “Passionate Sage: The Character and Legacy of John Adams” and “After the Revolution: Profiles of Early American Culture.” Ellis has also published a variety of scholarly articles and opinion pieces in such publications as American Heritage, The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Chicago Tribune, The New Republic and Civilization. His many honors include a Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship and a National Endowment for the Humanities Senior Research Fellowship.

French novelist to present talk about exile

Lela Sebbar, author of numerous novels, essays and collections of photographs, will present a lecture in French, titled “L’Exil, memoire d l’oubli” on Tuesday, Oct. 27, at 4 p.m. at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, 121 Wall St.

Sebbar, who lives in Paris, has devoted her writing to the subjects of love and violence on the North and South shores of the Mediterranean. Her eight novels and numerous novellas are concerned primarily with the topic of Africans living in exile or growing up as “Beurs,” second-generation offspring of Algerian immigrants. Sebbar’s “Sherazade” trilogy rewrites the Western tradition of Orientalism through the eyes of a young woman who refuses to be made into an “other.”

Sebbar’s lecture is sponsored by the French department’s Center for Interdisciplinary French Studies and by the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library.

Former state legislator will discuss the U.S. and the U.N.

Irving Stolberg, who served more than two decades in the Connecticut House of Representatives and is currently president of the Connecticut division of the United Nations Association, will be the guest at a tea on Tuesday, Oct. 27, at 4:30 p.m. in the Calhoun College master’s house, 189 Elm St. His talk is titled “The U.S. and the U.N.: On the Brink of Disaster.”

As principal of International Solutions for the past five years, Stolberg has served as a democracy adviser to numerous goverments around the world, principally in Central and Eastern Europe. His work has encompassed parliamentary structure and process, governmental decentralization, ethics, the environment and conflict resolution, among other issues. During his 22 years in the Connecticut House of Representatives, he served two terms as Speaker of the House and one as House Minority Leader. He also was president of the National Conference of State Legislatures. More recently, he has helped expand the number of chapters in the state’s United Nations Association from four to seven.

Deception is subject of talk by investigative journalist

Investigative journalist Dan Korem will discuss “Lies, Cons and the Truth: The Dangers and Detection of Deception in Contemporary Culture” on Tuesday, Oct. 27, at 8:30 p.m. in Sudler Hall of William L. Harkness Hall, 100 Wall St. His talk, which is free and open to the public, is sponsored by the Yale student chapter of Campus Crusade for Christ.

Korem will use live demonstrations in his talk, which will address issues of truth and deception as they are manifest in the current business, social and political climate. Korem is an internationally known expert on “profiling,” youth gangs, psychic and religious cults and the psychology of deception. He will emphasize that a personal commitment to the truth is the best defense against deception.

NBA basketball player to be guest at tea

Professional basketball player Joe Wolf will be the guest at a tea on Wednesday, Oct. 28, at 4:30 p.m. in the Calhoun College master’s house, 189 Elm St.

Wolf, who played college baseketball at the University of North Carolina (he was a freshman when Michael Jordan was a senior player on the same team) began his professional career in 1987, when he was picked by the Los Angeles Clippers in the first round of the National Basketball Association (NBA) draft. He has since played with a number of teams, including the Boston Celtics, the Portland Trailblazers, Charlotte Hornets, Orlando Magic, the Milwaukee Bucks and most recently, for the Denver Nuggets.

Outside magazine editor to give slide lecture about predators

“The Improbable Lion, and the Ultimate Fate of Ultimate Predators” is the title of a talk being presented on Thursday, Oct. 29, by David Quammen ‘70, editor at large for Outside magazine. His talk will begin at 4:30 p.m. in Sage Hall, 205 Prospect St.

Quammen’s slide lecture will draw on work from his forthcoming book about large, solitary predators – including the saltwater crocodile of northern Australia, the Asiatic lion in western India and the grizzly bear in the Yellowstone ecosystem – and the question of whether, as Quammen puts it, “such fearsome, inconvenient species can be expected to survive much longer on a planet dominated by Homo sapiens.” His campus talk will focus particularly on the Asiatic lion in the Indian forest sanctuary known as Gir, the only place on Earth where that subspecies of lion survives, surrounded by 980 million people.

After graduating from Yale, Quammen attended Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar. He began his career as a columnist for Outside in 1981, and his nature essays and other work won two National Magazine Awards. Among his eight books are “Natural Acts,” “The Song of the Dodo” and “Wild Thoughts from Wild Places,” which have won numerous awards, including the Academy Award (Literature) from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, Great Britain’s BP Natural World Book Prize, the John Burroughs Medal for nature writing and the Lannan Literary Award for Nonfiction.

Microsoft executive to deliver Sheffield lecture in engineering

Nathan Myhrvold, chief technology officer and member of the Executive Committee at Microsoft Corp., will present the next Sheffield Fellowship address. His talk, titled “The Future of Software,” will be presented Thursday, Oct. 29, at 4:30 p.m. in Sudler Auditorium of William L. Harkness Hall, 100 Wall St. The event will be followed by a reception in the Presidents Room, Woolsey Hall, corner of College and Grove streets. D. Allan Bromley, dean of the Faculty of Engineering, is the sponsor of the fellowship program.

Myhrvold reports directly to Microsoft chief executive officer Bill Gates, and is responsible for the broad strategic and business planning for the entire company. He leads the Advanced Technology and Research Group, providing technical leadership for the more than $2-billion-a-year investment made in research and development across the company. He also founded and continues to manage Microsoft Research, a research lab dedicated to creating new technology in support of the company’s vision for the evolution of personal computing. Myhrvold joined Microsoft as director of special projects in 1986. He has worked with renowned scientist Stephen Hawking on research in cosmology, quantum field theory in curved space time, and quantum theories of gravitation. He currently works during periods of time off as an assistant chef at one of Seattle’s leading French restaurants, and he has certificates in mountain climbing, formula car racing and photography.

Quality in child care is subject of Bush Center talk

Deborah Lowe Vandell, professor of psychology at the University of Wisconsin, will give a talk titled “Child Care Quality: Does It Really Matter?” on Friday, Oct. 30, at noon in the weekly lecture series sponsored by the Bush Center in Child Development and Social Policy. The event will be held in Rm. 119 of the Hall of Graduate Studies, 320 York St.

Vandell has concentrated her research on child care for more than 10 years. She is a principal investigator on the national study of early child care funded by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD), and is a member of the NICHD Early Child Care Research Network. She has also conducted two multi-year studies of the effect of after-school care on children’s development. She is particularly interested in child care quality and the needs of low-income children. Vandell began her career as a kindergarten teacher in Walpole, Massachusetts. She has taught in the department of educational psychology at the University of Wisconsin since 1989 and was formerly an associate professor in psychology and human development at the University of Texas at Dallas. For further information, call 432-9935.