Political Science

This will be an informal lunch with faculty to build awareness about programs at the Middlebury Institute of international studies in Monterey. Maren Gauldin, assistant director of global recruiting at MIIS, and Orion Lewis, professor of political science and faculty advisor for accelerated degrees, will provide brief audiovisual remarks briefing attendees on the structure of the recently announced accelerated degree offerings.

“Ecologies of Freedom: Global Political Thinking in the Age of Socrates” A lecture by Joel Alden Schlosser, Department of Political Science, Bryn Mawr College Drawing on the ancient historian Herodotus as well as ancient Greek poetic and scientific texts, this talk will consider an underappreciated strand of political thinking in the classical world, one deeply concerned with the complexity and interdependency of geography, culture, and political structure among diverse groups of people.

Commencement reception for Polical Science Seniors and their families.

Commencement reception for Polical Science Seniors and their families.

Mary Gallagher is an Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Michigan, where she is also the Director of the Center for Chinese Studies, and a faculty associate at the Center for Comparative Political Studies at the Institute for Social Research. The underlying question that drives her research in all of these areas is whether the development of markets is linked to the sequential development of democratic politics and legal rationality. Put simply, she is interested in the relationships between capitalism, law and democracy.

Students will have an opportunity to hear from and ask questions of four alumni who have pursued careers in law. Karen Massey ‘74 is a graduate of Yale Law School. Her diverse experience includes legal positions with the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Maine Land and Water Resources Council, the Marine Law Institute, and education at several levels. Jeff Thaler ‘77, a graduate of Yale Law School, teaches energy law at the University of Maine teaches land use, regulatory and energy law courses and skills at Maine Law School in Portland, Maine.

The 2016 presidential race has showcased the biggest and most colorful cast of presidential candidates in recent memory, including Vermont’s own Bernie Sanders, Celebrity Apprentice impresario Donald Trump and neurosurgeon Ben Carson. On the eve of the Iowa caucus, Professor Matthew Dickinson will examine the state of the race. Who is most likely to win their party’s nomination, and why?

Andrew Flowers, former Quantitative Editor and Economics Writer for FiveThirtyEight.com, will profile six types of data journalism stories. Several stories will serve as examples, such as p-hacking in nutrition studies, police officer shootings, Uber’s effect on taxis, and what local characteristics explain Donald Trump’s electoral victory.

Sponsored by: Middlebury Mathematics, Political Science, Economics, and CTLR. 

Panel “A Fresh Start in Latin America? Drug War Policy Reform and Cuba-US Relations” by Adam Schaffer ’12, program officer for drug policy at the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA), and Dan Egol ’13, chief of staff at Ross Cook, Inc.

The Honorable William K. Sessions III is serving as senior judge on the United States District Court for the District of Vermont and has served as Chair of the United States Sentencing Commission. Judge Sessions is a graduate of Middlebury College and the George Washington University Law School. Following several years in private legal practice in Vermont, he managed the successful 1992 reelection campaign of Senator Patrick Leahy. Judge Sessions was nominated to the bench by President Clinton on June 30, 1995.