Featured, Uncategorized
Pascale Florestal
she/her/hers
Director of Education
Front Porch Arts Collective
Pascale Florestal is a first generation Haitian American Queer Woman. As the Education Director Pascale created and manages The Young Critics and Apprenticeship Program. She is the Associate Producer of The Reading Series, Black Out Events and other productions. Pascale is an Elliot Norton Nominated Director, Educator, Dramaturg, Writer and Collaborator based in Boston, MA. Recent directing Credits: Fairview with SpeakEasy Stage, Spring Awakening at Brandeis University, The Colored Museum with The Umbrella Performing Arts Center, Once On This Island with SpeakEasy Stage, This Girl Laughs, This Girl Cries, This Girl Does Nothing with Emerson Stage, Everybody with Boston Conservatory and others. As an Assistant to the Director she has worked with Timothy Douglas, Liesl Tommy, Billy Porter, Paul Daigneault and M. Bevin O’Gara. Pascale served as the Associate Director to Gil Rose on X:The Life and Times of Malcolm Xwith Odyssey Opera and Kimberly Senior on Our Daughters, Like Pillars at The Huntington Theater. Pascale also serves as the Associate Director for The Broadway National Tour of Jagged Little Pill. In 2021 Pascale was named one of the WBUR ARTery 25 Artists of Color Transforming the Cultural Landscape in Boston. In 2020 she won the Inaugural Greg Ferrell Award for her excellence in teaching and supporting young people. Pascale is an Assistant Professor of Theater at Boston Conservatory at Berklee College of Music and is a full member of the SDC Union.
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Steve Kadish is a Senior Research Fellow at Harvard Kennedy School’s Taubman Center for State and Local Government.
Previously, Kadish served as Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker’s first Chief of Staff, where he helped shape and implement policy and operational improvements in key state agencies, working with the Governor’s cabinet, Massachusetts state legislature, and external stakeholders.
Steve and Governor Baker co-authored: Results Getting Beyond Politics to Get Important Work Done A Leader’s Guide to Executing Change and Delivering Results. Published in May 2022 by Harvard Business Review Press.
Prior to this appointment, Kadish served in a number of roles in the public and private sectors, including Senior Vice President and Chief Operating Officer at Northeastern University, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer at Dartmouth College, Director of Global Health Equity at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Massachusetts Undersecretary for Health & Human Services, Massachusetts Assistant Secretary for Administration and Finance, Senior Vice President for Administration at Harvard Pilgrim Health Care, Associate Vice Chancellor of Operations at UMass Medical School, and Assistant Commissioner for Operations at Massachusetts Division of Medical Assistance (Medicaid).
Beginning in March 2020, Steve served as a Special Advisor to the Massachusetts COVID-19 Command Center. Previously, he was appointed chairman of the Commission on the Future of Transportation by Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker to focus on the interrelationship of disruptive technologies, climate change, land use, and demographic trends.
Steve has served on local boards related to mental health services and homelessness. He has also served as an advisor/consultant to World Bank and the World Health Organization on strategic initiatives and organizational development issues.
He earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from Tufts University and a Master of City Planning degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Steve and his wife, Linda Snyder, have three children and two grandchildren.
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Nicholas A. Ashford, PhD, JD, is Professor of Technology & Policy and Director of the Technology & Law Program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he teaches courses in Environmental Law, Policy, and Economics; Law, Technology, and Public Policy; and Technology, Globalization, and Sustainable Development. Dr. Ashford is a Faculty Associate of the Center for Socio-technical Research in the School of Engineering; the Institute for Work and Employment Research in the Sloan School of Management; and the Environmental Policy Group in the Urban Studies Department. He holds both a Ph.D. in Chemistry and a Law Degree from the University of Chicago, where he also received graduate education in Economics.
Dr. Ashford is the co-author of two important textbooks/readers addressing sustainable development: Technology, Globalization, and Sustainable Development: Transforming the Industrial State (2018, Routledge Press) and Environmental Law, Policy and Economics: Reclaiming the Environmental Agenda (2008, MIT Press) He has also published several hundred articles in peer-reviewed journals and law reviews.
http://ashford.mit.edu
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President Marisa Kelly is a collaborative and results-oriented leader who is driving momentum at Suffolk University through her focus on educational excellence, experiential learning, global reach, and inclusion, all aimed at ensuring students are prepared for career success and community impact. She has been resolute in affirming Suffolk’s longstanding commitment to inclusivity as a hallmark of a Suffolk education and believes the University’s strength is greater because of its diversity.
President Kelly was named Suffolk’s permanent president in March 2018 after guiding the University as acting president for 20 months. As Suffolk’s 11th president, Marisa Kelly has recommitted the University to its essential access and opportunity mission, with a view toward empowering and supporting students today and in the future. Since arriving at Suffolk as senior vice president for academic affairs and provost in 2014 Kelly has focused the University on further improving student support in areas such as career development, international student services, and health and wellness. That support has remained a priority for her as president. She has championed innovative and interdisciplinary programming and has been an advocate for expanding Suffolk’s international reach and global approach to education. As president, she initiated and led a strategic planning process that culminated in the Suffolk 2025 plan and is now being implemented. And under her leadership, Suffolk has shattered fundraising goals and has been praised for its strong financial management. President Kelly is building a stronger and more connected University community and believes that the University’s success depends on strong bonds among faculty, staff, students, alumni, University partners, and many others. President Kelly holds a PhD in Political Science from the University of Kansas, an MA in Political Theory from San Francisco State University, and a BA in Government from California State University at Sacramento. She began her academic career as a member of the faculty and administrator at University of the Pacific in Stockton, California. She later served as dean and McQuinn Distinguished Chair of the College of Arts & Sciences at the University of St. Thomas, Minnesota. From there she became provost at Ithaca College before joining Suffolk as senior vice president for academic affairs and provost.
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Biographical Statement
Mira Morgenstern is Professor of Political Science at the City College of New York (CUNY). She specializes in eighteenth-century political theory, feminist thought, religion and politics, and biblical political theory. Besides her work on Rousseau (Rousseau and the Politics of Ambiguity and other essays), her writings include “Religion and State: The View From Enlightenment,” (Journal of Law, Religion and State); Conceiving a Nation: the Development of Political Discourse in the Hebrew Bible (Penn State Press 2009); and the recently-published Reframing Politics in the Hebrew Bible (Hackett 2018). Her latest work is co-authored with Barbara Abrams and Karen Sullivan and is entitled Crossing the Border: Text, Identity, and Polity in Rousseau’s Le Lévite d’Ephraïm (in process at OUSE). Mira Morgenstern is currently working on a study of social contract theory.
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Karen Sullivan, PhD, has degrees from the Université de Paris III and from Columbia University and is an Associate Professor at Queens College/City University of New York and the CUNY Graduate Center. She teaches French literature and language at Queens College and has published a monograph on Jean-Jacques Rousseau as well as articles on women writers of the eighteenth century and second language pedagogy. She is currently working on a book manuscript examining Rousseau’s works through the lens of 20th-21st century trauma theory.
Karen Sullivan, Ph.D.
Associate Professor
Department of European Languages and Literatures
Queens College/CUNY
Ph.D. Program in French
CUNY Graduate Center
Office hours by appointment for QC students of French and for placement assessments: http://meet.google.com/jut-jeor-sce
Queens College French Major and Minor requirements:
http://www.qc.cuny.edu/Academics/Degrees/DAH/ell/French/Pages/default.aspx
French/Francophone Club: QCFrenchClub@gmail.com
https://www.facebook.com/queenscollegefrenchclub/
New book out now: Reframing Rousseau’s Lévite d’Ephraïm: The Hebrew Bible, hospitality, and modern identity in the Oxford University Studies in the Enlightenment series, available from Liverpool University Press
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Wade in the water
Wade in the water
Children wade, in the water
God’s gonna trouble the water
Who’s that young girl dressed in red
Wade in the water
Must be the children that Moses led
God’s gonna trouble the water
Wade in the water, wade in the water children
Wade in the water,
God’s gonna trouble the water
Who’s that young girl dressed in white
Wade in the water
Must be the children of the Israelite
Oh, God’s gonna trouble the water
Wade in the water, wade in the water children
Wade in the water,
God’s gonna trouble the water
Who’s that young girl dressed in blue
Wade in the water
Must be the children that’s coming through,
God’s gonna trouble the water, yeah
Wade in the water,…
Past Events, Uncategorized
A Virtual Three-Week Storytelling Series
Beyond Borders: Women’s Stories and the Art of Bearing Witness
Join us in October as four fascinating storytellers talk to three Suffolk University professors via Zoom. Laura Levitt, professor, Religion, Jewish Studies and Gender, Temple University, Alba Jaramillo, executive director, Arizona Justice For Our Neighbors and nationally recognized human rights and social justice advocate, Patricia Davis, noted author, poet, and playwright, and Phoebe Potts, director, Family Learning, Sylvia Cohen Religious School, memoirist, and comic. These four captivating women will share their work, which bears witness to struggles about human rights, memory, belonging, and love.
Week Two: October 15, 2020
Live at 7:00 pm
THIS EVENT IS FREE AND OPEN TO THE PUBLIC
Alba Jaramillo and Patricia Davis talk about Digna. Written by Patricia Davis, the one-woman play starring Jaramillo follows Digna Ochoa, a prominent Mexican human rights lawyer who suffered torturous attacks following her defense of environmentalist peasants in Mexico. By the age of 37, she had met President Clinton, became close to the Kennedy family, and won a MacArthur Fellowship and the Amnesty International’s Enduring Spirit Award. In 2001, she was killed in her Mexico City office. In the play, Digna comes back from the dead in response to the worsening human rights crisis in Mexico. Jaramillo, an immigrant, human rights lawyer, and activist herself, plays the role of Digna with conviction, passion, and self-reflection. In telling her story and confronting her own doubts, Digna finds her strength and courage as she invites us to find our own. The evening’s moderator is Iani Moreno, PhD, associate professor, World Languages and Cultural Studies Department, Suffolk University.
THIS VIRTUAL SERIES IS PRODUCED BY WGBH FORUM NETWORK
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Pat Davis is US Advocacy Director for Peace Brigades International, an NGO that since 1983 has worked in fourteen countries providing physical accompaniment to human rights defenders at risk. Working under the Brussels-based International Secretariat, she represents the concerns of PBI projects in Honduras, Guatemala, and Mexico and shapes and implements advocacy initiatives aimed at opening space for defenders to do their work. She has been working for PBI with this focus since 2017. Prior to her work with PBI, she was executive director of the Guatemala Human Rights Commission/USA where she worked for seven years, both in that capacity and as Communications Director. She co-authored The Blindfold’s Eyes (Orbis, 2002),winning Best History/Biography and Best First-Time Author awards from the Catholic Press Association and a Best Spiritual Book of the Year designation from Spirituality and Health magazine. Her work has been published in The Nation, Hispanic, Counterpunch, Foreign Policy in Focus, and Common Dreams, as well as by the North American Congress on Latin America, the Copenhagen Initiative for Central America and Mexico, and the Center for International Policy. She has spoken on human rights issues at the Cleveland City Club, the Carter Center, Haverford College, Georgetown University, the University of Arizona, and the University of Texas and has submitted testimony to Congress on human rights conditions in Central America. As well as a human rights advocate, she is a poet and playwright. Her dramatic work includes the stage play, Digna, about Mexican human rights defender Digna Ochoa, produced by Teatro Dignidad at Universidad Ibero-Americana in Mexico City; the International Colloquium of Latin American Theater (Mexico City); Cumbre Tajin Festival (Pepantla, Veracruz); Encuentro en la Frontera (Nogales, MX); and in Tucson, AZ. Digna was nominated for a Mac Award for Best New Drama of 2018. Pat was a fellow in Arena Stage Playwrights’ Arena playwright development program, where she developed Digna. Pat’s short plays have been selected for production in the Kathy Rasmussen Women’s Theater Festival (Madison, WI), the Jane Addams Festival (Freeport, IL), and Planet Connections Zoom Fest (NY, NY). She is author of a poetry collection and is currently translations editor of Poet Lore, the United States’ oldest journal devoted solely to poetry. .
Past Events, Uncategorized
The COVID-19 pandemic is a global event unlike any other experienced in the contemporary era. Its size, scope, reach, and implications are enormous, ongoing, and unequal. Outcomes – from how people all over the world will live their daily lives to whether democracy will survive – are all in question.
Come into our virtual classroom to delve deeper into the pandemic-related themes we will explore in this survey course for everyone.
The idea that a pandemic was a threat to National Security has not been in doubt for many years. The real questions were when, in what form, how bad and how do we prepare? As we cope with the ravages of COVID-19, new questions emerge: Will the world after COVID be more or less dangerous? Will the U.S. role in the world be more important, or less? How can we best protect the integrity and safety of our elections during this crisis and, by extension, the integrity of our democracy? How do we best protect the most vulnerable among us, retain readiness to deal with other crises, and prevent economic insecurity from fueling destabilization, desperation and disruption? Our discussion this week will examine how the pandemic is changing the landscape of National Security.
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“NATURE UNDERFOOT: Learning to live with tiny life”
March 18, 2020, at 7 pm
First Parish Church, 2 Church Street, Cambridge MA 02138
FREE AND OPEN TO ALL
FORD HALL FORUM AND CAMBRIDGE FORUM are pleased to offer you a free invitation to an open public discussion.
John Hainze, entomologist, ethicist and former pesticide-developer call for humans to exercise greater respect and consideration for the other tiny organisms that share our world. In his latest book, “NATURE UNDERFOOT: Learning to Live with Tiny Life” Hainze argues that at a time when insect populations are in dramatic decline, it is more crucial than ever that we protect this creepy crawlies and “unwanted” plants.
He will be joined in conversation with James Barilla, author of ‘MY BACKYARD JUNGLE: The Adventures of an Urban Wildlife Lover who turned His Yard into Habitat and Learned to live with It” which considers the habitat of a typical urban back yard as a microcosm of burgeoning cities like Delhi and Rio de Janeiro. He teaches creative non-fiction and environmental literature in the MFA program at the University of South Carolina.
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Did you miss our TOMBOY forum last night? We live tweeted it so you can still catch the highlights! http://twitter.com/fordhallforum
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Trenni Kusnierek moderates TOMBOY at FHF just days before the movie comes out, per this tweet.
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Evan Engel from “Alternative Facts & Fake News” invites you to discuss his arrest in this tweet.
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The Forum is back on Comcast Newsmakers! Click here to see Director Jen Bonardi talk about what we do.
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Andrea Joyce (NBC Sports), Brooke Dickens (Harvard Women’s Soccer), Katie King Crowley (BC Women’s Ice Hockey) & Princell Hair (CSN NE)
MODERATOR: Trenni Kusnierek (CSN New England)
Monday, March 6, 6:30 p.m. to 8:00 p.m.
Modern Theatre, 525 Washington St.
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Mayor Joseph Curtatone (City of Somerville, MA) & Dina Haynes (New England Law)
MODERATOR: Christina Kulich-Vamvakas (Suffolk University)
Thursday, March 9, 6:30 p.m. to 8:00 p.m.
Sargent Hall 5th Floor Commons, 120 Tremont St.
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Joe Mathieu (WBZ NewsRadio 1030), Matt Viser (Boston Globe), & Evan Engel (Vocativ)
MODERATOR: Deborah Geisler (Suffolk University)
Wednesday, April 19, 6:30 p.m. to 8:00 p.m.
Modern Theatre, 525 Washington St.
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Yaron Brook (Ayn Rand Institute) & Jonathan Haughton (Beacon Hill Institute)
MODERATOR: Jim Stergios (Pioneer Institute)
Monday, November 14, 6:30 p.m. to 8:00 p.m.
Old South Meeting House, 310 Washington St.
