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Journalism Excellence, Philanthropic Generosity, Literary Scholarship and Human Rights Activism Recognized at Lawrence University’s 155th Commencement

For the 25th — and final — time, Lawrence University President Richard Warch will lead the procession of seniors and honored guests to the stage where he’ll award honorary doctorates, confer bachelor’s degrees and congratulate students for completing their undergraduate education Sunday, June 13 during the college’s 155th commencement. Graduation ceremonies begin at 10:30 a.m. on the Main Hall green.

Warch will retire as Lawrence’s second-longest serving president at the end of the month. He is currently the longest-standing president of any college or university in Wisconsin and believed to be one of only 20 current presidents in the country who have served their present institutions for 20 years or more.

An expected 303 seniors, Lawrence’s largest graduating class since 1977, will receive bachelor of arts and/or music degrees. In addition, Lawrence will award honorary doctorate degrees to John Carroll, editor of the Los Angeles Times, Jonathan Fanton, president of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, Stanley Fish, dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University of Illinois-Chicago and Samantha Power, lecturer in public policy at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.

Also, Professor of Music Robert Levy, who is retiring after 25 years as director of bands at Lawrence, will receive professor emeritus status and awarded an honorary master of arts degree, ad eundem.

A baccalaureate service, featuring Daniel Taylor, Hiram A. Jones Professor of Classics delivering the address “Making Connections,” will be held Saturday, June 12 at 11 a.m. in the Lawrence Memorial Chapel.

All four honorary doctorate degree recipients, along with President Warch, Lawrence Board of Trustees Chair Jeffrey Riester and student representative Andrea Hendrickson, a senior from Tillamook, Ore., will address the graduates during commencement. Both the baccalaureate service and commencement ceremony are free and open to the public.

Carroll, whose distinguished journalism career spans more than 40 years and includes seven Pulitzer Prizes, will receive an honorary doctor of laws degree. Named editor of the Los Angeles Times in 2001, he helped the paper earn five Pulitzers earlier this year, the second most ever won by a newspaper in a single year. The New York Times was awarded seven Pulitzer’s in 2002 for its coverage of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

After beginning his career as a reporter for the Providence Journal in Rhode Island, Carroll was drafted into the Army and served in Alaska, writing for the base’s newspaper. He joined the Baltimore Sun as a reporter in the late 1960s, covering the Vietnam War and the Nixon administration. He became the subject of a front page story in The New York Times after having his press credentials suspended for writing a story detailing U.S. plans to abandon Khe Sanh. Without his knowledge, the Army had imposed an embargo on news coverage of Khe Sanh. Following protests from media colleagues and a Congressional investigation, the Army restored Carroll’s credentials.

He spent seven years as a city editor and metropolitan editor at the Philadelphia Inquirer before being named editor of the Lexington Herald-Leader in Kentucky. Carroll returned to the Baltimore Sun as its editor in 1991, guiding it to Pulitzer Prizes in 1997 and ‘98 before taking editorial leadership of the Los Angeles Times.

Fanton, who will receive a honorary doctor of laws degree, has served as president of the Chicago-based MacArthur Foundation since September 1, 1999. With assets of nearly $4.3 billion, MacArthur is one of the nation’s 15 largest foundations and annually awards grants domestically and internationally of more than $180 million in support of public education, community development, system reform in mental health and juvenile justice, human rights, biodiversity preservation, reproductive health and international peace and security. It also supports public radio and television and the making of independent documentaries as well as support for exceptionally creative individuals through its famed “genius grant” Fellows program.

Before joining the MacArthur Foundation, Fanton served as president of New York City’s New School University (formerly known as New School for Social Research) from 1982-99. As president, he led the integration and enhancement of the seven divisions of the university, the expansion of the Greenwich Village campus and development campaigns that increased the university’s endowment from $8 million to more than $80 million.

During his presidency, the New School merged with the Mannes College of Music, established a drama school in partnership with the Actor’s Studio, merged with the World Policy Institute, added a jazz and contemporary music program, a teacher education program, a creative writing program and an architecture department at Parsons School of Design.

Fanton began his career teaching American history at his alma mater, Yale University, where he earned his bachelor’s degree and Ph.D. He served as a special assistant to Yale President Kingman Brewster from 1970-73 and as associate provost from 1976-78. He then moved to the University of Chicago, where he spent the next four years as vice president for planning and also taught American history.

A board member of Human Rights Watch, the largest U.S.-based human rights organization and the Chicago Historical Society, Fanton is the author of “The University and Civil Society, Volumes I and II” and co-edited the books “John Brown: Great Lives Observed” and “The Manhattan Project: A Documentary Introduction to the Atomic Age.”

Fish will receive a doctor of humane letters. Considered one of America’s most distinguished scholars of English literature, law and literary theory, particularly the subjectivity of textual interpretation, he has served as a dean and distinguished professor of English, criminal justice and political science at UIC since 1999.

During an academic career spanning more than 40 years, Fish has held numerous major positions, including the Kenan Professor of English at Johns Hopkins University (1974-85) and the Arts and Sciences Distinguished Professor of English and Law at Duke University (1985-98). A USA Today article described Fish as “an erudite scholar who capably makes difficult subjects understandable… a brilliant original critic of the culture at large.”

Fish as written nearly a dozen books, among them “John Skelton’s Poetry,” “Surprised by Sin: The Reader in Paradise Lost,” the second edition of which received the Hanford Book Award in 1998, “Self-Consuming Artifacts,” which was nominated for a the National Book Award in 1972 and “There’s No Such Thing as Free Speech, and It’s a Good Thing, Too,” which earned the 1994 PEN/Spielvogel-Diamonstein Award. In the past 30 years, more than 200 articles, books, dissertations and review articles have been devoted to his work.

Fish is a frequent guest on shows ranging from the “MacNeil/Lehrer Newshour” to CNN’s “Firing Line” to “Hardball with Chris Matthews.” In 2003, the Chicago Tribune named him its “Chicagoan of the Year” for culture.

A graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, Fish earned his Ph.D. from Yale University and began his teaching career in the English department at the University of California-Berkeley.

Power, a human-rights activist, lawyer, scholar and award-winning author, will receive an honorary doctor of humane letters degree. Her recent book, “A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide,” which examines U.S. responses to genocide in the 20th century, was awarded the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for general non-fiction, the 2003 National Book Critics Circle Award for general non-fiction and the Council on Foreign Relations’ Arthur Ross Prize for the best book in U.S. foreign policy.

She also co-edited the 2000 book, “Realizing Human Rights: Moving from Inspiration to Impact,” a collection of essays by leading activists, policy makers and critics who reflect upon 50 years of attempts to improve respect for human rights.

In 1998, she founded Harvard’s Carr Center for Human Rights Policy, which trains future leaders for careers in public service with a focus on the most dangerous human rights challenges, including genocide, mass atrocity, state failure and the ethics and politics of military intervention. She served as the Carr Center’s executive director until 2002.

A native of Ireland who moved to the United States when she was nine, Power covered the war in the former Yugoslavia from 1993-96 as a reporter for U.S. News & World Report, the Boston Globe and the London-based news magazine The Economist. A graduate of Yale University and Harvard Law School, she is currently working on a book on the causes and consequences of historical amnesia in American foreign policy.

LU’s Gina Bloom Named Solmsen Fellow, Awarded Huntington Fellowship to Complete Book

Lawrence University’s Gina Bloom has been awarded a pair of fellowships worth $44,000 from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the Huntington Library in San Marino, Calif., in support of her research on 16th- and 17th-century conceptions of the human voice and representations of boyhood.

Bloom, assistant professor of English, was one of three recipients of a prestigious $40,000 Solmsen Fellowship and will spend the 2004-05 academic year as a scholar-in-residence at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Institute for Research in the Humanities. She was selected from a pool of 21 international applicants for the fellowship, which recognizes scholars who are working on literary and historical studies of the European Classical, Medieval and Renaissance periods.

“Professor Bloom’s fellowship appointment is a coup,” said David Sorkin, director of the Institute for Research in the Humanities and professor of history at UW Madison. “There were applications for this year’s Solmsen Fellowship from the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom and France. The applicants are all sort of a ‘who’s who’ of younger scholars working in the European tradition from antiquity to 1700.”

In addition to Bloom, this year’s other two Solmsen Fellowships were awarded to professors at the University of Arizona and Great Britain’s Cambridge University.

Bloom will spend her Solmsen residency conducting research for her book, “Playing Boys: Youth and Masculinity on the Early Modern Stage.” In the book, Bloom examines representations of boyhood in 16th-and 17th-century dramas. She focuses especially on boys at play — setting pranks, throwing dice, catching bugs, among others — and the way play was thought to prepare boys for adult manhood.

A $4,000 fellowship from the Huntington Library, home to a collection of rare books with an extensive concentration in the Renaissance, will support writing and research efforts this summer for Bloom to complete her first book, “Choreographing Voice: Agency and the Staging of Gender in Early Modern England.”

“Choreographing Voice” examines how early modern writers, especially dramatists like Shakespeare, understood the workings of the human voice — how it was produced by speakers and heard by listeners. Focusing on the ways writers represent the voice in stage plays, medical texts, song books and religious sermons, Bloom challenges perspectives on “voice” in modern feminist thought, offering an alternative view of the relationship between gender, speaking and power.

“The resources provided by these fellowships will help me make a significant contribution to scholarship on the early modern period,” said Bloom. “At the Huntington, I’ll have the privilege to examine texts that cannot be read anywhere else in the world. The Solmsen offers me the luxury of an extended period of time to research and write as well as the opportunity to work through ideas with some of the best scholars in the field.”

A specialist in English Renaissance literature, especially drama, and gender studies, Bloom joined the Lawrence English department faculty in 2001. She earned her Ph.D. in English from the University of Michigan.

Reinterpreting the Past: Lawrence University’s Courtney Doucette Heading to Russia as Fulbright Scholar

Courtney Doucette got bit by the history bug as a fourth grader and has never been able to shake the infection. Twelve years later, the Lawrence University senior is still more interested in nurturing her long-term curiosity than she is in finding a cure.

To that end, Doucette soon will embark on a 10-month study of Russian history at the European University in St. Petersburg, Russia, courtesy of a $23,000 grant from the J. William Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board. Doucette was recently selected as a 2004-05 Fulbright Scholar from among more than 5,000 applicants. This is the second straight year and the third time in the past four years that a Lawrence student has been awarded a Fulbright Fellowship.

Beginning in late August, Doucette will undertake research at European University on the impact of political regimes on the way we understand the past. She also will work outside of academia to explore the way ordinary citizens regard history after the “official” view of the past is significantly changed.

“Since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, Russians have had to question what really happened in their country while the Communist regime was in power,” said Doucette, a history and Russian double major from Racine. “There is now strong evidence suggesting events of the Soviet era played out differently than the Party claimed. The new political regime’s power is partly based on its ability to disprove the Communist Party’s view of history, so there is a need to radically reinterpret and rewrite history in Russia.”

During a semi-nomadic childhood — Doucette’s family moved 13 times while she was growing up and she lived with a Japanese family for a year in Okinawa as a participant in the Rotary Youth Exchange Program — she constantly tried to make sense of her ever-changing world the way a historian would.

“I learned to ask questions about the history of my surroundings,” said Doucette, a founding member and former president of Lawrence’s Russian and East European Club.

While in Russia, Doucette intends to explore the impact the Soviet regime had on the content of Russian history books and the ways the post-Soviet regime has rewritten these texts. In addition, and outside the formality of the European University, Doucette will examine ways personal experiences and oral histories challenge the officially sanctioned interpretations of the past.

In addressing the second question, Doucette plans to observe what today’s youngest generation of Russians are learning about their history through observation sessions at primary and secondary schools. She also plans to become involved with Memorial, a non-profit organization in St. Petersburg that chronicles the experiences of victims of Stalinism.

“Part of my interest in Russian history and culture stems from my interest in the process of writing history,” said Doucette, who previously spent time in Russia while on an off-campus study program in Krasnodar in 2001. “Contemporary Russia provides an ideal context for me to investigate this process. As a Fulbright Scholar, I’ll be able to improve my Russian skills, gain valuable experience with Russian archival sources and form connections with professional Russian scholars.

“Living in Russia is going to provide great opportunities to explore fundamental questions about how academics and non-academics make sense of the past,” Doucette added.

Following her year abroad, Doucette plans to return to the States to pursue graduate studies in Russian history with the hope of eventually teaching Russian history at the collegiate level.

“My future goals are clearly a product of my past and of the way my past has shaped my method of making sense of the world,” said Doucette.

The Fulbright Program was created by Congress in 1946 to foster mutual understanding among nations through educational and cultural exchanges. Arkansas Senator J. William Fulbright, who sponsored the legislation, saw it as a step toward building an alternative to armed conflict.

Since its inception, the Fulbright Program has become the U.S. government’s premier scholarship program. It has supported more than 260,000 American students, artists and other professionals opportunities for study, research and international competence in more than 150 countries.

Harvard Scholar Discusses Merits of Medieval “Art” in Lawrence University Address

Harvard University scholar Jeffrey Hamburger shares his perspective on the debate of whether the Middle Ages produced “art works” or merely “images” in a William A. Chaney Lecture at Lawrence University.

Hamburger presents, “The Medieval Work of Art: Wherein the ‘Work’? Wherein the ‘Art’?,” Thursday, May 27 at 6:30 p.m. in the Wriston Art Center auditorium. The event is free and open to the public.

A specialist in medieval art of the High and later Middle Ages, especially medieval manuscript illumination and iconography, Hamburger believes the argument need not be merely a choice between image vs. art, craft vs. artistry or manual vs. liberal arts. He will discuss some of the ways in which medieval images offer a statement over and against the texts which claim to speak for them.

Focusing on some of the archetypal works of art of the Middle Ages — the temple, tabernacle and Ark of the Covenant — Hamburger will examine the ways in which those images could be used to address issues of authorship, authority and artistic invention.

A native of London, England, Hamburger joined the department of history of art and architecture at Harvard as a full professor in 2000. He previously taught at the University of Toronto and spent 11 years on the faculty at Oberlin College.

A Fellow of the Medieval Academy of America, Hamburger is the author of five books, including the award-winning “Nuns as Artists: The Visual Culture of a Medieval Convent” and “The Visual and the Visionary: Art and Female Spirituality in Late Medieval Germany.”

Hoft-March, Sarnecki Named Full Professors, Clark, Miller Granted Tenure

Eilene Hoft-March and Judy Sarnecki, members of the Lawrence University French department, have been promoted to the rank of full professor while Jeffrey Clark and Brigetta Miller have been promoted to associate professor and granted tenured appointments by the college’s Board of Trustees.

Hoft-March joined the Lawrence faculty in 1988. A specialist in modern French novels and autobiographies, her scholarship also includes literature about children and the Holocaust. In addition to the French department, Hoft-March also teaches courses for the gender studies major. She was a recipient of Lawrence’s Outstanding Young Teacher Award in 1991 and received the college’s Freshman Studies Teaching Award in 1997. She earned her Ph.D. from the University of California-Berkeley.

A member of the Lawrence faculty since 1985, Sarnecki’s research interests focus on 20th-century French cinema and literature, women authors and gender issues. She served as editor of and contributor to the recently published book, “Subversive Subjects: Reading Marguerite Yourcenar” (2004 Fairleigh Dickinson Press), a collection of essays on the acclaimed French novelist. In 1996, Sarnecki founded Lawrence’s Francophone Seminar in Dakar, Senegal, a 10-week program on Western African culture. She earned her doctorate in French from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Clark, a fluvial geomorphologist specializing in the study of how human activity alters the characteristics of rivers, joined the Lawrence geology department in 1998. He has conducted more than a dozen research trips to Puerto Rico, where he has worked with the International Institute of Tropical Forestry and is currently involved with on-going student research on the impact on Apple Creek on Appleton’s north side as the area shifts from agricultural use to residential development. He was cited in 2001 with Lawrence’s Outstanding Young Teacher Award. Clark earned his Ph.D. from John Hopkins University.

Miller, a native of Tigerton and a 1989 graduate of Lawrence, returned to her alma mater in 1996 as a member of the conservatory of music faculty. A flutist by training, Miller is the conservatory’s director of music education, specializing in music methodology for early childhood. A member of the Stockbridge-Munsee tribe, Miller is in the process of completing a book of Native American lullabies that have been shared generationally through oral tradition but never written in standard musical notation. She earned a graduate degree in music education with a Kodaly emphasis from Silver Lake College.

“An American Place:” Noted Environmental Historian Closes Lawrence University 2003-04 Convocation Series

Lawrence University will recognize award-winning author and historian William Cronon with an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree Tuesday May 25 during the annual Honors Convocation, which closes the 2003-04 series.

Cronon, whose scholarship combines the disciplines of history, geography and environmental studies, will deliver the address “The Portage: History and Memory in the Making of an American Place” at 11:10 a.m. in the Lawrence Memorial Chapel. He also will conduct a question-and-answer session at 2 p.m. in the Lawrence Memorial Union. Both events are free and open to the public.

The author of two books and editor several others, Cronon, 49, has earned critical acclaim for his writing and research on the ways human communities modify the landscapes in which they live and how people in turn are affected by changing geological, climatological and ecological conditions.

His first book, “Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of New England,” which explored the changes the New England landscape underwent as control of the region shifted from Native Americans to European colonists, was awarded 1984’s Francis Parkman Prize of the Society of American Historians.

His second book, 1991’s “Nature’s Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West,” an examination of Chicago’s relationship to its rural hinterland during the latter half of the 19th century, earned Cronon the Chicago Tribune’s Heartland Prize for the best literary work of non-fiction, the Bancroft Prize for the best work of American history and was one of three nominees for the Pulitzer Prize in history.

In addition, “Nature’s Metropolis” was recognized with the George Perkins Marsh Prize from the American Society for Environmental History and the Charles A. Weyerhaeuser Award from the Forest History Society for the best book of environmental and conservation history.

The Frederick Jackson Turner and Vilas Research Professor of History, Geography and Environmental Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Cronon is currently working on a local history of Frederick Turner’s hometown, Portage, Wis., in which he is exploring ways to integrate environmental and social historical methods with non-traditional narrative literary forms. He is also completing an anthology of first person accounts of past landscapes of the United States and the lives people have lived on them entitled “Working on Life on the American Land: A Commonplace Book.”

Cronon joined the UW-Madison faculty in 1992 after spending more than a decade teaching at Yale University in his hometown of New Haven, Conn. Among numerous academic awards he’s received, Cronon was named a Rhodes Scholar and a Danforth Fellow in 1976, received a $500,000 “genius grant” from the MacArthur Foundation in 1985 and was named the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1995. In addition to UW-Madison, where he earned his bachelor’s degree in history and English, Cronon holds advanced degrees Oxford University in Britith urban and economic history and from Yale in American history.

His professional affiliations include serving on the Board of Curators for the Wisconsin Historical Society, the Governing Council of The Wilderness Society and the editorial boards of Environmental History and the Journal of Historical Geography.

Art History Lecture Examines Famous German Church and its Importance to the Nazi SS

Annie Krieg, a 2001 Lawrence University graduate and former Fulbright Fellowship recipient, returns to campus to discuss in recent research on the appropriation of medieval architecture by the Nazi SS.

Krieg presents “‘As the Blood Speaks, So the People Build’: King Heinrich I, Heinrich Himmler and the Construction of the 1,000-Year Reich in Quedlinburg,” Thursday, May 20 at 4:30 p.m. in the Wriston Art Center auditorium. The event is free and open to the public.

Krieg, who spent 10 months teaching English in Germany on her Fulbright Fellowship, will discuss the 12th-century collegiate church of St. Servatius in Quedlinburg, Germany, a small town 125 miles west of Berlin, and its importance to Adolph Hitler’s Third Reich.

St. Servatius Church houses the tomb of King Heinrich I, the first medieval German king who unified the Saxon, Bavarian and Swabian groups, among others, into the first German Reich in the 10th century. Heinrich Himmler, leader of Hitler’s infamous SS troops, took great personal interest in King Heinrich and fashioned himself the modern reincarnation of the medieval ruler.

The 1000th anniversary of Heinrich I’s death in 1936 became an official Nazi party celebration and extensive renovations were made to the structure of the church to better accommodate Himmler’s notion of medieval history and national heritage.

Krieg will address questions raised by the SS-led renovations of St. Servatius, including concepts of the modern and the reactionary and the looming shadow of the Third Reich over Western civilization.

A German and art history major at Lawrence, Krieg recently completed her master’s degree in art history from the University of Pittsburgh.

Former Lawrence University President Thomas Smith Dies, Served from 1969-79

Thomas Smith, who served as president of Lawrence University from 1969-79, died Wednesday (5/12) at his home in Pine Lake after a battle with cancer. He was 83.

Smith came to Lawrence from Ohio University, where he had spent two years as provost, assuming the president’s office on July 1, 1969. He presided over the college until his retirement on August 31, 1979.

He led the college during one of the more difficult periods in its recent history. Student unrest over Vietnam and civil rights activism, as well as pressure from the student body for more of a voice in matters of academic and student life required delicate but decisive leadership. When Smith arrived on campus in 1969, his first faculty meeting was disrupted by students protesting U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War.

During the 1970s, the college, along with American higher education in general, faced an extended period of fiscal austerity, necessitating difficult decisions and the retrenchment of faculty, staff, and administration.

Among the milestones of his presidency were the completion of a major capital campaign; the opening of the Seeley G. Mudd Library in 1975; the strengthening of the university endowment; an extensive administrative reorganization involving academic affairs, admissions, development and student life; improvements in the curriculum and the renovations of Sage and Ormsby Halls.

“Tom was a quiet and unassuming man, yet forceful and straightforward in his dealings and interactions with others,” recalled Richard Warch, who succeeded Smith as Lawrence president in 1979. “I had the privilege of serving with him for the last two years of his tenure (as vice president of academic affairs) and counted him a friend and mentor and admired him as a man of principle and honor.”

In 1972, President Richard Nixon appointed Smith to the President’s Committee on the National Medal of Science, the selection committee for the prestigious awards for distinguished contributions in physical, biological, mathematics, or engineering sciences. The following year, Wisconsin Governor Patrick Lucey appointed Smith chairman of the newly created State Ethics Board, a position he still held when he left Lawrence.

Smith also served on the boards of the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities and Independent College Funds of America, Inc.

After leaving Lawrence, Smith served as executive director of the Lakeshore Consortium in Support of the Arts, an organization promoting increased awareness of, participation in, and contributions to an enhanced environment for arts activities in the Fox River Valley. He maintained a commitment to liberal education in retirement remaining active with the Waupaca-based Winchester Academy, encouraging it to foster its historic focus on the liberal arts and sciences and music.

Born Feb. 8, 1921, Smith was one of 10 children — five of whom survived infancy — born to a Hubbard, Ohio steelworker and his wife. He attended Kenyon College on a full tuition scholarship and graduated magna cum laude in 1947, earning a bachelor of arts degree in physics. He earned a Ph.D. in physics at Ohio State University in 1952.

Later that same year, Smith began his academic career as an assistant professor of physics at Ohio University in Athens, Ohio. In 1961, he was appointed an assistant to the president of Ohio University. From 1962 to 1967, he served as vice president for academic affairs and was named provost in 1967.

Smith is survived by his wife, Lillyan Beaver Smith, and their three children, Lizbeth, Steven, and David.

Conservative Author Dinesh D’Souza Celebrates America’s Greatness in Lawrence University Appearance

Noted conservative author Dinesh D’Souza takes on the critics and defends America’s unique standing as the “freest and most decent society in existence” in an address Thursday, May 20 at Lawrence University.

Based on his 2002 book of the same name, D’Souza presents “What’s So Great About America” at 7:30 p.m. in the Lawrence Memorial Chapel. The event is free and open to the public.

Written in the wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks, “What’s So Great About America” celebrates the United States, in D’Souza’s view as, “the best life our world has to offer” while taking on those who hate America, including radical Muslims.

Born and raised in India, D’Souza, 43, immigrated to the United States in 1978. After earning a degree from Dartmouth University, he served as the editor of Prospect magazine and spent a year as managing editor of the conservative magazine Policy Review. In 1987, D’Souza joined the Reagan administration as a senior domestic policy analyst.

In addition to “What’s So Great About America,” D’Souza is the author of six other books, including 1991’s best seller “Illiberal Education,” in which he casts a critical eye on the state of contemporary American higher education. He has also written a biography of Jerry Falwell, “Falwell: Before the Millennium,” provided a controversial view of the role of race in American society in “The End of Racism” and argues the case why Ronald Reagan should be considered among the nation’s greatest presidents in his 1997 book “Ronald Reagan: How an Ordinary Man Became an Extraordinary Leader.”

Hailed by Investor’s Business Daily as one of the “top young public-policy makers in the country,” D’Souza’s writing also has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, the Washington Post, Vanity Fair, Forbes, Harper’s and the Atlantic Monthly.

He currently serves as the Robert and Karen Rishwain Research Fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, specializing in issues of social and individual responsibility, civil rights and affirmative action, economics and society and higher education.

D’Souza is speaking at the invitation of the Lawrence College Republicans and his appearance is sponsored by the Class of ’65 Student Activity Fund, the Young America’s Foundation and the Outagamie County Republican Party.

Lawrence Main Hall Green Transformed for Third Annual “Shack-a-thon”

More than 200 students will join forces to transform the Lawrence University Main Hall Green into a temporary shantytown May 15-16 for the college’s third annual “Shack-a-thon” for Habitat for Humanity.

Sponsored by the Lawrence Volunteer and Community Service Center, Shack-a-thon will test the design moxie and construction skills of more than 20 teams of students who will assemble living quarters from donated materials on 10-foot-square plots near Main Hall beginning early Saturday afternoon. The shacks will remain up until mid-morning Sunday.

Teams will be soliciting pledges for having at least one member remain in the shack overnight to simulate the plight of the homelessness. “Change jars” will be placed in front of each shack with cash donations serving as votes for a “Best Shack” contest. A host tent on site will provide information on issues related to homelessness and the need for affordable housing.

Jill Wiles, Habitat for Humanity’s Campus Chapters Coordinator for the Midwest out of Chicago, will deliver the address, “Low Income Housing and the Mission of Habitat for Humanity” at 7 p.m. Saturday. In addition, live entertainment provided by some of Lawrence’s best student bands will be performed throughout the evening beginning at 5 p.m.

Shack-a-thon organizers are hoping to raise $5,000 at this year’s event. Since Shack-a-thon was launched in 2002, the event has raised $9,000. All event proceeds will be used for the eventual construction of a Habitat for Humanity home in the Fox Cities. For more information, contact the Lawrence VCSC at 920-832-6644.