political science

Career Summit Featured Speaker: Carolyn DeWitt ’04

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Registration for Career Summit 2018 is now closed. Students who are interested in attending but have not registered are welcome to stop by the registration table in the Hicks Student Center atrium before the session they would like to attend. Walk-ins will be accepted as space permits, especially on Saturday. See the Career Summit schedule online by clicking on ‘Agenda.’

A distinguished group of alumni will join Silicon Valley executives and venture capitalists for Career Summit 2018. The event is two days of practical preparation April 6 and 7 for Life after K. Carolyn DeWitt ’04, the president and executive director of Rock the Vote, is the third in a series of features that will highlight our speakers for the event. To learn more, visit our Career Summit 2018 news story.

Carolyn DeWitt ’04

President, Executive Director at Rock the Vote

Carolyn DeWitt
Carolyn DeWitt ’04, a passionate and lifelong champion of the democratic process in the U.S. and abroad, has a diverse background in government, politics, international development, education and in the financial sector.

A passionate and lifelong champion of the democratic process in the U.S. and abroad, Carolyn DeWitt ’04 has a diverse background in government, politics, international development, education and in the financial sector.

It was during her time in South Africa, meeting with parties critical to the collapse of the apartheid system and the subsequent building of a democratic state, that Carolyn witnessed the power of youth movements. Convinced of the absolute necessity of a health democracy for marginalized groups, she continued on to work in Kenya, participating on the Constitution of Kenya Review Commission during an election year. Carolyn also served as senior international advisor to a youth political movement and potential presidential candidate in Madagascar.

Back home in the U.S., on the national political stage, Carolyn coordinated satellite media booking operations at the 2012 Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, training teams of volunteers and staffs and coordinating surrogate media appearances alongside DNC and Obama for America staff. On the local government level, Carolyn has worked as chief of staff at the Office of Chicago Alderman Daniel Solis, and as deputy campaign manager and finance director for the 25th Ward Regular Democratic Organization.

Shortly after relocating to Washington, D.C., Carolyn took up the position of director of special projects for a thriving start-up that sought to leverage technology to provide clinical services to persons with special education and development needs in less-developed countries. She has also provided services for therapists working in DC public schools. For the 2014 election cycle, Carolyn served as chief of staff at Pivot, a political communications firm.

Carolyn studied international and African studies, political science, psychology and women’s studies and earned her bachelor’s degree in political science and international and area studies from Kalamazoo College. She sits on the board of Coworker.org.

Carolyn is scheduled to speak during the following sessions of Career Summit 2018:

  • Dinner and Opening Plenary, 6 p.m. April 6
  • Thriving as a Woman in the Workplace, 10 a.m. April 7
  • Social Entrepreneurship: Finding Solutions to Community Problems, 10:45 a.m. April 7
  • Crafting a Whole Life: How Work Fits with Family, Community, Self-Care and Fun, 11:30 a.m. April 7

Other Scheduled Speakers

Distinguished Judge Testifies to Power of K-Plan

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Testifying to the enduring value of the K-Plan, renowned former U.S. District Judge Gerald Rosen ’73 told Kalamazoo College students in a campus visit that “it made me who I am.”

Judge Gerald Rosen talks with students at Kalamazoo College
Students were invited to meet retired Chief U.S. District Judge Gerald Rosen ’73 on Monday, Feb. 19, and hear him talk about how his K experience helped him forge an exemplary career in public service and law. That career included engineering the “Grand Bargain,” which brought Detroit out of bankruptcy and paved the way for Motown’s rebirth.

“I’m a real product of the K-Plan,” said the recently retired judge, who presided over the Detroit-based U.S. Eastern District of Michigan and handled cases that included the city’s 2013 bankruptcy, the largest of its kind in U.S. history.

He came to the College to play tennis, he said, and had a vague idea about becoming a doctor. However, a familiar nemesis of many a would-be medical student — “two words,” Rosen said. “Organic chemistry” — dissuaded him from pursuing that field. He said his academic adviser pushed him toward political science, often a path to law school, and the K-Plan did the rest.

In a question-and-answer session with a student audience in the Olmsted Room at Mandelle Hall, Rosen recalled as particularly influential a history course that introduced him to the “roller coaster” career of Winston Churchill, the late wartime British prime minister who remains one of his heroes. He also cited philosophy courses that taught him the finer points of reasoning and writing; the challenge of participating in experiential learning opportunities that included working in the office of then-Michigan Gov. William Milliken; and study abroad in Sweden.

“I spent as many (terms) off campus as I did on campus,” he said, adding that experiences such as being a student teacher in an inner-city Philadelphia school challenged him to develop his self-reliance and fostered in him a sense of independence.

“You become confident in your ability to reason through things on your own,” he said. “I think if I had gone to a school that had a traditional program and a cookie-cutter curriculum I probably would have come out of it a different person than I am today.”

During his day at K, Rosen also spoke to a philosophy of law class led by Max Cherem ’04, the Marlene Crandell Francis assistant professor of philosophy; met with faculty; visited with the men’s tennis team as he praised K’s program as fostering “true student athletes;” and dined with President Jorge G. Gonzalez and Suzie (Martin) Gonzalez ’83.

Now beginning a new career as a high-level mediator with Judicial Arbitration and Mediation Services, Rosen served as a judge on the U.S. District Court in Detroit from 1990 to 2017 and was chief judge from 2009 to 2015. He long provided internships in his chambers to K students and graduates and received the Kalamazoo College Alumni Association’s Distinguished Achievement Award in 2014.

 

Initial Wait Leads K Student to Boren Scholarship

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Boren Scholarship Winner Kimberly Yang
Kimberly Yang ’19 has received a Boren Scholarship and will study at Capital Normal University in Beijing.

“Pleasant surprise” and “final exams” rarely are uttered in the same breath even at Kalamazoo College. Yet Kimberly Yang ’19, of Grand Rapids, Mich., received welcome news around finals time this past spring.

Yang first was placed on a waiting list in mid-April after applying for a Boren Scholarship, a prestigious grant that allows students to study abroad in geographic areas, languages and fields deemed critical to U.S. national security. Then, a congratulatory email came at the end of May, sparking her plans to spend a term in Beijing this fall before returning to the U.S. in March. She has received a scholarship and will study at Capital Normal University.

Yang, an economics and political science major and Chinese minor, departs for China in less than a week. She said the trip will provide her with international experiences representing the U.S. while living abroad in a capital city.

Boren Scholarship winners commit to U.S. federal service for at least a year after they graduate. Yang said she hopes to serve in a role in environmental relations.

“With the United States pulling out of the Paris Climate Accord, China ironically is the leading proponent in the effort to reverse climate change,” she said, noting how China’s urban development affects the environment. “I want to pursue a career with the environment in China, especially with the demolition and fast-paced construction the country has been witnessing.”

Yang was born in Texas, but spent most of her high school years in Shanghai. She ultimately chose K for college because its small size seemed less intimidating as she was reacclimating to the United States. Last year, Yang served as the vice president of the Asian Pacific Islander Student Association at K. She also has served the campus as a student representative to Teach for America, a professional corps of leaders who commit to teaching in low-income schools and work to increase their students’ opportunities.

Yang joins Ihechi Ezuruonye ’19, of Southfield, Mich., and Molly Brueger ’19, of Arlington, Va., as the Boren winners from K in 2017-18. Ezuruonye and Brueger will study in Japan. Boren Awards are worth up to $20,000 depending on the student’s financial need and how long the student stays overseas. The grants are funded by the federal government through the National Security Education Program.

Boren Awards are named after former U.S. Sen. David L. Boren, the principal author of the legislation that created the National Security Education Program. Boren Scholars (undergrads) and Fellows (graduate students) study in countries throughout Africa, Asia, Central and Eastern Europe, Eurasia, Latin America and the Middle East.

 

Endowed Professorships Mark the Quality of Pedagogy at K

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Kalamazoo College recently appointed four faculty as endowed professors. Endowed professorships are positions funded by the annual earnings from an endowed gift or gifts to the College; therefore they are a direct reflection of 1) the value donors attribute to the excellent teaching and mentorship that occurs at K, and 2) the desire of donors to ensure the continuation of that excellence. Currently at K there are 26 endowed faculty positions, including the four recently announced.

Hannah Apps is the Thomas K. Kreilick Professor of Economics;

John Dugas is the Margaret and Roger Scholten Associate Professor of International Studies;

Kyla Day Fletcher is the Lucinda H. Stone Assistant Professor of Psychology; and

Sarah Lindley is the Arcus Social Justice Leadership Professor of Art.

Hannah Apps
Hannah Apps

Hannah Apps earned a B.A. degree, cum laude, from the University of North Carolina–Chapel Hill.  She earned a Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania in 1984.  She began her career at K in 1989, teaching a wide range of courses from principles of economics to public sector and urban economics to econometrics.  She served one term as mayor of the city of Kalamazoo and seven terms as vice mayor (1997 through 2014), community service that well aligns with her scholarly focus on community and economic development.  Her body of scholarship is impressive–two monographs; more than a dozen papers, articles and reports; numerous invited presentations; and a number of consultancies, typically with local governments and public agencies. Apps was selected as a Woman of Achievement by the Kalamazoo YWCA in 2004.  At K she has been department chair, chair of the Faculty Hearing Committee, and (currently) member of the Faculty Personnel Committee.

John Dugas
John Dugas

John Dugas earned his B.A., magna cum laude, from Louisiana State University. He completed his Ph.D. (political science) from Indiana University. He began his career at K in 1995 and teaches a range of courses in international politics and Latin American politics.  His early research focused on issues of political reform in Colombia, including decentralization, constitutional reform, and political party reform.  In more recent years, he has written about U.S. foreign policy toward Colombia as well as on human rights in the northern Andes. His current research explores the concept of “political genocide” in relation to the systematic killing of members of the Unión Patriótica, a Colombian political movement that was decimated in the 1980s and 1990s. He is the co-author of one book and the editor of another, both published in Spanish in Colombia.  His scholarship also includes nine book chapters, three articles in refereed journals, and numerous book reviews and conference papers.  Dugas is the recipient of two Fulbright Grants, one for teaching and research in Bogotá, Colombia (1999) and another for research in Quito, Ecuador (2010-2011).  At K Dugas has served as chair of the political science department and is currently the director of International and Area Studies major.  He is also the faculty advisor for the Model United Nations student organization.

Kyla Fletcher
Kyla Fletcher

Kyla Day Fletcher earned a B.S. degree, summa cum laude, from Howard University.  She earned a Ph.D. (developmental psychology) from the University of Michigan.  She has worked at K since 2012, teaching general psychology, adolescent development, psychology of the African-American experience, research methods, and psychology of sexuality. She has published five peer-reviewed journal articles since 2014 and is currently the principal investigator of a study titled “Substance Use and Partner Characteristics in Daily HIV Risk in African Americans.” That study is sponsored by the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities (part of the U.S. National Institutes of Health).  Fletcher has been an active contributor to the psychology department and the College, most recently serving as a representative on the presidential search committee.

Sarah Lindley
Sarah Lindley

Sarah Lindley earned her Bachelor of Fine Art degree, magna cum laude, from the New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University.  She earned a M.F.A. (ceramics) from the University of Washington.  Since 2001 she has taught a wide range of ceramics and sculpture courses, and she has managed and maintained K’s ceramics, sculpture and woodshop studios and equipment.  Lindley served as an Arcus Center for Social Justice Leadership Faculty Fellow in 2010-2011, and in that capacity she helped found the Community Studio in downtown Kalamazoo’s Park Trades Center. The Community Studio provides space for advanced art students to do and show work in close proximity to and collaboration with professional artists and community advocates for the arts and social justice.  In 2014 Lindley won the Michigan Campus Compact Outstanding Faculty Award for her civic engagement pedagogy.  She has had numerous solo, two-person and group exhibitions regionally, nationally, and  internationally.  In 2015 she won honorable mention in the 8th Gyeonggi International Ceramic Biennale in Korea.

“Professors Apps, Dugas, Fletcher and Lindley are extraordinary teachers,” said Provost Mickey McDonald. “And each has a deep commitment to scholarship and service, to the art and science of learning, and to the achievement of educational outcomes students can long apply to successful living.”

Economic Inequality and Political Power in America

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Martin Gilens
Martin Gilens

Martin Gilens will deliver the 2016 William Weber Lecture in Government and Society on January 25 at 8 p.m. in the Mandelle Hall Olmsted Room on the Kalamazoo College campus. The event is free and open to the public. Gilens is professor of politics at Princeton University, and the title of his lecture is “Economic Inequality and Political Power in America.” It is based on his recent book titled Affluence and Influence. Dr. Gilen’s research examines representation, public opinion and mass media as they relate to inequality and public policy. His work has been extensively reported in the media. “While his finding that the wealthiest minority in this country are the only ones who impact policy outcomes is not novel,” said Justin Berry, assistant professor of American politics at K, “the empirical evidence he provides for this common perception is overwhelming.” Gilens has held fellowships at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford, and the Russell Sage Foundation. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and he taught at Yale University and UCLA prior to joining the faculty at Princeton. He also wrote the book Why Americans Hate Welfare: Race, Media and the Politics of Antipoverty Policy. The William Weber Lecture in Government and Society was founded by alumnus William Weber, class of 1939. Past lecturers in the series have included David Broder, E.J. Dionne, Frances Fox Piven, Spencer Overton, Van Jones and Joan Mandelle, among others.

K Expert on Anti-Semitism and the EU Addresses Colloquium in England

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Amy Elman, the Weber Professor in Social Science, traveled to Bristol, England, in September as an invited speaker at an international colloquium on contemporary anti-Semitism. Her talked was titled “The Enduring Significance of an Abandoned Definition: the EU’s Working Definition of Anti-Semitism and its Foreign Policy Ambition,” and it focused on the the past year’s developments in the European Union. The paper builds on Amy’s recently released book The European Union, Anti-Semitism and the Politics of Denial (University of Nebraska Press, 2014). Amy also wrote the chapter “The EU’s Responses to Contemporary Anti-Semitism: A Shell Game,” which appears in the book Deciphering the New Anti-Semitism, edited by Alvin Rosenfeld (Indiana University Press, 2015)

Jewish Studies Program Sponsors Panel Discussion

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Director of Jewish Studies Jeff Haus
Director of Jewish Studies Jeff Haus speaking with students

On Wednesday, October 29, at 7:30 p.m., the Jewish Studies program at Kalamazoo College will host a panel discussion titled, “Boycott Divestment Sanctions: Alternative Narratives.” The discussion will take place in the Mandelle Hall Olmsted Room and is free and open to the public. This program will add to the campus discussion of the issue of boycotts and divestment targeting Israeli companies and academics by placing the current conflict between Israel and the Palestinians into a broader political and historical context. The panel will also consider the implications of some of the rhetoric surrounding the BDS movement.

Participants include historian Kenneth Waltzer and political scientist Yael Aronoff, both members of the Jewish Studies program at Michigan State University (Aronoff is the present director of the program, and Waltzer is her immediate predecessor), and political scientist Amy Elman, the Weber Professor in Social Science at Kalamazoo College. Both Waltzer and Aronoff will consider the issue of Jewish self-determination (which is often left out of BDS discussions), and provide a critical assessment of BDS and its implications. Elman’s presentation will discuss her recent research on the European Union and its policies toward Israel and Jews, and the inherent contradictions contained therein. Jeffrey Haus, director of Jewish Studies at Kalamazoo College, will moderate the program, which will also include a question and answer period for the audience.

Lux Esto. Forever.

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Jillian McLaughlin shows her Lux Esto tattoo
Jillian McLaughlin ’10 knows how to “be light.”

What would you do to remind yourself and others just how much you loved and appreciated your college experience—assuming you only have about $100 to spend?

You’ll have to go a ways to top Jillian McLaughlin ’10 who recently treated herself to a tattoo just below her left ribcage of “Lux Esto,” K’s Latin motto that means “Be Light.”

“In the past few years, I have really come to appreciate the unique undergraduate experience I had at K and the friendships forged,” said Jillian, a Grosse Pointe (Mich.) native now working for an anti-poverty think-tank in Boston.

“I suppose I could have bought a T-shirt or a mug but a tattoo of ‘Lux Esto’ seemed more epic. So that’s what I did.”

Jillian’s K experience was a full one. She ran on the Hornet cross country team, wrote for The Index student newspaper, worked as a student sustainability coordinator in the College’s Facilities Management Division, and conducted research into political ideology with K Professor of Psychology Gary Gregg. She also served as an intern in U.S. Senator Carl Levin’s office in Washington, D.C.

During her senior year, the political science major earned a departmental award to travel to Spain and conduct interviews on international human rights law for her Senior Individualized Project, or SIP.

“It sounds corny, but no matter where I am, I feel like I’m at home when I’m around other K grads,” Jillian said. “As I get ready to attend graduate school [in pursuit of an MBA on nonprofit management and impact investing], I wanted a reminder of that experience.”

She said the tattoo idea was the brainchild of her K classmate and friend Anne Renaud ’10.

“She joked about getting ‘Lux Esto’ tattoos before we graduated. It didn’t happen but the seeds of my decision were planted.”

Thanks for honoring your alma mater, Jillian. You’ll be glad to know that your tattoo complies with the College’s new branding guidelines for typefaces!

K alumnus and trustee Eugene Bissell ’76 is a Hall of Famer

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Eugene Bissell ’76 didn’t know much about propane when he started in the industry in the 1980s. And yet, the Kalamazoo College and Wharton School of Business graduate listened and learned along the way, ultimately becoming president and CEO of AmeriGas, the country’s largest propane retailer, and one of the industry’s most influential people. Read about Eugene’s long and winding road to the top of his profession (including a stint as a truck driver) while maintaining a commitment to elder care, community service, and to K.