WHAT: “Social Entrepreneurship and Community Engagement: Bridging the Gap,” Alisa Del Tufo, Founder of Threshold Collaborative, Ashoka Fellow
WHEN: Monday, April 26 @ 12:30 p.m.
WHERE: The Deloitte Auditorium, Business Instructional Facility, 515 East Gregory Drive, Champaign
From the event description: “Alisa founded CONNECT in 1993. Starting with $1 million from the City of New York she created a program that now works with 130 community partners and has framed the dialogue among policymakers to a focus on the issue of family violence, not the separate issues of DV and child welfare. Today, people of all ages, ethnicities and gender attend training workshops in neighborhoods, at faith-based sites, at its centrally located training institute, and at the workplace: for example, all of Verizons 36,000 union employees in New York City go through CONNECTs training. This initiative was developed after the tragic murder of a female employee by her husband, another Verizon employee. Funded initially by the Union the goal of this project is to establish a self sustaining fee scale for the corporation. Verizon unions in upstate NY plan to adopt the program.”
WHAT: “Trafficking in Women: Legal Debates and Social Realities,” Carole J. Peterson, JD, University of Hawaii at Manoa
WHEN: Wednesday, April 28 @ 7:30 p.m.
WHERE: Alice Campbell Alumni Center, Lincoln Ave., Urbana
Dr. Peterson has done extensive research in the area of trafficking of mainland Chinese women to Hong Kong’s sex trade.
WHAT: “How the Oil Flows: Political Economy of Energy,” Esra Ergul, Economics, University of Illinois
WHEN: Thursday, April 29 @ 12 noon
WHERE: Room 356 Armory Building, 505 East Armory, Champaign
From the event description: “This paper examines the determinants of formations of trade partnerships and bilateral flows in oil trade and how these factors ultimately affect the world prices and trade pattern. We use the approach developed by Helpman, Melitz, and Rubinstein (QJE 2008) to specify and estimate a model of bilateral oil trade controlling for the role of selection in partnership formation and source heterogeneity in the flow of oil among countries. The results show that ignoring these controls introduces significant biases in the estimation of the elasticities of oil trade with respect to its determinants. We use the model to carry out a series of global equilibrium simulation exercises to demonstrate the usefulness of the model. In particular, we show that for the rise in oil prices during 1997-2007 to have been caused by economic growth around the world, the demand and supply price elasticities must have been closer to their short run estimates found in the literature. Moreover, relatively high growth in OECD countries followed by rapid growth in transition countries and India and China account for the bulk of the rise in global oil prices. We also show that the model can be used to explore various scenarios of oil price responses to international security issues, especially the conflicts of Iran with the West.”
WHAT: “Perverts in Paradise: Crime, Tourism, and the Homosexual Menace in Mexico, 1940-1975,” Ryan Jones, Ph.D. Candidate, History, University of Illinois
WHEN: Thursday, April 29 @ 12 noon
WHERE: Room 356 Armory Building, 505 East Armory, Champaign
If that title doesn’t get you out of the house, I guess I don’t know what to tell you. Something tells me that “homosexual menace” is used tongue-in-cheek in this case.
WHAT: “The Language of a Global Hip Hop Culture: Africa and the Middle East Region,” ($20 per person)
WHEN: Friday, April 30 & Saturday, May 1
WHERE: At Harvard University, but available through webcast
From the event description: “This two-part workshop introduces Hip Hop as a social and artistic movement that conveys important contemporary art, culture, language, and societal information in sub-Saharan Africa, North Africa, and the Middle East. Specific linguistic and geographical examples may come from artist in North America, sub-Saharan Africa, North Africa, and the Middle East in Arabic, Swahili, Persian, Wolof, and Hebrew. Workshop participants will explore methods for introducing the subject of Hip Hop in the K-12 classroom and think together about best practices for using the topic to connect their students to global studies and cultural diversity. Various sessions will be available through webcast.”
You live near a major university and a community college. There are smart people that come here every week to talk to the general public about interesting topics. Perhaps you were not aware of this fact, or were overwhelmed by the sheer number of opportunities for possible enlightenment. If that’s the case, Smile Politely understands and is here to help. Here are several events going on in town this week. Check out one or more of them if you have time. Get your learn on, as they say, and join the cognoscenti. It’s free, you know. Plus, sometimes there’s free food, too!
If you have a community event, speaker, or film event that you’d like to see featured on Listen Up!, send the event information to joelgillespie [at] smilepolitely [dot] com by Friday the week prior to the event. Listen Up! runs on Mondays.