A barrage of diverse speakers coming to Tufts in this highly politicized semester, urged students to open dialogue on issues ranging from the Middle East to obesity to bioethics.
New York Senator and former First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton spoke at the annual Issam M. Fares Lecture on Nov. 10 before an audience of 5,000. Speaking in the wake of the Democratic presidential loss, Clinton said that partisanship must be avoided within our nation if serious conflicts like those in the Middle East are ever to be resolved.
"We need to change our ways of thinking first, and then act on that thinking. [Middle Eastern and American] fates are inextricably bound together," Clinton said. Clinton concluded the lecture, "Policy Challenges in the Eastern Mediterranean After the Presidential Election," by saying, "We are at a crossroads. We cannot, must not, turn our backs on the Middle East. We must once again become a voice for freedom and peace in that region."
Earlier in the semester, Dr. Leon Kass, chair of President Bush's Council on Bioethics, analyzed current biotechnology trends as the inaugural event in the Snyder Presidential Lecture Series, which seeks to bring controversial speakers to Tufts.
The field of biotechnology contains many opportunities for controversial discussion, and in particular Kass hit on stem-cell research.
Kass said that the U.S. was in the midst of "the golden age of biomedical science technology," in which medicine and science can be used to prolong or "undermine the human life." He warned against using scientific resources to create an artificial uniformity he labeled the "homogenization of society."
In a lecture that was lighthearted, yet laden with social commentary, Morgan Spurlock, director and star of the acclaimed documentary "Supersize Me," discussed his self-proclaimed "fat movie" in a packed Cohen Auditorium on Nov. 3.
In order to demonstrate firsthand the negative cultural and health effects of fast food, Spurlock ate breakfast, lunch and dinner at McDonald's every day for 30 days under the supervision of three doctors: a liver specialist, a cardiologist and a general practitioner. However, Spurlock said that "the film isn't about McDonalds, but more of an attack on American eating and living."
"The days of us sitting around having a good relationship with each other and with food are gone," Spurlock said.
