Upcoming Events
February 12 | Wednesday Dinner
The Challenges Facing Journal Publishing
William Breichner, Journals Publisher, Johns Hopkins University Press
Scholarly journal articles have been referred to as fragments of treatises. Each fragment logically fits somewhere in the interlocking lore of its particular field and moves knowledge forward a small step. Probably more than in any other activity, journal publication is the way academic knowledge is established and disseminated. It is vital, changing, and under challenge.
William Breichner is the Journals Publisher for the Johns Hopkins University Press, the largest U.S.-based journals publishing program among university presses He joined the Journals Division in 1996, and was appointed Publisher in 2003. He and the Journals Division staff work with over 90 scholarly journals, mostly in the humanities and social sciences, and with 30 professional societies to provide print and electronic production, marketing, distribution, and membership services. Subscriptions to the electronic versions of the journals are disseminated by the Press digital platform, Project Muse, which Bill has overseen since 2001.
Bill will talk about issues facing scholarly presses, including the revolution wrought by digital publication, questions over the costs of access, and attribution of authorship in team publication.
February 22 | Saturday Lunch
Renewable Energy for Maryland: An Affordable and Equitable Path to a Clean Energy Sector
Arjun Makhijani, President, Institute for Energy and Environmental Research
Maryland has ample solar and wind resources. They can be the foundation of a renewable energy system that would be more economical and reliable than pursuing business as usual. Equity can and should be a central value.
Arjun Makhijani is President of the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research in Takoma Park, Maryland. He earned his Ph.D. from the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences at the University of California, Berkeley in 1972. He was the principal author of the first study of the energy efficiency potential of the US economy published in 1971. He was part of the Ford Foundation Energy Policy Project whose final report,
A Time to Choose
, 1974, became the foundation of President Carter’s energy policy. Dr. Makhijani has testified before Congress, and appeared on ABC World News Tonight, the CBS Evening News, CBS 60 Minutes, NPR, CNN, and BBC. He has served as a consultant on energy issues to utilities, including the Tennessee Valley Authority, the Edison Electric Institute, the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, and several agencies of the United
Nations.
February 26 | Wednesday Dinner
Maryland Opera:
The Trials, Tribulations and Joy of Starting a New Opera Company
James Harp, Artistic Director
James Harp will speak about creating a new opera company, despite the failure of the Baltimore Opera Company.
Mr. Harp is the artistic director of Maryland Opera, the Mid-Atlantic’s newest opera company and arts organization where he is building a comprehensive, innovative opera and opera education/outreach program to serve Maryland. He is pursuing and nurturing partnerships and collaborations with local and national arts organizations to sustain the operatic art form in perpetuity. He is also a judge for regional and district Metropolitan Opera auditions.
He is well known in the Baltimore area as a pianist, organist, stage director, singer, composer, lecturer, writer and conductor. He holds bachelors and master’s degrees from the Peabody Conservatory of Music.
March 11 | Wednesday Dinner
How New Drugs Are Developed
Dr. Eaton (Ed) Lattman is a recently retired academic, that has spent most of his career at Johns Hopkins University. He has held positions as Professor of Biophysics, Departmental Chair, and Dean of Research and Graduate Education.
March 21 | Saturday Brunch
Fraser Smith on His New Book
The Daily Miracle: A Memoir of Newspapering
The backdrop to this memoir is the death of newspapers across the country, leaving news deserts -- places with no easy access to good or even shoddy papers. Worse, some papers soldier on unable to meet the lowest demands of anything called a newspaper. "Ghost" papers have the trappings -- the proud names, etc,-- but little capacity to do the work our founders knew we would need to sustain a democracy.
The book includes stories about my life as a reporter, editorial writer and columnist at The Sun. As for many of my colleagues, newspapering was a calling. I realized at some point that I had always wanted to represent my townspeople. I literally saw myself in that role. I started a month or so before Kennedy was assassinated -- fitting, I suppose for a career demarcated by assassinations and wars of many kinds: for civil rights, women's rights and the needs of the poor. So, my book is part social and political history, part obituary and part "appreciation."
March 25 | Wednesday Dinner
The Breakthrough Plan for the Johns Hopkins Peabody Institute
Fred Bronstein will describe this “Breakthrough Plan.”
In June, 2014, Dean Bronstein began his appointment as the first dean of the Peabody Institute of the Johns Hopkins University. And in July, 2019, he was renewed for a second five-year term.
Since his arrival at Peabody, Dean Bronstein has established Peabody’s five-year
Breakthrough Plan
to focus the Institute on big strategic goals and financial sustainability for the future.
Dean Bronstein is also an accomplished pianist, dedicated music educator, and successful chief executive of American symphony orchestras.
April 1 | Wednesday Dinner
Perceiving Light: A Brief History of Our Understanding of Light, Leading to the Invention of the Laser
By Joe Ganem
Light is a fascinating, subtle, and profound phenomenon that many of the greatest minds in history have struggled to understand. This struggle has resulted in some of humanity’s greatest intellectual and technological achievements. The talk will take a brief historical tour, provide an explanation of the invention and operation of the laser, and feature some demonstrations.
Joe Ganem is a club member and Professor of Physics at Loyola University Maryland. He is an author on numerous scientific papers in the fields of optical materials, lasers, and magnetic resonance. Joe speaks and writes frequently on science and education issues, and has been a contributor of articles on these topics to the
Baltimore Sun
newspaper. For its 2017 “Best of Baltimore” awards,
Baltimore
magazine named him one the “Best Baltimoreans” in its people in the media section for the category “Best Defense of Science.”
April 18 | Saturday Brunch
Susan Pfeiffer on Who Owns the Bones?
A Story about Repatriation
Discoveries of ancient human skeletons can be informative, but also disruptive. Museums and universities hold collections, the results of past excavations. Susan Pfeiffer will talk about her part in helping with the re-burial of over 1700 ancestral skeletons by First Nations (Indian) descendants in Canada. The story provides a framework for discussing “truth and reconciliation” between the first peoples of the Americas and the in-comers who now greatly outnumber them.
Dr. Pfeiffer is an anthropologist with a specialty in learning about the distant past through the analysis of human skeletons. Her research has taken her to museums and archaeological digs in Canada, Kenya and South Africa. Think of the TV series Bones, but focusing on the long-dead. She will talk about what can be learned from human remains when their “final resting place” is disturbed. Her focus will be repatriation - the transfer of responsibility to the descendants – in an international context.
Susan Pfeiffer is Professor Emeritus at University of Toronto. Since her move to Baltimore with her husband Eaton Lattman in 2017, she has also been a research associate at the Center for the Advanced Study of Human Paleobiology at George Washington University. And she has also taught at the University of Cape Town, Department of Archaeology, and retains an affiliation there.
April 22|Wednesday Dinner
Martin Clarke on Prosecution of Mayor Pugh
Unites States v. Catherine Pugh: How the Sale of Children's Books Resulted in the Conviction of Baltimore's Mayor.
Federal prosecutor Martin Clarke will chronicle the investigation and prosecution of former Mayor Pugh for the fraudulent sale of Healthy Holly children's books and related criminal offenses. Before joining the United States Attorney's Office, Martin Clarke was an Assistant State's Attorney for Baltimore City for ten years. For the past twenty years, he has prosecuted a wide range of federal cases and served as Chief of the Fraud and Public Section and Senior Litigation Counsel.
