Spring 2012 Master’s Tea Guests

Jim Embry has a long history of activism. While in high school, Jim became the Kentucky state youth chairman for the NAACP, and then while attending the University of Kentucky, helped found and served as president of the Black Student Union. In April 1968 while attending Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s funeral and serving as a funeral marshal, Jim met Ernie Green (part of the “Little Rock Nine”) and was offered a summer job working in New York City. This job exposed Jim to the issues of food and health injustice that became so central to his life’s work. In 2001, Jim moved to Detroit and served as the Director of the Boggs Center to Nurture Community Leadership. He later returned to Kentucky and founded Sustainable Communities Network in 2006, guiding the development of 30+ community garden projects at homeless shelters, schools, neighborhood empty lots and more. An avid photograher, in 2009 he contributed articles and photographes to three publications, and in 2012 will publish his first book of photographs, Through the Lens of a Sacred Earth Activist and his autobiography, Black and Green. He has participated in most of the major social justice movements of his era: Civil Rights, Student, Black Power, Environmental, Labor, Anti-War and Peace, Women’s, Disability, Gay and Lesbian, Anti-Nuclear and natural foods.

 

A great understanding of people combined with a rich performance background has led Paul Draper to a multi-faceted career as an anthropologist, mentalist, and organizational improvement expert. His warmth and interest in his audiences forms a strong component of his training seminars and shows. As a former faculty member of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas and lecturer at Westminster College and Weber State University, Paul has honed his research and training to improve business and organizational processes. He draws heavily on his Anthropology and Communication studies in his workshops to empower attendees to develop healthy communities. In addition to his corporate shows and academic lectures, Paul Draper is frequently called upon as an expert in fields ranging from magical history to human consciousness. He has appeared as an expert on the History Channel, WB, A&E, HBO, and HGTV. Paul has performed at the Venetian Hotel and Casino, Caesars Palace, The Magic Castle, on documentaries accompanying Steven Spielberg’s Poltergeist and major theaters all across the US. Learn more about the workshops at http://www.helpinghospitalsheal.com/ and learn more about Paul Draper’s shows at www.mentalmysteries.com.

 

Bill has been calling dances for over thirty years, starting out in New Haven, Connecticut, with the contra dance series that has been a fixture of the folk music and dance scene there for nearly thirty-five years. In addition to contra dances in and around the northeast, he has called at various festivals and dance camps regionally and nationally. Bill also calls several maypole dances regionally each year in May, and hosts a May Day festival as well as seasonal celebrations of the solstices and equinoxes at his house in Bethany, CT. Somewhat accidentally, he has focused on groups which include a lot of beginners- of all ages- and has done events at schools, parties, special occasions, and nursing homes, including square dances for people in wheelchairs! Besides calling, he plays several folk instruments- primarily penny whistle- and has danced in and played music for performing dance groups at many events and festivals in and around the northeast.

 

Harvey C. Mansfield studies and teaches political philosophy at Harvard University. He has written numerous books, including Manliness in 2006. He has also written on Edmund Burke and the nature of political parties, on Machiavelli and the invention of indirect government, in defense of a defensible liberalism and in favor of a Constitutional American political science. He has translated three books of Machiavelli’s and (with the aid of his wife) Tocqueville’s Democracy in America. His book on manliness has just been published. He was Chairman of the Government Department from 1973-1977, has held Guggenheim and NEH Fellowships, and has been a Fellow at the National Humanities Center. In 2004, he accepted a National Humanities Medal from the President.

 

Sarah Stillman is an investigative reporter and visiting scholar at NYU’s Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute, where she teaches a course on reporting the global city. Her recent New Yorker feature story on human trafficking on U.S. military bases in Iraq and Afghanistan, “The Invisible Army,” was named a finalist for the Daniel Pearl Award for Outstanding International Investigative Reporting. Her coverate of America’s wars has also appeared in the Washington Post, Slate.com, The New Republic.com, the Atlantic.com and The Nation.

 

Rachel Saltz works at The New York Times, where she is an editor and writer, contributing frequently on theater and film, particularly movies from India. She has an M.F.A. in film from Columbia University, and has written scripts and directed two short films, including “Gold Mountain,” which won a student Academy Award. her undergraduate degree is from the University of Chicago, where she majored in South Asian Languages and Civilizations.

 

Howard Dean is the former Governor of Vermont, a 2004 candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination, former chairman of the Democratic National Committee, founder of Democracy for America, and a Yale (and Pierson!) graduate.

 

Brian Janosch serves as The Onion’s editorial coordinator and writes for the paper’s sports section. Originally from the northern suburbs of Chicago, he came to New York after graduating from Indiana University in Bloomington where he founded a national award-winning magazine. Brian is relatively confident he’s the only person in America who has worked for Field & Stream, Parenting, Maxim, then The Onion consecutively. Baratunde Thurston is a politically-active, technology-loving comedian from the future. He co-founded the black political blog, Jack and Jill Politics and serves as Director of Digital Science’s Future Of on Discovery Science and appears on cable news regularly to say smart things in funny way. Then-candidate Barack Obama called him “someone I need to know.” Baratunde travels the world speaking and advising and performing standup regularly in NYC. He resides in Brooklyn, lives on Twitter and has over 30 years experience being black. His first book, How to be Black, will be published in February 2012 by Harper Collins.

 

Scott Johnston, a 1982 Pierson grad, is the co-founder and Vice Chairman of Wayin LLC, a new internet start up. Wayin is a free engagement service connecting users and enterprise partners anywhere, anytime on movile, facebook and web platforms. Co-founded by Scott McNealy, Wayin is fun for consumers but also the first mobile service to provide enterprise partners with instantaneous measuring of sentiment. See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a_Ip-hIMEs8. Previously, Scott had a long career in financial services with firms like Salomon Brothers and Bankers Trust. He also ran his own group of hedge funds, Peconic, for over a decade. At Yale, Scott taught a seminar on financial theory as a Lecturer at Yale College. He is married with three children and lives in Bedford, N.Y. Scott is a Pierson College Fellow.

 

Dennis is an independent Animation Director & Producer whose work has been shown at film festivals around the world. His 2007 film Chainsaw has won many Grands Prix in animation festivals, and his films are often shown in retrospectives, and are discussed in Judith Kriger’s book “Animated Realism” (2012). Dennis was also featured in Chris Robinson’s book as one of the “Unsung Heroes of Animation.” He has spoken at international conferences, and taught, presented his work and run workshops at many universities and film schools around the world.

 

Mila is a documentary filmmaker, whose first feature documentary, Cinema Komunisto, premiered in the First Appearance Competition at IDFA 2010. It has won 14 awards including the FOCAL International Award for Creative Use of Archive Footage, the Alpe Adria Cinema Award for Best Documentary, the Gold Hugo for Best Documentary at the Chicago International Film Festival, and FIPRESCI Serbia for Best Documentary film.

 

Mila graduated from teh London School of Economics with a degree in Politics and International Relations, and completed a degree in Film Production at the Faculty of Dramatic Arts in Belgrade. During her studies she set up an NGO that introduced parliamentary debating at the University of Belgrade, and competed in many debate tournaments, winning Best Speaker Award at the European Universities Debating Championships in 2001. Faced with the political reality of post-revolutionary Serbia, she converted to filmmaking in the belief that art will always be more subversive than politics. She received the Michael Peacock scholarship to continue her master studies in Media and Communications at the LSE, and specialized in documentary filmmaking at La Femis in Paris. With the aim to bring quality documentaries to Serbian audiences, in 2005 she co-founded the Magnificent 7 Festival of European Feature Documentary Films, which takes place in Belgrade every January.

 

Daniel Rose, Chairman of Rose Associates, Inc., a New York-based 85-year old real estate organization, has pursured a career involving a broad range of professional, civic and non-profit  activities. Professionally, he has developed such properties as the award-winning Pentagon city complex in Arlington, VA and the One Financial Center office tower in Boston, MA. As an institutional consultant, his credits include the creation and implementation of the “housing for the performing arts” concept for New York’s Manhattan Plaza. Mr. Rose founded (and is now Chairman Emeritus of) the highly-acclaimed Harlem Educational Activities Fund, whose inner-city students are flowing into the nation’s leading high schools and colleges and whose junior high school chess teams have ranked first in the nation; and he is a founding Board member of FC Harlem/Harlem Youth Soccer.

 

Sebastian Smee is the Boston Globe’s art critic and winner of the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for criticism. He joined the paper’s staff from Sydney, where he served as the national art critic for The Australian. Before that he worked in London, where he was art critic at the Daily Telegraph and a contributor to The Guardian, The Times, The Financial Times, The Independent on Sunday, The Art Newspaper, Modern Painters, and Prospect magazine. In 1994 he received a bachelor of arts degree, with honors, in fine arts from Sydney University. He reviews books regularly for the Spectator and is himself the author of books and essays on the British painter Lucian Freud as well as “Side by Side: Picasso v. Matisse.”

 

XiXi Yang is an entertainment TV personality, executive producer, and a social media maven. Mostly known for creating PopStopTV.com- a new media network that generates over 6 million unique visitors a month and celebrates pop culture for the web 2.0 generation- she is a fresh faced entrepreneur who utilizes the power of Internet as well as television and radio to connect with the youth culture.

 

Michael Gerhardt is Samuel Ashe Distinguished Professor of Constitutional Law at UNC-Chapel Hill. He is a nationally recognized expert on constitutional conflicts. He has participated in the confirmation proceedings for five of the nine justices currenetly sitting on the Supreme Court, including most recently as Special Counsel to Chairman Patrick Leahy and the Senate Judiciary Committee on the nominations of Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan to the Supreme Court. During President Clinton’s impeachment proceedings, he testified as the only joint witness before the House of Representatives and served as CNN’s full-time impeachment expert. He has published five books, including a leading treatise on the appointments process (published by Duke University Press) and The Power of Precedent (Published by Oxford University Press). His forthcoming book, “The Constitutional Significance of the Forgotten Presidents.” will be published by Yale University Press.

 

Judith Ursitti is director of state government affairs for Autism Speaks. Since her son Jack was diagnosed with an autism spectrum disorder in 2005 she has been involved in the drafting, passage and implementation of autism insurance reform legislation in more than a dozen states, including Connecticut, New York, Vermont, New Jersey, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Maine and Rhode Island. Judith is a certified public accountant with more than a decade of experience in taxation. She lives in Dover, MA with her husband Andy and children, Amy and Jack.

 

Ambassador L. Paul Bremer ‘63 is a distinguished American diplomat. He served as the head of the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq from May 2003 to June 2004. He has also served as the Ambassador to the Netherlands and the Ambassador at large for counter0terrorism. He is a past managing director of Kissinger Associates. In 2004, President Bush awarded Ambassador Bremer the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Monday, April 9th, David Roberts

David Roberts is a senior writer for Grist.org, where he covers energy, climate change and politics. His work has appeared in Outside magazine, Popular Science, Scientific American, Fast Company, and elsewhere. He’s appeared on NPR, The Rachel Maddow Show, and even, believe it or not, Hannity & Colmes, where he discussed Sheryl Crow’s toilet paper. (Don’t ask). He lives in Seattle with his wife and two sons.

 

CJ May, an FES graduate, has been working with Yale in sustainability since 1989 and is now the recycling coordinator at the Yale Office of Sustainability. In this position, he led and is in the successful transition phases of the campaign to move Yale to single-stream recycling. This effort was started at Yale in 1970 by a group of undergraduates and continues to be an important part of Yale’s sustainability efforts due to the dedication and leadership of CJ May.

 

Robert Louis Jackson (b. 1923), B.E. Bensinger Professor (Emeritus) of Slavic Languages and Literatures at Yale University, has published widely on Dostoevsky, Chekhov, Tolstoy, Turgenev, and other Russian and European writers of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.