* Danté Q. Allen, the commissioner of the U.S. Rehabilitation Services Administration in the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services, was featured speaker at the 23rd Annual U.S. Conference on Disability, which is designed to educate and enhance the lives of individuals with disabilities and their families. Born with spina bifida, Allen is a full-time wheelchair user and a staunch proponent of disability rights and equity. Also speaking at the conference were Alison Levy, director of the Office of Technical and Information Services at the U.S. Access Board; Kathy West-Evans, director of business relations for the National Employment Team of the Council of State Administrators of Vocational Rehabilitation; John Evans, recently retired Vocational Rehabilitation program administrator for employee relations for the State of Washington Department Social Health Services Division of Vocational Rehabilitation; and Gary Karp, disability awareness speaker, trainer, consultant and author of Life On Wheels: For the Active Wheelchair User, among other notable speakers.
Author, historian and medical humanities scholar Brandy Schillace, Ph.D., received the University’s Friends of the Weinberg Memorial Library 2024 Royden B. Davis, S.J., Distinguished Author Award.
Marc Melitz, Ph.D., the David A. Wells Professor of Political Economy at Harvard University, presented the University’s 38th Henry George Lecture. He discussed “Global Production and Innovation Networks: Consequences for Trade and Industrial Policy.”
Award-winning author Stephanie Saldaña discussed her book What We Remember Will Be Saved at the University’s 2024 Ignatian Values in Action Lecture. The book was selected for the University’s “Royal Reads” program for its incoming Class of 2028.
• Bryan W. Van Norden, Ph.D., best-selling author of Taking Back Philosophy: A Multicultural Manifesto and professor at Vassar College and Wuhan University in China, discussed “Learning from Chinese Philosophy” at a Humanities Forum Lecture presented by the University’s Slattery Center for Ignatian Humanities and the Asian Studies Program.
• The University’s Schemel Forum’s fall semester World Affairs Luncheon Seminars speakers included Perri Klass, M.D., author of The Best Medicine; Adam Benforado, J.D., professor of law, Drexel University; and Jonathan Conyers, author of I Wasn’t Supposed to Be Here; Vince Giordano, Grammy-winner, multi-instrumentalist; Olapeju Simoyan, M.D., professor of psychiatry, Drexel University College of Medicine; and Josef Wegner, Ph.D., chair of the Department of Middle Eastern Languages and Cultures, University of Pennsylvania.
Visit the University's YouTube channel to view some of these lectures and read more about the On the Commons news.
