Panelists present three perspectives on the World Trade Organization's apparent failure to achieve agreement at last summer's Doha Round. They focus on the implications for the poor in developing countries. The speakers are James Anderson, who holds the economics department's William B. Neenan, SJ, Millenium Chair; David Deese, associate professor of political science; and Frank Garcia, professor at the Law School.

Since its founding, America has been compared to Rome, says Cullen Murphy.

Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, former lieutenant governor of Maryland and oldest daughter of Robert F. and Ethel Kennedy, is an adjunct professor at Georgetown University's School of Public Policy.

Dahlia Wasfi, MD, was born in the United States to an Iraqi father and Jewish mother. Although she was educated in this country, she frequently visited extended family in Iraq, most recently during the spring of 2006 when she spent three months in Basra.

Former Massachusetts Governor and 1988 Democratic nominee for president Michael Dukakis doesn't mince words in talking about health care reform.

NBC newsman Tim Russert moderated a discussion on April 23 in Conte Forum with presidential candidates Senator Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) and Senator Sam Brownback (R-Kan.) entitled "Catholic Senators and Presidential Candidates: Their Faith and Public Policy."

Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs R. Nicholas Burns '78 has been a foreign service officer and assistant to presidents of both political parties in the course of his 24-year diplomatic career.

William Galston of the University of Maryland, Hahrie Han of Wellesley College, Professor Marc Landy, and Professor Alan Wolfe discuss the nature and significance of what analysts describe as a widening gulf within the American body politic.

The U.S. Constitution is silent on bioethical issues such as stem cell research and cloning, according to Diana Schaub, chair of the Department of Political Science at Loyola College of Maryland. This fact "should be taken as an invitation to practice self-government as the founding fathers intended," she asserts, before describing the efforts of the executive and legislative branches of government to cope with the legal and ethical questions that new medical technologies force us to confront. Schaub is author of Erotic Liberalism: Women and Revolution in Montesquieu's "Persian Letters" (Rowman and Littlefield, 1995).

Tommie Shelby, Loeb Associate Professor of the Social Sciences and African and African American Studies at Harvard University, speaks on how class differences between African Americans make it difficult to build black solidarity and a progressive politics. He is the author of We Who Are Dark: The Philosophical Foundation of Black Solidarity (Harvard, 2005).