All Star Lineup Announced for The Centennial's Classroom Revisited
On March 22, 2014 Regis High School will host a very special version of The Classroom Revisited. In honor of the Regis Centennial, a number of prominent Regis alumni will join us and "teach" a class in their area of expertise. They will be joined by current and former faculty members for a day that promises to be educational, informative, and fun.
Below is a description of presenters and their classroom discussions. Pre-registration for this event is required, and space is limited. For more event details and to register, click here. For questions or more information, conact Melanie Seltzer, Special Events Coordinator, at mseltzer@regis.org.
NEW CLASS ADDED! "Writing Life and Death: Exploring War, Disease and the American Catholic Experience Through Fiction" presented by Phil Klay '01 (author, Redeployment) and Matthew Thomas '93 (author, We Are Not Ourselves)
Public Service: Reflections on a Career at the National Institutes of Health
Presentation by Anthony S. Fauci, M.D. '58
Director, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases
Dr. Fauci will discuss his journey from a student at Regis High School to a physician-scientist at the National Institutes of Health where he has directed the U.S. government's HIV/AIDS research program. His career path put him in a position to influence domestic and global health policy, dealing with the Congress of the United States and serving as an advisor to five U.S. Presidents from Ronald Reagan to Barack Obama.
Anthony S. Fauci, M.D., is director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) at the National Institutes of Health. Since his appointment as NIAID director in 1984, Dr. Fauci has overseen an extensive research portfolio devoted to preventing, diagnosing, and treating infectious and immune-mediated diseases. Dr. Fauci also is chief of the NIAID Laboratory of Immunoregulation, where he has made numerous important discoveries related to HIV/AIDS and is one of the most-cited scientists in the field. Dr. Fauci serves as one of the key advisors to the White House and Department of Health and Human Services on global AIDS issues, and on initiatives to bolster medical and public health preparedness against emerging infectious disease threats such as pandemic influenza. He was one of the principal architects of the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), which has already been responsible for saving millions of lives throughout the developing world. Dr. Fauci is a member of the US National Academy of Sciences and is the recipient of numerous prestigious awards for his scientific and global health accomplishments, including the National Medal of Science, the Mary Woodard Lasker Award for Public Service, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom. He has been awarded 38 honorary doctoral degrees and is the author, coauthor, or editor of more than 1,200 scientific publications, including several major textbooks.
Our National Approach to Terrorism: What Has Changed and What Hasn't
Presentation by Patrick J. Fitzgerald '78
Former Federal Prosecutor, U.S. Department of Justice
Patrick Fitzgerald is a seasoned trial lawyer and experienced investigator whose practice focuses on internal investigations, government enforcement matters and civil litigation. Prior to joining Skadden in 2012, Mr. Fitzgerald most recently served as the U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois. Appointed in 2001 by President George W. Bush, he was the longest-serving U.S. Attorney ever in Chicago. In this capacity, he led numerous high-profile investigations and prosecutions, including the convictions on corruption charges of two successive governors of Illinois — George Ryan and Rod Blagojevich — and the fraud conviction of media figure Conrad Black. As a special counsel, Mr. Fitzgerald was selected to lead the investigation of leaks in the Valerie Plame matter and tried the case of United States v. Lewis “Scooter” Libby. During his tenure, the U.S. Attorney's office prosecuted significant fraud, civil rights, organized crime, narcotics and national security cases. Mr. Fitzgerald also was involved in a number of nationwide initiatives, including the President's Corporate Fraud Task Force and the Attorney General's Advisory Committee.
Reflections On Changes in the Law Over the Last 50 Years
Presentation by Hon. John G. Koeltl '63
U.S. District Judge for the Southern District of New York
Judge Koeltl was appointed United States District Judge for the Southern District of New York on August 11, 1994 and entered on duty on September 9, 1994. He graduated from Georgetown University with an A.B. degree summa cum laude in 1967 and received a J.D. degree magna cum laude for Harvard Law School in 1971, where he was an editor of the Harvard Law Review. From 1971 to 1972, Judge Koeltl was a law clerk to the Hon. Edward Weinfeld United States District Judge, Southern District of New York and from 1972 to 1973 he was a law clerk to Hon. Potter Stewart, United States Supreme Court. He served as an Assistant Special Prosecutor, Watergate Special Prosecution Force, Department of justice from 1973 to 1974. In February 1975 he became an Associate with Debevoise & Plimpton until January 1979 when he became a partner with the firm. He remained at Debevoise & Plimpton until his appointment to the bench in 1994. Judge Koeltl is a member of the American Bar Association, the American Law Institute, the Association of the Bar of the City of New York, the New York State Bar Association, the Bar Association of the Fifth Circuit, the American Society of International Law, the New York County Lawyers Association, the Federal Bar Council, the Federal Communications Bar Association, the Fellows of the American Bar Foundation, the American Judicature Society, Phi Beta Kappa Associates, the Supreme Court Historical Society and the Harvard Law School Association of New York. He is an Adjunct Professor of Law at New York University School of Law. Judge Koeltl is a member of the Advisory Committee on Civil Rules and a former member of the Committee on Court Administration and Case Management of the Judicial Conference of the United States.
Life As A United States Ambassador
Presentation by Ambassador Timothy A. Chorba '64 (Former U.S. Ambassador to Singapore)
and Ambassador William B. Wood '68 (Former U.S Ambassador to Afghanistan & Colombia)
Timothy A. Chorba, Ambassador to Singapore from 1994 to 1997 and a senior partner of Patton Boggs in Washington, D.C., represents domestic and international enterprises in working with the U.S. government and foreign governments to attain their business objectives. Ambassador Chorba helps clients articulate their interests and objectives on Capitol Hill and in the executive branch, and then translate those objectives into strategic, results-oriented action. He employs his relationships around the world to help solve clients' problems. Ambassador Chorba is a 1968 Georgetown graduate, a 1968-69 Fulbright Scholar in International Relations at the University of Heidelberg, and a 1972 Harvard Law School graduate. An Army ROTC graduate of Georgetown, he served as an Armor officer and a JAG officer. As Ambassador, he assisted U.S. multinational corporations with interests in Southeast Asia and worked to enhance the bilateral military relationship. He promoted the export of American goods, including successful advocacy of Singaporean purchase of American aircraft and light rail vehicles, and he was instrumental in initiating the U.S.-Singapore “Open Skies Agreement” which he signed on behalf of the United States. He is President of the Council of American Ambassadors, the association of non-career (politically appointed) U.S. Ambassadors.
Ambassador William B. Wood was the State Department coordinator for implementation of sanctions on Iran from 2010 to 2013. He was the U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan from 2007 to 2009, and the U.S. Ambassador to Colombia from 2003 to 2007. He was the Principal Deputy and Acting Assistant Secretary of State in the Bureau of International Organization Affairs from 1998 to 2002. He was a member of the teaching faculty at the National War College from 2009 to 2010. Wood has been a professional Foreign Service officer for more than 35 years. He has served abroad in Latin America, Europe, South Asia, and in multilateral organizations, including the United Nations, where he was the chief U.S. negotiator in the Security Council. He has served in four conflict or post-conflict situations in Uruguay, El Salvador, Colombia, and Afghanistan. In Washington, he has served on a number of functional and regional desks. His areas of experience include multilateral affairs, international economics and development, international law enforcement, and politico-military affairs, including low intensity conflict and peacekeeping.. Wood has received the Department of State's meritorious and superior honor awards on repeated occasions. In 2002 he received the Distinguished Service Award, the highest award offered by the Department of State. In 2010 he received the Presidential Award for Distinguished Service.
Covering National Security in an Age of Secrets
Presentation by Mark Mazzetti '92 (National Security Correspondent for The New York Times)
and Jim Sciutto '88 (Chief National Security Correspondent for CNN)
Mark Mazzetti is a correspondent for The New York Times, where he has covered national security from the newspaper's Washington bureau since April 2006. He is the author of The Way of the Knife: The CIA, A Secret Army, and a War at the Ends of the Earth. In 2009, he shared a Pulitzer Prize for reporting on the intensifying violence in Pakistan and Afghanistan and Washington's response. The previous year, he was a Pulitzer finalist for reporting on the C.I.A.'s detention and interrogation program. Before joining The Times, Mr. Mazzetti was a staff writer for the Los Angeles Times, where he covered the Pentagon and military affairs from June 2004 until April 2006. Since the Sept. 11 attacks, he has made several reporting trips to Afghanistan, Iraq and the Horn of Africa. From 2001 through 2004 he was the Pentagon correspondent for U.S. News & World Report, covering defense and national security. During the war in Iraq in 2003, he spent two months embedded with the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force and as a reporter in Baghdad. Before joining U.S. News, he worked as a correspondent for The Economist, based in Washington, D.C. and Austin, Tex. from 1998 until 2001. While with The Economist, he covered national politics, including the candidacy of George W Bush, as well as business, general news and culture stories in the Southwest. Mr. Mazzetti was the recipient of the 2006 Gerald R Ford Prize for Distinguished Reporting on National Defense. In 2008, Mr. Mazzetti won the Livingston Award in the category of national reporting for breaking the story of the C.I.A.'s destruction of videotapes showing brutal interrogation of Qaeda detainees.
Jim Sciutto in Chief National Security Correspondent for CNN, based in Washington, DC. Previously, he served as Chief of Staff and Senior Advisor to US Ambassador to China Gary Locke from 2011-2013. Prior to accepting this appointment, Sciutto was ABC News’ Senior Foreign correspondent. Based in London from 2002-2011 and then in Washington, Sciutto reported from more than 50 countries in Europe, Asia, Latin America, Africa and the Middle East, including more than a dozen assignments each in Iraq, Afghanistan and Iran. He contributed to all ABC News broadcasts and platforms, including “World News,” “Nightline” and “Good Morning America” and also anchored “World News” and “Good Morning America.” In 2010, Sciutto won the Edward R. Murrow award for his reporting from Iran during the 2009 election protests. In 2008 he was awarded the George Polk Award for Television Reporting for his work from Myanmar, as well as a Citation for Excellence from the Overseas Press Club. Sciutto has defied government restrictions to report undercover from Myanmar, Zimbabwe and Iran several times. He won Emmy awards in 2004 and 2005 for best story in a regularly scheduled newscast, covering northern Iraq for “Iraq: Where Things Stand.” He was nominated for other Emmys in 2005 for outstanding coverage of a breaking news story for “Crisis in Beslan” and in 2007 for Good Morning America’s “Around the World” series. In September 2008, Sciutto published a book based on his reporting experiences in the Middle East, entitled “Against Us: The New Face of America’s Enemies in the Muslim World,” published by Random House. Publishers Weekly called it “deeply insightful” and “captivating”; Booklist, “much-needed light on dark geopolitical realities”. ABC News’ Charlie Gibson said “It’s a solid job of reporting, a personal journey of discovery and a wake-up call for all who read it.”
Writing Life and Death: Exploring War, Disease and the American Catholic Experience Through Fiction
Presentation by Phil Klay '01 (author, Redeployment)
and Matthew Thomas '93 (author, We Are Not Ourselves)
Phil Klay is a graduate of Dartmouth College and a veteran of the U.S. Marine Corps. He served in Iraq’s Anbar Province from January 2007 to February 2008 as a Public Affairs Officer. After being discharged he went to Hunter College and received an MFA. His story "Redeployment" was originally published in Granta and is included in Fire and Forget: Short Stories from the Long War. His writing has also appeared in the New York Times, Newsweek, The Daily Beast, the New York Daily News, Tin House, and The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2012. His collection of stories, entitled Redeployment, will be published by Penguin Press in March.
Matthew Thomas graduated with honors from the University of Chicago and has an MA from the Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University and an MFA from the University of California, Irvine, where he received the Graduate Essay Award. His debut novel, We Are Not Ourselves, will be published by Simon and Schuster in September 2014 and subsequently in the following territories: UK and Commonwealth (Fourth Estate), Czech Republic (Euromedia Group), France (Editions Belfond), Germany (Berlin Verlag), Holland (De Bezige Bij), Italy (Neri Pozza Editore S.p.A.), Korea (Sigongsa), Norway (Forlaget Press) and Russia (Atticus Publishers).
Regis High School Faculty Presentations
From Grammar to God
Mr. Edgar (Ned) Jackson, Former Latin & Languages Teacher
A two-hour presentation, part of a well-received series over the years but conceived this time with special reference to the Regis centennial. Each hour can be attended independently, but the aim is for cumulative effect. During these two hours, I hope to present to visitors, and discuss with them, some of my utterly unforeseen discoveries in the Regis language-classroom, in which the seemingly routine issues of daily pedagogy have led to reflections on some of the deepest, or highest, questions open to human beings—and, conceivably, to revelations, as well: from banality to deity. Our discussion will begin with the Regis Latin textbook and proceed to one or more authors recently taught at the higher levels of Latin at Regis, such as Ovid, Virgil and, more unusually, Petronius (in whom my visitors of two years ago expressed a special interest), but no experience of those authors is necessary for the visitors. At the same time, the presentation will be, above all, an opportunity for this year’s visitors to renew their experience, in as immediate a fashion as possible, of a Regis education.
Loose Shorts
Mr. Joseph Quinn ‘04, English Teacher
We will revisit a few of John’s favorite sequences and short films, leaving time for talking in between. Works may draw from Hitchcock, Hawks, Ford, Keaton, Bresson, Ophuls, Antonioni, and "Beckett on Film".
Meditation in Action
Ms. Eelka Lampe, Teacher of German and T’ai-chi ch’üan
The class offers an introduction to Realization Process Meditation as developed by Judith Blackstone. This unique kind of meditation practice offers deep relaxation through breathing and body awareness and cultivates non-dual awareness for a deeper and richer sense of living. No previous experience is necessary to participate. Dr. Lampe is fully certified in Realization Process Meditation, Embodiment, and Spiritual Psychotherapy. She has taught Senior year seminars in Meditation and has been offering this meditation approach to faculty at Regis since 2008.
Latin in 21st century USA
Dr. Fernando Gomez Herrero, Latin & Spanish Teacher
What about engaging in the study of the Latin language in 21st Century America? What do American teenagers taking Latin 3 do in the classroom (exercises, responses, comments, arguments, etc.)? What does "classical" legacy mean in Gotham in 2014? How classical is classical? How kitschy is classical? How classical is modern and how modern is classical inside the so-called departments of "languages"? We will look into the current generation of Regians taking Latin and see how they are quite different from conventional students studying the most prestigious field of classics inside the humanities in the Europe of the 1960s. Current Regians are no British imperialists moving about selective circles of power and privilege seeking to be deployed to India or Africa; nor are they 19th century German scholars and philosophers in the vicinity of the emerging nation-state that will become leading force in Europe until today. It is unlikely they will be in the same historical world as fiery Iberian priests wanting to convert the barbarian Indians in the newly discovered lands mistakingly called “America” after Americo Vespucci. Smart Regian students taking Latin today will have little resemblance to medieval monks scribbling away the long nights and beautifully decorating manuscripts in a fragmented Europe after the collapse of the Roman Empire. Will they have anything in common with early Christians like St. Augustine writing his confessions in the provinces of a decrepit Roman Empire? How would these American teenagers with a predilection for the game called "Seven Up" compare to Renaissance humanists walking around the city of Rome in the cows’ field of pasture (where the Colossium stands today) wanting the rebirth of the classical world…? We will problematize the study of Latin and we will look into arguments for the theoretical defense of the Latin language and the classical legacy and/or tradition inside the larger crisis of the field known as "the humanities," or most commonly the "liberal arts." Selections of three recent texts will be included to add rich food for thought (Mary Beard, Francoise Waquet and Jurgen Leonhardt).
Introduction to Mandarin Chinese
Mr. Pedro Acosta, Language Teacher
Mandarin Chinese is the official language of the People’s Republic of China and the Republic of China on Taiwan. Chinese is spoken by more than 1.3 billion people throughout the world. It is the language of the oldest continuous civilization in the history of humanity. Chinese culture has contributed richly to the human experience for more than four thousand years. This session will include an explanation of the Romanization system, the tones of Mandarin, and the basic principles of character writing. Attendees will learn some basic words and phrases which they will be able to use in elementary conversation.
Regis and the Society of Jesus: The Founding of a School that Returned the Jesuits to Their Founding
Fr. Anthony Andreassi, C.O., History Teacher & Regis Historian
In addition to 2014 marking the 100th anniversary of Regis, this year also marks the 200th anniversary of the re-founding of the Society of Jesus. In many ways the newly-refounded Jesuits were different than the Society that had existed from 1540 to 1773. However, in the starting of Regis, Father Hearn and the foundress actually went back to the Society’s origins in offering an education to all and not just those who could afford to pay for it. Join Father Andreassi in a conversation on 19th and early 20th century Jesuit history (both in Europe and America) especially as it affected the founding of Regis and its educational apostolates in general.
The Standard Model
Mr. Frank Barona, Science Teacher
A discussion of the things smaller than an atom and how we know they're there.