WDCSA NEWSLETTER May 2018
Beyond the Farm: Alumni Day of Service
Saturday, May 5
Join WDCSA in a local community service project as more than 200,000 alumni around the globe participate in an annual day of service. One day can make a world of difference. See below for your local options:
NY Avenue Men’s Shelter Clean Up
Saturday, May 5 10 am – 1 pm
1355 New York Avenue, NE,
Washington, DC
NY Avenue Men’s Shelter provides emergency shelter every single night of the year
The shelter offers a hot meal, shower, place to stay off the streets, and access to a case manager. Beds are available on a first come, first served basis to some of our most vulnerable neighbors.
Join us to help clean and maintain the inside of the shelter, while also cleaning up the perimeter of the property.
Sign up / additional info: https://alumni.stanford.edu/get/page/events/details?event_id=26737.
Serve Lunch to Homeless with SOME (this event has reached capacity)
Saturday, May 5 10 am – 1:15 pm
71 O Street, NW,
Washington, DC
Volunteers are needed to help prepare meals and serve them to hungry guests at SOME’s Dining Rooms for the Homeless. With the help of volunteers, SOME
provides a nourishing, hot breakfast and lunch every day of the year.
Parents Connection Spring Social
Sunday, May 6 2-4 pm
McLean, VA (address provided upon RSVP)
Join the Stanford Parents Connection for our spring social to welcome the new Stanford Class of 2022 parents. Come to fellowship, ask questions, and
share your experiences and insights. Please bring a snack to share.
Questions/RSVP: Helene Myers, Ph.D., P’14, at cedarhouse@comcast.net
WDCSA Faculty Speaker Series
An Afternoon with Stanford Professor Michael McFaul
Saturday, May 12 4-5:30 pm
Stanford in Washington
2661 Connecticut Avenue, NW,
Washington, DC
From Cold War to Hot Peace: An American Ambassador in Putin’s Russia
Former US ambassador to Russia and director of Stanford’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, Mike McFaul, shares an inside account of U.S.-Russia relations. In 2008, when he was asked to step away from Stanford and join an unlikely presidential campaign, Professor McFaul had no idea that he would find himself at the beating heart of one of today’s most contentious and consequential international relationships. Marking the publication of his new book, From Cold War to Hot Peace, this talk combines history and memoir to tell the full story of U.S.-Russia relations from the fall of the Soviet Union to the new rise of Vladimir Putin.
Michael McFaul, ’86, MA ’86, is a professor of political science, director and senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, and the Peter and Helen Bing Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution. He has served the Obama administration as Special Assistant to the President, Senior Director for Russian and Eurasian Affairs at the National Security Council at the White House, and most recently as the U.S. Ambassador to the Russian Federation. Professor McFaul has written and edited several books on international relations and foreign policy and his op-ed writings have been featured in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and the Washington Post. His latest book is From Cold War to Hot Peace: An American Ambassador in Putin’s Russia. As a NBC News analyst, he provides expertise on foreign affairs and national security coverage.
The registration price is $25 for WDCSA members and guests; $40 for non-WDCSA members and guests. Please RSVP and pay online at http://alumni.stanford.edu/goto/event26996.
Please contact Kevin Coyne, MS ‘02 at kevin.coyne@stanfordalumni.org with any
questions.
Free Minds Outreach Event
Sunday, May 20 1:30-3:30 pm
Stanford In Washington
2661 Connecticut Avenue, NW,
Washington, DC
The award-winning Free Minds Book Club and Writing Workshop, which works with young men in the DC Jail and the federal prison system, invites you to connect with DC inmates through their poetry. Join fellow Stanford alumni and students at Stanford In Washington to read moving, insightful poems written by young men in jail about their lives, and offer brief written feedback that will later be returned to the poets. Hear about the work of Free Minds from its founders and from "poet ambassadors" – who took part in the life-changing program and are now back in the community. For more information, visit: http://freemindsbookclub.org.
RSVP and questions: Lois Herrmann, MA ’68.herrmannlois@gmail.com.
WDCSA Faculty Speaker Series
Stanford Professor Bruce Macintosh: Emerging Pictures of Distant Worlds
Tuesday, June 5 6:30-8 pm
St. Albans School,
(Activities Building, Manger Trophy Room)
3101 Wisconsin Avenue, NW,
Washington, DC
Join WDCSA for an evening with Stanford Astrophysicist Bruce Macintosh.
In less than two decades, more than two thousand planets have been discovered orbiting other stars. Professor Macintosh will discuss these discoveries and the vast diversity of systems they have revealed, with a particular focus on imaging – using advanced telescopes and instruments to see the light from the planet directly, allowing us to measure their composition and nature. He will also look toward the future where space-based telescopes with similar technology or giant light-blocking star shades may someday measure the atmosphere of an Earth twin. Bruce Macintosh is a professor of physics at Stanford’s Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology. As principal investigator of the Gemini Planet Imager, he uses an advanced adaptive optics planet-finder for the Gemini South telescope to image extrasolar planets orbiting nearby stars.
Professor Macintosh co-led the team that made the first-ever images of an extrasolar planetary system, discovering four giant planets orbiting the young star HR8799. Additionally, he employs adaptive optics technology to control light and explores other approaches to studying extrasolar planets.
Registration for the event is available at https://alumni.stanford.edu/goto/event26893. Please contact Kevin Coyne at kevin.coyne@stanfordalumni.org with any questions.
Meet Congressman Adam Schiff ’82
Wednesday, June 20 6:30-8:30 pm
Stanford in Washington – Distance Learning Center
2661 Connecticut Avenue, NW,
Washington, DC
(Convenient entry is available through the SIW Art Gallery, 2655 Connecticut Avenue until 7 pm) Join WDCSA for a conversation with Congressman Adam Schiff, who is serving his 9th term in the House of Representatives representing California’s 28th Congressional District.
Congressman Schiff is the Ranking Member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, and a Member of the Benghazi Select Committee. He co-founded and chairs the Congressional Caucus for Freedom of the Press – a bipartisan, bicameral caucus that aims to advance press freedom around the world. Adam also founded and co-chairs the International Creativity and Theft-Prevention Caucus and is a strong proponent of science and American leadership in space exploration.
Prior to serving in the House of Representatives, Congressman Schiff served as the State Senator for California’s 21st State Senate District, and as a federal prosecutor with the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Los Angeles. A member of the Stanford University Class of 1982, Adam also received a J.D. degree from Harvard Law School in 1985.
The evening’s host and moderator will be Pete Williams ’74, long time reporter for NBC News, who has covered the Justice Department and the U.S.
Supreme Court since 1993. Pete served as a press official on Capitol Hill for many years before joining Congressman Dick Cheney as press secretary and a legislative assistant and, when Cheney was named Secretary of Defense, serving as Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs. While in that position,
Pete was named Government Communicator of the Year in 1991 by the National Association of Government Communicators.
Registration for this evening’s event will be $25 for WDCSA members and guests, $35 for nonmembers. Light refreshments will be served. Sign up for this special event here:
https://alumni.stanford.edu/get/page/events/details?event_id=27026
Questions? Contact Risa Shimoda
at risa@theshimodagroup.com or 301-502-6548.
Boomers to Busters Rooftop Soiree
Friday, June 22 6-8 pm
1730 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
Washington, DC
Enjoy the latest sunset of the year on a private rooftop taking in one of the most exquisite views anywhere in Washington: an unobstructed southern
panoramic view encompassing the Jefferson and Washington Memorials, White House and the Capitol. Relax with people who took test run off of mimeograph machines.
Light dinner buffet of sandwiches and salads, and soft drinks included with registration fee. Cash bar available (no credit cards) for wine and beer.
Early bird registration is $35 until June 11th; then regular registration is $40 until June 18th; after that late registration is $50. To register, visit:
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/summer-solstice-rooftopsoiree-2018-tickets-45134967904.
For more information about BtoB: https://dc.uchicagoalumni.org/boomerstobusters.
If you have questions, contact boomerstobusters@gmail.com.
DC Book Club Discussion
Sunday, May 13 5 pm
Annandale, Va
The book group will discuss Age of Ambition: Chasing Fortune, Truth, and Faith in the New China by Evan Osnos. All are welcome to join the discussion and participate in the potluck dinner.
As the Beijing correspondent for The New Yorker,
Evan Osnos was on the ground in China for years, witness to profound political, economic, and cultural upheaval. In Age of Ambition, he describes the greatest collision taking place in that country: the clash between the rise of the individual and the Communist Party’s struggle to retain control. He asks probing questions: Why does a government with more success lifting people from poverty than any civilization in history choose to put strict restraints on freedom of expression? Why do millions of young Chinese professionals, fluent in English and devoted to Western pop culture, consider themselves “angry youth,” dedicated to resisting the West’s influence? How are Chinese from all strata finding meaning after two decades in pursuit of wealth? Writing with narrative verve and a sense of irony, Osnos follows the moving stories of everyday people and reveals life in the new China to be a battleground between aspiration and authoritarianism.
Upcoming book selections:
June 10th- A Gentleman in Moscow: A Novel by Amor Towles
For more information, please contact Jennifer Presley, MA ’78, Ph.D. ’81 at Jenniferbpresley@gmail.com.
Baltimore Book Club Discussion
Monday, May 14 7:30 pm
Mother’s Federal Hill Grille
1113 S. Charles Street,
Baltimore, Md
The May selection is Before We Were Yours by Lisa Wingate. This book won the 2017 goodreads Choice Award in the Historical Fiction category. It is rated a 4.7 out of 5 stars by over 5,500 Amazon readers. The story is based on the tragedies perpetrated at an orphanage in Tennessee by Georgia Tann, where over the span of almost 30 years (1920’s to 1950), children who had living parents were farmed out for adoption. This is the fictional life story of a group of siblings who were kidnapped for such deed.
The July selection is The Woman Who Smashed Codes: A True Story of Love, Spies, and the Unlikely Heroine Who Outwitted America’s Enemies by Jason Fagone.
Questions/RSVP: Helene Myers, Ph.D., P’14, at cedarhouse@comcast.net.
This month’s newsletter is available for download in PDF format.