ACN 2012 Fall Programs!

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 6TH – Speaker Paul K. Chappell - War is NOT Inevitable, 7:00pm, Hawkins-Conard Student Center-Ashland University


Paul K. Chappell graduated from West Point in 2002. He served in the army for seven years, was deployed to Baghdad in 2006, and left active duty in November 2009 as a Captain. He is the author of Will War Ever End?: A Soldier’s Vision of Peace for the 21st Century, The End of War: How Waging Peace Can Save Humanity, Our Planet, and Our Future, and Peaceful Revolution: How We Can Create the Future Needed for Humanity’s Survival (publication date: Feb 2012). He lives in Santa Barbara, California, where he is serving as the Peace Leadership Director for the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation (www.wagingpeace.org). He is working on his fourth book, The Art of Waging Peace: A Strategic Approach to Improving Our Lives and the World.

“Captain Paul K. Chappell has given us a crucial look at war and peace from the unique perspective of a soldier, and his new ideas show us why world peace is both necessary and possible in the 21st century." -Archbishop Desmond Tutu

Paul will also be doing presentations in Columbus, Wooster, Cleveland and Mansfield on September 7, 8, &9. Please contact ACN for details – acn@ashland.edu



TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 18TH – Speaker John Mueller – Code RED: The Cost of Fear, 7:00pm, Ronk Lecture Hall in the Schar College of Education-Ashland University

John Mueller holds the Woody Hayes Chair of National Security Studies, Mershon Center, and is professor of Political Science, at Ohio State University where he teaches courses in international relations.

He is currently working on terrorism and particularly on the reactions (or over-reactions) it often inspires. His recent book, Atomic Obsession: Nuclear Alarmism from Hiroshima to Al Qaeda (Oxford University Press, 2010), suggests that atomic terrorism is highly unlikely and that efforts to prevent nuclear proliferation frequently have damaging results. He has also written Overblown: How Politicians and the Terrorism Industry Inflate National Security Threats, and Why We Believe Them (Free Press, 2006). The New York Times called the book "important" and "accurate, timely, and necessary." His book, Terrorism, Security, and Money: Balancing the Risks, Benefits, and Costs of Homeland Security, written in collaboration with engineer and risk analyst Mark Stewart, applies cost-benefit analysis to issues of homeland security and was published in early September 2011 by Oxford University Press.



THURSDAY, OCTOBER 4TH – A National Issues Forum – A Nation in Debt: How Can We Pay the Bills?, 7:00pm, Hawkins-Conard Student Center Auditorium-Ashland University

A short video researched and developed by National Issues Forum, will explain three possible solutions to the national debt. Louise Fleming, Executive Director of the Center for Civic Life at Ashland University, will moderate a discussion on the benefits and trade-offs of each solution. Judy White, Center for Civic Life at Ashland University member, will record comments which will be available online and will be sent to Ashland’s legislators. Come prepared to participate!

National Issues Forums (NIF) is a network of civic, educational, and other organizations, and individuals, whose common interest is to promote public deliberation in America. It has grown to include thousands of civic clubs, religious organizations, libraries, schools, and many other groups that meet to discuss critical public issues. Forum participants range from teenagers to retirees, prison inmates to community leaders, and literacy students to university students.

NIF does not advocate specific solutions or points of view but provides citizens the opportunity to consider a broad range of choices, weigh the pros and cons of those choices, and meet with each other in a public dialogue to identify the concerns they hold in common. This particular forum will focus upon the national debt.

A full issues book is available for download at the NIF Store on the website of the National Issues Forum. The price is $1.99. At the meeting, there will be a handout of the issue in brief.

This program is co-sponsored by the Center for Civic Life at Ashland University.