We offer more than a hundred intellectually stimulating and personally enriching programs each year.

WEEKLY

Monday Quarterback Luncheon – 12:30 PM to 1:45 PM

Innmates lead vibrant talks on topics of their choosing. Discussion points are sent to members on Sundays to prepare for comments and questions.

Thursday Roundtable Luncheon – 12:30 PM to 1:45 PM

Invited guests speak on a wide range of topics. Past Roundtable speakers include Pulitzer Prize winner Benjamin Nathans, Diane D. Turner, curator of the Charles L. Blockson Afro-American Collection of the Temple Libraries, and James Timberlake, founding principal of internationally renowned architecture firm KieranTimberlake.

On the third week of the month, Thursday Roundtable Luncheon is replaced by Friday Club Dinner.

SEPTEMBER PROGRAMS

Tuesday Quarterback Luncheon
September 2 from 12:30pm to 1:45pm
Rick Pasquier is our Quarterback

Thursday Roundtable Luncheon
September 4 from 12:30pm to 1:45pm

Speaker is Innmate Jordan Strauss. His topic ‒ Seeing and Thinking Like a State: The National Security System and Technological Developments Since 1984

Jordan discusses the process of developing and implementing national security policy and provides an overview, from a national security perspective, of major technological developments from the fall of AT&T’s monopoly to novel issues with semiconductors and artificial intelligence.

The co-founder of a startup focused on privacy and technology issues, Jordan Strauss was an executive at Kroll, the global risk and technology firm, and a fellow of the firm’s think tank. He provided advice to clients and corporate boards on geopolitical and national security issues and worked with clients facing existential crisis events. Jordan has also served as a national security official for the White House and U.S. Department of Justice and as a federal prosecutor and trial attorney. Since 2018, he has taught national security law at Drexel’s Kline School of Law. In the past year, gave guest lectures on security and technology issues at Penn, the University of California, Berkeley, and other institutions.

Monday Quarterback Luncheon
September 8 from 12:30pm to 1:45pm
Franklyn Rodgers is our Quarterback

Thursday Roundtable Luncheon
September 11 from 12:30pm to 1:45pm

Speaker is Innmate Judd Peskin. His topic ‒ The Bold Style of Frank Furness

In a flourishing career that began after the Civil War and extended into the 20th century, Frank Furness designed more than 600 buildings, almost all of them in the Philadelphia area. Judd Peskin surveys Furness’ inventive, colorful, and unabashedly unique work, which fell out of favor as tastes shifted in the 20th century toward more restrained architectural styles. With this change came the demolition of many important and iconic Furness buildings many of which were torn down to make way for Independence National Historic Park. Approximately a third of the architect’s work was for railroads, including the massive, but now gone Broad Street Station and the B & O Station on 24th Street in Baltimore. The rest of his work was residential, institutional, and commercial. Fortunately, surviving examples of his buildings in Philadelphia have been painstakingly maintained and restored, notably the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, the First Unitarian Church and the Fisher Fine Arts Library at Penn.

Judd Peskin, a retired attorney, has a lifelong interest in architecture that was richly nurtured when he took several courses in the history of architecture and urban design as a Penn undergraduate. There he discovered the Fisher Fine Arts Library and made extensive use of its reading room and study alcoves. Judd led the Frank Furness lecture/tour for the Preservation Alliance since 2021.

Monday Quarterback Luncheon
September 15 from 12:30pm to 1:45pm
Patrick Keough is our Quarterback

Friday Club Dinner – a Cosmopolitan Club Joint Presentation
September 19 with Member mixer at 5:30pm followed by presentation, with dinner at 7pm

Speaker is Dr. Catherine Boland Erkkila. Her topic ‒ Place, Space, and Transit: The Infrastructure of American Immigration at the Turn of the 20th Century

Immigrants to the United States at the turn of the 20th century encountered a highly regulated network of ports, quarantine stations, boarding houses, railway stations, and train cars that revealed the racial, ethnic, and class hierarchies of American society. Architectural historian Catherine Boland Erkkila explores this tapestry of place, space, and movement. Her new book Spaces of Immigration: American Ports, Railways, and Settlements (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2025) is an architectural and spatial approach that shows how powerfully immigrants were impacted by systems and structures created by railway companies and the federal government from Ellis Island to ethnic settlements reached by rail, and the bleak barracks for detention of Chinese immigrants on Angel Island in San Francisco.

Dr. Catherine Boland Erkkila is an architectural historian specializing in American cultural landscapes of the 19th and 20th centuries. Her work received several awards, including the Jacob K. Javits Fellowship, a Newberry Library fellowship, and the Vernacular Architecture Forum’s 2016 Bishir Prize. She previously taught at Rutgers, and as managing editor of SAH Archipedia, the online encyclopedia of the U.S. built environment organized by the Society of Architectural Historians. Spaces of Immigration: American Ports, Railways is available for purchase at the program.

Monday Quarterback Luncheon
September 22 from 12:30pm to 1:45pm
Leslie Whipkey is our Quarterback

Thursday Roundtable Luncheon
September 25 from 12:30pm to 1:45pm

Speaker is Lynn Levin. Her topic ‒ In Brief: Loving the Short Story

There are as many reasons to love the short story as there are good short stories, but chief among the attractions are urgency and brevity. The pace is quick and after the turmoil or hilarity has ended for the characters (at least on the page), we get to reflect on why they are so driven or strange or sad or funny ‒ plus, we can enjoy the satisfaction of reading a whole work in one sitting. Lynn Levin offers an appreciation of the short story and its current state, reflecting on noted writers and hopes that members share comments on their favorite stories. She will read one of her new short stories.

Lynn Levin is the author of nine books, most recently the short story collection House Parties (Spuyten Duyvil, 2023) and the poetry collection The Minor Virtues (Ragged Sky, 2020). Of House Parties, Innmate Paula Marantz Cohen and Lynn’s colleague and mentor at Drexel, wrote “These crisply written, sharply observed stories have the surprising hallmark of having mostly gentle, if not outright happy, endings. The turn from dark possibility to lighter conclusion is a welcome relief in our difficult times. Levin affirms something basically positive about the human condition.” Lynn is an adjunct associate professor of English at Drexel and for many years taught creative writing at the University of Pennsylvania.

Monday Quarterback Luncheon
September 29 from 12:30pm to 1:45pm
Alan Penziner is our Quarterback

Tuesday Movie Night
September 30 at 6pm; feature at 6:30pm
The Conformist with snacks and drinks including light fare, popcorn, chips, nuts, soda, beer, and wine

Jean-Louis Trintignant portrays Marcello Clerici, a weak-willed Italian man turned fascist flunky who goes abroad to arrange the assassination of his old teacher, now a political dissident. A case study in the psychology of conformism and fascism, Trintignant’s Clerici is willing to sacrifice his values in the interests of building a supposedly “normal life”.

Director Bernardo Bertolucci, 1970, Italy/France/Germany, 1 hour 53 minutes, color, French and Italian w/ English subtitles