FIC JANUARY PROGRAMS
January 6, Monday Quarterback Luncheon – 12:30 to 1:45 p.m.
Steve Gold is our Quarterback.
January 9, Thursday Luncheon Roundtable – 12:30 to 1:45 p.m.
Speaker is Dan Rottenberg. His topic – Penn’s Forgotten Struggle to Join the Ivy League
Innmate Dan Rottenberg discusses his 13th book, The Price We Paid: An Oral History of Penn’s Struggle to Join the Ivy League, 1950-55, examining a watershed moment in academic and athletic history. Midway through the 20th century, the University of Pennsylvania stunned the sports world by scrapping its renowned big-time football program in exchange for the academic prestige of membership in the newly created Ivy League. This astonishing choice ultimately helped catapult Penn into the ranks of the world’s great universities. But in the short run, it brought pain and confusion to countless Penn players, coaches, administrators, and fans who were caught in the gears of the transition. Dan’s book, telling their personal stories for the first time, paints a rare picture of what it was like to play college football in Penn’s most glorious years, the 1940s, and during the turmoil that followed.
Dan Rottenberg built a rewarding life as journalist, editor, and author. His most recent venture is the web-based Contrarian’s Notebook, now nearing its second year of thought-provoking comment. His 12 other books include The Education of a Journalist (Redmount Press, 2022), a professional memoir; Death of a Gunfighter (Westholme Publishing, 2008), honored as Best Western History Book of 2008 by the Wild West History Association; and Finding Our Fathers (Random House, 1977), which launched the modern Jewish genealogy movement. Dan has also been chief editor of seven innovative publications, most recently Broad Street Review, the online arts and culture salon he created in 2005.
January 13, Monday Quarterback Luncheon – 12:30 to 1:45 p.m.
Patrick Keough is our Quarterback.
January 17, FIC Annual Meeting & Dinner – starting 5:30 p.m.
January 20, Monday Quarterback Luncheon – 12:30 to 1:45 p.m.
Roberta Kangilaski is our Quarterback.
January 23, Thursday Luncheon Roundtable – 12:30 to 1:45 p.m.
Speaker is Penn historian Peter Holquist. His topic – Imperial Russia: Advocate for Developing the International Laws of War
Peter Holquist delves into a history that offers stark contrast with Russia’s recent battlefield conduct – the role of Imperial Russia in the development of international laws of war at the turn of the 20th century. Tsar Nicholas II’s government pushed for convening the 1899 Hague peace conference, known as the First International Convention on the Law and Customs of Land Warfare, and remained an active participant in international conferences held in the early years of the century.
Peter has been a professor in Penn’s history department since 2006, after teaching at Cornell for ten years. He received his PhD from Columbia in 1995. He is the author of Making War, Forging Revolution: Russia’s Continuum of Crisis, 1914-1921 (Harvard, 2002) and founding editor of the journal Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History. He is currently at work on a book titled By Right of War: The Discipline and Practice of International Law in Imperial Russia, 1868-1917.
January 27, Monday Quarterback Luncheon – 12:30 to 1:45 p.m.
Palmer Hartl is our Quarterback.
January 28, Movie Night at the Inn – starting at 6:00 p.m.
Free admission with snacks and drinks including popcorn, chips, nuts, sodas, beer, wine.
Feature TBA.
January 30, Thursday Luncheon Roundtable – 12:30 to 1:45 p.m.
Speaker is Bloomberg journalist Frank Barry. His topic – Patriotic Pragmatism in an Era of Political Polarization: Discovering Unity in Division.
Bloomberg Opinion columnist Frank Barry unfolds lessons learned from his 2020 cross-country RV drive on the Lincoln Highway and beyond, a journey that led to his book Back Roads and Better Angels: A Journey into the Heart of American Democracy (Penguin Random House, 2024).
As a columnist, Frank Barry covers national affairs with a special focus on polarization. He is also a member of the Bloomberg editorial board. He was chief speechwriter on the Michael R. Bloomberg 2020 presidential campaign after serving as director of speechwriting and public affairs for 11years in Bloomberg’s NYC mayoral administration. During his City Hall tenure, Barry helped design and implement a variety of government reform initiatives. He holds a master’s degree in public administration from NYU and a B.A. from Notre Dame. His earlier book is The Scandal of Reform: The Grand Failures of New York’s Political Crusaders and the Death of Nonpartisanship (Rutgers, 2009).