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 speaker include Pultizer 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 Roundable Luncheon is replaced by Friday Club Dinner.
JUNE PROGRAMS
June 2, Monday Quarterback Luncheon – 12:30 to 1:45 p.m.
Russell Cooke is our Quarterback.
June 5, Thursday Roundtable Luncheon – 12:30 to 1:45 p.m.
Speaker is Beth Wenger. Her Topic – Sculpting an American Jewish Hero: Myths, Monuments, and Legends of Haym Salomon.
In the Haym Salomon of popular memory as the financier of the American Revolution, Beth Wenger finds a figure fashioned from fragments of historical evidence. She traces how and why his story has been made and remade over the centuries to serve perceived needs for a desired narrative among various Jewish “publics” that often battled over his memory.
Beth S. Wenger is the Moritz and Josephine Berg Professor of History and Associate Dean for Graduate Studies in Penn’s School of Arts & Sciences. She was one of the four founding historians who helped to create the core exhibition at the Weitzman National Museum of American Jewish History and serves as the museum’s historical consultant. She is the author of History Lessons: The Creation of American Jewish Heritage (2010). Her book The Jewish Americans: Three Centuries of Jewish Voices in America (2007) was the companion volume to the PBS series “The Jewish Americans” and New York Jews and the Great Depression: Uncertain Promise (1999) was awarded the Salo Baron Prize in Jewish History. Among her other published works are several volumes co-edited by Lila Corwin Berman and Deborah Dash Moore on American Jewish history and heritage, including The Future of American Jewish Pasts to be published in November by the University of Pennsylvania Press.
June 9, Monday Quarterback Luncheon – 12:30 to 1:45 p.m.
Alan Penziner is our Quarterback.
June 12, Thursday Roundtable Luncheon – 12:30 to 1:45 p.m.
Speaker is Kevin Werbach. His topic ‒ To Serve Humanity: The Path Toward Accountable AI
Should we celebrate AI or fear it? Artificial intelligence is seen as a magical technology that will generate immense benefits, both economic and societal. Yet its already appearing dangers range from simple errors to discrimination to privacy abuses. However, we might be thinking about this the wrong way as AI is a tool that embodies human choices. As we consider the broad future implications of ever-more-powerful AI systems, today we possess tools to implement AI in responsible ways. Kevin Werbach highlights the emerging field of AI governance, which is developing both technical and operational practical steps to shape the impacts of Artificial Intelligence.
Kevin Werbach is the Liem Sioe Liong / First Pacific Company Professor and Chair of the Department of Legal Studies and Business Ethics at Penn’s Wharton School. A world- recognized expert on emerging technologies, he examines business and policy implications of developments such as AI and Blockchain. Kevin directs the Wharton Accountable AI Lab and the Wharton Blockchain and Digital Asset Project. His books include The Blockchain and the New Architecture of Trust (2018), For the Win: The Power of Gamification and Game Thinking (updated 2020), and After the Digital Tornado: Networks, Algorithms, Humanity (2020).
June 16, Monday Quarterback Luncheon – 12:30 to 1:45 p.m.
Patrick Keough is our Quarterback.
Tuesday, June 17 at 12 noon
Special Event
The Franklin Inn Club in partnership with Barnes & Noble welcomes author Eric Weiner reading from and discussing his book Ben & Me: In Search of a Founder’s Formula for a Long and Useful Life
Free admission including beverages and light fare. Paperbacks available for purchase.
June 20, Friday Club Dinner – member mixer at 5:30 p.m., followed by presentation, with dinner at 7:00 p.m. Predinner speaker is Peter Conn. His topic ‒ Thomas Sully’s Philadelphians
Thomas Sully’s mastery ‒ creating portraits alive with the intelligence and personality of his subjects ‒ gave Peter a fine framework for his new book. In Thomas Sully’s Philadelphians: Painting the Athens of America (American Philosophical Society Press), the portraits enliven the stories of men and women who made the history of early national Philadelphia. They are points of entry to explore lives, institutions, and events from the Revolution to the 1840s, a period when the city was at once the most cosmopolitan and the most racially embattled in the nation.
Peter retired from Penn as Vartan Gregorian Professor of English and Professor of Education. Among his other publications are Adoption: Brief Social and Cultural History (2013), The American 1930s: A Literary History (2009), Pearl S. Buck: A Cultural Biography (1996), Literature in America (1989), and The Divided Mind: Ideology and Imagination in America, 1898-1917 (1983). Pearl S. Buck received the Athenaeum Literary Award and was listed in Notable Books of the Year 1996 by the New York Times.
June 23, Monday Quarterback Luncheon – 12:30 to 1:45 p.m.
Roberta Kangilaski is our Quarterback.
June 26, Thursday Roundtable Luncheon – 12:30 to 1:45 p.m.
Speaker is Jesús Fernández-Villaverde. His topic – Demographic Evolution: What Happens When the Global Fertility Rate Declines?
As world population evolves into an era of decline, Jesús Fernández-Villaverde digs into the data and the economic consequences of this phenomenon. Globally, the total fertility rate is below replacement, the level needed to sustain population in the long run. That’s a fertility rate of approximately 2.18 children per woman. The rate in the U.S. is now about 1.6, and without immigration, our population would already be declining. Even so, being “below replacement” doesn’t mean that we face immediate leveling or decline in growth. World population will continue to grow for the next three or so decades as large cohorts of women born in the late 1990s and early 2000s are having children while their parents are still alive.
Jesús Fernández-Villaverde is the Howard Marks Presidential Professor of Economics at Penn, where he serves as director of the Penn Initiative for the Study of Markets and co-director of the Business, Economic, and Financial History Project. He is a visiting professor at the University of Oxford, the John H. Makin Visiting Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, a visiting scholar at the European Central Bank and Bank of Spain, a fellow at Collegium Institute and the Econometric Society, a non-resident fellow at the Civitas Institute at the University of Texas at Austin, and a member of the National Bureau of Economic Research and the Center for Economic Policy Research.
June 30, Monday Quarterback Luncheon – 12:30 to 1:45 p.m.
Skip Schwarzman is our Quarterback.
The Club closes for the summer on Tuesday, July 1st through Monday, September 1st. We reopen with a Quarterback Luncheon on Tuesday, September 2nd.
The annual summer picnic is planned for Saturday, July 12 at Innmate Jan Gordon’s Hidden Hollow Farm in Radnor.
Monthly
Friday Club Dinner: Dinners are held on the third Friday of the month. Guest Speakers present a wide range of topics including time for member discussion afterward. Member mixer at 5:30pm, followed by Guest presentation, culminating with dinner at 7:00pm.
Tuesday Movie Night: On the last Tuesday of the month, the Club presents classic films chosen by members. Screenings followed by a “talk back” led by month’s programmer. Doors at 6:00pm with feature at 6:30pm. Free admission with snacks and drinks including light fare, popcorn, chips, nuts, soda, beer, and wine.
Annually
January: Annual Business Meeting of the general membership followed by the Benjamin Franklin Dinner. On a Friday evening closest to Franklin’s birthday on January 17th.
Summer: Picnic usually at the home of an Innmate.
December: Holiday Luncheon featuring housemade Fish House Punch.