A Symposium in Honor of Peter Dale Scott

[Ed Jewett]

Source: opencenter.org
“One of that tiny and select company of the most brilliantly creative and provocative political-historical writers of the last half-century.”
James Galbraith, Richard Falk, Roger Morris, Daniel Ellsberg, James Schamus, Norman Rush, Mark Selden, Eric Wilson, Mary Baine Campbell, Tracy Ware, Ronna Kabatznick, Russ Baker, Askold Melnyczuk and Paul Almond
Peter Dale Scott is one of the most perceptive and courageous political thinkers and poets of our time. A former Canadian diplomat and professor of English at Berkeley, his brilliant research has consistently revealed the deepest, most hidden truths about America’s efforts to shape the world in the last half century. His major works include The Road to 9/11: Wealth, Empire and the Future of America (2007) and Deep Politics and the Death of JFK (1993). Both books explore the concepts of parapolitics and deep politics, growing in part out of his researches into the Vietnam War, and later the JFK assassination. This symposium will bring together an outstanding group of writers and scholars to honor the brilliant work of Peter Dale Scott at the beginning of his 80s.
3/13: A Symposium in Honor of Peter Dale Scott
3/14: [URL="http://www.opencenter.org/wealth-empire-and-the-future-of-america-an-exploration-of-the-deep-politics-of-war/"]Wealth, Empire, and the Future of America: An Exploration of the Deep
Politics of War[/URL]
3/17: An Evening of Poetry with Peter Dale Scott
3/20: Peter Dale Scott: His Life as a Poet, Seeker and Investigator of Politics and Deep Politics


A Symposium in Honor of Peter Dale Scott

Filed under Conferences & Symposiums, Events, Programs, Society Ecology and Culture. March 13, 201010:00 AMto10:00 PM
“One of that tiny and select company of the most brilliantly creative and provocative political-historical writers of the last half-century.”
James Galbraith, Richard Falk, Roger Morris, Daniel Ellsberg, James Schamus, Mark Selden, Eric Wilson, Mary Baine Campbell, Tracy Ware, Ronna Kabatznick, Russ Baker, Askold Melnyczuk and Paul Almond


Peter Dale Scott is one of the most perceptive and courageous political thinkers and poets of our time. A former Canadian diplomat and professor of English at Berkeley, his brilliant research has consistently revealed the deepest, most hidden truths about America’s efforts to shape the world since the Second World War. His major prose works include The Road to 9/11: Wealth, Empire and the Future of America (2007) and Deep Politics and the Death of JFK (1993). Both books explore the concepts of parapolitics and deep politics, growing in part out of his researches into the Vietnam War, and later the JFK assassination. He is also an award-winning poet and was co-founder of the Peace and Conflict Studies Program at UC Berkeley. Much of his work has been engaged with Deep Politics, which posits that “in every culture and society there are facts which tend to be suppressed collectively because of the social and psychological costs of not doing so.” This symposium will bring together an outstanding group of writers and scholars to honor the brilliant work of Peter Dale Scott at the beginning of his 80s.
For more information about this see www.peterdalescott.net. For information on additional programs by Peter Dale Scott visit www.opencenter.org/peterdalescott
A ONE-DAY SYMPOSIUM
Saturday, March 13, 10am–10pm
10WEC10S (a one-day workshop)
Members: $75 / Non-members: $80

Paul Almond is a film director and producer who created the landmark documentary “7 UP” for Granada TV in the UK. He has won numerous awards for film directing including a Golden Globe Nomination for Best Foreign Picture. His trilogy “Isabel, Act of the Heart and Journey” is considered part of the Canadian film canon.
Russ Baker is an investigative journalist who has written for The New York Times, The Washington Post and Vanity Fair. He is founder of WhoWhatWhy/The Real News Project. His first book, Family of Secrets: The Bush Family, and the Powerful Forces That Put It in the White House was published in 2009.
Mary Baine Campbell is an American poet, scholar, and professor. She teaches medieval and Renaissance literature, as well as creative writing, at Brandeis University. Her most recent book is entitled Trouble.
Daniel Ellsberg is a former US military analyst employed by the RAND Corporation who precipitated a national political controversy in 1971 when he released to The New York Times and other media The Pentagon Papers, a top-secret Pentagon study of US government decision-making about the Vietnam War.
Richard Falk, PhD, is professor emeritus of international law and practice at Princeton University and United Nations Human Rights Rapporteur in the Occupied Territories. He is the author of many books including, The Costs of War: International Law, the UN and World Order after Iraq.
James K. Galbraith, PhD, holds the Lloyd M. Bentsen Chair of Government/Business Relations at the University of Texas. He is a Senior Scholar with the Levy Economics Institute and Chair of the Board of Economists for Peace and Security. His books include: Balancing Acts: Technology, Finance and the American Future, Created Unequal: The Crisis in American Pay.
Ronna Kabatznick, PhD, is a social psychologist who has been practicing meditation since 1985. She spent nearly two years on a Vipassana Meditation retreat under the guidance of two of Thailand’s greatest Forest Masters. She is assistant clinical professor in the Department of Psychiatry at UC San Francisco, and the wife of Peter Dale Scott.
Askold Melnyczuk is the director of creative writing at the University of Massachusetts, Boston; He is the author of Ambassador of the Dead, What Is Told and The House of Windows. He also teaches in the Graduate Writing Seminars at Bennington College.
Roger Morris, PhD, is former aide to U.S. Secretary of State Dean Acheson and former National Security Council member under Lyndon B. Johnson. His books include Uncertain Greatness: Henry Kissinger and American Foreign Policy, Richard Milhous Nixon: The Rise of an American Politician; Partners in Power: The Clintons and Their America; and The Money and the Power: the Making of Las Vegas (with Sally Denton).
James Schamus, PhD, is a film producer and screenwriter noted for his work on critically acclaimed films such as the Academy Award winning “Brokeback Mountain.” He also co-wrote and produced “Eat Drink Man Woman” and “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” with director Ang Lee. He holds a doctorate from UC Berkeley and is a published film historian holding a faculty position at Columbia University.
Mark Selden, PhD, is a Senior Research Associate in the East Asia Program at Cornell University and Coordinator of The Asia-Pacific Journal. He is a specialist on modern geopolitics, political economy and the history of China, Japan and the Asia Pacific. His books include: China in Revolution and War and State Terrorism.
Eric Wilson, PhD, is professor of Law at Monash University Law School, Melbourne, Australia. His books include Government of the Shadows: Parapolitics and Criminal Sovereignty. His current subject interests are in the history and philosophy of international law and critical jurisprudence.
Tracy Ware, PhD, is a professor of Literature at Queen’s University, Toronto. He has published on Wordsworth, Byron, Shelley, Poe, Trilling and Naipaul. He edited A Northern Romanticism: Poets of the Confederation and Susan Francis Harrison’s Crowded Out! and Other Sketches.




Wealth, Empire, and the Future of America: An Exploration of the Deep Politics of War

Filed under Events, Programs, Society Ecology and Culture. March 14, 201010:00 AMto5:30 PM
Peter Dale Scott, with panelists including Richard Falk, James Galbraith, Roger Morris, Mark Selden, Eric Wilson, Norman Rush, Russ Baker and Daniel Ellsberg
In the first of two seminars offered by Peter Dale Scott, he will be joined by a distinguished panel in his deep political analysis of American politics. The opening session will look at the concepts of deep politics and deep history, and apply them to the gradual corruption of recent American politics that has resulted from Wall Street’s distortion of American foreign policy through its domination of the CIA. His second presentation will look at the evolution of so-called “Continuity of Government” planning over two decades under Rumsfeld and Cheney, its implementation on 9/11, and the consequences of that implementation today. In the afternoon, Peter’s presentation, which could be entitled The Road to Afghanistan, will survey the CIA’s reliance on drug-trafficking allies and assets over fifty years, and how this has contributed to America’s current dilemma in Afghanistan. The concluding session will argue that the most hopeful model for significant social change in America is that presented by the civil rights movement in the South, or Polish Solidarnosc: namely, the solidarity between urban intellectuals and a spiritually united popular base.
For more events and information about the symposium in honor of Peter Dale Scott, visit www.opencenter.org/peterdalescott.
A ONE-DAY SEMINAR
Sunday, March 14, 10am–5:30pm
10WEC20S (a one-day workshop)
Members: $65 / Non-members: $70

Russ Baker is an investigative journalist who has written for The New York Times, The Washington Post and Vanity Fair. He is founder of WhoWhatWhy/The Real News Project. His first book, Family of Secrets: The Bush Family, and the Powerful Forces That Put It in the White House was published in 2009.
Daniel Ellsberg is a former US military analyst employed by the RAND Corporation who precipitated a national political controversy in 1971 when he released to The New York Times and other media The Pentagon Papers, a top-secret Pentagon study of US government decision-making about the Vietnam War.
Richard Falk, PhD, is professor emeritus of international law and practice at Princeton University and United Nations Human Rights Rapporteur in the Occupied Territories. He is the author of many books including, The Costs of War: International Law, the UN and World Order after Iraq.
James K. Galbraith, PhD, holds the Lloyd M. Bentsen Chair of Government/Business Relations at the University of Texas. He is a Senior Scholar with the Levy Economics Institute and Chair of the Board of Economists for Peace and Security. His books include: Balancing Acts: Technology, Finance and the American Future, Created Unequal: The Crisis in American Pay.
Roger Morris, PhD, is former aide to U.S. Secretary of State Dean Acheson and former National Security Council member under Lyndon B. Johnson. His books include Uncertain Greatness: Henry Kissinger and American Foreign Policy, Richard Milhous Nixon: The Rise of an American Politician; Partners in Power: The Clintons and Their America; and The Money and the Power: the Making of Las Vegas (with Sally Denton).
Norman Rush is a writer whose stories have appeared in The New Yorker, The Paris Review and Best American Short Stories.He is the author ofWhites, a collection of stories, and the novel Mating, which received the National Book Award in 1991. Mortals is his second novel.
Mark Selden, PhD, is a Senior Research Associate in the East Asia Program at Cornell University and Coordinator of The Asia-Pacific Journal. He is a specialist on modern geopolitics, political economy and the history of China, Japan and the Asia Pacific. His books include: China in Revolution and War and State Terrorism.
Eric Wilson, PhD, is professor of Law at Monash University Law School, Melbourne, Australia. His books include Government of the Shadows: Parapolitics and Criminal Sovereignty. His current subject interests are in the history and philosophy of international law and critical jurisprudence.




An Evening of Poetry

Filed under Art and Creativity, Evening Lectures & Workshops, Events, Programs. March 17, 20108:00 PMto10:00 PM
Peter Dale Scott
Enjoy an evening of poetry of “conscience, intelligence, and eloquence with a candid and humane activist, an adventurer, traveler, penetrating scholar, and teacher…. reminding one that some valuable human beings with authentic voices are still among us.” His long poem Coming to Jakarta has been called the most important political poem to appear in the English language in a very long time. His meditative poems also honor the world as a spiritual resource, and reveal a profound sympathy for all things.
For more events and information about the symposium in honor of Peter Dale Scott, visit www.opencenter.org/peterdalescott.
AN EVENING READING
Wednesday, March 17, 8pm
10WEC25P
Members: $15 / Non-members: $17







Peter Dale Scott: His Life as a Poet, Seeker and Investigator of Politics and Deep Politics

Filed under Art and Creativity, Events, Programs, Society Ecology and Culture. March 20, 201010:00 AMto5:30 PM
Peter Dale Scott, with David MacGregor, Ron Graham, Ron Dart, Ronna Kabatznick and Bryan Sentes
“I believe that at the present time the problem of the unification of the world and the problem of the unification of the individual, are in the end one and the same problem, and the solution of one is the solution of the other.” —T.S. Eliot
Peter Dale Scott’s method of political analysis, often drawing on a wide-span survey of details, has been called the intuitive method of a poet. Conversely, his poetry has been praised for its attempts to encompass both pastoral and contemporary political-historical elements in a single comprehensive vision. In recent years both his politics and his poetry have expanded to embrace a more explicitly spiritual dimension, where Scott writes as a seeker rather than as a preacher. Peter will speak on each of these three aspects of his life, and each will be discussed by a distinguished panel. Minding the Darkness, his most recent long poem, “predicts with Shelley that both outer and inner enlightenment (the current word is development) are damned, even murderous, if they do not honor each other.”
For more events and information about the symposium in honor of Peter Dale Scott, visit www.opencenter.org/peterdalescott.
A ONE-DAY SEMINAR
Saturday, March 20, 10am–5:30pm
10WEC30S (a one-day workshop)
Members: $65 / Non-members: $70

Ron Dart is a university professor, mountaineer and author. He teaches in the Department of Political Science, Philosophy and Religious Studies at University of Fraser Valley, British Columbia. His books include Thomas Merton and the North Cascade Beat Poets. He is a regular contributor to Vive le Canada.
Ron Graham is an author and journalist whose books include One-Eyed Kings, God’s Dominion and All the King’s Horses. He has been a television producer and a contributor to Saturday Night magazine, the Globe and Mail and the New York Times. He was formerly president of PEN Canada and is currently Chair at the Institute of Contemporary Culture, Toronto.
David MacGregor, PhD, is Professor of Political Thought at Kings College, an affiliate of the University of Western Ontario, Canada. His publications include: Hegel and Marx After the Fall of Communism; and Hegel, Marx and the English State. His forthcoming book is Deep Politics of the New Millennium: September 11 and US Imperialism.
Ronna Kabatznick, PhD, is a social psychologist who has been practicing meditation since 1985. She spent nearly two years on a Vipassana Meditation retreat under the guidance of two of Thailand’s greatest Forest Masters. She is assistant clinical professor in the Department of Psychiatry at UC San Francisco, and the wife of Peter Dale Scott.
Bryan Sentes teaches at Dawson College and Concordia University, Montreal. He has read his poetry widely in North America and Europe. He has published reviews, translations and scholarship in the sociology of religion, mythology, and popular culture. His books include Ladonian Magnitudes, and Grand Gnostic Central and other poems.