Hersh begins series at Duke

DURHAM — Seymour Hersh, the Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist, kicks off this year’s Provost’s Lecture Series at Duke University today with a talk titled “A Report Card on Obama’s Foreign Policy.”

Hersh’s lecture is from 5 to 6:30 p.m. in Page Auditorium on Duke’s West Campus. This and other lectures in the series are free and open to the public. Parking is available in the parking deck next to the Bryan Center.

Hersh received a Pulitzer Prize in 1970 for reporting on the cover-up of the My Lai massacre during the Vietnam War. In 2004 he exposed the Abu Ghraib prison scandal in a series of articles in The New Yorker.

The Provost’s Lecture Series aims to inspire a year-long discussion of an issue of broad significance to society. Each speaker will discuss an aspect of this year’s theme, “The Future of the Past, The Future of the Present: A Historical Record in the Digital Age.”

A second lecture in the series is scheduled for Oct. 26, and features Diana Taylor, founding director of the Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics at New York University, a consortium of activists and artists who teach and study the interplay of art and politics.

Taylor’s talk, “The Digital Age as Anti-Archive,” will address the emerging challenges of the electronic archive. Taylor’s lecture is from 5 to 6:30 p.m. in the Levine Science Research Center’s Love Auditorium, also on West Campus.

Durham Tech offers clinic

DURHAM — Durham Technical Community College’s Small Business Center and the Durham County Bar Association will sponsor a free business legal clinic Friday from 10 a.m. to noon in the Small Business Center.

The sessions will provide counsel to entrepreneurs interested in creating or expanding a business. Those attending will receive advice on their legal strengths and weaknesses, help in understanding legal issues such as business formation and intellectual property assets, and legal opinions for these difficult economic times.

The Small Business Center is located in the SOUTHBank Building, 400 West Main St., on the 3rd floor.

For more information, or to make an appointment, call the center at 536-7241, ext. 4505 or visit www.durhamtech.edu/sbc.

Muñoz awarded at Duke library

DURHAM — Heraldo Muñoz, the Chilean ambassador to the United Nations, will be presented Thursday at Duke University’s Perkins Library with the WOLA-Duke Book Award for Human Rights in Latin America.

Muñoz’s memoir of dictatorship and exile, “The Dictator’s Shadow,” won the award honoring the best current, non-fiction book published in English on human rights, democracy and social justice in contemporary Latin America.

Muñoz will read from his book at 5 p.m., Thursday, in the Rare Book Room in Perkins Library. The public reading is free, and will be followed by a discussion session with the ambassador. Books will be made available for purchase and signing, courtesy of the Gothic Bookshop.

Shaw to deliver Thorpe lecture

DURHAM — Stephanie Shaw, an associate professor of history at The Ohio State University, will deliver this year’s Earlie E. Thorpe Memorial Lecture from 2 to 4 p.m. on Sunday.

The annual lecture at Historic Stagville is given in honor of Thorpe, who chaired the department of history at N.C. Central University from 1962 to 1972 and taught there for 27 years until his death in 1989.

Shaw, a graduate of the history department at NCCU, earned her M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in history from Ohio State, where she has taught women’s history and African-American history since 1988. Her lecture is titled, “Grandmothers, Granny Women, and Old Aunts: Rethinking Antebellum Slave Families and Communities.”

The program is free and open to the public. Refreshments will be served and the jazz quartet Quintessence, with Quinton Parker, will be the entertainment.

HIV/AIDS Q&A offered Oct. 20

DURHAM — Three medical experts will present a question-and-answer forum for persons interested in issues pertaining to HIV/AIDS and for those who are also infected with HIV/AIDS on Oct. 20 from 6:30 to 8 p.m.

John Bartlett, associate professor of medical research for Duke Global Health, Joe Eron, UNC AIDS clinical trials principal investigator, and Harry Goforth, a Duke assistant professor of psychiatry, will participate in the forum at the Duke South Medical Student Amphitheater.

Bartlett and Eron have recently returned from the CapeTown World AIDS Meeting, and are also familiar with the new vaccine work that has been just broken from Thailand.

Bennett inducted into academy

DURHAM — Vann Bennett, James B. Duke Professor of Cell Biology at the Duke University Medical Center, was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences 229th class of new members.

The program celebrates pioneering research and scholarship, artistic achievement and exemplary service to society. Bennett, who is also an investigator with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, studies the biochemistry of spectrin-based membrane skeleton and other membrane skeletal proteins.

Founded in 1780, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences is an independent policy research center that conducts multidisciplinary studies of complex and emerging problems. Current Academy research focuses on science and technology policy, global security, social policy, the humanities and culture, and education.

The 212 new Fellows and 19 Foreign Honorary Members are leaders in research, scholarship, business, the arts, and public affairs. This year’s group includes Nobel laureates and recipients of the Pulitzer and Pritzker prizes, MacArthur Fellowships, Academy, Grammy, and Tony awards and the National Medal of Arts.

Department at NCCU accredited

DURHAM — The Department of Environmental, Earth, and Geospatial Sciences at N.C. Central University has received accreditation from the National Environmental Health Science and Protection Accreditation Council.

NCCU is the only fully EHAC-accredited HBCU in North Carolina.

The National Accreditation Council for Environmental Health Curricula was established in 1967 to implement a program accrediting undergraduate and graduate programs in the field of environmental health.

— Compiled by Neil Offen