What is bitcoin and cryptocurrency?  Where did it come from?  How is it produced?  How does it impact us (if it does)?  Professor Pack will describe what cryptocurrency means for governments, businesses, investors, and ordinary individuals, including some of the major political, economic, sociological, philosophical and financial implications of these attempted new currencies.

Spencer J. Pack, Professor Emeritus of Economics at Connecticut College, has spent the last half dozen or so years advising his son, Alexander, an early crypto-venture capitalist, as well as others in the crypto community. His latest book, The Political Economy and Feasibility of Bitcoin and Cryptocurrencies:  Insights from the History of Economic Thought will be published in late spring 2022.  

Pack has a BA in Social Theory, an MA in Political Science (in Political Theory and The Politics of Developing Countries) and a Ph.D. in Economics (in Mathematical Economic Models and Political Economy). He taught Macroeconomic Theory for over 3 decades at Connecticut College, and such innovative courses as “Ancient Greek and Jewish Economic Thought”; “The Economics of Food from a Feminist Perspective” (in Perugia and Florence, Italy); “Libertarian and Anarchist Economic Thought”; “International Financial Management”; and “Financial Speculation and the Real Economy”.

Hank Klibanoff will discuss the Georgia CivilRights Cold Cases Project, which he teaches and directs at Emory University, and the podcast Buried Truths, which has drawn more than two million listeners in three seasons. The class and the podcast examine unpunished racially motivated killings in Georgia -- investigating not who-done it (because we almost always know who did it) but why. Season 3 focused on a 2020 case that was remarkable because it so closely resembled cases from the1950s: the shooting death of Ahmaud Arbery, a black jogger in Brunswick, Georgia, by three white men who chased him in trucks, cornered him, killed him, then claimed self-defense. His presentation will include photos, audio and videos from the cases covered in all three seasons.

Veteran journalist Hank Klibanoff won a Pulitzer Prize in History in 2007 for The Race Beat: The Press, the Civil Rights Struggle, and the Awakening of a Nation (Knopf, 2006), co-authored with Gene Roberts, about the news coverage of the civil rights struggle in the South.

The Buried Truths podcast has won Peabody, Robert F. Kennedy, national Edward R. Murrow and American Bar Association Silver Gavel awards.

A native of Florence, Alabama, Klibanoff joined Emory at the close of a 36-year career in newspapers in Mississippi and at The Boston Globe, The Philadelphia Inquirer and The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, where he was managing editor for news. He is a professor of practice in the Creative Writing Program at Emory, where he teaches non-fiction.

In Spring 2021, Klibanoff was nominated by President Joe Biden to the newly created Civil Rights Cold Case Records Review Board. The five-member board will examine all records held by the federal government related to civil rights killings from 1940 to 1980 and determine which records can be released to the public and the level of redactions.

Washington DC is synonymous with the federal government--with the White House and its occupant at the center of it all. But you can find past presidents--at least memorials or reminders of them--in all kinds of surprising places that few tourists visit--and even many native Washingtonians don't know about. Ralph Buglass will cover a good number of those little-known spots, including some in Northwest DC, in this is richly illustrated talk.

Ralph Buglass teaches lifelong learning courses at American University, Johns Hopkins University, Montgomery College, and Frederick Community College. Ralph is a frequent speaker for Montgomery History on a variety of local history topics. He also is a volunteer researcher for Peerless Rockville, the non-profit historic preservation organization for Montgomery County’s seat of government. In 2020, with Peerless Rockville, he co-authored Images of America: Rockville, a pictorial history of the city’s 250 years. A Montgomery County native, he graduated from Winston Churchill High School, then earned a BA in American history from Cornell University and an MA in journalism from American University.

The stories of investigative reporter Jerry Mitchell have helped put four Klansmen responsible for the murder of three civil rights workers in the “Mississippi Burning” case and a serial killer behind bars. His stories have also helped free two people from death row, exposed injustices and corruption, prompting Justice Department investigations and reforms as well as the firings of boards and officials. Mr. Mitchell will share how some of the nation’s most notorious murders have come to be punished decades later.

Jerry Mitchell is a Pulitzer Prize finalist, a longtime member of Investigative Reporters & Editors, and a winner of more than 30 other national awards, including a $500,000 MacArthur “genius” grant.

His memoir for Simon & Schuster, Race Against Time, is an astonishing, courageous story capturing a historic race for justice, and was selected by NPR for “The Best Books of 2020,” and The New York Times made it an Editors’ Pick.

After working for three decades for the statewide Clarion-Ledger, Mitchell left in 2019 and founded the Mississippi Center for Investigative Reporting, a nonprofit that exposes injustices, investigates cold cases, gives voice to the voiceless and raises up the next generation of investigative reporters.

More than 15 million adults, or nearly one in six Americans aged 55 and older, are childless, and the levels of childlessness among adults are expected to increase. Using data from the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2018 Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP), Dr. Tayelor Valerio will provide an overview of the childless older American population and compare their demographic, economic, health, and household characteristics to those of biological parents of the same age group.

Dr. Tayelor Valerio, Ph.D., is a survey statistician at the U.S. Census Bureau. She is an analyst for the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP), the American Community Survey (ACS), and the June Fertility Supplement of the Current Population Survey (CPS), where she focuses on topics related to fertility and family.