From the archives: Sen. McGovern @ Cincinnati

Date: 4/18/2005
Title: Military Action for Humanitarian Needs: Why Wasn’t Auschwitz Bombed?
Speaker(s): Sen. George McGovern, Werner Coppel, Anna Ornstein
Location: University of Cincinnati
Presentation Type(s): Streaming video (Windows Media Player)

From the announcement:

Senator George McGovern, acclaimed humanitarian, is also a decorated WWII B-24 bomber pilot who flew 35 missions over Poland and Germany. He never received orders to target the gas chambers or railroad tracks to Auschwitz.

Werner Coppel and Anna Ornstein were teenage prisoners in Auschwitz while Allied forces held the skies in 1944. They dreamed for the pilots to notice them, to stop the trains, to stop the gas chambers, to show that they cared about the mass murder.

For the first time in public, in this ground-breaking meeting between a WWII war hero and Holocaust survivors, they will explore the many questions about the possibilities of the bombing of Auschwitz

Yale Sherrill Lecture 2005: Ralph Cavanagh

Date: 4/11/2005
Title: Suspending the World’s Most Dangerous Experiment: The Global Warming Challenge (1:15:47)
Speaker(s): Ralph Cavanagh
Location: Yale Law School
Presentation Type(s): Streaming video (Real Player)

From the announcement:

Ralph Cavanagh ‘77, director of the Energy Program of the Natural Resources Defense Council, will deliver the 2004-05 Preiskel-Silverman Lecture on Monday, April 11, 2005, at 4:30 p.m., in Room 127. His talk is titled “Suspending the World’s Most Dangerous Experiment: The Global Warming Challenge” and is free and open to the public.

Cavanagh joined the NRDC in 1979, and he has also taught at the Stanford, Harvard, and Boalt Hall Law Schools on topics across a wide range of energy and environmental issues. He is a past member of the U.S. Secretary of Energy’s Advisory Board, the Energy Engineering Board of the National Academy of Sciences, and the Advisory Council of the Electric Power Research Institute.

In 1996 Cavanagh received the Heinz Award in Public Policy for his work lobbying for and implementing policies that permit utilities to earn money by saving energy. According to the Heinz Award brochure: “His unparalleled success in persuading regulators of the merits of this once unorthodox view helped to prove that utility regulatory reform is viable and yields substantial environmental gains. He has used public policy in an exemplary way to bring about positive, widespread changes in existing regulations and practices.”

He describes his talk at YLS as follows: “My subject is the extraordinarily dangerous experiment that humanity is conducting with the earth’s climate, and the prospects for suspending that experiment before it careens out of control. The perspective is that of an American public interest lawyer working for the past quarter century with other attorneys and scientists across institutions ranging from private, for-profit corporations to state and federal governments.”

Dean Koh introduces the lecture, named for two YLS grads (who are present in the audience). Dan Esty introduces Cavanagh.