2025-2026 Town & Gown Faculty Lecture Series

October 14, 2025

FISCAL CRISES

James D. Hamilton, PhD, is the Robert F. Engle Endowed Chair in Economics Professor at UC San Diego.  He is the 2025 honoree elected to join the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.  He has received seven teaching awards from the UCSD Economics Department.  In 2020, he received the Best Paper Award from the Journal of Monetary Economics.

There have been more than 250 separate instances of governments defaulting on their debt around the world since 1800.  A common trigger is that governments are unable to continue to make interest payments on growing debt loads.  This talk reviews three recent case studies from Greece, Ireland, and Italy in 2011-2012, and discusses challenges currently facing the United States.

November 4, 2025

OPTIMIZING CELLULAR ENERGY AND METABOLISM TO PROMOTE HEALTHY AGING

Anthony J. Molina, PhD, is Professor of Medicine; Scientific Director, Stein Institute for Research on Aging & Center for Healthy Aging; and Research Chief, Division of Geriatrics, Gerontology, and Palliative Care at UC San Diego.

Aging research has made tremendous advancements over the past few decades.  As scientists continue to improve our understanding of the biological underpinnings of aging, promising strategies for improving healthy longevity have emerged.  This talk will focus on how our bodies can optimize energy and metabolism leading to the promotion of healthy aging.

December 9, 2025

A METAPHOR THAT FOLDS: TRANSLATING UKRAINIAN POETRY IN A TIME OF WAR

Amelia Glaser, PhD, is Professor of Literature at UC San Diego, where she holds the Chair in Judaic Studies.  She has been short-listed, along with Yuliya Ilchuk, for the Griffin Poetry Prize and the Drahomán Translation Award, and has won the Sundara Ramaswamy Prize for poetry in translation.

“In a metaphor that folds, like a Swiss army knife, /the corkscrew broke, the file got dull.”  In this metaphor of a metaphor, the Ukrainian poet Halyna Kruk asks her reader to notice the fragility of language.  In February 2022, the poet Ostap Slyvynsky began collecting a lexicon of war terms, which illustrates the ways that war changes Ukraine’s language.  Other poets soon began contributing their own overheard anecdotes to the hashtag Slyvynsky created for this project, #slovnikviinii, and the result has been a collective glossary of war terms.  In this talk, Professor Amelia Glaser, who is also a translator of Ukrainian poetry, will speak about how the ongoing war in Ukraine has changed the language of poetry, and what role translators have played in this process.

January 13, 2026

THE COST OF “SAVINGS”: WHAT ARE THE IMPLICATIONS  OF CUTS TO US SCIENCE BUDGETS?

Robert T. Schooley, MD, is Distinguished Professor of Medicine in the Division of Infectious Diseases and Global Public Health; Co-Director, Center for Innovative Phage Applications and Therapeutics; and Senior Director, International Initiatives at UC San Diego. He was awarded the Revelle Medal in 2024 for sustained, distinguished and extraordinary service.

The Cost of “Savings”: What are the Implications of Cuts to US Science Budgets? The seminar will focus on the short- and longer-term costs of the current fiscal and political attacks on science in the United States. Since January of 2025, the budgets of agencies supporting science in the US have been under assault. Existing grants and contracts from the NIH, the NSF, the CDC and NOAA (among others) have been rescinded and new grants have been severely restricted and/or redirected in support of the Administration’s priorities. The impact on American technological leadership, on American Universities, on American scientists and on the public will be systematically examined. Suggestions will also be put forward about how the damage might be mitigated as we await a return to longer-term priorities in our country.

February 10, 2026

IS THE RELIGIOUS PUBLIC IN CONFLICT WITH SCIENCE?

John H. Evans, PhD, is Professor of Sociology; Tata Chancellor’s Chair in Social Sciences; Associate Dean of the Social Sciences; and Co- Director of the Institute for Practical Ethics at UC San Diego.

Everyone seems to think that science and religion have been in conflict since Galileo, but historians have shown that to be largely mythical.  Moreover, common wisdom has it that contemporary religious people are in conflict with science.  But, is that true?  In this lecture, John Evans examines the question from a sociological view.  The discussion starts with the question: “conflict over what?”  Different types of possible conflict are outlined, and then he describes whether and how the largest religious groups in the U.S. are or are not in such conflict.

March 10, 2026

DEEP DISCOVERIES IN THE 2000S: BONE-EATERS, GREEN BOMBERS, RUBY SEADRAGONS AND MORE!

Gregory Rouse, PhD, is Distinguished Professor of Marine Biology at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego.  He is also Curator of the Benthic Invertebrate Collection. He specializes in the study of animal biodiversity.

Exploration of our oceans continues to reveal strange new animals.  I will review some of the more famous discoveries dating back over the last century and then document some of the more recent amazing discoveries focusing on California and the eastern Pacific Ocean.  This will include the bizarre bone-eating worms known as Osedax, the green bomber worm Swima, the enigmatic Xenoturbella, and our work on the extraordinary Ruby Seadragon from Australia.

April 14, 2026

LEADING SCHOOLS IN RAPIDLY SHIFTING TIMES

Amanda Datnow, PhD, is Chancellor’s Associates Endowed Chair and Professor in the Department of Education Studies, and Associate Dean in the School of Social Sciences at UC San Diego. She is a member of the National Academy of Education and a Fellow of the American Educational Research Association. She is the 2025 honoree elected to join the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. 

This presentation will focus on the complexities of school leadership in rapidly shifting times.  The job of the school principal has become increasingly challenging as principals navigate new reform initiatives, manage complex realities outside schools, and attend to the needs of different stakeholders.  Gaining insight into the lived experiences of school leaders is essential for understanding the future of K-12 education.

May 12, 2026

THE HOMELESSNESS CRISIS: CHALLENGES, OPPORTUNITIES AND DEBUNKING MYTHS AND STEREOTYPES

Mirle Rabinowitz Bussell, PhD, is Department Chair and Professor of Urban Studies and Planning at UC San Diego. She is a recipient of the Paul D. and Barbara J. Saltman Distinguished Teaching Award.

In this presentation, Dr. Rabinowitz Bussell will talk about the work of Homelessness Hub at UC San Diego, a non-partisan hub for research, education, policy, and action on homelessness that is dedicated to critical, unbiased and data-driven research in order to inform local policy and action aimed at reducing homelessness in the San Diego region.  She will draw from current research and data to provide an overview of the unique challenges of homelessness and provide a demographic overview of the populations experiencing homelessness in San Diego.  She will conclude by presenting examples of best practices in response to the homelessness crisis.