"Honoring Our Changing Stories"

In her address at Alumni Weekend, environmental lawyer and award-winning author Rishi Reddi '88 spoke about "honoring change in our lives," including examples from the College's history in which students "challenged this school to live up to the ideals of its Quaker founders."

Rishi Reddi was born in Hyderabad, India, and grew up in England and the United States. Her book Karma and Other Stories, published by ecco/ HarperCollins in April 2007, received the 2008 L.L. Winship/PEN New England Awar and one of those stories, "Justice Shiva Ram Murthy," appeared in Best American Short Stories 2005.

Writing is only one of Rishi's professional paths. She earned her law degree from Northeastern University in 1992 and, having been interested in nature and the environment for years, became an environmental attorney for Massachusetts.

Rishi continues her dual pursuit of law and literature, working part-time for the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection and writing a historical novel based on the first South Asians who moved to Southern California in the 1910s. Rishi also serves on the board of South Asian Americans Leading Together, a national, non-profit organization dedicated to fostering an environment in which all South Asians in America can participate fully in civic and political life, and have influence over policies that affect them.

"Hemispheric Asian America: Rethinking Migration, Sociality, and Racialization"

Lok Siu, associate professor of anthropology and Asian/Pacific/American studies, New York University

In her talk, Lok Siu proposes an approach to Asian American studies that examines more fully the extent to which hemispheric dynamics and processes link the experiences of Asians across the Americas. Siu, author of the award-winning Memories of a Future Home: Diasporic Citizenship of Chinese in Panama, argues that adopting this approach will inevitably transform the historiography of Asian America and will bring Asian American studies into productive dialogue with fields such as Latin American studies, Canadian studies, and American studies. Siu is introduced by Assistant Professor of English Literature Bakirathi Mani.

The Genevieve Ching-wen Lee '96 Memorial Lecture was established in 1996 by her family to promote awareness of and research on Asian American issues. Each year the College welcomes to campus a leading scholar in the field.

"Sustainability for Competitive Advantage"
Keynote speaker Chris Laszlo '80
Introductions by President Al Bloom and Alex Ginsberg '08

The environmental and social impact a business has on the world around it is a rapidly growing source of competitive advantage. CEOs of some of the world's leading companies are now tackling global challenges such as climate change and the widening rich-poor gap, not as cost constraints but as business opportunities. Based on his new book, Sustainable Value, published by Stanford University Press in February 2008, Chris Laszlo '80 discusses sustainability-driven business leadership and emerging sustainability practices based on case studies at DuPont, Wal-Mart and other global industry leaders.

Upon its centenary in 1964, the College published Swarthmore Remembered, a collection of essays by alumni, including James A. Michener '29. In honor of what would have been his 100th birthday, the College returned the favor and hosted best-selling author Frank Delaney, whose talk, "The Michener Phenomenon," celebrated the Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist's life and legacy. Introducing Delaney is Dan Menaker '63, longtime New Yorker editor and former executive editor-in-chief of Random House.

Nobel Laureate John Mather '68 tells the story of how the universe began with a Big Bang, how it could have produced an earth where sentient beings can live, and how those beings are discovering their history. Mather, co-recipient of the 2006 Nobel Prize in Physics for providing increased support for the Big Bang theory of the universe, is a senior astrophysicist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. He includes in his talk, the 2007 McCabe Lecture, Einstein's biggest mistake, how Edwin Hubble discovered the expansion of the universe, and NASA's plans for the next great telescope in space, the James Webb Space Telescope.