Dom Sagolla '96 (@dom), co-founder of Twitter, spoke on campus about his new book, 140 Characters: A Style Guide for the Short Form (@thebook) and demonstrated the companion iPhone app (@bookapp). He encouraged the audience to think of short, 140 character Twitter updates as a new form of literature and to "lead" as a writer in the short form rather than be a follower. The medium is "there to empower you," he said. He engaged the audience in a discussion about topics ranging from the demographics of social networking to how Twitter impacts personal relationships.

Sagolla graduated from Swarthmore with a degree in English Literature and later obtained a Masters in Education from Harvard. He has contributed to Macromedia Studio, Adobe Creative Suite, and Odeo. Currently, he works at DollarApp, an iPhone app development company.

Rita Dove, Pulitzer Prize winner, National Humanities Medalist, and former U.S. Poet Laureate, gave a reading on campus as part of the Cooper Series. She indulged the audience by reading several requested poems and sharing the stories that inspired them as well as a bit about her writing process.

Peggy Seeger was a special guest at Swarthmore's 2009 Alumni Weekend. She gave a talk titled "Scalpels or Sledgehammers? Music as a Tool for Activism." Her visit was organized by Swarthmore Folk, a group of alumni interested in carrying forward the tradition of folk music on the campus.

In giving the 2009 Bernie Saffran Lecture, noted economist Alice Rivlin H'76 examines the policy challenge of addressing capitalism's downsides without destroying the productivity of the market-based economy.

Currently a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and a professor at Georgetown University, Rivlin is the founding director of the Congressional Budget Office and is an expert on urban issues as well as fiscal, monetary, and social policy. She has served as the director of the White House Office of Management and Budget in the first Clinton Administration and as vice chair of the Federal Reserve Board .

The Bernie Saffran Lecture is named for an economics professor who taught and mentored generations of Swarthmore students until his death in 2004.

Wing Thye Woo '76 discusses China's impressive past growth, the present acrimony over its exchange rate policy, and the key challenges to maintaining its high growth in the future.

Woo is a professor of economics at the University of California at Davis, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington D.C., and the director of the East Asia Program within the Earth Institute at Columbia University. An expert on the East Asian economies, particularly China, Indonesia and Malaysia, he has advised the U.S. Treasury Department, the IMF, World Bank, and the United Nations.

Mark Alan Hughes '81 discusses his efforts as Philadelphia's first sustainability director to conserve resources, reduce waste, and promote alternative energy, green jobs, and many other sustainable methods of living and doing business. He also addresses how such efforts can serve as a model for developing Swarthmore's green profile.

Hughes joined the public policy faculty of Princeton's Woodrow Wilson School at the age of 25, then later taught public policy at Penn's Fels Institute, Harvard's Kennedy School, and at Swarthmore College. He has been a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and the Urban Institute and his research has appeared in the leading journals of several academic disciplines, including the Journal of Urban Economics, Political Science Quarterly, Economic Geography, Journal of the American Planning Association, and Urban Studies.

Introduction by Professor Robinson Hollister

In the 2008 Bernie Saffran Lecture, Michael Greenstone '91 provides estimates on the impact of climate change on mortality in the US and India. He also presents estimates of the costs of the adaptations that people will undertake to protect themselves against the health risks posed by climate change and finally, he analyzes the implications for climate policy.

Michael Greenstone '91 is the 3M Professor of Environmental Economics in the Department of Economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He also is a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) and a Nonresident Senior Fellow at Brookings.

Lydia Polgreen, chief of the New York Times West Africa bureau, recently visited campus and shared her experiences reporting on conflicts in Congo, Chad, and Sudan. She reflected on violent conflicts in these countries, the lasting effects of past brutalities on individuals and the political structure, and the hope she feels as a result of humanitarian efforts and activism she’s seen on the ground. In 2006, Polgreen was awarded a George Polk Award in foreign reporting for her coverage of ethnic violence in Sudan's Darfur region.