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Earl E. Devaney, inspector general for the Department of the Interior, will deliver a lecture titled “How to Protect $800,000,000,000 in Public Spending: Oversight of the Stimulus Package,” on Thursday, March 7, at 4:30 p.m., in the Dwight Lounge in the Bristol Center at Hamilton. His lecture is part of the Arthur Levitt Public Affairs Center’s Security program and is free and open to the public.

To conclude its program series on Security, the Levitt Center brought John Dehn to campus to present a lecture titled “War and the Constitution: Military Commissions, Targeted Killing of Citizens, and Other Hard Cases.” Dehn – a senior fellow at the West Point Center for the Rule of Law at the United States Military Academy – discussed the philosophical, constitutional and legal underpinnings of the doctrine and law of war and the implications they have on the international system, as well as on due process rights of American citizens and foreigners involved in war.

Since gaining nationhood in the 18th century, the United States has been directly involved in dozens of armed military conflicts. The standard that the government has used and still uses to justify military engagements is the just war theory, which posits that a nation can, morally, only become involved in a military conflict that adheres to a set of ethical criteria. Andrew Fiala, professor of philosophy and director of the Ethics Center at California State University, Fresno, discussed the theory on March 1.

The U. S. has been involved in many debates about the merits and detriments of its involvement in overseas democracies. Currently, this subject is coming to a head with regard to Libya. On Sept. 27, Cornell University Professor Valerie Bunce  gave a lecture titled “When U.S. Democracy Assistance Works,” which provided insight into the complex world of U.S. involvement in the color revolutions in post-Soviet countries.

“It is the one of the toughest and, at times, most brutal prisons in America,” said Doran Larson, professor of English, in introducing the Attica symposium on Sept. 16.  The symposium detailed the uprising of 1971 that left 39 dead and led to major prison reform.