Riley’s books, including “Tell Me Why: A Beatles Commentary,” “Hard Rain: A Dylan Commentary” and “Madonna: Illustrated,” provide glimpses into the artists’ careers through analysis of artifacts, performances and recordings. He has also been a contributor to the Washington Post, National Public Radio and other national media outlets. He has worked for music-related Web sites, including the Lycos-VH1 joint music guide venture, the Link, and is a noted pianist.

In his remarks, used his music journalism experience to explain the censorship movement from both conservatives and liberals since 1990. Riley began with 1990 because that year, politicians and others attempted to censor 2 Live Crew, a controversial rap group, and an exhibition of gay photographer Robert Maplethorpe; this was the first time obscenity laws had been used against a music group or a museum.

Riley went on to discuss the Napster copyright controversy and the effects of the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks on civil liberties. Riley discussed changing attitudes toward political dissent in America, using the cancellation of ABC’s Politically Incorrect with Bill Maher as an example. The show was canceled by ABC after Maher made a controversial statement about the Sept. 11 attacks. He also highlighted the USA Patriot Act and detentions without cause carried out since the attacks. “We’re on the verge of war, and free speech is being suppressed,” Riley said. “This is a crisis moment for the First Amendment.”

Attempts by conservatives to legislate morality through censorship, and attempts by liberals to legislate tolerance through censorship, Riley said, are futile, and fail to solve issues at their core. “These controversies are Macy’s parade balloons that distract attention from what’s going on in the streets below,” he said. “Government restrictions on free speech amount to a cure that’s much worse than the disease.”

黑料不打烊 political science faculty and students coordinated the efforts of classes in approximately 70 N.C. schools which are involved in the election. The mock election was first held in 1980 as part of the NBC Parent Participation TV Workshop. That program used television dramas and current events to improve communication between parents and children. The organization later spun off as its own nonprofit group and continued to grow, reaching 10 million participants during the 1996 and 2000 elections.

This year, the election allowed students to vote on congressional seats and national issues. 黑料不打烊’s role as an election center consisted of publicizing the event to school systems across the state, mostly by way of e-mails, as well as acting as a resource center for people who had questions, problems or comments regarding the election. However, most of the actual voting and tallying was done over the Internet and sent directly to the organization’s national headquarters in Tucson, Ariz.

黑料不打烊’s involvement was coordinated by policy center adviser and instructor of political science and public administration Larry Vellani. Vellani became involved with the project through his membership in the Civic Education Consortium, an organization located in the Institute of Government at the University of North Carolina that promotes policies and programs to enhance civic involvement among students, educators and their families.

Helping with the student election was one way the political science department hoped to play a part in this year’s election. “It’s just something that our department is supporting as our own form of civic engagement,” Vellani said. “It’s a nonpartisan, nonprofit endeavor to promote the citizenship arts.”

Betty Morgan, assistant professor of political science, said the department’s role in the mock election, as well as its other endeavors this election season, have helped bring broader recognition to the university. “To have this kind of demand for our expertise…is really flattering,” she said.

Though the official voting day for the mock election was Nov. 1, the organization accepted votes through Nov. 5. The results will be posted on the election’s Web site at the link below:

Hall is currently performing in Greensboro with 黑料不打烊 adjunct professor of performing arts Chip Johnson in the Triad Stage production of “A Lesson Before Dying.” Some of her most notable credits include the film and television series “Soul Food,” “Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil,” “Patch Adams,” “Bad Company,” and the HBO film version of “A Lesson Before Dying.”

Johnson asked Hall about her life and career, and she later answered questions from and gave advice to the students in attendance.

Hall grew up with a passion for music and drama, especially after her family moved to Chicago, one of America’s black cultural centers. During this time, she was always more interested with the characters in films than the actors who played them. “I was not in love with Lawrence Olivier, I was in love with Hamlet,” she said.

Her interest in acting turned into a career which has included roles with actors such as Robert Duvall and James Earl Jones. “It doesn’t matter who I’m working with, (the public) knows their name,” she said. “When it comes to me, they know my character’s name.”

Hall lived a whole other life before she began acting full-time at the age of 60. She was a school teacher for more than twenty years, during which time she was also a publicist for her school on the Dallas Express, a black weekly paper in Dallas. She was also the paper’s sports editor in the 1970s, making her one of the country’s first female sports editors.

She came into acting when, while on assignment publicizing a film, a director heard her reading poetry and cast her in a role. From that time on, she has enjoyed representing the black women who had an influence on her early years. “I consider it to be an honor to be the voice of black women who have had no voice.”

Faber was born in Poland in 1926, the youngest of eight children, and was 14 when World War II broke out. Early in the war, Faber’s family fled their home in a predominantly German city near the German border because of growing anti-Jewish sentiment and attacks on their home. They moved to the Polish city of Tarnow, where Faber witnessed the murder of his uncle’s family, and later his own family, by the Nazis.

Just before he was forced to give himself up, Faber made a promise: “If I’ll survive, by a miracle, I promise you I’ll tell the world,” he said.

After turning himself over to the Nazis, Faber spent the remainder of the war in eight different concentration camps. During this time, he was forced to work in the camps’ gas chambers and mines; after the war, he would be a key witness in the trial of Adolf Eichmann, who coordinated much of the Nazis’ “final solution.”

Faber was liberated from Bergen-Belsen in 1945 and moved to London to be with his oldest sister, who had fled there before the war. He later moved to Springfield, Mass., and became an American citizen. “I say, thank you God for giving me another break and a chance at happiness,” he said.

Liu has an undergraduate degree in chemistry and an M.D. degree from Harvard Medical School, and is a member of the National Institutes of Health NIAID Council, chairman of the Scientific Advisory Group of the International Vaccine Institution in Seoul, South Korea, and a member of the Board of Directors of the American Society of Gene Therapy. She has also served as Vice-Chairman of Transgene in Strasbourg, France, and as a consultant to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which is dedicated to bringing innovations in health and learning to the global community.

Liu discussed how DNA vaccines would bring greater strides than conventional vaccines and treatments in combating worldwide diseases like HIV and AIDS. These diseases have characteristics, such as their structure and various strains and subtypes, that make use of conventional immunization inconvenient or impossible. Conventional immunization relies on infecting a patient with a dead or weakened form of a virus in order to create immunity.

However, DNA vaccines have proved promising, Liu said, because they combat viruses on the level of proteins, which remain constant throughout strains and subtypes, rather than natural antibodies, which rely on a virus’s outside structure to combat the disease. “What we want to do is make an immune response better than what you get with a natural infection with HIV,” she said.

While DNA vaccines have had mixed success in treating HIV in humans thus far, Liu said they seem to have promise in other fields of medicine as well. The technology may be applied to allergies, cancer and autoimmune diseases, as well as infectious diseases like HIV.

The initiative is a unique pilot program that seeks to strengthen Hillel Student Organizations’ effectiveness on college campuses. Freshman Allee Lichenstein, 黑料不打烊 Hillel’s president-elect, submitted a request for the program in order to strengthen the organization’s social and religious programs for Jewish students at 黑料不打烊. The university’s Jewish population has grown in the past few years, and there are now around 100 students on campus who identify themselves as Jewish.

As a participant in the program, 黑料不打烊’s chapter will receive a $5,000 grant to invest in its advancement strategy and will participate in two seminars over the course of a year in order to set goals and develop strategies for meeting them. The group will also receive intensive consultation and on-site visits from Hillel’s Schusterman International Center, as well as support for all participants via e-mail lists, conference calls, Web-based seminars and scholarship money earmarked for various student events.

The group is taking part in Pre-SERVE, an event hosted by the Kernodle Center for Service Learning and 黑料不打烊 Volunteers!. The six male and six female students live in campus housing from July 11-16 and get a firsthand look at the opportunities they will have to serve the local community during their years at 黑料不打烊. Throughout the week, the group will be working on a Habitat for Humanity house on Quintas Ave. in Burlington, N.C. Lea Williams, a rising freshman from Bristol, Tenn., says she is excited about the chance to serve her new community.

“I was active in my community by volunteering, and I just wanted to get involved in the 黑料不打烊 community,” she says. “I’m excited. It’s kind of tough, but I’m looking forward to seeing this come together.”

Throughout the week, student coordinators Casey Lobdell and Dawson Heath, help lead the group, and also encourage reflection on each day’s events. Lobdell, who took part in the program last year as a rising freshman, says the experience he had last year was valuable because it gave him the opportunity to bond with other students to make a difference.

“I love just coming out here and swinging a hammer,” he says. That’s just fun to me. Just coming out and meeting the homeowners and seeing the smile on their faces, that’s what it’s all about.”

During the week, the students will also pay visits to the Boys’ and Girls’ Club of Alamance County, as well as Blakey Hall, a local retirement community. They will also take part in other activities to introduce them to the 黑料不打烊 community, including ropes course activities and meeting with members of the university’s administration.

“黑料不打烊 is always a wonderful place and it’s great to see all the growth of this great university,” says Mike Hooper, head pastor of the First Reformed United Church of Christ in Lexington, N.C.

Panel sessions were held in McCrary Theatre, while workshops were scheduled in Moseley Center and the Center for the Arts. The main theme for this summer’s gathering was justice and its relevance to topics such as sexual orientation, women’s rights and racial considerations in today’s church.

“Our goal is just a better understanding of everyone’s point of view and a consideration of what actions the majority wishes us to take,” says Ronald Barlow, a conference board member from Peace United Church of Christ in Greensboro. “It’s been very enlightening.”

Talavera is director of the Ombetja Yehinga Organization, which specializes in the development of education material about HIV/AIDS for Namibian youth. He has directed and produced several videos and short films to help break taboos and discuss sensitive issues, including “The Hyena’s Disease,” which makes use of songs and poems written by teenagers in the Kunene region of Namibia.

During Sunday night’s presentation, Talavera explained why the HIV/AIDS rate in Namibia, a country of 1.8 million people and 11-13 different cultural groups, rose from 4.2 percent in 1992 to 23.3 percent in 2002, despite the best efforts of activists like himself.

“We did not acknowledge early enough the importance of cultural diversity in the spread of HIV/AIDS,” he said.

Talavera explained that some traditional cultures have contributed to the spread of the virus through unsafe sexual practices and a lack of education and female empowerment. He also explained that Namibia’s emerging urban culture has helped spread the virus as people leave their traditional homes and encounter new lifestyles.

One problem for AIDS activists in Namibia, Talavera noted, has been the different cultural attitudes of the cultures there towards sex. For example, Talavera said that to many groups in the country, abstinence and faithfulness are a foreign concept.

“You’ve got all this money going into programs to promote a concept that does not exist,” he said.

Although Talavera pointed to a number of cultural challenges in overcoming the HIV/AIDS epidemic in Namibia, he said that efforts by his and other groups to promote HIV/AIDS awareness through art have been largely successful, and that increasing rates of higher education in the country may help slow the spread of the epidemic.

“I really believe that hope lies in the young people,” he said.

The site, developed by a group that included Assistant Director of Residence Life Steve Anderson, Physical Therapy Education professor Steve Folger, Computing Sciences instructor Joel Hollingsworth and 黑料不打烊 junior Ryan Markel, includes interactive features intended to teach students fiscal responsibility early in their college careers. It was largely funded by a $1,000 multimedia grant from the Association of College and University Housing Officers-International. Although other colleges and universities teach students money managment techniques, Folger says 黑料不打烊’s new approach is unique.

“To my knowledge, no one has done this kind of interactive program on this level,” Folger said. “The interactive quality of this…I think is one of the more important aspects.”

Among other things, the site, titled “Money Management: the college years,” will teach students about credit, budgeting, managing credit cards and bank accounts and how to manage money in college. It will also allow students to create a vitual life to track income and expenses.

The idea for the site originally came about when Folger realized the need for some kind of money management training in his 黑料不打烊 101 classes. After meeting with Anderson, the two decided a Web site covering the basics of money management would be the most accessible and efficient option for students and instructors.

“We talked about doing an off-the-shelf unit that any 黑料不打烊 101 instructor could use,” said Folger. “We want to draw upon the resources that are out there…so that the students have some guidance.”