Mark LeClair, professor of economics at Fairfield University where he has taught for 33 years, will discuss the outlook for Connecticut’s economy, assessing our state’s strengths and weaknesses. His areas of specialization include international finance and trade, industrial organizations, and regional economic development. In addition to nearly two dozen scholarly articles, Dr. LeClair has published four books, including Regional Integration and Global Free Trade (1997), International Commodity Markets and the Role of Cartels (2000), Cartelization, Antitrust and Globalization in the U.S. and Europe, and Philanthropy in Transition (2014). His current research centers on the regulatory environment in the not-for-profit sector. Dr. LeClair has taught courses for both the Lifelong Learning program in Fairfield and the Learning in Retirement program in Stamford for over a decade.
Arranged by Charles Salmans
Mark Albertson, who is well known to DMA members as an entertaining and informative speaker and historian, will talk about George Washington’s Farewell Address, delivered in 1796. It’s one of the best by any departing president. Washington offers an array of prognostications along with his concerns, a number of which, unfortunately, have arisen over the course of our history. Washington himself, of course, is fascinating. He was a large landowner. He was a slaveowner. But here is a man who had the opportunity to take control of the country as General of the Army and refused to do so. Here is a man who served his two terms as president and then willingly vacated the highest political office in the land, setting the precedent of the two-term presidency. Into the 20th century all second term presidents willingly leave office. That is American Exceptionalism. America was blessed from the historical perspective that George Washington was not another Julius Caesar, Oliver Cromwell, or Napoleon Bonaparte, which is something that comes around once every Haley’s Comet.
Basil Hero is an award-winning former investigative reporter with NBC News television stations. For his book, “The Mission of aLifetime: The Men Who Went to the Moon,” he interviewed the twelve remaining lunar explorers. They talk at length about the real right stuff, the true source of courage, leadership, and the quiet patriotism that it took to risk their lives going to the moon. Their voyages led them to the most incredible discovery of all: our home planet and its precious place in the universe. They fear for earth’s future and offer sensible solutions to its mounting crises and the path to future space exploration.
