| Date: | December 18, 2025 at 10 am (Meeting # 711 since 02/13/1986) |
| Topic: | The Role of Local Government and Community in a Climate-Changing World |
| Speaker: | Randall Solomon, Director of The Sustainability Institute at The College of New Jersey and the Executive Director of Sustainable Jersey |
| THIS WILL BE A HYBRID MEETING (in-person at TJC & via Zoom) | |
| To join this meeting on Zoom, please click HERE | |
We are living in a time of accelerating instability.
Climate change is no longer a distant threat-it is here, reshaping our environment, our economy, and our communities.
For decades, national and global governments have failed to respond with the urgency required.
This is not only a failure of climate policy, but a broader pattern of institutional stagnation in the face of mounting challenges.
As Ezra Klein has argued, societies that cannot adapt and build will struggle to sustain abundance, safety, and trust.
That is why action on the ground, at the community level, has never been more critical.
The shift underway in climate action reflects this reality.
While reducing emissions is still vital, we can no longer prevent all the damage.
Warming that is already locked in will continue to drive rising seas, dangerous heat, and more extreme weather.
But the consequences extend further.
Climate change is destabilizing food systems, straining water supplies, disrupting energy reliability, and exposing the fragility of global economic interdependence.
These cascading effects threaten the essentials of daily life and demand resilience strategies that reach far beyond sandbags and cooling centers.
Local governments and communities are uniquely positioned to meet these challenges.
Unlike climate mitigation, which depends heavily on federal and international policy, adaptation is inherently local.
It is about redesigning infrastructure, rethinking land use, strengthening local food and energy systems, preparing for emergencies, and building networks of trust and mutual aid.
In New Jersey, programs like Sustainable Jersey are providing the tools, technical assistance, and implementation framework that municipalities need to lead.
From resilience planning and vulnerability assessments to local energy initiatives, towns across the state are showing what is possible.
By acting locally, we can not only weather global instability but create stronger, more self-reliant, and more hopeful communities.
Mr. Solomon has over 25 years of experience working in government, academia, and the non-profit sector.
He is one of the principals that founded and directs the Sustainable Jersey Certification program.
Prior to his current position he was the founder and Executive Director of the New Jersey Sustainable State Institute at Rutgers where he worked to expand the capacity of public decision making to address sustainability.
Mr. Solomon's experience includes positions as a policy advisor on sustainable development for the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities integrating land use and energy policy, director of the States Campaign for the Resource Renewal Institute in San Francisco, and policy director for the non-profit New Jersey Future.
Other jobs include a stint as a national Park Ranger and serving in the inaugural class of AmeriCorps volunteers.
He has participated on advisory boards for federal and state government, civic organizations, and has advised major corporations.
He writes and speaks frequently on sustainable development, energy, land use policy, using indicators in public decision making, and governance issues.
Randy holds a B.S. in Biology from Stockton University and a M.S. in Public Policy from Rutgers University.
| Date: | January 8, 2026 at 10 am (Meeting # 712 since 02/13/1986) |
| Topic: | The Spinach King: The Rise and Fall of an American Dynasty? |
| Speaker: | John Seabrook, staff writer at The New Yorker |
| THIS WILL BE A ZOOM-ONLY MEETING | |
| To join this meeting on Zoom, please click HERE | |
My talk to about the mixed legacy of my grandfather, C.F. Seabrook who created an agricultural empire of frozen vegetables on South Jersey called Seabrook Farms.
Revered by many of his workers as a humanitarian business leader who inspired and in some cases saved them, he turned on his own family, destroyed his relationships with his sons, and in the process wrecked the business.
My father only revealed the truth about his father after he died when he left me proof of the kind of man my grandfather was.
In writing The Spinach King, I had to reconcile the official mythologized portrait of C.F. Seabrook with the way he treated his family, and my father's posthumous desire for revenge.
John Seabrook has been a staff writer at The New Yorker for more than three decades.
He is the author of The Song Machine: Inside the Hit Factory, Flash of Genius: And Other True Stories of Invention, Nobrow: The Culture of Marketing, the Marketing of Culture and other books.
The film Flash of Genius was based on one of his stories.
He and his family live in Brooklyn.
| Date: | January 15, 2026, 10:00–12:00 |
| What: | 55PLUS VOLUNTEERS MEETING. ALL ARE WELCOME! |
| Topic: | Discussion about running 55Plus and future plans |
| To join this meeting on Zoom, please click HERE | |
| Date: | January 22, 2026 at 10 am (Meeting # 713 since 02/13/1986) |
| Topic: | Lessons we can learn today from the activists and organizers of the Women’s Liberation Movement |
| Speaker: | Clara Bingham, Journalist and author |
| THIS WILL BE A ZOOM-ONLY MEETING | |
| To join this meeting on Zoom, please click HERE | |
Bingham's second book, Class Action: The Landmark Case that Changed Sexual Harassment Law (with Laura Leedy Gansler, Doubleday 2002), was adapted into the 2005 feature film North Country (Warner Bros.) staring Charlize Theron and Francis McDormand.
She is also the author of Women on the Hill: Challenging the Culture of Congress (Times Books 1997).
A graduate of Harvard College (1985), Bingham got her start in journalism as a correspondent in the Washington, DC bureau of Newsweek magazine.
Clara Bingham is a journalist and author whose work has focused on social justice and women's issues.
Her latest book, The Movement: How Women's Liberation Transformed America 1963-1973, was published by Simon & Schuster in 2024.
A history of the early years of second wave feminism, The Movement is written in a similar oral history narrative style to her previous book, Witness to the Revolution: Radicals, Resisters, Vets, Hippies, and the Year America Lost its Mind and Found its Soul (Random House 2016)
| Date: | February 5, 2026 at 10 am (Meeting # 714 since 02/13/1986) |
| Topic: | Fables and Confabulations: The Stories We Tell About Our Bodies, and The Stories Our Bodies Tell Us |
| Speaker: | Pria Anand, Assistant Professor of Neurology at the Boston University School of Medicine and attending phisician at the Boston Medical Center |
| THIS WILL BE A ZOOM-ONLY MEETING | |
| To join this meeting on Zoom, please click HERE | |
Stories are etched into the very structure of our brains, coded so deeply that the impulse for storytelling survives and even surges after the most devastating injuries.
But the stories our brains concoct are also malleable, shaped by cultural narratives about bodies and illness that permeate the minds of doctors and patients alike.
In this talk by a practicing neurologist, we will use medical history, mythology, neurologic symptoms, and science to explore the intersection between storytelling and the brain.
Pria Anand is a neurologist and the author of
The Mind Electric: A Neurologist on the Strangeness and Wonder of Our Brains,
named a Best Book of June and Best Science & Technology Book of 2025 by Barnes & Noble and a Best Book of the Summer by The Observer, Publisher's Weekly, The Globe and Mail, and Book Riot.
Her stories and essays have appeared in the Los Angeles Review of Books, Time Magazine, The Boston Globe, The Washington Post, The New York Times, Ploughshares, and elsewhere.
She is a graduate of Yale University and Stanford Medical School, and she trained in neurology, neuro-infectious diseases, and neuroimmunology at the Johns Hopkins Hospital and the Massachusetts General Hospital.
She is now an Assistant Professor of Neurology at the Boston University School of Medicine, and she cares for patients at the Boston Medical Center.
| Date: | February 19, 2026 at 10 am (Meeting # 715 since 02/13/1986) |
| Topic: | [American Table] |
| Speaker: | Paula Johnson, Curator at National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution |
| THIS WILL BE A ZOOM-ONLY MEETING | |
| To join this meeting on Zoom, please click HERE | |
| Date: | March 5, 2026 at 10 am (Meeting # 716 since 02/13/1986) |
| Topic: | Walking with Wisdom and Anxiety: Navigating the Challenges and Opportunities of the Current World |
| Speaker: | Rachel Paster, Psy.D. (she/her), Clinical Psychologist, Director of Clinical Training, Interim Clinical Site Director, Boston Office |
| THIS WILL BE A HYBRID MEETING (in-person at TJC & via Zoom) | |
| To join this meeting on Zoom, please click HERE | |
Dr. Rachel Paster is a Clinical Psychologist at Center for Anxiety where she is the Director of Clinical Training and Interim Director of the Boston Office (though she is based in New Jersey).
Dr. Paster holds Masters degrees in Risk and Prevention and Adjustment Counseling from Harvard's Graduate School of Education as well as a Doctorate in Psychology from William James College with a certificate in Latino Mental Health.
She completed her APA-accredited internship at Wediko Children's Service in Boston, Massachusetts.
Dr. Paster is trained in a variety of treatment modalities including CBT, ACT, DBT, and EMDR and works with people presenting with depression, anxiety, trauma, grief, and life transitions.
She also has a focus on working with couples and folks in the LGTBQ+ community.
Dr. Paster enjoys spending time with her family, baking, and eating good food.
| Date: | March 19, 2026 at 10 am (Meeting # 717 since 02/13/1986) |
| Topic: | TBA |
| Speaker: | Gary Rendsburg, Chair in Jewish History at Rutgers University |
| THIS WILL BE A ZOOM-ONLY MEETING | |
| To join this meeting on Zoom, please click HERE | |
| Date: | April 16, 2026 at 10 am (Meeting # 718 since 02/13/1986) |
| Topic: | TBA |
| Speaker: | Gadi Dechter, Vice President for Communications and Government Affairs, Princeton University |
| THIS WILL BE A HYBRID MEETING (in-person at TJC & via Zoom) | |
| To join this meeting on Zoom, please click HERE | |
Gadi Dechter became Vice President for Communications and Government Affairs on January 10, 2022.
He provides strategic communications and federal relations advice to the President and other senior University leaders, communicating about and advocating for the priorities of Princeton and higher education more broadly.
He oversees the offices of communications and government affairs (located in Washington, D.C.).
Prior to joining Princeton, he was head of public affairs at the Washington, D.C., headquarters of APCO Worldwide, a communications consultancy.
Before that he served in the White House as senior adviser to the White House National Economic Council and National Security Council under President Barack Obama.
He has also served as deputy director of policy and strategic planning at the U.S. Department of Commerce, as managing director of economic policy at the Center for American Progress, and as a reporter at Bloomberg News and the Baltimore Sun.
Dechter received a B.A. in literature from Yale University and a master's degree in The Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University.
He has held lecturer appointments at George Washington University, Johns Hopkins University and the Maryland Institute College of Art.
| Date: | April 30, 2026 at 10 am (Meeting # 719 since 02/13/1986) |
| Topic: | Demographic Snapshots of New Jersey in a Changing Century |
| Speaker: | Jorge Schement, Emeritus Distinguished Professor of Communication Policy at Rutgers University |
| THIS WILL BE A ZOOM-ONLY MEETING | |
| To join this meeting on Zoom, please click HERE | |
This presentation will address demographic changes in New Jersey through the lens of population diversity and higher education.
- Overview of the nation's population trends: population growth; ethnicity; immigration; age cohorts.
- New Jersey's changing population: age, ethnicity, women and minority entrepreneurship, segregation and communities; statewide inclusion and multiculturalism.
- Evolving higher education in New Jersey: demand for university education; diversity of student populations; foreign student trends; faculty diversity profiles.
- New Jersey's coming tension over DEI: diversity in New Jersey's communities, in higher education.
Jorge Reina Schement is Emeritus Distinguished Professor of Communication Policy in the Dept.
of Journalism and Media Studies (JMS), School of Communication and Information (SC&I) with affiliations in American Studies and Latino Studies at Rutgers University.
He previously served as the first Vice President, and Vice Chancellor for Diversity and Inclusion for RU-New Brunswick and for Rutgers Biological and Health Sciences.
He also served as Dean of SC&I, and chaired the Executive Planning Committee for Rutgers' 250th Anniversary celebration.
He was a Distinguished Professor, and cofounder of the Institute for Information Policy at Penn State University.
Schement holds a PhD from Stanford University, an MS from the University of Illinois, and a BBA from SMU.
He is author of over 250 books, papers, and articles.
He served on President George W. Bush's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, the Technology Advisory Committee for Governor Jerry Brown of California, and authored the telecommunications policy agenda for the Congressional Hispanic Caucus.
He is a founding member of the FCC Federal Advisory Committee on Diversity in the Digital Age.
He served as an advisor to the FCC Transition Team for President Barack Obama, and for President Joe Biden.
He is currently working on a memoir project and posts draft essays to his Facebook page.
| Date: | May 7, 2026 at 10 am (Meeting # 720 since 02/13/1986) |
| Topic: | TBA |
| Speaker: | Tom Griffiths, Henry R. Luce Professor of Information Technology, Consciousness, and Culture in the Departments of Psychology and Computer Science at Princeton University; Director of the AI Lab |
| THIS WILL BE A ZOOM-ONLY MEETING | |
| To join this meeting on Zoom, please click HERE | |
People solve challenging computational problems every day, making predictions about future events, learning new causal relationships, or discovering how objects should be divided into categories.
Prof. Tom Griffiths' research investigates how this is possible, first identifying the nature of the underlying computational problems, and then examining whether we can explain aspects of human behavior as the result of approximating optimal solutions to those problems.
Since many of the problems people face in everyday life are problems of induction, requiring inferences from limited data to underconstrained hypotheses, these optimal solutions draw on methods developed in statistics, machine learning, and artificial intelligence research.
Exploring how these methods relate to human cognition provides connections between these fields and cognitive science, as well as a way to turn insights obtained from studying people into new formal techniques.