Nobel Laureate to Speak on Greenhouse Dangers

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WILLIAMSTOWN - Thomas C. Schelling, who won the 2005 Nobel Prize in Economics, will deliver the talk "What is the Greenhouse Danger, and Can We Manage It?" on Thursday, April 10, at 8 p.m.  

The event will be held in the '62 Center on the Williams College campus. The public is invited and the event is free.

The talk is the keynote address of a conference on "Global Warming and Developing Countries: Addressing and Coping with the Challenge," which will take place on Friday, April 11. The conference is open to the public. A schedule of events can be found here.

Schelling has been involved in the global warming debate since chairing a commission for President Carter in 1980. He is presently a participant in the Copenhagen Consensus, which analyzes the world's great challenges and establishes a framework in which solutions to problems are prioritized according to efficiency based upon economic and scientific analysis.


Schelling, who is Distinguished University Professor at the Maryland School of Public Affairs, was previously at the John F. Kennedy School of Government, where he was the Lucius N. Littauer Professor of Political Economy. He has held positions in the White House and Executive Office of the President, Yale University, the RAND Corporation and the Department of Economics and Center for International Affairs at Harvard University.

He has published on military strategy and arms control, energy and environmental policy, climate change, nuclear proliferation, terrorism, organized crime, foreign aid and international trade, conflict and bargaining theory, racial segregation and integration, the military draft, health policy, tobacco and drugs policy, and ethical issues in public policy and in business.

The lecture and conference is being hosted by the Center for Development Economics, Center for Environmental Studies, and the department of geosciences, with the generous support of the Mellon and Luce Foundations.
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Williamstown Elementary Principal Making Plans to Use New Math Position

By Stephen DravisiBerkshires Staff
WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — Williamstown Elementary School's principal last week told the Mount Greylock Regional School Committee that the best use of an additional $120,000 in the fiscal year 2027 budget is to hire a math interventionist for the school.
 
Benjamin Torres on Wednesday gave the board an update on the school with a focus on the need to address instruction in mathematics.
 
Those concerns prompted a request from the WES School Council to include the full-time math interventionist position in the FY27 budget.
 
School councils are committees of staff and community members in each building of a regional school district that are charged with assessing and advocating for the needs of individual schools.
 
Although funding for the position was not included in what district administrators characterized as a "level services" budget that it sent to both member towns, some Williamstown parents took their case directly to town meeting, which voted to amend the town's assessment to the district, adding the additional $120,000 to cover salary and benefits for new position.
 
Torres last week reminded the School Committee of the arguments he made for an interventionist when he presented the School Council's report back in February.
 
"My goal is to highlight the amazing growth we've seen with our students and the amazing work being done by our teachers, but also highlight there's a small group of students who are not closing the gaps quickly enough to be prepared to be successful at the upcoming grade level," Torres said. "This is why the School Council has been advocating not just for an interventionist but for a more systematic approach when it comes to interventions."
 
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