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Speakers

Linda Langford, Sc.D. is an Associate Center Director at the Center for College Health and Safety, located at Education Development Center, Inc. in Newton, MA, working on a variety of projects. She has been an associate director for the U.S. Department of Education's Higher Education Center for Alcohol and Other Drug and Violence Prevention since 1998, managing the Center's evaluation projects for four years and most recently directing the Center's violence prevention initiatives and developing a "framework" for violence prevention in higher education. She is also Principal Investigator for the NIAAA-funded "SNAPPY" project, a pilot evaluation study of a social norms marketing approach to high school alcohol prevention. Her work focuses on strategic planning, program evaluation, and health communications with special interests in environmental approaches to prevention, practitioner-researcher collaborations, and translating research to practice. She holds a doctorate in behavioral science from the Harvard School of Public Health and is an Assistant Clinical Professor at Tufts University School of Medicine, teaching a core course in strategic planning for health behavior change in the health communications program.

John D. McCarthy is Professor of Sociology and until recently was Director of the Graduate Program in Sociology at The Pennsylvania State University. His research interests include social movements and collective action, the sociology of protest, how the media decides what constitutes news, the policing of protest and the sociology of social movement organizations. He was a Fulbright Scholar in Berlin, Germany, and continues his research begun there which compares public protest in Germany with similar protest in the U.S. He previously directed studies of local citizens groups opposing drunk driving and of local community organizations working to empower poor citizens. He has received numerous Research Grants from the National Science Foundation, and is presently completing an NSF funded project on protest in the U.S. during the 1960-1990 decades with several collaborators. Currently he is at work on a study with Andrew Martin and Clark McPhail on a study of campus community public order disturbances.

Clark McPhail, PhD , is Professor Emeritus, Department of Sociology, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Since 1967 he has observed, recorded and analyzed individual and collective actions in hundreds of prosaic, religious, sport and political gatherings. He is the author of the prize-winning monograph The Myth of the Madding Crowd (1991), and many articles on the assembling processes that produce temporary gatherings, the alternating and varied individual and collective actions that compose them, and the dispersing processes that terminate them. Work in progress includes: a monograph on the life course of temporary gatherings; a systematic observation study of collective actions during 1997 Promise Keeper rally in Washington, D.C.; a television news archival analysis of the annual March for Life, 1974-1999; and, with John McCarthy and Andrew Martin, a study of U.S. campus disorders, 1985-2002. In 1999-2000 he was the Fulbright Senior Research Scholar to Great Britain where he analyzed the Poll Tax Riot and other demonstrations with videotapes from the archives of Scotland Yard.

Craig Anderson received his Ph.D. from Stanford University, and his current research focuses on the potentially harmful effects of exposure to violent video games. He serves on the Executive Council of the International Society for Research on Aggression, and has testified at a U.S. Senate hearing on "The Impact of Interactive Violence on Children." Dr. Anderson has also served on the Media Violence Expert Advisory Panel for the Surgeon General's report on Youth Violence. He has authored numerous publications related to human aggression and the relationship of media violence to aggression. Dr. Anderson has also been involved in several public policy efforts at the local, state, and national level pertaining to media violence. He joined the Iowa State University faculty in 1999, and served as Chair of the Department of Psychology until August 2005. Dr. Anderson was named a Distinguished Professor in Spring 2005.

Cynthia Buettner currently serves as Director in The Ohio State University College of Human Ecology where she provided research assistance to the OSU Task Force on Preventing Celebratory Riots and helped author the Task Force's final report. Among the projects she directs are the Pragmatics Project, an NIAAA funded research project focused on college drinking and student disturbances, and the OSU Kid Corps program, an AmeriCorps funded program aimed at increasing literacy and social skills in at risk preschoolers. Dr. Buettner also holds a masters degree in interpersonal communication from Bowling Green State University and has served in executive positions in non-profit, educational, and training and development organizations. A former teacher of court-involved youth, she has focused her research on at risk children and youth, their families, and the systems that serve them. Her research efforts include evidence-based practices in prevention and intervention programs for children and youth, strategies for implementing evidence-based practices in the mental health professions, and the effectiveness of student generated solutions for reducing harms associated with high risk drinking. Dr. Buettner is the author of the Safe School Audit Guidebook and the developer of BenchMark, a tool for identifying quality practices for serving at-risk youth.

Captain Patrick Smith, has eighteen years of law enforcement service. He is currently a US Park Police Patrol Captain in Washington DC. Captain Smith commands two police districts and supervises 60 sworn and 2 civilian personnel. His prior command assignments include Shift Commander, Assistant Commander Planning and Development Unit, Commander of Reactionary Teams, Commander/Coach of Patrol Competition Teams, and Commander of SWAT and Canine.

Captain Smith has been a SWAT and Canine Commander during numerous large scale demonstrations and special events to include 2005: Anti-War Demonstration (resulted in 370 arrests), 2005 Presidential Inauguration, 2005 Million More March, ANSWER and IMF/WB Demonstrations 2002-2005, National Socialist Movement Rallies in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania and Yorktown, Virginia,  July 4th activities on the National Mall 2003-2005, and 2003 NFL Experience on the National Mall.

He has also been Commander of Reactionary Squads (specialized units that deal with flare ups and civil unrest during large scale demonstrations) during major demonstrations to included the IMF/World Bank Demonstrations 1999-2001, 2001 Presidential Inauguration in Washington DC and the Republican National Convention in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Captain Smith received his bachelor of Arts Degree from George Mason University in Government and Politics, has graduate level credits from the University of Virginia and is a graduate of the FBI National Academy.