Accomplished Scholars to Speak at Schemel Forum Luncheon Seminars

The University of Scranton’s Schemel Forum World Affairs Luncheon Seminars series brings to campus a roster of distinguished speakers who will discuss baseball history, Egyptian archaeology and international relations.

The fall series will feature four seminars in total. All luncheon seminars take place from 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. on the University’s campus. A remote viewing option is available for many of the luncheons. The Schemel Forum is sponsored by Munley Law.

The series opens Thursday, Oct. 2, with “Global Insights from Poland’s Consular General,” presented by Mateusz Sakowicz, Consul General of the Republic of Poland in New York. The luncheon presentation will be held in the McIlhenny Ballroom of the DeNaples Center at the University.

Drawing on his extensive diplomatic experience, Consul General Sakowicz will share insights into Poland’s role in transatlantic relations, the value of cultural diplomacy and the importance of Polish-American partnerships in addressing today’s global challenges.

Sakowicz is a career diplomat and appointed civil service officer with extensive experience in international relations, peace and security and cultural diplomacy. He has represented Poland in key diplomatic posts across Dublin, the United Nations, and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, culminating in his appointment as Consul General in 2024.

Next, on Monday, Oct. 20, Tom Shieber, senior curator at the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum in Cooperstown, New York, will present “Around the World with A.G. Spalding: The Mystery of an 1888-89 Tourist’s Diary.” His luncheon presentation will be held in the Rose Room of Brennan Hall on campus.

In 1888, baseball pitcher-turned-entrepreneur A.G. Spalding along with an entourage of ball players, sports writers and other adventurers embarked on a baseball tour around the world. Nearly 110 years later, the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum received the donation of an unsigned diary kept by a member of the expedition. During the luncheon presentation, participants will relive the tour, visit exotic lands, view images of rare ephemera and artifacts from the journey and along the way solve the mystery of just who penned the diary.

It was a serendipitous series of events that led Shieber to his current role at America’s cherished baseball museum. During nearly a dozen years working in Astrophysics at Mount Wilson Observatory in the San Gabriel Mountains, he drove to Dodger Stadium “more times than I care to admit,” he said.

“While I very much enjoyed my work at the Observatory, my passion had long been researching baseball history,” he said.

In 1998, Shieber traveled across the country for a job interview at the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum. While in Cooperstown, he was shown the very diary that plays a starring role in his Schemel Forum presentation.

“As luck would have it, I was well-acquainted with Spalding’s 1888-89 World Tour, and so when I returned to my hotel after the first day of my visit, I did much of the detective work that now, 27 years later, appears in my presentation,” he said. “In fact, I like to think that the work I did to help solve the mystery of who penned the diary is part of the reason I was hired.”

The diary, Shieber says, will never be mistaken as a great work of literature, but it does offer a glimpse into a world tour that took place just 16 years after the publication of Jules Verne’s “Around the World in Eighty Days.”

“While the baseball tourists took a lengthier six months to circumnavigate the globe, the trip (and the diary) still retained the spirit of adventurism, romanticism and even danger found in Verne’s classic novel,” he said.

For those attending Shieber’s presentation, he hopes “that with the combination of our national pastime with a long-ago trip to far-off lands both wrapped within a ‘whodunnit’ (or, in this case, a ‘whowroteit’) mystery, the presentation will have a little something for everyone.”

The fall luncheon series continues Thursday, Oct. 30, with a talk by Josef Wegner, Ph.D., professor of Egyptian Archaeology; chair, Department of Middle Eastern Languages and Cultures; and curator, Egyptian Section, Penn Museum, University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Wegner will present “New Discoveries of the Penn Museum Excavations at Abydos, Egypt” at the luncheon being held in the Rose Room of Brennan Hall on campus.

The University of Pennsylvania Museum has been excavating in Egypt for more than a century. During a Schemel Forum luncheon last fall, Dr. Wegner discussed the role of fieldwork in the formation of the Egyptological collection at Penn, and the current project to reinstall this important collection of 50,000 artifacts.

In a much-anticipated second part of the Schemel Forum’s exploration into Egyptian archaeology, this talk will focus on ongoing excavations at the site of Abydos where Dr. Wegner has been working on an excavation that, he says, reveals a lot of material about Egypt from 2000 – 1000 BCE.

Work at Abydos has identified a royal necropolis at the site named “Anubis Mountain.” There, at least 13 kings who reigned between 1850 and 1650 BCE were buried. These include previously unknown pharaohs such as the King Seneb-Kay discovered in 2014, as well as the mysterious owner of new royal tomb just discovered in January 2025.

“This is the largest tomb we have discovered from the Abydos Dynasty, and we are still searching for the identity of this new-found king,” said Dr. Wegner.

At the lecture, Dr. Wegner will also present fresh-from-the-field findings from his excavation at the Abydos site this fall.

As Dr. Wegner points out, there’s more to these excavations than discovering tombs.

“We’re examining royal tombs for shreds of evidence that help patch together a window into life at a certain period of time – who these kings were, the nature of the kingdoms they ruled over and the social climate of that era,” he said, noting that many aspects of Ancient Egypt are similar to our lives today.

Then and now, we are all searching for the answer to the fundamental question of “who we are as humans in the cosmos,” said Dr. Wegner.

During the lecture, Dr. Wegner will also provide an update on Penn Museum’s reinstallation of its collection of Egyptian artifacts. The first phase is expected to open in 2026 and the second phase in 2028.

The fall luncheon series will conclude Thursday, Nov. 21, with Matthew Duss, executive director, Center for International Policy, and former visiting scholar, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, who will discuss “America is Ready for a Pro-Peace Foreign Policy. Is Washington?” The presentation will be held in the McIlhenny Ballroom of the DeNaples Center at the University.

Washington’s post-Cold War foreign policy consensus has broken up, and the race is on to define a new one. Yet so many in Washington remain wedded to an ideology of American primacy undergirded by global military power. There are strong signs that voters are ready for something different. In every election since the end of the Cold War, with the exception of 2004, Americans have voted for the candidate who offered a less militaristic, more restrained vision of American foreign policy. Duss will discuss these trends and their implications for the next general election in the U.S.

Admission to the seminars is free for University of Scranton and Geisinger Commonwealth School of Medicine students, faculty, staff and Schemel Forum members. For non-members, the seminars are $30 in-person (buffet lunch included) and $15 for remote access.

To register for the seminars, call 570-941-4740 or email [email protected].

To pay online, visit: www.scranton.edu/schemelforum.

Additional Schemel Forum events and information can be found on the Schemel Forum’s webpage.

Dean Aulisio spoke about the fall Schemel Forum schedule of events with WVIA’s Erika Funke on ArtScene.