Penn State Beaver invites the public to attend a free screening of the award-winning documentary, "The Anatomy of Hate - A Dialogue to Hope," 6:00 p.m., Wednesday, March 20, in the Student Union Building auditorium. At 7:30 p.m., the film's director, Mike Ramsdell, will engage the audience in a discussion and question and answer session. The film contains graphic language and is for mature audiences. For six years, Ramsdell worked with unprecedented access to some of the world's most extreme, violent ideologies and participants, including the White Supremacy movement, Christian fundamentalism as an anti-gay platform, Muslim extremism, the Palestinian Intifada, Israeli settlers and soldiers, and United States military forces in Iraq. For information, contact the Beaver campus Office of Student Activities at 724-773-3947 or ras62@psu.edu.

Foreign Service Officer Peter Van Buren, author of a critical account of his experience assisting in Iraq reconstruction, will speak at Penn State's School of International Affairs on April 26. The public is welcome. Van Buren will present "Post-Conflict Nation Building: Why It Isn't Easy" and be available to sign copies of the book after the presentation.

The first non-Iraqi archaeological investigation of the Tigris-Euphrates delta in 20 years was a preliminary foray by three women who began to explore the links between wetland resources and the emergence and growth of cities last year. "Foreign investigations in Iraq stopped in the 1990s," said Carrie Hritz, assistant professor of anthropology, Penn State. "Iraqis continued research, but because their work is unpublished, we are unsure of where they surveyed."

It is 6,000 miles from the Nittany Valley to the desert of Taji, Iraq. The soldiers of Pennsylvania's 56th Stryker Brigade had to leave many important things behind when they were deployed in January, but the distance didn't keep them from taking along their Penn State and Pennsylvania pride. Spc. Dirk Omerzo, deployed with the rest of the brigade in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom, painted a mural featuring the logos of Penn State and Pennsylvania's professional sports teams. The mural covers 60 square feet and was painted outside of the dining hall at Camp Taji, north of Baghdad.