Martin Indyk, former ambassador to Israel, will visit the University of Nebraska at Omaha campus on Tuesday to give a lecture titled “The New Administration – Making Peace in the Middle East.”

The lecture, part of the Ruth and Phil Sokolof lecture series, is free and open to the public. It will be held at 7:30 p.m. at the Thompson Alumni Center. A press release on the event is available for more information.

Indyk is expected to discuss his involvement in Arab-Israeli diplomacy during his service as ambassador to Israel and as assistant secretary of state for Near East Affairs during the Clinton administration. He is also expected to include material from his new memoir, “Innocent Abroad: An Intimate Account of American Peace Diplomacy in the Middle East.”

The Natan and Hannah Schwalb Center for Israel and Jewish Studies is sponsoring the event, which director Guy Matalon said he hopes will be the inaugural installment of an annual lecture on Israeli and Jewish studies.

“The goal is to have this level of high-caliber speakers coming yearly to UNO,” Matalon said. “The Schwalb Center will have other speakers come to our campus to lecture on the Holocaust, on Israeli-Arab relations. We have a researcher coming the spring semester to talk about minorities in the state of Israel.”

Matalon said part of the Schwalb Center’s mission is to bring researchers and lecturers to the UNO campus to educate both the campus and local community about issues that affect Israel and Judaism. The center is also working on organizing a study trip to Israel for the campus community.

“We are offering for the summer a trip to Israel for faculty, students, administrators and community members, to go to Israel on a 10-day trip,” Matalon said. “We will be traveling all around learning and studying. I think if we get enough people to go — which we’re looking for about 25 people — it will be a big, big success.”

For more information on the Schwalb Center or the Israel trip, visit the center’s Web site, Facebook account or Twitter feed. You can also call their office at (402) 554-2139.

- Scott Stewart

Do you know the words to the University of Nebraska at Omaha fight song? (Did you even know UNO has a fight song?)

If not, point your browser to the UNO Cheer Team’s Web site or follow along with the Mavericks:

We will fight, fight, fight for our Mav-er-icks,
We will fight, fight, fight for our team.
Everyone knows when that old whistle blows,
We will shout, we will yell, we will scream.

GO MAVS!

We will fight, fight, fight for our Mav-er-icks,
We will cheer so all fans will know.
Be it win or lose or draw,
Everyone for Omaha.
We will fight for U-N-O!

While you’re at it, hockey fans should check out the Red Army’s lexicon of hockey terms. Yahoo! Sports also had an interesting article on college hockey fan traditions worth checking out (thanks to UNO alumna Cassy Loseke for the link!)

- Scott Stewart

The No. 12 Maverick hockey team will take to the road this weekend for a two-game series against conference foe Northern Michigan. UNO is 5-2-3 overall and 2-2-2 in conference play with one shootwin win, bringing the Mavs to seventh in the Central Collegiate Hockey Association standings.

Nationally, UNO remains ranked 12th in the USA Today/USA Hockey poll and fell only one place to 12th in the USCHO rankings. Following last week’s 4-0/1-3 split to Lake Superior State, the Mavericks did fall three places to 10th in the Inside College Hockey Power Rankings.

Fans can listen to Friday’s and Saturday’s games on KVNO 90.7 FM with coverage beginning at 6:15 p.m. CST each night. For more on the series against Northern Michigan, check out the Athletic Department and the Omaha World-Herald.

The Mavericks return home the day after Thanksgiving for a home series against Western Michigan at the Qwest Center Omaha, with the puck dropping at 7:35 p.m. on Nov. 27 and at 7:05 p.m. on Nov. 28.

Until then, enjoy some highlights from last weekend’s games:

- Scott Stewart

The University of Nebraska at Omaha men’s basketball team opened its season Sunday morning against the Doane College Tigers at the earliest possible time for a Division II team to start its 2009-10 season.

The Mavs defeated Doane 96-67 after a groggy start that left UNO with only a tenuous two-point lead going into halftime. UNO got back into the game in the second half, though, building a comfortable advantage in the first two minutes.

Check out the Athletic Department’s coverage, the Omaha World-Herald’s coverage and WOWT’s video coverage for more about the game. A box score is also available.

- Scott Stewart

If you’re looking for something to do on a Wednesday early afternoon, usually all you need to do is walk down to the Milo Bail Student Center and see what’s going on.

Walking down to the student center from Arts and Sciences Hall this afternoon, students passed the Gender and Sexual Orientation student agency’s Transgender Day of Remembrance display.

More than 115 tombstones marked the names of known victims of anti-transgender violence. A memorial service was held by the GSO today, where Rabbi Aryeh Azriel from Temple Isreal and Pastor Tom Emmett from Metropolitan Community Church acknowledged 22 known, documented victims from 2007 and 2008.

Continuing to the Milo Bail Student Center, students from The Rock student ministry were holding signs in the Maverick Plaza that depicted words representing their testimonials to Jesus Christ. They also promoted their services Wednesdays at 7:24 p.m. in the Strauss Performing Arts Center Concert Hall.

Finally, in the Milo Bail Student Center Nebraska Room, Native American Heritage Month continued with a Native American Cultural Fair featuring free food and dance performances.

Watch a performance of the Omaha tribe’s Grass Dance here:

- Scott Stewart

This will be a great event tonight — Film Streams, the University of Nebraska at Omaha (UNO) Department of History and UNO College of Arts and Sciences, in conjunction with the University of Nebraska Foundation, will host a special screening of the film “The Insider” tonight, Nov. 17. The collaborative event, which starts at 6:30 p.m. at Film Streams’ Ruth Sokolof Theater, will feature a post-film discussion with environmental attorney Charles J. Mikhail, who played a leading role in building the real-life case against Big Tobacco that “The Insider” is based on.  Click on the graphic above for the full story.

Join the International Student Services (ISS) for its annual International Dance Party on Friday, Nov. 20, from 8:30 p.m. until midnight in the MBSC Ballroom.

DJ Glenn Lewis will be featured as “DJ in the Cage,” spinning the latest international music.  Tickets can be purchased for $4 at the door or at the MBSC Business office and snacks will be provided.

This event is very much part of International Education Week at UNO.

UNO  continues to maintain its leadership position among America’s master’s degree granting institutions in total number of international students enrolled.  In an announcement this week, the Institute of International Education’s Report on International Educational Exchange ranked UNO 33^rd with 739 students.

UNO is the only institution in Nebraska with a national ranking.

“Being ranked six years in a row is gratifying,” said Tom Gouttierre, dean of International Studies and Programs at UNO.  “The University of Nebraska at Omaha has a rich history of international exchange and now an even greater focus on international issues.”

The University of Nebraska system recently announced several university-wide objectives focused on global engagement, including a goal of doubling international student enrollment.  In addition to the important exchange of ideas, international education has a bottom line impact, Gouttierre said.  Estimates for 2008-2009 show that international participants at UNO have an economic impact of more than $30 million to the metropolitan area economy.

This week is also International Education Week, and UNO is celebrating with activities and events through Friday, Nov. 20. 

Last week, I attended a digital journalism ethics seminar at the University of Nebraska – Lincoln featuring Steve Buttry from the American Press Institute. The all-day seminar included a unit on blogging, which got me thinking about the explosion of blogs here at the University of Nebraska at Omaha.

Of course, there is Maverickland, which syndicates student-related news and feeds original content to the university’s Facebook, Twitter and YouTube accounts.

Other university divisions have blogs, too. The Criss Library keeps three blogs connecting students with news about the library, information on electronic research resources and fun, informative content.

Jeremy Lipschultz keeps a blog, Tuesday Morning Update, for the UNO School of Communication, and Maverick forensics keeps a blog of its own. The UNO athletic bands also have kept a blog for more than four years.

Students are also involved in blogging, both institutionally and personally. For example, broadcasting students who produce The Omaha News publish content in a blog-like format, including video stories, while the Women’s Resource Center publishes a blog on feminism and resources for female students.

International studies student Andie Hansen is blogging about her experiences at Stellenbosch University in South Africa this semester. She is serving as the on-site coordinator for the Service-Learning Academy’s World AIDS Day of Service project.

Lipschultz’s online media students also are keeping several blogs as part of their course requirements, including Andrea Ciurej, editor-in-chief of The Gateway, blogging on University Weekly about local news and Zach Seastedt, sports editor of The Gateway, blogging about Maverick athletics on Omaha Sports Weekly.

MavRadio’s Jon Green also blogs about Maverick athletics on his personal blog, Maverick Maniacs’ Musings. Of course, students aren’t the only people blogging about athletics: check out Husker’s Mike’s Blasphemy or Paula C. Weston’s most recent post on USCHO’s This Week in the CCHA.

Ethical considerations arise in all of these blogs. Sometimes determining right from wrong is easy; sometimes they are a little muddy.

For a simplistic example, the video above of Lipschultz discussing his online media class comes from an interview I conducted on Oct. 28 on a different topic: a basic introduction on how to use Flip cameras to capture video. The decision to use portions of the material from that interview in a new context, while I think appropriate here, could become inappropriate if all Maverickland did for the rest of the semester was rehash videos we had previously captured.

Buttry, at the Journalism 2.0 Ethics and Technology Seminar, discussed real-life problems associated with blogging and gave a three-page handout online that just lists ethical questions bloggers should consider when posting content online or even just linking to other outlet’s information.

The ramifications of these questions can be tremendous. The Federal Trade Commission, for instance, is collecting comments for an upcoming workshop titled “From Tow Crier to Bloggers: How Will Journalism Survive the Internet Age?” The Society for Professional Journalists have chimed in, along with several other organizations and individuals.

No clear answers exist to any of these questions. I just think it is a good idea to reflect on them occasionally, to take a break and look at what we are doing with blogs – Maverickland included – and what impact that can have on our community and our professions.

- Scott Stewart

More than 100 members of the Boys & Girls Clubs of the Midlands participated in the Second Annual Stock Market Challenge Thursday.

The event, which was held at the Scoular Ballroom near 20th and Dodge streets, involved high school students trading fictitious stocks in real time. The simulation approximated the moves of market prices during actual New York Stock Exchange trading.

The event was supported by more than 40 University of Nebraska at Omaha College of Business Administration finance students, who acted as floor traders for the competition.

The top-place four-member team received a $1,000 scholarship to the College of Business Administration from a donor. For more information on the event, visit the Boys & Girls Club Web site.

“Yes, this is fun. Yes, there are some scholarship dollars available,” Jonna Holland, an associate professor of marketing who helped coordinate the event, said in a press release.  “The most important thing coming out of this is that these young people will know more about personal finance and business. The competition is a simulation, but what they learn is real.”

- Scott Stewart