Profs and Pints Metro Baltimore

Profs and Pints Baltimore presents: “Ukraine’s Peace Prospects,” a look at the chances of ending a long and brutal conflict and keeping Russia from invading its neighbor again, with Michael Kimmage, director of the Wilson Center’s Kennan Institute, former U.S. State Department planner for Ukraine and Russia, and author of Collisions: The Origins of the War in Ukraine and the New Global Instability.

[Advance tickets: $13.50 plus sales tax and processing fees. Available at https://www.ticketleap.events/tickets/profsandpints/baltimore-ukraine .]

Throughout his second term President Trump has been driving for an end to the war in Ukraine, in recent weeks making a big diplomatic push through meetings with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Alaska and with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and various European officials in the White House.

Will such efforts bring lasting peace? Will the outcome be easy for Ukrainians to stomach and will it deter Russian aggression elsewhere?

Hear such questions tackled by Dr. Michael Kimmage, a leading expert on that region who has been giving insightful and prescient Profs and Pints talks on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine since even before it began.

We’ll start by examining the historical roots of the conflict going back to the end of the Cold War in 1991. We’ll look at how Russian initiated the first phase of the war—annexing Crimea and invading Eastern Ukraine—following Ukraine’s 2014 “Maidan Revolution” or “Revolution of Dignity.”

You’ll learn why the first attempt to end this conflict—a series of agreements negotiated in Minsk, Belarus in 2014 and 2015—did not result in any lasting peace. Dr. Kimmage will explain Putin's motivations for going into Ukraine again and sketch out the course of the latest conflict from Ukrainians' brave defense of Kyiv to the twists and turns of the war across many different battlefields. He’ll show you how Russia has been unable for a long time to make any real progress but the costs to Ukrainian civilians have been impossibly high.

This talk will conclude with a deep dive into the Trump administration’s efforts to change the conversation about the war and bring about peace. It will lay out the reasons why the war is likely to continue for a long time and explore what it means to have a sprawling, bloody, unresolved conflict at the heart of Europe. (Doors: $17, or $15 with a student ID. Doors open at 5 pm. The talk starts at 6:30.)

Image: An area of Kyiv following an April 2025 Russian missile and drone attack. Photo by State Emergency Service of Ukraine / Wikimedia Commons

Profs and Pints Baltimore presents: “Hunting Hurricanes,” a look at research on violent storms, their impact, and their causes, with Jeffrey Halverson, professor of geography and environmental systems at the University of Maryland Baltimore County, former NASA hurricane investigator, and author of An Introduction to Severe Storms and Hazardous Weather.

[Doors open at 5. The talk starts at 6:30. The room is open seating. Advance tickets: $13.50 plus sales tax and processing fees. Available at https://www.ticketleap.events/tickets/profsandpints/baltimore-hurricane-hunting .]

We are in the midst of the peak season for hurricanes, cause of the costliest and deadliest natural disasters in the United States. But what do you really know about them?

Gain a deep understanding of these violent storms with hurricane scientist Jeffrey Halverson, severe weather expert for the Washington Post’s Capital Weather Gang, long-time writer for Weatherwise magazine, and author of a book that seeks to explain severe and hazardous weather to laypeople.

Before becoming a professor at UMBC—where he teaches courses on natural hazards, weather and climate, and severe storms and their impacts—Dr. Halverson was a NASA scientist who took high-altitude aircraft into developing storms to try to understand why many intensify so rapidly. He’ll discuss what it’s like to be on such missions and to penetrate a hurricane’s eye.

Dr. Halverson will discuss what we are learning about hurricanes using high-tech tools such as satellites and high-definition computer models, and he’ll help you distinguish fact from speculation and outright nonsense regarding what science tells us about such storms. He’ll delve into the debate within the scientific community about the impact of climate change on hurricanes’ frequency, strength, and impacts.

We’ll look back at what was learned from famous Mid Atlantic storms such as Agnes, Isabel, and Sandy, and we’ll examine the outlook for hurricanes in the long term. If you have wondered about your personal risks or how to deal with specific storm forecasts and scenarios, know that Dr. Halverson will happily field questions. (Doors: $17, or $15 with a student ID.)

Image: The eye of Hurricane Edouard as photographed from NOAA Gulfstream IV aircraft in 2002 (NOAA/OAR/AOML/Hurricane Research Division).

Profs and Pints Baltimore presents: “Mental Health in an Unhinged World,” a guide to managing stress in turbulent times that evoke big existential questions, with Jillian Tucker, licensed clinical social worker in private practice and an adjunct professor of clinical social work at Columbia University and New York University.

[Advance tickets: $13.50 plus sales tax and processing fees. Available at https://www.ticketleap.events/tickets/profsandpints/baltimore-mental-health .]

It’s tough to stay grounded when the world seems upside-down.

So much of what’s going on around us can feel overwhelming, especially at a time when globalization and the omnipresence of social media increase our exposure to conflict and to troubling international and national news. Adding to the stress: Many of these crises bring up core questions about morality, mortality, the unknown, and life’s meaning.

There’s good news, however: People have figured out how to get through turbulent times before, and the fields of psychology and neuroscience have affirmed the wisdom of many of their coping strategies while helping equip us with new ones.

Learn how to better cope with chaos with Jillian Tucker, an award-winning clinical practice instructor who previously has given excellent Profs and Pints talks.

She’ll provide valuable context by discussing how humans have always dealt with existential stressors—in fact, many of the earliest human objects, traditions and stories reflect effort to make sense of life. You’ll learn how people have coped with turbulent times throughout history by drawing from cultural and ancestral experience and wisdom as well as other sources of resilience. We’ll examine a full range of coping skills from history, philosophy, spirituality, art, literature, music, and dance.

Dr. Tucker also will discuss coping skills rooted in modern psychology and neuroscience. She’ll talk about neuroscientific research finding that spirituality, in a broad sense, can help protect us from distress. You’ll learn about biological, psychological, social, environmental, and movement-based strategies for managing short- and long-term stressors. You’ll also get tips on how to assess your current individual and group coping skills and make sure you have the right skills when you need them. You’ll gain a newfound appreciation of the value of seeking joy, connection, and mirth as an antidote to the stress in our lives.

You’ll gain insight into how the global situation can distress us on an individual level. We’ll look at the role that our digital lives play in exacerbating stressors and how to curate digital overuse while still using technology to maintain social connections and bring meaningful change. (Doors: $17, or $15 with a student ID. Bar doors open at 5 pm. The talk itself starts at 6:30)

Image by Canva.

Profs and Pints Baltimore presents: "The Victorians' Sexual Underworld," on sex workers and queer communities in nineteenth century cities, with Andrew Israel Ross, associate professor and chair of history at Loyola University Maryland and author or editor of several books and articles on the history of prostitution, homosexuality, and policing in nineteenth century Paris.

[Doors open at 5. The talk starts at 6:30. The room is open seating. Advance tickets: $13.50 plus sales tax and processing fees. Available at https://www.ticketleap.events/tickets/profsandpints/victorians-sexual-underground .]

We are living through a moral panic about the presence of sexual and gender diversity in our society, as evidenced by attacks on Pride month, calls to ban drag queen story hours, and governmental efforts to redefine sex and gender. Underlying such actions is a sense that the increasing prominence of queer and trans people in American society represents something new and unexpected, a deviation from a clear history of heterosexual and gender stability.

The reality, however, is that queer life—and sexual life broadly—used to be much more central to social life than it is today, especially in growing cities during the Industrial Revolution.

Come to Baltimore’s Guilford Hall to gain an eye-opening understanding of the history of sexual communities often seen as marginal in history–female sex workers, gay men and lesbians, and transgender people.

Dr. Andrew Ross, a historian of sexuality, will explain why public sex was so important to nineteenth century urban culture and how Victorians wrestled with evidence of sexual and gender diversity. Drawing from his intensive study of the history of Paris but also from research on London, Berlin, and New York during the Industrial Age, he’ll discuss the sexual ideology of the Victorians and how it gave substantial opportunities to people who faced a great deal of discrimination then and continue to face it now.

You’ll learn about the practice “regulationism,” which sought to manage the business of sex work so that heterosexual men could always have access to sex.

Then we’ll look at the queer male world – one that often intersected with that of female prostitutes – and the spaces where men found one another quite publicly. Dr. Ross will discuss the emergence of the first gay bars, which were opened (perhaps surprisingly) by women, and talk about how people who did not identify as either men or women navigated this world.

What happened to these cultures? The talk will conclude by focusing on a period between the World Wars characterized by incredible experimentation with sexual identity, community building and politics, and how it came to an end with the rise of the Nazis in Europe and the Red Scare in the United States. (Doors: $17, or $15 with a student ID.)

Image: Thomas Ernest Boulton and Frederick William Park, a gay couple in Victorian England who cross-dressed as Fanny and Stella, in an 1869 photo by Frederick Spalding (Wikimedia Commons).