Upcoming Lectures and Conversations

Our public outreach programs bring a broad constituency of campus and community members together for shared humanities experiences. We host artists, writers, scholars, filmmakers, public figures, community experts, and world leaders to investigate how humans relate to the self, to others, and to the world we share. Our speakers are diverse, renowned or emerging, and have include Nobel Laureates, National Book Award winners, Pulitzer Prize recipients, and MacArthur Foundation “Geniuses,” among others.

In the past five years alone, we have lead public conversations about antiracist practices, creativity and wellness, fiction and empathy, bias and discrimination in innovative technologies, environmental art, monuments and memory, women in leadership, the pressures and rewards of public service, and constitutional democracy and voting rights. Recent speakers have included Margaret Atwood, Ruha Benjamin, John Brennan, Sandra Cisneros, Michael Chabon, Anita Hill, Ibram X. Kendi, Martha Jones, Tony Kushner, Maya Lin, Safiya Noble, Stanley Nelson, Reshma Saujani, Andrew Solomon, Anna Deavere Smith, and Zadie Smith.