Past Events
Jennifer Rubin
Our Constitutional Inflection Point: Responses to Our Crisis of Democracy
Tuesday, April 12, 2022
5 p.m. Eastern, Sweeney Concert Hall, Sage Hall
Jennifer Rubin is an opinion writer for The Washington Post. She covers politics and policy, foreign and domestic, and provides insight into the conservative movement, the Republican and Democratic parties, and threats to Western democracies. She is the author of Resistance: How Women Saved Democracy From Donald Trump, which Kirkus described as “an excellent contribution to the literature of contemporary electoral politics.” Rubin is also an MSNBC contributor and frequent guest on syndicated radio programs. She came to The Post after three years with Commentary magazine. Prior to her career in journalism, Rubin practiced labor law for two decades, an experience that informs her work.
Annette Gordon-Reed
The Struggle For Democracy in America: From the Founding Era to Our Own
Thursday, March 31, 2022
5 p.m. Eastern, Sweeney Concert Hall, Sage Hall
Annette Gordon-Reed is a professor of history in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Harvard University, the Carl M. Loeb University Professor at Harvard Law School, and the award-winning author of six books. The first African-American recipient of the Pulitzer Prize for history, for The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family, she is also the author of On Juneteenth, which sets out to capture the importance of the holiday to American history. Gordon-Reed’s honors include the National Humanities Medal, a Guggenheim Fellowship and a MacArthur Fellowship. She was elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and is a member of the Academy’s Commission on the Humanities and Social Sciences. In 2019, she was elected a member of the American Philosophical Society.
Masha Gessen
Hope and Hopelessness
Tuesday, February 15, 2022
5 p.m. Eastern, virtual event
A trenchant observer of Russia and its history, Masha Gessen is the author of 12 books, including the National Book Award-winning The Future Is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia and The Man Without a Face: The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin. Gessen’s latest book, Surviving Autocracy, has been described as a bracing overview of the calamitous trajectory of American democracy under the Trump administration. A staff writer at The New Yorker, Gessen has covered political subjects including Russia, autocracy and L.G.B.T. rights, among others. They have taught at Amherst and Oberlin colleges and currently serve on the faculty at Bard College. A recipient of many awards, including Guggenheim and Carnegie fellowships, Gessen has lived in New York since 2013.
Maria Hinojosa
Monday, December 6, 2021
5 p.m. Eastern, Sweeney Concert Hall, Sage Hall
As the first Latina reporter in many newsrooms, Maria Hinojosa dreamed of creating independent journalism that explored the diverse American experience. To that end, she created the Futuro Media Group, a nonprofit organization that creates content about the new American mainstream to empower people to navigate an increasingly diverse world. Hinojosa is the anchor and executive producer of the Peabody Award-winning Latino USA, distributed by PRX, and co-host of In The Thick. She is also a contributor to CBS Sunday Morning and a frequent guest on MSNBC. Hinojosa’s career includes reporting for PBS, CBS and CNN, and anchoring the Emmy Award-winning Maria Hinojosa: One-on-One. She is the author of two books and has won many awards, including the Ruben Salazar Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Association of Hispanic Journalists.
Carol Jenkins
Tuesday, September 21, 2021
5:30 p.m. Eastern, Sweeney Concert Hall, Sage Hall
Carol Jenkins is co-president and CEO of The ERA Coalition and the Fund for Women’s Equality, sister organizations dedicated to the passage and enactment of the Equal Rights Amendment. She is also a writer, media analyst, commentator and speaker on media issues, as well as an Emmy Award–winning journalist and documentary producer. Founding president of the Women’s Media Center, she served on the board of The African Medical Research Foundation, the largest health organization on the African continent. Her commentary has appeared in print and digital platforms including TheNation.com. Jenkins is also the co-author, with her daughter, Elizabeth Hines, of Black Titan: A.G. Gaston and the Making of a Black American Millionaire, which was named Best Nonfiction Book by the American Library Association’s Black Caucus. This colloquium is presented in conjunction with Smith College’s observance of Constitution Day.
Nancy Pelosi
Wednesday, September 8, 2021
8 p.m. Eastern, John M. Greene Hall
Nancy Pelosi is the 52nd speaker of the House of Representatives, having made history in 2007 when she was elected the first woman to serve in that role. Now in her third term as speaker, Pelosi made history again in January 2019 when she regained her position second-in-line to the presidency, the first person to do so in more than 60 years. For 33 years, Pelosi has represented San Francisco in Congress. As speaker, Pelosi has led the Congress in passing the Affordable Care Act and the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act and in repealing the discriminatory “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, among other key accomplishments.
Jennifer Ho
Not Your Model Minority: Fighting Anti-Asian Racism and Yellow Peril Rhetoric in COVID Times
Wednesday, May 5, 2021
7 p.m. Eastern, online event
Jennifer Ho is the daughter of a refugee father from China and an immigrant mother from Jamaica, whose own parents were, themselves, immigrants from Hong Kong. Ho is the director of the Center for Humanities and the Arts at the University of Colorado Boulder, where she also holds an appointment as professor of ethnic studies. She is also the president of the Association for Asian American Studies and the author of three scholarly monographs, several academic articles and book chapters, and public-facing pieces addressing the intersections of race, sex and class in Asian American communities. In addition to pursuing her academic work, Ho is active in community engagement around issues of race and intersectionality, leading workshops on anti-racism and how to talk about race in our current social and cultural climate.
C. Yulín Cruz
Leadership for a New Democracy
Wednesday, April 28, 2021
7 p.m. Eastern, online event
C. Yulín Cruz is the former mayor of San Juan, Puerto Rico, and the author of El poder está en la calle (Power Is in the Street). Cruz was elected San Juan’s mayor in 2012, defeating a 12-year incumbent, and came to national prominence in 2017 as an outspoken advocate for federal support to Puerto Rico in the wake of Hurricane Maria. Educated at Boston University and Carnegie Mellon University, she has worked in the private and public sectors in Puerto Rico and the United States, including an appointment at the U.S. Department of the Treasury and a four-year term in the House of Representatives of Puerto Rico. She is the recipient of awards from numerous humanitarian organizations, including the Martin Luther King Center and the United States Hispanic Leadership Institute. In 2018, Time magazine named her to its list of 100 Most Influential People. She is currently a distinguished fellow at the Harriet L. Weissman and Paul M. Weissman Center for Leadership at Mount Holyoke College.
Michael Sandel
The Tyranny of Merit: What’s Become of the Common Good?
Tuesday, April 20, 2021
7 p.m. Eastern, online event
Michael Sandel teaches political philosophy at Harvard University, and also has sought to extend the reach of philosophy beyond the academy. His writings—on justice, ethics, democracy and markets—have been translated into 27 languages. His class on “Justice” is the first Harvard course to be made freely available online and on television, where it has been viewed by tens of millions of people. Sandel’s books—which include “Justice: What’s the Right Thing to Do?” and, most recently, “The Tyranny of Merit: What’s Become of the Common Good?”—relate enduring themes of political philosophy to the most vexing moral and civic questions of our time. Sandel has served on the President's Council on Bioethics and is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Judy Heumann and Tom Hehir
On the 30th Anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act
Thursday, April 1, 2021
7 p.m. Eastern, online event
Judy Heumann is an internationally recognized leader in the Disability Rights Independent Living Movement. Since the 1970s, her work with a wide range of activist organizations (including the Berkeley Center for Independent Living and the American Association of People with Disabilities), NGOs and governments has contributed greatly to the development of human rights legislation and policy benefiting disabled people. She has advocated for disability rights in the United States and abroad, serving in the Clinton and Obama administrations and as the World Bank’s first adviser on disability and development. Her book, Being Heumann: An Unrepentant Memoir of a Disability Rights Activist, released just this year, details her story of fighting to belong in a world that “wasn’t built for us.”
Tom Hehir recently retired after nearly 20 years as the Silvana and Christopher Pascucci Professor of Practice in Learning Differences at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, where he taught courses on federal education policy and on educating students with disabilities. He has spent his entire career in the field of special education as a classroom teacher, local administrator in both Boston and Chicago, and as a university professor. He served as director of the Office of Special Education Programs for the U.S. Department of Education during the first six years of the Clinton Administration.
Smith students, faculty, staff and alums can register to watch this event on Zoom. Members of the general public may watch this event on Smith’s Facebook page. This event will be captioned and interpreted in ASL.
Bryan Stevenson
Just Mercy: The Movement for Justice
and Redemption
Thursday, March 11, 2021
7 p.m. Eastern, online event
Bryan Stevenson is the founder and executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI), a human rights organization in Montgomery, Alabama. He is a widely acclaimed public interest lawyer who has dedicated his career to helping the poor, the incarcerated and the condemned. He has argued and won multiple cases at the U.S. Supreme Court, including a 2019 ruling protecting condemned prisoners who suffer from dementia and a landmark 2012 ruling that banned mandatory life-without-parole sentences for all children 17 or younger. Stevenson’s work has won him numerous awards including 35 honorary doctorates, the MacArthur Foundation “Genius” Prize and the ABA Medal, the American Bar Association’s highest honor. He is the author of a memoir, Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption, which was adapted to a motion picture, starring Michael B. Jordan, in 2019.
Mona Sinha ’88 and Sam Feder
“Disclosure”
Tuesday, March 2, 2021
7 p.m. Eastern, online event
Mona Sinha ’88
Mona Sinha ’88 is executive producer of Disclosure, a film about the history of transgender representation in media. A dedicated advocate for and investor in gender justice, Sinha is the board chair of Women Moving Millions and the ERA Fund for Women’s Equality. A trustee emerita of Smith College, she also serves on the boards of Apne Aap Women Worldwide, Let’s Breakthrough and the Center for High Impact Philanthropy at the University of Pennsylvania. In addition, she is on the advisory boards of the Social Enterprise Program at Columbia Business School and their investment committee, the Columbia Global Mental Health Program/WHO collaboration, and the American Museum of Natural History. In 2015, she was awarded the Ellis Island Medal of Honor for her contribution to women’s leadership and education.
Sam Feder
Cited by Indiewire as one of the “exciting trans filmmakers shaking up Hollywood,” Sam Feder makes films that explore legacy, conflict and futures within the queer and trans communities while working toward higher ethical standards in filmmaking. Feder’s films have been programmed by film festivals around the world, including Sundance and the Tribeca Film Festival. Kate Bornstein Is a Queer and Pleasant Danger, about trans icon Kate Bornstein, was named one of the best documentaries of 2014 by The Advocate and earned multiple awards, including the James Aronson Award for Social Justice Journalism. Feder’s most recent film, Disclosure, a Netflix original documentary, looks at transgender depictions in film and television, revealing how Hollywood simultaneously reflects and manufactures our deepest anxieties about gender.
Jill Lepore
This America | That America
Tuesday, February 23, 2021
7 p.m. Eastern, online event
Jill Lepore is the David Woods Kemper ’41 Professor of American History and Affiliate Professor of Law at Harvard University. She is also a staff writer at The New Yorker and host of the podcast The Last Archive. Her many books include the international bestseller These Truths: A History of the United States, which was named one of Time magazine’s top 10 nonfiction books of the decade. Her most recent book, IF THEN: How the Simulmatics Corporation Invented the Future, has been longlisted for the National Book Award. Lepore also has been a finalist for the National Magazine Award and, twice, for the Pulitzer Prize. She has been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and to the American Philosophical Society.
Gina McCarthy
Climate Change and Social Justice: Strategies for Meaningful Progress
Tuesday, February 9, 2021
7 p.m. Eastern, online event
In late 2020, U.S. President Biden named Gina McCarthy to serve as head of the White House Office of Domestic Climate Policy, making her the United States’ first national climate advisor. Previously, she was president and CEO of the Natural Resources Defense Council. She has been a leading advocate for common-sense strategies to protect public health and the environment for more than 30 years. She served under President Barack Obama as the 13th administrator of the EPA from 2013 to 2017. Her tenure as EPA administrator heralded a paradigm shift in national environmental policy, expressly linking it with global public health. She led EPA initiatives that cut air pollution, protected water resources, reduced greenhouse gases and strengthened chemical safety to better protect more Americans, especially the most vulnerable, from negative health impacts. This presentation, pre-recorded in mid-January 2021, features McCarthy in conversation with Smith students and faculty members Natalie Baillargeon ’21; Alex Barron, assistant professor of environmental science and policy; Niveen Ismail, assistant professor of engineering; Storm Lewis ’21; and Denise McKahn, associate professor of engineering and faculty director of CEEDS (moderator).
Marcelo Suárez-Orozco
Humanitarianism, Education and Mass Migration: Confronting the World Crisis
Thursday, October 8, 2020
7 p.m. Eastern, online event
Marcelo Suárez-Orozco is chancellor of the University of Massachusetts Boston. His research focuses on conceptual and empirical problems in the areas of cultural psychology and psychological anthropology, with a focus on the study of mass migration, globalization and education. Previously, Suárez-Orozco served at Harvard University as the Victor S. Thomas Professor of Education. In 1997, he co-founded the Harvard Immigration Project and co-directed a study of Asian, Caribbean and Latino immigrant youth in American society. The book reporting the results of this landmark study, Learning a New Land: Immigrant Students in American Society, was published in 2008. Suárez-Orozco has been elected to the National Academy and has served as special adviser for education, peace, and justice to the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court in The Hague.
Gloria Steinem ’56 and Julie Taymor
“The Glorias”: Building Movements Through Storytelling
Thursday, September 17, 2020
8 p.m. Eastern, online event
Gloria Steinem is a writer, lecturer, political activist and feminist organizer. She travels in the United States and other countries as an organizer and lecturer and is a frequent media spokeswoman on issues of equality. She is particularly interested in the shared origins of sex and race caste systems, gender roles and child abuse as roots of violence, nonviolent conflict resolution, the cultures of indigenous peoples, and organizing across boundaries for peace and justice. A 1956 graduate of Smith, she lives in New York City.
Julie Taymor is a director, playwright and creative visionary. She is the force behind numerous stunning productions, including Broadway’s smash musical The Lion King. Long admired as an innovative director in the worlds of theater and opera, Taymor has employed her visionary talents to create several feature films, including Frida, Titus, The Tempest and Across the Universe. Her film The Glorias—based on Gloria Steinem’s autobiography, My Life on the Road—premiered at Sundance in January 2020 and is scheduled for release in fall 2020.
Gail Collins and Bret Stephens
The 2020 Election: A Conversation with New York Times Columnists Gail Collins and Bret Stephens
Tuesday, September 15, 2020
7 p.m. Eastern, online event
Gail Collins joined The New York Times in 1995 as a member of the editorial board and later as an op-ed columnist. In 2001 she was appointed editorial page editor—the first woman to hold that post at the Times. In 2007, she stepped down to finish a book, When Everything Changed: The Amazing Journey of American Women From 1960 to the Present. She returned as a columnist in time to cover the 2008 presidential election. The author of five other books, including America’s Women: Four Hundred Years of Dolls, Drudges, Helpmates and Heroines, Collins is currently at work on a history of older women in America. Since 2013, she has served on the Pulitzer Prize Board. Collins and her New York Times colleague Bret Stephens often engage in editorial conversations in the Times editorial pages.
Bret L. Stephens joined The New York Times as an op-ed columnist in 2017 after a long career with The Wall Street Journal, where he served most recently as deputy editorial page editor and, for 11 years, as a foreign affairs columnist. Before that, he was editor in chief of The Jerusalem Post. He has reported from around the world and interviewed scores of world leaders. Stephens is the author of America in Retreat: The New Isolationism and the Coming Global Disorder, released in November 2014. He is the recipient of numerous awards and distinctions, including the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for commentary. Stephens and his New York Times colleague Gail Collins often engage in editorial conversations in the Times editorial pages.
Eric K. Ward
Authoritarian State or Inclusive Democracy? What We Can Do Right Now
Wednesday, September 9, 2020
8 p.m. Eastern, online event
Eric K. Ward is executive director of Western States Center. A senior fellow with Southern Poverty Law Center and senior adviser with Race Forward, Ward is a nationally recognized expert on the relationship between authoritarian movements, hate violence and preserving inclusive democracy. In his long career, Ward founded the Community Alliance of Lane County, established 120 task forces in six states through Northwest Coalition Against Malicious Harassment, supported immigrant rights as national field director for the Center for New Community and served as program officer for Atlantic Philanthropies and the Ford Foundation.
Kwame Anthony Appiah
“Identity and Identities”
Tuesday, February 4, 2020
5 p.m., Campus Center Carroll Room
Kwame Anthony Appiah, professor of philosophy and law at New York University, was educated at schools in Ghana and in England, and studied at Clare College, Cambridge University, in England, where he took both B.A. and Ph.D. degrees in philosophy. His Cambridge dissertation brought together issues in the philosophy of language and the philosophy of mind, which led to two books: Assertion and Conditionals (1985, Cambridge University Press) and For Truth in Semantics (1986, Basil Blackwell). Since Cambridge, he has taught at Yale, Cornell, Duke and Harvard universities and lectured for institutions around the world.
Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy ’02, DFA ’18
On Arts and Activism: Women’s Rights in a Volatile World
Thursday, October 17, 2019
5 p.m., Campus Center Carroll Room
Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy is a journalist, filmmaker and activist. Her work has taken her around the world, where she has filmed and worked with refugees, women’s advocacy groups and human rights defenders. By bringing their voices to the outside world, she has often helped them bring about a critical change in their community. She is the recipient of two Academy Awards, six Emmy Awards and the Hilal-i-Imtiaz, the second highest civilian honor awarded by the government of Pakistan. In 2012, Time magazine named her one of the 100 most influential people in the world. A member of the Smith class of 2002 and recipient of an honorary degree in 2018, she currently serves on the college’s board of trustees.
Cristina Rodríguez
Constitution Day Lecture: The President, Immigration Law and the Politics of Constitutional Structure
Thursday, September 19, 2019
5 p.m., Campus Center Carroll Room
Cristina Rodríguez is the Leighton Homer Surbeck Professor of Law at Yale Law School. Her research interests include constitutional law and theory; immigration law and policy; administrative law and process; language rights and policy; and citizenship theory. In recent years, her work has focused on constitutional structures and institutional design. She has used immigration law and related areas as vehicles through which to explore how the allocation of power (through federalism and the separation of powers) shapes the management and resolution of legal and political conflict.
G. Gabrielle Starr
On Value: Arts, Education, Aesthetics and Policy
Monday, April 8, 2019
5 p.m., Campus Center Carroll Room
Pomona College President G. Gabrielle Starr is a highly regarded scholar of English literature whose work reaches into neuroscience and the arts. Recipient of the Guggenheim Fellowship, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation’s New Directions Fellowship and a National Science Foundation ADVANCE grant, Starr offers a compelling voice for working across academic disciplines to spark intellectual discovery. Her research looks closely at the brain, through the use of fMRI, to help get to the heart of how people respond to paintings, music and other forms of art. Her most recent book, Feeling Beauty: The Neuroscience of Aesthetic Experience, was a finalist for the Phi Beta Kappa Society’s 2014 Christian Gauss Award.
Martha Nussbaum
Anger, Fear and the Politics of Blame
Friday, March 29, 2019
4:30 p.m., Campus Center Carroll Room
Martha Nussbaum is the Ernst Freund Distinguished Service Professor of Law and Ethics at the University of Chicago, where she is jointly appointed in the law school and the philosophy department. She has a particular interest in ancient Greek and Roman philosophy, political philosophy, feminism and ethics, including animal rights. She also holds associate appointments in classics, divinity, and political science. Nussbaum is the author of a number of books, including The Fragility of Goodness, Sex and Social Justice and Frontiers of Justice: Disability, Nationality, Species Membership. She received the 2016 Kyoto Prize in Arts and Philosophy and the 2018 Berggruen Prize for Philosophy and Culture.
Ijeoma Oluo
The Only Way Out Is Through: Solidarity and Accountability
Tuesday, November 13, 2018
5 p.m., Leo Weinstein Auditorium
Ijeoma Oluo is a Seattle-based writer, speaker and self-described “Internet Yeller.” She is the author of the New York Times bestseller So You Want to Talk About Race. Named one of the The Root’s 100 Most Influential African Americans in 2017 and winner of the of the 2018 Feminist Humanist Award by the American Humanist Society, Oluo’s work focuses primarily on issues of race and identity, feminism, social and mental health, social justice, the arts and personal essay. Her writing has been featured in The Washington Post, NBC News, Elle magazine, Time, The Stranger and The Guardian, among other outlets.
Freeman Hrabowski
Promoting Access and Diversity in STEM Fields
Monday, October 29, 2018
4:30 p.m., Campus Center Carroll Room
Freeman A. Hrabowski, III, has served as president of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, since 1992. Named one of the 100 Most Influential People in the World by Time (2012) and one of America’s Best Leaders by U.S. News & World Report (2008), his research and publications focus on science and math education, with special emphasis on minority participation and performance. He chaired the National Academies’ committee that produced the 2011 report, Expanding Underrepresented Minority Participation: America’s Science and Technology Talent at the Crossroads. He was named in 2012 by President Obama to chair the President’s Advisory Commission on Educational Excellence for African Americans.
Pam Bosley and Stasha Rhodes
America’s Gun Violence Epidemic
Monday, October 22, 2018
4:30 p.m., Campus Center Carroll Room
After one of Pam Bosley’s sons was murdered on the grounds of a church, she left a career in banking to make a difference in the lives of youth. She now serves as the violence prevention manager for the ARK of St. Sabina in Chicago, where she empowers young people to be leaders and self-advocates, guiding them to discover their own voices and abilities to bring change to their communities. She is also the co-founder of Purpose Over Pain, an organization that offers support to parents who have lost children to violence, advocates for common sense gun measures, and provides a safe space and mentorship for youth.
Stasha Rhodes is the director of engagement for Giffords, an organization formed by the merger of Americans for Responsible Solutions and the Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence and a leader in the growing movement to save lives from gun violence. She previously served as the founder and principal of The Red Team, LLC, an advocacy firm specializing in issue campaign management, grassroots organizing, and government relations, as the director of advocacy for guns and crime policy at the Center for American Progress, and as the American Heart Association’s Louisiana director of government affairs.
Nancy Malkiel ’65, LTD ’97
“Keep the Damned Women Out”: The Struggle for Coeducation
Wednesday, September 26, 2018
4 p.m., Campus Center Carroll Room
Nancy Weiss Malkiel is professor of history, emeritus, at Princeton University. A scholar of 20th-century American history, she is the author of “Keep the Damned Women Out”: The Struggle for Coeducation, a study of the cascade of decisions for coeducation at elite institutions of higher education between 1969 and 1974. During her tenure at Princeton, she served as dean of the college—the longest-serving dean in Princeton’s history, at 24 years—and was founding master of Dean Mathey College, one of Princeton’s six residential colleges. A graduate and former trustee of Smith and a trustee of the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation, she received her M.A. and Ph.D. from Harvard University.
Martha Minow
Constitution Day Lecture: Freedom of the Press and the Changing Ecosystem of News
Monday, September 17, 2018
4:30 p.m., Campus Center Carroll Room
Martha Minow is the 300th Anniversary University Professor at Harvard Law School, where her courses include civil procedure, constitutional law, family law, international criminal justice, jurisprudence, law and education, nonprofit organizations, and the public law workshop. She is also a lecturer in the Harvard Graduate School of Education and Distinguished Service Professor at Harvard University. An expert in human rights and advocacy for members of racial and religious minorities and for women, children and persons with disabilities, she also writes and teaches about privatization, military justice, and ethnic and religious conflict.
Juana María Rodríguez
Imagining Respect, Refusing Respectability
Friday, April 13, 2018
4:30 p.m., Leo Weinstein Auditorium
Juana María Rodríguez is a leading scholar and cultural commentator whose research focuses on race and sexual politics, Latino/a/x and Caribbean literatures and cultures, queer activism and transgender studies. She is the author of two books: Queer Latinidad: Identity Practices, Discursive Spaces introduced the idea of queer latinidad, and Sexual Futures, Queer Gestures, and Other Latina Longings earned the Alan Bray Memorial Prize from the Modern Language Association. Rodríguez is professor of comparative ethnic studies at UC Berkeley, and is a proud recipient of the university’s Distinguished Teaching Award. The recipient of a Ph.D. degree from UC Berkeley, she earned a B.A. from San Francisco State University and an M.A. in English from Columbia.
Jack P. Shonkoff, M.D.
Leveraging 21st-Century Science to Advance Social Justice
Thursday, February 15, 2018
5 p.m., Leo Weinstein Auditorium
Jack P. Shonkoff, M.D., is founding director of Harvard’s Center on the Developing Child, whose mission is to bring credible science to bear on public policy affecting young children. He also chairs the JPB Research Network on Toxic Stress, which is developing new ways to assess the biological, bio-behavioral and health consequences of excessive stress. In 2011, he launched Frontiers of Innovation to support the lifelong health of young children and families experiencing significant adversity. Shonkoff is a chaired professor at Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health and at the Graduate School of Education; he also is professor of pediatrics at Harvard Medical School and Boston Children’s Hospital.
Ruby Bridges
Friday, February 2, 2018
4 p.m., John M. Greene Hall
In 1960, Ruby Bridges became a symbol of the civil rights movement as the youngest of a group of African American students to integrate schools in the American South. Her bravery inspired the Norman Rockwell painting The Problem We All Live With (1964), which depicts the young Bridges walking to school between two sets of federal marshals, a racial epithet marking the wall behind them. Her memoir, Through My Eyes, was released in 1999. “Racism is a grown-up disease,” Bridges has said, “and we must stop using our children to spread it.” She was awarded the Presidential Citizens Medal in 2001.
Maura Healey
Our Role in Upholding the Constitutıon
Monday, September 18, 2017, 4:30 p.m.
Leo Weinstein Auditorium, Wright Hall
Maura Healey is an attorney, a former professional basketball player (she’s 5’4”) and, since 2015, the Attorney General for Massachusetts. As the “people’s lawyer” for the commonwealth, Healey leads an office dedicated, in her words, to “protecting consumers, ensuring equality for all and keeping our communities safer.” Since taking office, Healey has tackled issues including the heroin and prescription drug abuse epidemic, escalating health care costs, workers' rights and student loan costs. She has focused on strengthening consumer protections and on improving our criminal justice system. A Harvard graduate with a J.D. degree from Northeastern, Healey is the first openly gay attorney general in the United States.
Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
Black America Since MLK
Monday, March 27, 2017, 4:30 p.m.
Weinstein Auditorium, Wright Hall
Henry Louis Gates, Jr., is the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor and Director of the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research at Harvard University. Emmy Award-winning filmmaker, literary scholar, journalist, cultural critic and institution builder, Gates has authored or co-authored more than 20 books and created more than a dozen documentary films, including Wonders of the African World, African American Lives, Faces of America, Black in Latin America and Finding Your Roots, his groundbreaking genealogy series for PBS. A member of the first class awarded “genius grants” by the MacArthur Foundation in 1981, in 1998 he became the first African American scholar to be awarded the National Humanities Medal.
Robert Kegan
Tuesday, February 28, 2017, 4:30 p.m.
Weinstein Auditorium
Robert Kegan is a psychologist who teaches, researches, writes and consults about adult development, adult learning and professional development. His work explores the possibility and necessity of ongoing psychological transformation in adulthood; the fit between adult capacities and the hidden demands of modern life; and the evolution of consciousness in adulthood and its implications for supporting adult learning, professional development, and adult education. A licensed clinical psychologist and practicing therapist, Kegan lectures widely and consults in the area of professional development.
Reflections on the 2016 Election
Rachel Maddow
Monday, January 23, 2017, 10 a.m.
John M. Greene Hall
Rachel Maddow is a political commentator who rose to national prominence after launching her career on local radio. On her nightly television program, MSNBC’s “The Rachel Maddow Show,” Maddow daily analyzes top headlines from the worlds of politics, current events, sports, science, health, crime and the absurd. Her interviews with newsmakers have been described as spotlighting “the headlines, and the politics behind the headlines.” Maddow was the speaker at Smith’s 2010 commencement ceremony.
Ana Navarro
Tuesday, January 24, 2017, 5:30 p.m.
John M. Greene Hall
Strategist and commentator Ana Navarro is one of the leading Hispanic Republican political voices in the United States. A political commentator on CNN, ABC and Telemundo, she frequently comments on political issues and current affairs in national and international print media. A native of Nicaragua and a graduate of the University of Miami, she has served as ambassador to the United Nations Human Right Commission and was a fellow at Harvard’s Institute of Politics. She was a member of Florida Gov. Jeb Bush’s transition team and administration in 1998–99, and was the national Hispanic co-chair for the presidential campaigns of John McCain in 2008 and Gov. Jon Huntsman in 2012.
Mahzarin Banaji
Workshop on implicit Bias
Blindspot: Hidden Biases of Good People
Friday, October 28, 2016, 2 p.m.
Sweeney Concert Hall, Sage Hall
Mahzarin Banaji is the Richard Clarke Cabot Professor of Social Ethics at Harvard University. With social psychologists Anthony Greenwald and Brian Nosek, she maintains an educational website, Project Implicit, designed to create awareness about unconscious bias. In 2016 the Association for Psychological Science named Banaji one of its William James Fellows, an award given to outstanding contributors to scientific psychology.
Arne Duncan
Jane Grossman Cecil '50 Memorial Lecture
What I’ve Learned From Children
Wednesday, September 21, 2016, 5 p.m.
Weinstein Auditorium, Wright Hall
Arne Duncan was appointed U.S. Secretary of Education by President Barack Obama in 2009 and served in that position until early 2016. He previously served as superintendent of the Chicago Public Schools. He is a managing partner at the Palo Alto–based education group Emerson Collective.
The Honorable Patti B. Saris
Constitution Day Lecture
Mass Incarceration and Criminal Justice Reform
Thursday, September 15, 2016, 4:30 p.m.
Neilson Browsing Room
Patti B. Saris has served as a United States district judge for the District of Massachusetts since 1994 and as chief judge of the district court since 2013. She has been a member and chair of the United States Sentencing Commission since 2010. For Smith’s annual Constitution Day lecture, Judge Saris will speak about the problem of overincarceration in the United States as well as her work on the Sentencing Commission.
Lawrence Lessig
Wednesday, April 20, 2016, 5 p.m.
Weinstein Auditorium, Wright Hall
Lawrence Lessig is the Roy L. Furman Professor of Law at Harvard Law School and Director of the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard University. Prior to rejoining the Harvard faculty, Lessig was a professor at Stanford Law School, where he founded the school’s Center for Internet and Society, and at the University of Chicago. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Philosophical Association. His awards include the Free Software Foundation’s Freedom Award, Fastcase 50 Award and being named one of Scientific American’s Top 50 Visionaries.
Maria Klawe
Getting More Women Into Tech Careers
Tuesday, April 12, 2016, 5 p.m.
Alumnae House Conference Hall
Maria Klawe is the president of Harvey Mudd College. She joined Harvey Mudd from Princeton University after serving 14 years at the University of British Columbia. Prior to UBC, Klawe spent eight years with IBM Research in California and two years at the University of Toronto. Part of the Clark Science Center’s “She Is a Scientist” series and co-sponsored by the Lazarus Center for Career Development.
danah boyd
Living in a Culture of Algorithms
Wednesday, March 30, 2016, 5 p.m.
Weinstein Auditorium, Wright Hall
Social media scholar danah boyd is a principal researcher at Microsoft Research and the founder of the Data & Society Research Institute. She is a visiting professor at New York University’s Interactive Telecommunications Program and a faculty affiliate at Harvard’s Berkman Center. Her research examines the intersection between technology and society.
Gloria Steinem
Monday, March 28, 2016, 5 p.m.
John M. Greene Hall
Gloria Steinem, Smith class of 1956, is a feminist, journalist, and social and political activist. She has been a leader and a voice for the feminist movement since the 1960s. Through her writing, speeches and activism, she has inspired generations of women and men to look at the world differently, change the rules and right society’s wrongs. A founder of Ms. magazine, she is the author of several books, including Revolution From Within (1992) and My Life on the Road (2015).
Imani Perry
Which Feminism Do We Choose?
Tuesday, March 1, 2016, 5 p.m.
Weinstein Auditorium, Wright Hall
Imani Perry is the Hughes-Rogers Professor of African American Studies and a faculty associate in the Program in Law and Public Affairs at Princeton University. An interdisciplinary scholar who studies race and African American culture, she is the author of More Beautiful and More Terrible: The Embrace and Transcendence of Racial Inequality in the United States and Prophets of the Hood: Politics and Poetics in Hip Hop.
Frank Bruni
Where You Go Is Not Who You’ll Be
Tuesday, October 20, 2015, 5 p.m.
Weinstein Auditorium, Wright Hall
Journalist Frank Bruni is a former White House correspondent and chief restaurant critic for The New York Times. In June 2011, he was named an op-ed columnist for the newspaper. He is the author of two bestselling books: Born Round, a memoir about his family's love of food and his own struggles with overeating, and Ambling Into History, about George W. Bush. His new book is Where You Go Is Not Who You’ll Be: An Antidote to the College Admission Mania.
Linda Greenhouse
What the Supreme Court’s Same-Sex Marriage Decision Teaches Us About the Constitution
Friday, September 18, 2015, 1 p.m.
Alumnae House Conference Hall
Linda Greenhouse, a senior research scholar and journalist in residence at Yale Law School, covered the Supreme Court for The New York Times between 1978 and 2008. She was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in Journalism in 1998 “for her consistently illuminating coverage of the United States Supreme Court.” She now writes a biweekly column on law.
Jennifer Finney Boylan
She’s Not There: A Life in Two Genders
Thursday, April 30, 2015, 4:30 p.m.
John M. Greene Hall
Jennifer Finney Boylan, professor of English at Barnard College and New York Times contributing writer, is the author of the memoir She’s Not There: A Life in Two Genders, the first bestseller by a transgender American.
Jeffrey Sachs
The Age of Sustainable Development
Wednesday, April 8, 2015, 4:30 p.m.
Weinstein Auditorium, Wright Hall
Economist Jeffrey Sachs is director of The Earth Institute, Quetelet Professor of Sustainable Development, and Professor of Health Policy and Management at Columbia University. He is known for his work on the challenges of economic development, environmental sustainability, poverty alleviation, debt cancellation and globalization.
Claudia Rankine
February 23, 2015
Sweeney Concert Hall, Sage Hall
Claudia Rankine is the author of Citizen: An American Lyric (2014). A nominee for the National Book Award in poetry, Citizen is described by BookForum as “an anatomy of American racism in the new millennium, a slender, musical book that arrives with the force of a thunderclap.”
Larry Summers
The American Economic Growth Challenge
Monday, March 31, 2014
Weinstein Auditorium, Wright Hall
President Emeritus and Charles W. Eliot University Professor, Harvard University; Board Chair of the Center for Global Development; Secretary of the Treasury (1999–2001); Director of the National Economic Council (2009–10)