University Lecturer

Dr. Cynthia Miller Idriss ’94, Professor, School of Public Affairs and School of Education Justice, Law & Criminology

Lecture Title: TBD
Date:  September 30, 2026
Time: TBD
Place: TBD

Dr. Miller Idriss recently publish a book, Man Up: The New Misogyny and the Rise of Violent Extremism (Princeton University Press, 2025). From the nomination: “Dr. Miller-Idriss’s work represents a bold and incisive analysis of the link between misogyny and far-right extremism throughout the Western Hemisphere…Dr. Miller-Idriss is a sociologist and scholar of extremism and radicalization who graduated from Cornell in 1994 with a BA in Sociology and German Area Studies. She received her Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Michigan in 2003. She now holds an appointment as Professor in the School of Public Affairs and the School of Education at American University. She is the founding director of the Polarization and Extremism Research & Innovation Lab (PERIL) research lab, which combines quantitative, cultural, policy, and media analysis to understand how hate and violence emerge in society.”

Messenger Lecturer

Lecture Titles: TBD
Date:  October 13, 15 and 20, 2026
Time: TBD
Place: TBD

Shrinivas R. (Shri) Kulkarni is the George Ellery Hale Professor of Astronomy and
Planetary Science at Caltech. Excerpt from his Messenger Lecturer nomination:
“There are few modern astronomical observers who have been as successful as Shri
Kulkarni in making diverse, foundational and transformational discoveries in astronomy.
His astronomical accomplishments include:
1. finding the first millisecond pulsar (a neutron star with mass greater than that
of the Sun spinning at 641 times per second),
2. identifying the first brown dwarf (a so-called “failed star” slighly too light to
be able to ignite hydrogen burning in its core),
3. providing the first distance measurement to a gamma-ray burst (a brief intense
burst of gamma rays, the brightest and most powerful class of explosion in the
universe) placing it outside our own galaxy,
4. developing an instrument and survey for fast radio bursts (a short transient
emission of radio waves) and localizing one such burst to a galactic magnetar
(highly magnetized neutron star),
5. building the Palomar Transient Factory (PTF) and Zwicky Transient Factory
(ZTF) to study variable or transient astronomical objects in the optical bands.”

University Lecturer

Dr. Britt Wray, director of Stanford University’s “CIRCLE at Stanford Psychiatry”

Lecture Title: TBD
Date:  March 2027
Time: TBD
Place: TBD

From the nomination: “Dr. Wray is director of Stanford University’s “CIRCLE at Stanford Psychiatry,” a
research and action initiative focused on Community-minded Interventions
for Resilience, Climate Leadership and Emotional wellbeing. She is the author of Generation
Dread: Finding Purpose in an Age of Climate Anxiety (2022), a carefully-researched general audience
book on how to support young people as they face eco-anxiety related to climate and
environment-related fears. Dr. Wray received in 2023 the top prize in the “Research Scientist:
Early Career” category of the SciComm Excellence awards given by the National Academies of
Science, Engineering, & Medicine in partnership with Schmidt Futures. Dr. Wray’s work
crosses, among other disciplines, psychology, environmental studies, ethics, and communication.”