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Cornell University

Office of the Dean of Faculty

Connecting & Empowering Faculty

University and Messenger Lectures Archive

2024-2025

2023-24

  • Moon Duchin, Professor, Mathematics, Tufts University, Professor, Tisch College, and John Dibiaggio Professor of Citizenship and Public Service, Mathematics. University Lecture: Algorithms, Race, and Redistricting: Can Computers Find Fairness?
  • Robin Coste Lewis, former poet laureate of Los Angeles, writer-in-residence at the University of Sothern California, as well as a Cave Canem fellow and a fellow of the Los Angeles Institute for the Humanities. University Lecture: To the Realization of Perfect Helplessness
  • Anupama Rao, Professor of History, Barnard College, and MESAAS, Columbia University. University Lecture: Caste, Outcaste, Anticaste: Reflections on Worldmaking
  • Gil Anidjar, Professor, Departments of Religion and Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies, Columbia University.  Messenger Lectures:  Freud’s Mothers: The Woman Hagar and the Monotheistic Religion, Two Mothers in Heaven: Inventing the Perfect Mother, and Mama’s Baby: Race and Religion
  • Alexander Rudensky, Chair, Immunology Program, Sloan Kettering Institute and Director of The Ludwig Center for Cancer Immunotherapy, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. University Lecture: Dominant Tolerance

2021-22

  • Professor Emerita Jennifer Robertson, Anthropology and History of Art, Departments of Anthropology and the History of Art, and the Penny W. School of Art & Design, and Affiliate Professor, Robotics Institute, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. She is also Affiliate Professor, Departments of Anthropology and Japan Studies, University of Washington, Seattle. University Lecture: Robo-Sexism: Gendering AI and Robots in Japan and the United States (and Elsewhere). Lecture video recording.
  • Willa Cather Professor Emerita Sidnie White Crawford, Classics and Religious Studies, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, and Visiting Scholar at Princeton Theological Seminary; Messenger Lectures: Archaeology, Science and the Dead Sea Scrolls, A Library at Qumran? How to Identify a Library in the Ancient World, and Scribes and Scrolls: Scribalism in the Ancient World and the Dead Sea Scrolls

2020-2021   No University or Messenger Lectures due to COVID-19

2019-20

2018-19

2017-18

Spring 2018

Christina Crosby, Professor of English and Gender and Sexuality Studies at Wesleyan University. Lecture:  “Faithful to the Place of Bones”

Fall 2017

  • Messenger Lecturer: Scott Aaronson, Professor, University of Texas at Austin. Lectures:  Lecture 1:  “Complexity-Theoretic Foundations of Quantum Supremacy Experiments”; Lecture 2:  Quantum Computing and the Limits of the Efficiently Computable”; Lecture 3:  “New Results on Learning and Reconstruction of Quantum States”
  • University Lecturer: Zafer Şenocak, Creative Writer and Public Intellectual. Lecture:  “Imagining Migration in Contemporary Europe:  A Literary Author’s Perspective”
  • University Lecturer: Raul Andino, Professor, Department of Microbiology and Immunology, University of California, San Francisco. Lecture:  “RNA virus evolution, infection and new vaccines for humans and animals”
  • University Lecturer: Richard Harris, Science Correspondent at National Public Radio, Washington, DC. Lecture:  “Rigor Mortis.  Returning delight and rigor to science”
  • University Lecturer: Stephanie W. Jamison, Professor, Asian Languages and Cultures, UCLA. Lecture: “Adulterous Woman to Be Eaten by Dogs:  Women and Law in Ancient India”

 

2016-17

Spring 2017

  • University Lecturer: Professor Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, Chief Curator, Core Exhibition, POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews; University Professor Emerita, New York University. Lecture:  Materializing History:  Time and Telos at POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews
  • University Lecturer:  Seth Siegel, Author. Lecture:  Title:   A Global Water Crisis Is Coming:  What Can We Do To Avoid It?

Fall 2016

  • University Lecturer:  Professor Jaak Panksepp, Professor of Veterinary Science, Washington State University. Lecture:  The Emotional Feelings of Other (Animal Brains:  From Cross-Species Nero-Affective Foundations to Novel Psychiatric Therapeutics
  • University Lecturer:  Professor John Rickford, J.E. Wallace Sterling Professor of Linguistics and the Humanities, Stanford University. Lecture:  Justice for Jeantel (and Trayvon):  Fighting Dialect Prejudice in Courtrooms and Beyond

2015-16

Fall 2015

  • Messenger Lecturer:  Professor Thomas H. Jordan, University Southern California and Director, Southern California Earthquake Center. Lecture:  Trial of the L’Aquila Seven:  How an Unforetold Seismic Catastrophe Changed Operation Hazard Forecasting
  • University Lecturer:  Gina Apostol, Novelist and Essayist. Lecture:  The Filipino-American War and the Writing of a Novel: Reflections on History and the Art of Fiction
  • University Lecturer:  Dr. Amara Lakhous, Bilingual Writer. Lectures:  Lecture 1:  Becoming a Writer: The Story of My Dream – Lecture 2: Why is Europe Failing at the Issue of Immigration – Lecture 3: Why Narrating Immigration Through Images is More Effective Today
  • University Lecturer:  Professor David Kaplan, Johns Hopkins University. Lecture:  Particles and the Nature of All Things
  • University Lecturer:  Professor Stephen Long, University of Illinois. Lecture:  Can We Feed and Fuel the World From Plants by 2050? Scientific vs. Social Barriers
  • Messenger Lecturer:  Professor Karl Deisseroth, Stanford University. Lectures:  Lecture 1:  Illuminating the Brain; Lecture 2:  Optical Technologies for Neuroscience; Lecture 3:  Optical Investigation of Fully-Assembled Biological Systems
  • Messenger Lecturer:  Professor Cecilia Vicuna, Poet and multidisciplinary artist. Lectures & Performances:  Quipu and the Quanta of Language; The Poem is the Animal; Awareness is the Art: Artists for Democracy
    and Other Stories
  • University Lecturer:  Professor Yoko Tawada, Contempory Japanese-German Prose Writer. Lectures:  Multilingual Literary Reading, in German, Japanese, English and Other Surprises
  • University Lecturer:  Joel Salatin, Polyface Farms, Inc., Virginia. Lecture:  Can We Feed the World?
  •  

2014-15

Spring 2015

  • University Lecturer:  Professor Allison M. Macfarlane, Professor of Public Policy and International Affairs, George Washington University. Lecture:  The Fukushima Nuclear Accident:  Is Nuclear Energy still a Viable Choice for a Carbon-Constrained World?
  • University Lecturer:  Professor Sherman Jackson, University of Southern California. Lecture:  Islam and the American Common Good
  • Messenger Lecturer:  Michael Moss, Author and Investigative Journalist. Lectures:  Lecture 1:  A journey into the underbelly of the processed food industry; Lecture 2: You are your own journalist: the evolving ethics of storytelling, Lecture 3: Panel Discussion: Brocolli, The Alpha Vegetable. Hard-core messaging for healthier eating

Fall 2014

  • Messenger Lecturer:  David Roman, Department of English and American Studies and Ethnicity at the University of Southern California. November Lecture:  Reviving AIDS:  On the 2011 Revival of the Normal Heart on Broadway
  • University Lecturer:  Mimi White, Northwestern University. Lecture:  Dramas of Domestic Space on HGTV

2013-14

Fall 2013

  • Messenger Lecturer:  Patrick Dougherty, Sculptor. Lectures:  Lecture 1:  Engaging with Plants and Art; Lecture 2:  The Art of Horticulture; Lecture 3:  Public Space, Public Art; Lecture 4:  Hands-On Workshop at Ithaca Children’s Garden
  • Messenger Lecturer:  Professor Jonathan Jansen, Vice-Chancellor and Rector of the University of the Free State. Lectures:    Lecture 1:  A South African Model for Practicing Community Engagement; Lecture 2:  The Role of Higher Education in the Development of South Africa; Lecture 3:  Meeting the Spirit and Letter of Diversity on a South African Campus

2012-13

Spring 2013

  • Messenger Lecturer:  Leonard Susskind, Director of the Stanford Institute for Theoretical Physics, Stanford University. Lectures:  Lecture 1:  The Birth of the Universe and the Origin of Laws of Physics; Lecture 2:  Black Holes, the Conservation of Information, and the Holographic Principle; Lecture 3:  Entanglement:  The Hooks that Hold Space Together
  • University Lecturer:  Carolyn Porco, Team Leader for the Imaging Investigation on the Cassini Saturn Orbiter. Lecture:  A Decade at Saturn
  • University Lecturer:  Jose Saldivar, Stanford University. Lecture:  Junot Díaz’s Search for Decolonial Aesthetics and Love
  • University Lecturer:  Elaine Romero, University of Wisconsin, Madison. Lecture:  Mother of Exiles:  From Concept to Production
  • University Lecturer:  Ron Suny, University of Michigan. Lecture:  Explaining Genocide:  The Fate of the Armenians
  • University Lecturer:  Stephen Pacala, Princeton University. Lecture:   The Fate of the Land Carbon Sink
  • University Lecturer:  Jin Li, Brown University. Lecture:  Western and East Asia Cultural Learning Models in the 21st Century
  • University Lecturer:  Ann Cvetkovich, University of Texas at Austin. Lecture:  The Art of the Queer Counterarchive

Fall 2012

  • Messenger Lecturer:  Dr. Peter Nathanielsz, The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, Center for Pregnancy & Newborn Research. Lectures:   Lecture 1: Health in the post-genomic era – the significance to our lifetime health of developmental programming and gene-environment interactions during development; Lecture 2: Biological milestones: The story of how fetal and neonatal development proceeds and how we become who we are; Lecture 3: Genes development and health: The new lesson for lifetime health – We are our Epigenome not our Genome
  • Messenger Lecturer:  A.E. Stallings, Poet, Translator, Member, American Academy of Arts & Sciences. Lectures:   Lecture 1:  Writing Poetry;Translating Poetry & Reading Poetry; Lecture 2:  *A. E. Stallings Reading Poetry Video;  Lecture 3:  **A.E. Stallings Writing Poetry Video
  • Messenger Lecturer:  Professor Neil Price, Department of Archaeology, University of Aberdeen. Lectures:  Lecture 1:   The Children of Ash: Cosmology and the Viking Universe; Lecture 2:   Life and Afterlife: Dealing with the Dead in the Viking Age; Lecture 3:  The Shape of the Soul: The Viking Mind and the Individual
  • University Lecturer:  Professor W. Ian Lipkin, M.D., John Snow Professor of Epidemiology Director, Center for Infection & Immunity, Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health. Lecture:  Microbe Hunting

2011-12

Spring 2012

  • Messenger Lecturer:  Professor David SavranDistinguished Professor and Vera Mowry Roberts Chair in American Theatre, CUNY Graduate Center. Lectures:  Lecture 1:  Branding as Cultural Performance; Lecture 2:  Branding American Theatre in Postwar Europe;  Lecture 3:   The Queer Brand of Broadway: The American Musical from Porter to The Book of Mormon
  • University Lecturer:  Professor Neco Celik, The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, Center for Pregnancy & Newborn Research. Lecture:  Film Screening of Urban Guerillas
  • University Lecturer:  Professor Lori GinzbergProfessor of History and Women’s Studies, Pennsylvania State University. Lecture:  Rights, Racism, & “A Very Radical Proposition”: Grappling with the Complex Legacies of Elizabeth Cady Stanton
  • University Lecturer:  Professor Brent Hayes EdwardsProfessor of English and Comparative Literature, Columbia University. Lecture:  Ici Ou Ailleurs/Here or Anyplace Else: Dancing in Translation
  • University Lecturer:  Professor Ewine van Dishoeck, Professor of Molecular Astrophysics at the University of Leiden, Netherlands. Lecture:  Building Planets and the Ingredients for Life Between the Stars
  • University Lecturer: Professor Paul J. Steinhardt, Albert Einstein Professor of Science at Princeton University. Lecture:  Once Upon a Time in Kamchatka: The Extraordinary Search for Natural Quasicrystals
  • Messenger Lecturer:  Professor Silvio Ferrari, University of Milan. Lectures:  Lecture 1: Religion in the Western Legal Tradition: An Historical Perspective; Lecture 2: Law and Religions: Patterns; Lecture 3: Law and Religions: Problems
  • Messenger Lecturer:  Professor Tariq Ramadan, Oxford University. Lectures:  Lecture 1:  What would Muhammad do?; Lecture 2: Muslims in the West; Lecture 3: “Arab Revolutions: What Next”
  • University Lecturer:  Professor Jas’ Elsner,
    Humfry Payne Senior Research Fellow in Classical Art at Corpus Christi College, Oxford.
    Lecture:   Rhetorics of Iconoclasm from Antiquity to Byzantium
  • University Lecturer:  Professor Raymond PierrehumbertLouis Block Professor in Geophysical Sciences and the College, University of Chicago. Lecture:  The Runaway Greenhouse: Could it Happen Here
  • University Lecturer:  Professor Sheldon Pollock, William B. Ransford Professor of Sanskrit and Indian Studies, Columbia University. Lecture:  Philology in Three Dimensions
  • Messenger Lecturer:  Professor Amihai Mazar, Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Lectures:  Lecture 1:  Archaeology and Biblical History: The Current State of Scholarship;  Lecture 2:  The Levant in the Tenth Century: Archaeology and the Alleged Time of David and Solomon; Lecture 3:  A Land of Milk and Honey:  Archaeological Research on the Unique Apiary at Tel Rehov, Israel
  • University Lecturer:  Professor Steven Cowley, Director of the Culham Laboratory and the Chief Executive Officer of the UK Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA). Lecture:  Fusion energy in the 21st century…and beyond!

Fall 2011

  • University Lecturer:  Professor Gene Robinson, Swanlund Chair, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Lecture:  Understanding the Relationship Between Genes and Behavior: Lessons form the Honey Bee
  • University Lecturer:   Ambassador Edward J. Perkins, Former Ambassador to South Africa. Lecture:  Reflections on a Career in Diplomacy
  • University Lecturer:  Catharine A. Mackinnon, Elizabeth A. Long Professor of Law at the University of Michigan Law School. Lecture:  Women’s Status, Men’s States
  • University Lecturer:  Theda Skocpol
    Victor S. Thomas Professor of Government and Sociology at Harvard University.
    Lecture:  Obama’s New Deal, Tea Party Reaction, and America’s Political Future
  • University Lecturer: Carol Graham
    Sr. Fellow and Charles Robinson Chair, The Brookings Institution.
    Lecture:  Happiness around the World: The Paradox of Happy Peasant and Miserable Millionaires

2010-11

Spring 2011

  • University Lecturer: Professor Nancy Armstrong, Gilbert, Louis, and Lehrman Professor of English, Duke University. Lecture:  What is Contemporary About Contemporary Fiction?
  • University Lecturer: Alan Lightman
    Writer and Adjunct Professor, MIT.
    Lecture:  Mr. g, a novel about the creation
  • University Lecturer: Elizabeth Freeman
    Professor of English at the University of California, Davis.
    Lecture:  Chronic Thinking (In conjunction with:  Strategic Ruptures: Feminist Reflections on Crisis Management Series
  • University Lecturer: Rabbi Greg Epstein, Humanist Chaplain at Harvard University. Lecture:  Good Without God: What a Billion Nonreligious People Do Believe
  • University Lecturer:  Professor Sally Kohlstedt, History of Science and Technology, University of Minnesota. Lecture:  Through Books to Nature: Objects and Education in the Progressive Era
  • University Lecturer:  Dr. Regina Sullivan, Professor of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry of New York University. Lecture:  Neurobiology of Infant Attachment: Lessons from an Animal Model
  • University Lecturer: Professor Susan R. Barry, Professor of Biology and Neuroscience, Mount Holyoke College in South Hadley, Massachusetts. Lecture:  FIXING MY GAZE: A scientist’s journey into seeing in three dimensions
  • University Lecturer:  Professor Dana Polan, Professor of Cinema Studies, New York University. Lecture:  Television that Tastes Good: Julia Child, television cooking, and the search for status in America
  • Messenger Lecturer: Lord John Krebs
    Professor Principal of Jesus College at Oxford.
    Lecture:  Science and Public Policy Lecture Series: Risk, Uncertainty and Regulation; Is Food Safe?; Facing up to Climate Change
  • University Lecturer:  Nilufer Gole
    Professor of Sociology, Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris, France.
    Lecture:  Islamic Visibility in European Publics: Secularism, Culture, and the Sacred
  • University Lecturer:  Jay T. Groves
    Chemical Biologist, University of California, Berkeley.
    Lecture:  At the Interface of Physics: Spatial Organization in Chemical Biology

Fall 2010

  • University Lecturer:  Gananath Obeyesekere, Emeritus Professor, Anthropology, Princeton University. Lecture:  Madame Blavatsky’s Visionary Travels and the Work of the Dream-Ego
  • Messenger Lecturer:  Nima Arkani-Hamed
    Professor, School of Natural Sciences, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, NJ.
    Lectures:  The Future of Fundamental Physics; *N. Arkani-Hamed: Setting the stage: Space-time and Quantum Mechanics Video
  • Messenger Lecturer:  Nancy Fraser,
    Professor of Philosophy and Politics, The New School of Social Research.
    Lectures:  Lecture 1:  The Fictitious Commodity: Fount of Capitalist Crisis in the 21st Century; Lecture 2:  The Market in Nature: Seeds and Offshoots of Capitalist Crisis;   Lecture 3:  The Wages of Care Body and Soul of Capitalist Crisis”

2009-10

Spring 2010

  • Messenger Lecturer: Gregor Schoeler,
    Emeritus Professor, Islamic Studies, University of Basel.
    Lectures: Lecture 1:  Miracles in Islam;  Lecture 2:   The Arabic Divine Comedy – The 11th Century Epistle of Forgiveness of al-Ma’arri; Lecture 3:  Memory and Literacy – The oral and the written word in early Islam (8th Century)
  • University Lecturer:  William Julius Wilson, Lewis P. and Linda L. Geyser University Professor at Harvard University. Lecture:  More Than Just Race, Being Black and Poor in the Inner City
  • University Lecturer:  A. James Hudspeth
    Professor at the Rockefeller University in New York and the Head of the Laboratory of Sensory Neuroscience. Lecture:  How Hearing Happens
  • University Lecturer:   Martin Kemp,
    Emeritus Professor, History of Art at Oxford University.
    Lecture:  Structural Intuitions in Art, Science and Technology
  • University Lecturer:  Phillip Lopate,
    John Cranford Adams Chair & Professor of English, Hofstra University, New York.
    Lecture:  The Art of Ambivalence: Self-Doubt and Changing One’s Mind and Books, Movies and Cities
  • University Lecturer: Robert J. Richards,
    Fishbein Professor of the History of Science, Departments of History, Philosophy, Psychology, University of Chicago.
    Lecture:  Darwin and Haeckel
  • University Lecturer:  Marga Gomez
    Award Winning Playwright, Actor and Humorist. Lecture: Long Island Iced Latina
  • University Lecturer:  Susan Michaelis
    Professor of Cell Biology, The Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. Lecture:  Cell Biology in the Translational Era: From Mating in Yeast to Aging in Humans

Fall 2009

  • University Lecturer:  E. Patrick Johnson,
    Professor, Chair, and Director of Graduate Studies in the Department of Performance Studies and Professor in African American Studies at Northwestern University.
    Lecture:  Pouring Tea: Black Gay Men of the South Tell Their Stories
  • University Lecturer: Elinor Ostrom,
    Arthur F. Bentley Professor of Political Science at Indiana University.
    Lecture:  Collective Action and the Commons: What Have We Learned?
  • Messenger Lecturer:  Nancy Fraser,
    Professor of Philosophy and Politics, The New School of Social Research.
    Lecture:   Theorizing the Great Transformation of the 21st Century
  • Messenger Lecturer: George Bass,
    Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Anthropology at Texas A&M University.
    Lectures:   Lecture 1:  The Birth of Nautical Archaeology;  Lecture 2:  Early Mediterranean Seafaring; Lecture 3:  A Midieval Puzzle: The Glass Wreck at Serce Limani

2008-09

Spring 2009

  • University Lecturer: Margaret Wertheim
    Science Writer and Exhibition Curator.
    Lecture:  Reefer Mathness: Confronting Coral Reef Destruction and Global Warming through Mathematics, Collective Art Practice and Crochet
  • University Lecturer:  John A. Pickett
    Professor Head of Department of Biological Chemistry at Rothamsted Research.
    Lecture:  Developing plant-derived stress signals for new crop protection strategies
  • University Lecturer:  Nidhal Guessoum,
    Professor of Physics & American University of Sharjah.
    Lecture: Science and the Arab Society: A Critical Survey and Assessment and The Anthropic Principle Today: Scientific, Philosophical, and Religious Perspectives
  • University Lecturer:  Michael Geyer,
    Samuel N. Harper Professor of German and European History, University of Chicago. 
    Lecture:  Millennial Militarism: Sovereignty Panics in the Contemporary United States
  • University Lecturer:  Ira Mellman,
    Vice President of Research Oncology & Genentech, Inc..
    Lecture:  From the Halls of Academia to the Shores of Industry: Basic Cell Biology for Human Benefit

Fall 2008

  • Messenger Lecturer: Paul Griffiths,
    Author and Music Critic, Performer and Librettis. Lecture:  Restoring the Lost, Retrieving the Unwritten and Relinquishing the Unwritable
  • University Lecturer:  Scott de la Hunta ’84
    Research Fellow, ARTI Group, Amsterdam School of the Arts.
    Lecture:   The Choreographic Resource: Technologies for Interpreting Dance
  • Messenger Lecturer:  Sheilia Jasanoff,
    Professor of Science & Technology Studies, Harvard University.
    Lecture:  After Enlightenment: Rethinking Science’s Place in Democracy
  • University Lecturer:  Garry Wills,
    Professor, Northwestern University, Pulitzer Prize Winning Author.
    Lecture:  Lincoln-Douglas Debates (1858), One Hundred Fifty Years Later (2008)
  • University Lecturer: Marita Sturken
    Professor of Media, Culture, and Communication, New York University.
    Lecture:  Consuming Security: Defensive Design in the Comfort Cultureof Everyday Life

2007-08

Spring 2008

  • University Lecturer: Anselm Haverkamp,
    Professor of English and Director of the Poetics & Theory Program, New York University. 
    Lecture:  To Conceive of, in Pictures: Episodes from the History of Knowledge
  • University Lecturer:  Robert Duke
    Professor in Music &  Human Learning, University of Texas, Austin. Lecture:   Why Don’t Students Learn What We Think We Teach”
  • Messenger Lecturer:  Nancy Fraser,
    Professor of Philosophy and Politics, The New School of Social Research. 
    Lecture:   Disputing the Subject of Justice: National Citizenry, Global Humanity, or Transnational Community of Risk?

Fall 2007

  • Messenger Lecturer:  Michel Balinski,  Professor Emeritus, Ecole Polytechnique, Paris. Lectures:  Lecture 1:  How to apportion fairly:  Aristotle, the Talmud, the U.S. Congress and kidney transplants; Lecture 2:  How to elect and to rank:  Overcoming the paradoxes of social choice, electing a President of France and ranking wines; Lecture 3:  How to eliminate gerrymandering:  A new approach to representation, its realization in Zurich and its application to the U.S. Congress
  • University Lecturer:   Mandyam Srinivasan,  Professor of Visual Neuroscience, Queensland Brain Institute, University of Queensland. Lecture:  Small Brains, Smart Minds: Vision, Navigation, and ‘Cognition’ in Honeybees and Applications to Robotics
  • University Lecturer:   Speciosa Wandira former Ugandan Vice President. Lecture:  Achieving Freedom from Hunger, Poverty, and Poor Health in Sub-Saharan Africa: Priorities for Research and Public Policy

2000-07

Spring 2007

Messenger Lecturer:  Steven Weinberg, Nobel Laureate, Holder of the Josey Chair in Science and Professor of Physics & Astronomy, University of Texas at Austin. Lectures:  The Invention of Science: Poetry and Technology; The Invention of Science: Mathematics and Philosophy; A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology

Spring 2005

Messenger Lecturer:  Sir Martin Rees,
Astronomer Royal, University of Cambridge, UK.
Lecture:  Science and Survival in the 21st Century

Spring 2003

Messenger Lecturer:  Francis Fukuyama,
Johns Hopkins University.
University Lecture:  The State After September 11

Spring 2001

Messenger Lecturer:  Norman Myers
Consultant in Environment & Development.
University Lecture:  Environmental and Conservation Issues for the New Millenium

Fall 2001

Messenger Lecturer:  Janet Halley,
Harvard Law School.
University Lecture:  Sexuality Harassment/Same Sex Marriage

Fall 2000

University Lecturer:  David J.P. Barker, University of Southampton. University Lecture:  Early Life Experiences and Adult Disease

1990-99

Spring1999

Gerald R. Fink, Director, Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research. University Lecture:  We’re Off to See the Genome

Fall 1998

Judith Butler, Chancellor’s Professor, University of California at Berkeley. Lecture:  Psychoanalysis, Politics, and Kinship

Fall 1997

Hon. Rex  Nettleford, Deputy Vice Chancellor & Prof. of Continuing Studies, Univ. of W. Indies, Mona, Jamaica. University Lecture:  Cultural Identity and Development: A Caribbean Perspective

Spring 1996

Clifton R. Wharton, Former Deputy Secretary of State. University Lecture:  Presidential Politics and Foreign Policy: Diminishing America’s Global Stature

Fall 1996

Byron S.J. Weng, Prof. of Government & Public Administration, Chinese Univ. of Hong Kong. University Lecture:  China’s One Country, Two Systems’ Policy and Its Implications for Sino-American Relations

Spring 1995

Ross Chambers, Prof. of French and Comparative Literature, University of Michigan. University Lecture:  Aspects of Literature

Fall 1995

Helen Vendler, Professor of English, Harvard University. University Lecture:  Shakespeare’s Sonnets

Spring 1994

Martha Nussbaum, University Professor & Professor of Philosophy and Classics, Brown University. University Lecture:  Upheavals of Thought: A Theory of the Emotions

Fall 1994

Leo Bersani, Class of 1950 Professor of French, University of California at Berkeley. University Lecture:  Homos

Spring 1993

Bruno Latour, Professor at the Ecole National Superieure des Mines, Paris. University Lecture:  From Baboons to Nuclear Plants: A Common Geneaology for Technology and Society

Fall 1993

Ronald Takaki, Professor of Ethnic Studies, University of California at Berkeley. University Lecture:  A Past Re-Visioned: The Making of Multicultural America

Spring 1992

Maynard SolomonProfessor of Music, Julliard. UniversityLecture:  Mozart: A Family Portrait

Fall 1992

Peter Brooks, Professor of Humanities, Yale University. University Lecture:  The Place of the Body in Modern Narrative

Spring 1991

John & Jean Comaroff, Professors of Anthropology, University of Chicago. UniversityLecture:  Christianity, Colonialism, and Consciousness in South Africa

Fall 1991

Terrence Sejnowski, Professor of Biology & Physics, UCSD and the Salk Institute. University Lecture:  The Computational Brain

Spring 1990

Myles Burnyeat, Senior Research Fellow, All Souls College, UK. University Lecture:  Freedom, Anger, and Tranquility: An Archeaology of Feeling

Fall 1990

Sir Roger Penrose, Professor of Mathematics, Oxford University. University Lecture:  Three Worlds and Three Mysteries

1980-89

Spring 1989

Peter H. Nye, Professor Emeritus, Plant Science, Oxford University. University Lecture:  Towards the Quantitative Control of Crop Production and Quality

Fall 1989

Susan Moller Okin, Professor of Politics, Brandeis University. University Lecture:  The Public/Domestic Dichotomy

Spring 1988

Houston Baker, Professor of English & Human Relations, University of Pennsylvania. University Lecture:  Workings of the Spirit: The Poetics of Afro-American Women’s Writing

Fall 1988

Bert ValleeProfessor of Biochemical and Biophysical Sciences & Medicine, Harvard University. University Lecture:  How Zinc Affects Biology and Medicine and the Fundamentals of Our Lives

Fall 1987

Baron Carl Friedrich von Weizsacker,
Emeritus Professor of Physics & Philosophy, Universities of Munich & Hamburg.
University Lecture:  Philosophical and Political Consequences of Modern Science

Spring 1987

Charles Tilly, Professor of Sociology & History, New School for Social Research. Lecture:  War, States, and Collection Action

Spring 1986

Edward Said, Professor of English & Comparative Literature, Columbia University. Lecture:  Culture and Imperialism

Fall 1986

Irving Janis, Professor of Psychology, Yale University. Lecture:  Crisis Decision-Making in the Nuclear Age

Spring 1985

John E. Casida, Professor of Entomology, University of California at Berkeley. Lecture:  Retrospective and Prospect Views on Chemicals, Man, and the Environment

Fall 1985

Ernst Mayr, Professor Emeritus, Museum of Comparative Zoology, Harvard University. Lecture:  Evolutionary Biology and Philosophy

Fall 1984

  • Jurgen Habermas, Director, Max Planck Institute, Munich. Lecture:  Discourse on Modernity
  • Herbert York, Professor of Physics, University of California, San Diego. Lecture:  The Nuclear Arms Race

Spring 1983

  • Maarten Brands, Professor of Modern History, University of Amsterdam. Lecture:  Re-Inventing Europe
  • Paul de Man, Professor of French & Comparative Literature, Yale University. Lecture:  Rhetoric Aesthetics

Fall 1983

Quentin Skinner, Professor of Political Science, University of Cambridge, UK. Lecture:  The Idea of Liberty:  Classical and Contemporary Perspectives

Spring 1982

John T. Noonan, Jr., Professor of Law, University of California at Berkeley. Lecture:  Bribery

Fall 1981

Patrick Suppes, Professor of Philosophy, Stanford University. Lecture:  Rationality

Spring 1980

Robert J. LiftonProfessor of Psychiatry, Yale University. Lecture:  From Healer to killer:  The Doctors of Auschwitz

Fall 1980

  • Donald Kennedy, President Stanford University. Lecture:  Health, Science and Regulation
  • Rosemary Cramp, Professor of Art & Archaeology, Durham University, UK. Lecture:  The Viking Achievement

1970-79

Spring 1979

Marvin Minsky, Professor of Science, Computer Science Dept., MIT. Lecture:  The Construction of the Mind

Fall 1979

Marvin Minsky, Professor of Science, Computer Science Dept., MIT. Lecture:  The Construction of the Mind

Spring 1978

Jean Seznec, Professor of French Literature, University of Oxford. Lecture:  Revival and Metamorphoses of the Gods in Nineteenth Century Art and Literature

Fall 1978

Arthur Kantrowitz, Chairman, AVCO-Everett Research Laboratory, Inc.. Lecture:  A Technologist Looks at Anti-Technology

Spring 1977

Rene Girard, Professor of French & the Humanities, Johns Hopkins University. Lecture:  Sacrifice, Symbolic Thought and Judeo-Christian Culture

Fall 1977

David Grene, Professor of Social Thought, University of Chicago. Lecture:  Shakespeare: Politics, History, and Poetry

Spring 1976

Edward O. Wilson, Professor of Zoology, Harvard University. Lecture:  Sociobiology

Fall 1976

Noam Chomsky, Professor of Linguistics & Philosophy, MIT. Lecture:  Concepts of Language

Spring 1975

Charles Rosen, Pianist & Writer. Lecture:  Music and the Perspectives of Historical Criticism

Fall 1975

Walle J.H. Nauta, Profesor of Psychology, MIT. Lecture:  Mammalian Behavior and the Anatomy of the Brain

Spring 1974

  • Zhores Medvedev, Soviet Biologist & Critic. Lecture:  Intellectual Dissent in the Soviet Union
  • Harry Bober, Professor of the Humanities, New York University. Lecture:  Celtic Illuminated Manuscripts:  Enigmas and Mysteries

Spring 1973

Elting Morison, Killian Professor of the Class of 1926, MIT. Lecture:  Celtic Iluminated Manuscripts:  Engimas and Mysteries

Spring 1972

C.T. deWit, Professor of Theoretical Production Ecology, Agricultural University, the Netherlands. Lecture:  Theoretical Production Ecology:  An Attempt Toward Integration

Fall 1972

Garrett Hardin, Professor of Biology, University of California at Santa Barbara. Lecture:  The Value and Dignity of Life

Spring 1971

Jerzy Neyman, Professor of Statistics, University of California at Berkeley. Lecture:  A Statistician’s Experience in Three Domains of Science: Astronomy, Cancer, and Weather Modification

Fall 1971

David Daube, Professor of Law, University of California at Berkeley. Lecture:  Civil Disobedience in Antiquity

Fall 1970

Oswei Temkin, Professor of the History of Medicine, Johns Hopkins University. Lecture:  Galenism:  Rise and Decline of a Medical Philosophy

1960-69

Fall 1969

  • Yigael Yadin, Professor of Archaeology, Hebrew University, Jerusalem. Lecture:  From the Hasmoneans to Bar-Kochba: Archaelogical Findings and Finds in the Wilderness of Judea
  • Samuel H. Beer, Professor of Government, Harvard University. Lecture:  The Politics of American Federalism

Spring 1968

Henry Eyring, Professor of Chemistry & Metallurgy, University of Utah. Lecture:  The Scientific Models We Live By

Fall 1968

Michel Jouvet, M.D., Faculty of Medicine, University of Lyons, France. Lecture:  Sleep and Dreams

Spring 1967

Madame Jacqueline de Romilly, Professor of Greek, The Sorbonne. Lecture:  Aspects of Time in Greek Tragedy

Fall 1967

Dame Helen Louise Gardner, Professor of English Literature, University of Oxford, UK. Lecture:  Shakespeare’s Tragic Art

Fall 1965

A. Frey-Wyssling, Department of General Botany & Electron Microscopy, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology. Lecture:  Ultra-Structural Cell Organization

Spring 1964

C. Vann Woodward, Professor of History, Yale University. Lecture: The First Reconstruction in Light of the Second

Fall 1964

Richard Feynman, Professor of Theoretical Physics, California Institute of Technology. Lecture:  The Character of Physical Law

Spring 1963

H.L.A. Hart, Professor of Jurisprudence, University of Oxford, UK. Lecture:  Mind and Deed in the Law

Fall 1963

Kingsley Davis, Professor of Sociology, University of California at Berkeley. Lecture:  New Perspectives on Population: Change and Response in Modern Demographic History

Fall 1962

Alexander Hollaender, Director, Biology Division, Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Lecture:  Some Basic Problems in Radiation Biology

Spring 1961

William Haller, Professor of English, Barnard College, Columbia University. Lecture: The Elect Nation on Puritanism Reconsidered

Fall 1961

Harry Harlow, Professor of Psychology, University of Wisconsin. Lecture:  The Nature of Love and Affection in Primates

Spring 1960

Meyer Shapiro, Professor of Fine Arts, Columbia University. Lecture:  Abstract Painting