Audio
Angela Davis (1988-1989)
Feb 09, 1989
“Race, Class, and Gender in the Reagan-Bush Era” Angela Davis was a prolific American professor and Black activist. During this time, she co-founded Sisters Inside and Critical Resistance. She first gained prominence as a Black nationalist activist during the 1960s, when she beca
Stephen Jay Gould (1987-1988)
Nov 18, 1987
“Human Equality is a Contingent Fact of History” Stephen J. Gould was an evolutionary scientist, a professor at Harvard, and a leading opponent of scientific creationism. He was also a prominent author. His award-winning book, The Mismeasure of Man, examined the racist [...]
Frank Kermode (1986-1987)
Jan 20, 1987
“Are We Moderns or Post-Moderns? The Present State of the Arts” Frank Kermode was an eminent literary critic and King Edward VII Professor of English Literature at Cambridge. At the time of his talk, he had written and edited 25 books of literary criticism, including books [...]
Richard Selzer (1984-1985)
Feb 11, 1985
“The Exact Location of the Soul” Richard Selzer was a surgeon-turned-writer. He was a professor of surgery at Yale University, an award-winning essayist, and the author of four books including Mortal Lessons, a book of essays on the art of surgery. In 1960, following a [...]
Marilyn Ferguson (1983-1984)
Mar 06, 1984
“The Visionary Factor” Marilyn Ferguson was an American author, editor, and public speaker. She was best known for her 1980 book The Aquarian Conspiracy, which became a key text of the New Age movement. After attending Mesa College and the University of Colorado, she began [...]
Ivan Illich (1983-1984)
Feb 28, 1984
“Newspeak and Computer Language” Ivan Illich was a theologian, philosopher, historian, and sociologist. Forced to leave Austria during the Second World War because of his mother’s Jewish ancestry, his family moved to Italy, where he completed school and earned a PhD in [...]
John Meisel (1983-1984)
Oct 19, 1983
“Newspeak in the Information Society” John Meisel was Professor Emeritus in the Department of Political Studies at Queen’s University and a well-known researcher of political behaviour in Canada. From 1949 to 1979, he taught at Queen’s. Throughout his career, he studied [...]
Julian Symons (1983-1984)
Oct 18, 1983
“Freedom and Order in 1984” Julian Symons was a British crime fiction writer and poet. He founded the poetry magazine Twentieth Century Verse in 1937 and edited it for two years before turning his attention to crime novels. During his lifetime, Symons published more than 70 [...]
Ronald Dworkin (1981-1982)
Feb 11, 1982
“The Paradoxes of Equality” Ronald Dworkin was a widely-respected philosopher of law. At the time of his talk, Dworkin was the professor of jurisprudence at Oxford. In his research and teaching, he examined how the law should deal with race, abortion, euthanasia and [...]
Michael Harrington (1981-1982)
Feb 09, 1982
“The Necessity of Solidarity” Michael Harrington was a prolific socialist writer and at the time of his talk was a political scientist at Queen’s College (NYC). He was also a founding member of Democratic Socialists of America. Harrington served as the first editor of New [...]
Amartya K. Sen (1981-1982)
Oct 07, 1981
“Paradoxes of Liberty” Amartya K. Sen is an Indian economist and philosopher and the current Thomas W. Lamont University Professor and Professor of Economics and Philosophy at Harvard University. He has also taught at Cambridge, Oxford, Jadavpur University Calcutta, the [...]
Han Suyin (1980-1981)
Oct 06, 1980
“The Chinese Perception of the World Today” and “Writers and Writing in China Today” Han Suyin was a well-known author and authority on Chinese literature. Her 15 works of fiction, autobiography, history and cultural analysis include A Many-Splendored Thing (1952), which [...]