Lawrence University Convocation Series Features Spectrum of Difference Makers
APPLETON, WIS. -- Political, medical, social and literary difference-makers spanning four decades will share their perspectives during Lawrence University's 2002-2003 convocation series.
Renowned peace and civil rights activist Rev. William Sloane Coffin, noted neurologist and best-selling author Dr. Oliver Sacks, ground-breaking political strategist and legal scholar Susan Estrich, foreign policy expert Fareed Zakaria and Pulitzer Prize-winning Native American poet and novelist N. Scott Momaday will participate in this year's series.
Lawrence President Richard Warch opens the convocation series Thursday Sept. 26 with his annual matriculation address. All convocations are held in the Lawrence Memorial Chapel at 11:10 a.m. and are free and open to the public.
Coffin, who held Lawrence's Scarff Memorial Distinguished Professorship in 1995-96 and again in the spring of 1997, returns to Appleton Oct. 8 to deliver the address, "A Call to Abolish Nuclear Weapons." Coffin will be making an unprecedented fourth convocation appearance. The former long-time chaplain at Yale University, he was the first guest speaker when Lawrence revived its convocation series in 1978 and has also delivered addresses in 1988 and 1998.
Coffin first rose to national prominence in the 1960s as one of the seven "Freedom Riders" arrested while protesting segregation laws in Montgomery, Ala. In 1979, he was one of four clergymen invited by Iran's ruling Revolutionary Council to celebrate Christmas services with the American hostages held at the U.S. Embassy in Teheran. From 1987-90, Coffin served as president of SANE/FREEZE: Campaign for Global Security, the largest peace and justice organization in the U.S.
Sacks, who has created compassionate drama from the dysfunctions of the brain, is a clinical professor of neurology at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine and adjunct professor of neurology at the New York University School of Medicine. He visits Thursday, Nov. 14 to deliver the address, "Creativity and the Brain."
He has written nine books, including "Awakenings," the best-selling story of the survivors of sleeping sickness which became the inspiration for the Oscar-nominated movie of the same name and starred Robert De Niro and Robin Williams.
His best known work may be his 1985 book, "The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat," a collection of case histories from the far borderlands of neurological experience in which he describes patients struggling to live with conditions ranging from Tourette's Syndrome to autism, parkinsonism, musical hallucination, phantom limb syndrome, schizophrenia, retardation and Alzheimer's disease.
Estrich, the first woman to head a national presidential campaign, presents "Civil Liberties in the Times of Terror: The Balance Between Security and Freedom" Thursday, Jan. 30, 2003.
The youngest woman ever granted tenure at Harvard Law School, Estrich managed Michael Dukakis' 1988 bid for the White House after serving as a senior policy advisor to the Mondale/Ferraro ticket in 1984.
A frequent guest on national news programs for her expertise in the areas of gender inequality, criminal law and civil rights, Estrich has written five books, including "Sex and Power" in 2000 and "Getting Away with Murder: How Politics is Destroying the Criminal Justice System" in 1998. She is the Robert Kingsley Professor of Law and Political Science at the University of Southern California.
Zakaria, widely regarded as one of America's best new foreign policy minds, is the editor of Newsweek International. He visits the campus Tuesday, March 4 to deliver the address, "Why Do They Hate Us? America in a New World."
In 1992 at the age of 28, Zakaria was named managing editor of Foreign Affairs, the nation's premier foreign policy journal, becoming the youngest person ever to hold that position. As editor of Newsweek International, Zakaria oversees 26 foreign language editions and three English editions in Europe, Asia, Africa, Latin America and the Middle East. He was named "one of the 21 most important people in the 21st century" by Esquire magazine.
Momaday, a poet, novelist, playwright, painter and storyteller, comes to Lawrence Thursday, May 22 for the college's annual Honors Convocation. An important voice on the American literary landscape for more than a generation, he has written 13 books, including novels, poetry collections, literary criticism and works on Native American culture. His first novel, "House Made of Dawn," won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1969.
A Kiowa Indian who spent his childhood on the Navajo, Apache and Pueblo reservations of the Southwest, Momaday has been recognized with a Guggenheim Fellowship a National Institute of Arts and Letters award and the "Mondello," Italy's highest literary award.
Momaday has held tenured appointments at the University of California-Santa Barbara and the University of California-Berkeley, Stanford University and the University of Arizona. He also was the first professor to teach American literature at the University of Moscow in Russia.