We join three Iraqi artists to discuss the challenges of filmmaking in present-day Iraq. ...
» view details
Against Ignorance: Science Education in the 21st Century
A Conversation with Richard Dawkins and Lawrence Krauss
RICHARD DAWKINS, LAWRENCE M. KRAUSS and MARK A. KAY (MODERATOR) Sunday, March 9, 2008
The rise of religiously motivated threats to scientific practice and instruction in American schools has motivated biologist...
» view details
The Beatles on the Brain
DANIEL LEVITIN, NICK BROMELL and JONATHAN BERGER Thursday, February 21, 2008
Forty years have passed since the Beatles released The White Album, introducing "Blackbird,"...
» view details
IRAQ: REFRAME (4):
What we Don't Know About America in Iraq: An Evening with Dahr Jamail
DAHR JAMAIL and MARK GONNERMAN (INTERVIEWER) Monday, February 4, 2008
In this fourth installment in the IRAQ: REFRAME series with Montalvo Arts Center, we enter...
» view details
IRAQ: REFRAME (3):
Iraq's Lost National Treasures
NADA SHABOUT, MCGUIRE GIBSON and ABBAS MILANI (moderator) Monday, January 28, 2008
In this third of five conversations in our IRAQ: REFRAME series, Abbas Milani,...
» view details
What Would Martin Say?
An Evening with Clarence B. Jones
CLARENCE B. JONES and MARK GONNERMAN (interviewer) Thursday, January 17, 2008
Join us for an in-depth conversation with Clarence B. Jones, Martin Luther King, Jr.’s counsel and draft speechwriter...
» view details
IRAQ: REFRAME (2): Three Contemporary Artists
Second of Five-Part Series
with Montalvo Arts Center
SINAN ANTOON, WAFAA BILAL, MICHAEL RAKOWITZ and GORDON KNOX (moderator) Monday, December 17, 2007
In this installment, we hear from three artists whose work helps reshape our understanding of Iraqi culture and the damage...
» view details
Esalen:
Education for Life on the Edge
MICHAEL MURPHY, JEFF KRIPAL and MARK GONNERMAN (moderator) Thursday, December 6, 2007
The brainchild of two Stanford graduates, Michael Murphy and Richard Price, Esalen Institute on the Big Sur coast has...
» view details
IRAQ: REFRAME
First of Five-Part Series
with Montalvo Arts Center
ANTHONY SHADID and MARJORIE MILLER (interviewer) Monday, November 12, 2007
The Aurora Forum at Stanford University is pleased and proud to join with Montalvo Arts Center to present the first of...
» view details
An Evening with Leonard Cohen and Philip Glass
LEONARD COHEN, PHILIP GLASS and ALAN ACOSTA (moderator) Monday, October 8, 2007
In anticipation of Stanford Lively Arts’ West Coast premiere of Book of Longing, the Aurora...
» view details
Making Connections:
Photographic Storytellers From Around the World
AKITUNDE AKINLEYE (Nigeria), ODED BALILTY (Israel), KATJA GAURILOFF (Lapland), ALTAF QADRI (Kashmir), CHRIS RAINIER (National Geographic Society), SARAH DEL SERONDE (Arizona), PAUL STOLL (Arizona), A YIN (Inner Mongolia) and SHAHIDUL ALAM Monday, October 1, 2007
The National Geographic Society’s All Roads Film Project recognizes and supports indigenous and underrepresented...
» view details
Clean, Secure, and Efficient Energy:
Can We Have It All?
Amy Goodman (moderator), Sally Benson, Paul Ehrlich, Fred Krupp, George Shultz and JB Straubel Wednesday, September 5, 2007
The race is on for commercialization of domestic fuels that shrink our carbon footprint, and change is in the wind: utilities...
» view details
New Media and Political Campaigns
Jonathan Alter, Dan Schnur and David Demarest (moderator) Sunday, July 15, 2007
What are we to make of the increasing expression of politics as media experience? How are "new media"...
» view details
Title IX at 35:
A Conversation with Billie Jean King
Billie Jean King and LaDoris Cordell (interviewer) Saturday, April 28, 2007
Title IX is the landmark legislation enacted in 1972 that establishes gender equity in schools, whether in academics or athletics....
» view details
Exposures of Truth:
Richard Avedon and Gordon Parks
Andy Grundberg, Deborah Willis and Wanda Corn (moderator) Wednesday, April 18, 2007
The Aurora Forum hosts this unique conversation on the photographic work of Richard Avedon (1923–2004) and...
» view details
Martin Luther King and Economic Justice:
The Fortieth Anniversary Commemoration of
Dr. King's "The Other America" Speech at Stanford
Allen Willis, Bernard LaFayette, Thomas F. Jackson and Mark Gonnerman Sunday, April 15, 2007
On 14 April 1967, Martin Luther King, Jr., made his second visit to Stanford's Memorial Auditorium. On this occasion he delivered...
» view details
Why Read Books?
Seth Lerer, Leah Price and Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht (moderator) Thursday, February 22, 2007
At a time when people express concern about the fate of the book, we join three virtuoso scholars—Seth Lerer,...
» view details
Spirituality and Social Change:
An Interfaith Roundtable
Rabbi Patricia Karlin-Neumann (moderator), Prof. Susannah Heschel, Imam Zaid Shakir, Rev. Dr. Heng Sure and Rev. Dr. Raphael Warnock Thursday, January 25, 2007
To celebrate the January 2007 publication of Advocate of the Social Gospel, volume VI of The Papers of Martin...
» view details
An Evening with the Kitchen Sisters
Davia Nelson, Nikki Silva and Alan Acosta (moderator) Thursday, December 7, 2006
The Kitchen Sisters—Davia Nelson and Nikki Silva—have been producing...
» view details
The Truth of War
Chris Hedges, Anthony Swofford and David Spiegel (moderator) Thursday, October 26, 2006
What are immediate and long-term effects of experiencing combat firsthand? In this conversation we probe this question...
» view details
Making Connections:
Photographic Storytellers
from Around the World
Saiful Huq, Larry McNeil, Peter Magubane, Andy Patrick, Sandra Sebastián Pedro, Chris Rainier and Newsha Tavakolian Tuesday, October 3, 2006
The National Geographic Society’s All Roads Photography Program recognizes and supports talented indigenous...
» view details
Conversations from the Edge:
Vanishing Cultures and the Ethnosphere Project
Wade Davis, Chris Rainier and Mark Gonnerman (moderator) Monday, October 2, 2006
In Light at the Edge of the World: A Journey through the Realm of Vanishing Cultures, explorer Wade Davis coined...
» view details
American Gospel:
Religion, Politics, and the Press
Jon Meacham Sunday, July 16, 2006
Join us as Newsweek managing editor Jon Meacham discusses religion, one of the most pervasive yet least understood...
» view details
Democracy and the Middle East:
Prospects and Problems
Larry Diamond, Abbas Milani and Erik Jensen (moderator) Thursday, April 20, 2006
In his recent book, Squandered Victory: The American Occupation and the Bungled Effort to Bring Democracy to Iraq,...
» view details
An Evening with Calvin Trillin
Alan Acosta (interviewer) Thursday, March 16, 2006
Famous as America's "deadline poet," Calvin Trillin has been a gadfly in verse for The Nation since 1990, delighting...
» view details
Celebrating South African Freedom:
A Symposium on the International
Campaign to End Apartheid
Clayborne Carson, Connie Field, Amanda Kemp, Donald Kennedy, Steve Phillips and Justice Albie Sachs Saturday, January 21, 2006
The Aurora Forum, the Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute, and the Stanford Institute for International...
» view details
Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass:
A 150th Anniversary Celebration
Kenneth Fields, Shelley Fisher Fishkin, Albert Gelpi and Hilton Obenzinger Thursday, December 1, 2005
On July 4, 1855, an anonymous poem entitled Leaves of Grass was published in Brooklyn. Nothing like it had ever been...
» view details
The Heart of Nonviolence:
His Holiness the Dalai Lama
and the Reverend Scotty McLennan
Friday, November 4, 2005
The Dalai Lama, who has become known worldwide for his advocacy of peace, tolerance and compassion, lives in exile in Dharamsala,...
» view details
Arbitrary Convictions:
Capital Punishment in the United States
Sister Helen Prejean, Lawrence C. Marshall and William F. Abrams (moderator) Thursday, October 27, 2005
As of October 2004, 117 wrongfully convicted persons from twenty-five states have been released from America's death rows,...
» view details
Cameras and Cultures:
The Myth of Objective Documentation
Click here for presenters' bios Monday, September 26, 2005
The All Roads Photographers Program of the National Geographic Society recognizes and supports talented photographic storytellers...
» view details
Is News Journalism Under Siege?
A Conversation with the Editors of Newsweek and Time
Mark Whitaker, Jim Kelly and Richard Stolley (moderator) Sunday, July 17, 2005
In this conversation with the editors of Newsweek and Time, we think about democratic ideals in the age of consolidated...
» view details
Restorative Justice:
Reducing Crime by Reforming Prisoner Experience
Michael Hennessey, Cathrine Sneed and Michael Krasny (moderator) Thursday, April 14, 2005
Today nearly 70 percent of all prisoners will be rearrested within three years of their release. Might awareness of this failure...
» view details
America’s Jesus
Richard Fox, Stephen Prothero and Thomas Sheehan (moderator) Thursday, March 3, 2005
Religious studies professors Thomas Sheehan and Stephen Prothero join historian Richard Fox for a lively conversation...
» view details
Nature’s Economy:
Population, Consumption, and Sustainability
Paul Ehrlich, Anne Ehrlich and Gretchen Daily (moderator) Thursday, January 20, 2005
Stanford conservation biologists Paul and Anne Ehrlich discuss three challenging global trends: increasing population, rising...
» view details
Onward! A Post-Election Town Hall Meeting
Amy Goodman, Larry Diamond, David Dill and John McManus Thursday, November 4, 2004
Please join our post-election Town Hall Meeting. We begin with forty-five minutes of on-stage conversation between Amy Goodman,...
» view details
Democracy Matters:
An evening with Cornel West
Thursday, September 30, 2004
Tonight we are privileged to hear Cornel West, the Class of 1943 University Professor of Religion at Princeton University,...
» view details
Democracy and Dissent
Lewis Lapham and Pamela Karlan Wednesday, September 22, 2004
In his new book, Gag Rule: On the Stifling of Dissent and Democracy, Harper's Magazine editor Lewis Lapham offers...
» view details
Waging Peace:
Practical Approaches to a Violent World
Arun Gandhi, James Gilligan, Frances Moore Lappé, Michael Nagler and Mark Gonnerman Saturday, August 14, 2004
At the beginning of a new century marked already by war and seemingly intractable conflicts, it is more important than ever...
» view details
Talking Right and Left:
The Language of American Politics
Deborah Tannen, Geoffrey Nunberg and Alan Acosta (moderator) Wednesday, May 5, 2004
In recent decades, political debates have often come down to struggles for control of the language: leftist agenda and...
» view details
True Colors:
Myth, Magic, and the American Flag
Carolyn Marvin and Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht Monday, March 1, 2004
In 1989, a University of Pennsylvania professor, Carolyn Marvin, stood in front of her free speech class and, without speaking,...
» view details
The American Soul:
Founding Ideals and the American Dream
Jacob Needleman and Scotty McLennan Monday, January 26, 2004
In his recent book, The American Soul: Rediscovering the Wisdom of the Founders, Jacob Needleman writes: America...
» view details
An Evening with Thomas Jefferson
Clay S. Jenkinson and Jack Rakove Monday, December 15, 2003
Clay S. Jenkinson began presenting Thomas Jefferson in character in 1984 and has since made presentations in nearly every state...
» view details
The American Presidency:
Character and Crisis
Michael Beschloss, David Kennedy and Michael Krasny (moderator) Tuesday, October 28, 2003
In the past half-century, the question of character has loomed large in discussions of the American presidency. Does a person...
» view details
American Media and the Culture of Fear
James Bettinger, Barry Glassner, Jay Harris and Paul Saffo Wednesday, July 23, 2003
Are mainstream news media creating an irrational climate of fear? Does 'the news' reflect your personal experience? Are Americans...
» view details
Your Body on the Line?
Julia Butterfly Hill and Rebecca Solnit Monday, June 2, 2003
In December 1997, Julia Butterfly Hill, then age 23, climbed up “Luna,” a thousand-year-old redwood in Humboldt County, California,...
» view details
Public Life in a Wired World
Lawrence Lessig, Pamela Samuelson and Geoffrey Nunberg Monday, May 5, 2003
Has the internet expanded democracy, or has it accelerated the privatization of ideas? How does it affect institutions that...
» view details
From Sharecropper’s Daughter to Surgeon General
General
Joycelyn Elders and LaDoris Cordell Monday, April 14, 2003
Joycelyn Elders entered college at age 15 after growing up in a sharecropper’s shack. She attended medical school on the G....
» view details
Simply Delicious
Frances Moore Lappe and Alice Waters Monday, March 3, 2003
In 1971, Alice Waters opened Chez Panisse restaurant in Berkeley and invented "California cuisine." That same year, Frances...
» view details
Doing Good Work
Joanne Ciulla, Richard Rodriguez and Debra Satz (moderator) Monday, February 10, 2003
Why do Americans both celebrate work and continually strive to eliminate it? What makes work meaningful, dignified, and socially...
» view details
National Pride, National Shame
Angela Davis, Richard Rorty, Gordon Wood and Kathleen Sullivan (moderator) Monday, January 13, 2003
What gives us glowing pride in our country? What gives us cause for shame? If we have gone wrong somewhere, how can we get...
» view details
Our 2008-09 Series of Public Conversations
Tuesday, November 30, 1999
...
» view details
