Lives of Liberty Lecture Series
In the fall, the Lives of Liberty lecture series will include distinguished scholars whose work deals with the Marquis’ life or the times in which he lived. In the spring, the series will feature accomplished individuals whose lives embody the ideals of Lafayette in the world today. Information on the speakers will be posted here as scheduling advances.
David McCullough
Keynote Lecture “Ties that Bind: America and France,” 8 p.m. Sept. 5, Kamine Gymnasium
David McCullough, recipient of the Pulitzer Prize for his biographies of Harry S Truman and John Adams, will kick off the Lives of Liberty series with a keynote talk Sept. 5.
The father of a Lafayette graduate and recipient of an honorary doctor of laws degree from the College in 1995, McCullough was presented the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian award, by President George W. Bush in December 2006. He is a world-renowned writer and historian who has received more than 70 awards and honors for his books and articles. In addition to Pulitzers for Truman and John Adams, McCullough’s biography of Theodore Roosevelt, Mornings on Horseback, won the 1982 National Book Award for Biography and The Path Between the Seas: The Creation of the Panama Canal, 1870-1914, won the National Book Award for History in 1978.
He is also the author of The Great Bridge: The Epic Story of the Building of the Brooklyn Bridge (1983), The Johnstown Flood (1987), Brave Companions: Portraits in History (1992), and most recently 1776 (2005). None of his books has ever been out of print.
He has been honored with the National Book Foundation Distinguished Contribution to American Letters Award, National Humanities Medal, St. Louis Literary Award, Carl Sandburg Award, and New York Public Library’s Literary Lion Award.
McCullough received his B.A. in English literature from Yale University and has been given more than 30 honorary degrees. He has also hosted public television’s Smithsonian World and The American Experience and narrated Ken Burns’ documentaries The Civil War and Napoleon and the movie Seabiscuit.
Ron Chernow
“Intertwined Lives: Alexander Hamilton, George Washington, and the Birth of the American Republic,” 4:15 p.m. Oct. 19, Williams Center for the Arts
Called “America’s best business biographer” by Fortune magazine, Ron Chernow is an author, journalist, lecturer, and television and radio commentator.
His first book, The House of Morgan: An American  Banking Dynasty and the Rise of Modern Finance (1990), won the National Book Award for Nonfiction. In 1999, the Modern Library selected The House of Morgan as one of the 100 best nonfiction books published in the twentieth century.
His most recent book, Alexander Hamilton (2004), was the first recipient of the new George Washington Book Prize in 2005, which at $50,000 is one of the largest book awards in the nation. Alexander Hamilton was also named one of 2004's Ten Best Books by the New York Times and BusinessWeek.
Chernow’s other publications are The Warburgs (1994); The Death of the Banker: The Decline and Fall of the Great Financial Dynasties and the Triumph of the Small Investor (1997) and Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr. (1998), which spent sixteen weeks on The New York Times bestseller list.
He is a frequent contributor to The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, and a familiar figure on national radio and television shows with appearances on Today, NBC Nightly News, Nightline, World News Tonight with Peter Jennings, CBS Evening News, Charlie Rose, The Newshour with Jim Lehrer, C-Span, CNN, Fox News, CNBC, the History Channel and NPR. Chernow has lectured at the National Archives, the Library of Congress, and the United States Treasury Department. He has degrees in English literature from Yale and Cambridge universities.
James M. McPherson
“Tried by War, Decided by Victory: Abraham Lincoln as Commander in Chief,” 7:30 p.m. Feb. 4, Williams Center for the Arts
James M. McPherson is a noted American Civil War historian and author. In October, he became the first recipient of the $100,000 Pritzker Military Library Literature Award forlifetime achievement in military writing.
As the George Henry Davis ’86 Professor of History Emeritus at Princeton University, McPherson is best known for his Pulitzer  Prize-winning work Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era (1988). For Cause and Comrades: Why Men Fought in the Civil War (1997) won the Lincoln Prize, which is presented to the best non-fiction historical work of the year on the American Civil War. His book, The Struggle for Equality: Abolitionists and theNegro in the Civil War and Reconstruction (1964), received an Anisfield-Wolf Book Awardfor contributions to the appreciation and understanding of race and culture.
He is the author of more than 10 other books. His latest work, This Mighty Scourge: Perspectives on the Civil War, was published earlier this year.
McPherson served as president of the American Historical Association in 2003 and is a member of the editorial board of Encyclopaedia Britannica. In 1991, he was appointed by the United States Senate to the Civil War Sites Advisory Commission, which determined the major battle sites, evaluated their conditions, and then recommended strategies for their preservation.
McPherson shares his name with James B. McPherson, a major general who served under William Tecumseh Sherman and Ulysses S. Grant during the Civil War. He received his Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University in 1963 and his B.A. from Gustavus Adolphus College in 1958.
Simon Schama
“Remembering the Abolition of the Slave Trade, 200 Years On: British Eloquence and American Silence,” 6 p.m. Feb. 11, Colton Chapel
Simon Schama’s research and teaching focus on European cultural and environmental history and the history of art. He is a professor in the department of art history and archeology at Columbia University and received his B.A. and M.A. degrees from Cambridge University. In 2001, he was made a Commander of the British Empire by Queen Elizabeth II.
His first book, Patriots and Liberators: Revolution in the Netherlands 1780-1813 (1977),  won the United Kingdom’s Wolfson Prize for History. Citizens. A Chronicle of the French Revolution (1989) received the UK’s NCR Book Award for non-fiction. In 1995, Landscape and Memory won the W.H. Smith Literary Award, which celebrates the most outstanding contributions to literature by a UK citizen.
He is also the author of Two Rothschilds and the Land of Israel (1979); The Embarrassment of Riches: An Interpretation of Dutch Culture in the Golden Age (1987); Dead Certainties (1991); Rembrandt’s Eyes (1999); the trilogy, A History of Britain vol I The Edge of the World (2000), volume 2 The British Wars ( 2001), and volume 3 The Fate of Empire (2002); Hang-Ups: A Collection of Essays on Art (2004); and Rough Crossings: Britain, the Slaves and the American Revolution (2006).
Schama has been a regular contributor to The New Republic; The New York Review of Books; The Guardian; and since 1994, art and cultural critic for The New Yorker, winning a National Magazine Award for his art criticism in 1996.
His television work as writer and host for the BBC includes Art of the Western World; Rembrandt: The Public Gaze and the Private Eye; a five-part series based on Landscape and Memory; an eight-part series, The Power of Art; and the award-winning, 15-part History of Britain, which also ran on the History Channel. Schama’s lecture is also supported under the auspices of the Thomas Roy and Lura Forrest Jones Visiting Lecturer Program.
Gloria Steinem
"The Longest Revolution: Social Movements and Women's Rights," 8 p.m. March 4,
Colton Chapel
Gloria Steinem is a writer, lecturer, editor, and feminist activist.
In 1972, she co-founded Ms. Magazine, where she remained one of its editors for fifteen years and continues to serve as a consulting editor. In 1968, she helped found New York magazine and served as a political columnist and wrote feature articles.
She helped found the Women's Action Alliance, a pioneering national  information center that specialized in nonsexist, multiracial children's education, and the National Women's Political Caucus, a group that continues to work to advance the numbers of pro-equality women in elected and appointed office at a national and state level.
For her writing, Steinem has received the Front Page and Clarion awards, National Magazine awards, an Emmy Citation for excellence in television writing, the Lifetime Achievement in Journalism Award from the Society of Professional Journalists, and the Society of Writers Award from the United Nations.
She also received the Bill of Rights Award from the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California, the National Gay Rights Advocates Award, the Ceres Medal from the United Nations, and a number of honorary degrees. In 1995, Parenting magazine selected her for its Lifetime Achievement Award for her work in promoting girls' self-esteem, and Biography magazine listed her as one of the 25 most influential women in America. In 1993, she was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame in Seneca Falls, New York.
Her books include the bestsellers Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions (1983), Marilyn: Norma Jean, on the life of Marilyn Monroe (1986), Revolution from Within: A Book of Self-Esteem (1992), and Moving Beyond Words (1994).
Salman Rushdie
8 p.m. April 3, Colton Chapel
Sir Salman Rushdie is an award-winning and controversial novelist and
essayist. In June 2007, he was appointed Knight Bachelor for "services
to literature" by Queen Elizabeth II.
Rushdie’s first novel, Grimus, was published in 1975, but he first achieved fame with his second novel, Midnight's Children (1981). It won the Booker Prize for Fiction, the James Tait Black Memorial Prize (for fiction), an Arts Council Writers' Award, and the English-Speaking Union Award. In 1993, it  was judged to have been the 'Booker of Bookers,' the best novel to have won the Booker Prize for Fiction in the award's 25-year history.
It was Rushdie's fourth novel, The Satanic Verses (1988), which catapulted him into the international spotlight as the center of controversy. The book, winner of the Whitbread Novel Award in 1988, brought about accusations of blasphemy against Islam and demonstrations by Islamist groups in India and Pakistan.
The orthodox Iranian leadership issued a fatwa against Rushdie in 1989 - effectively a sentence of death - and he was forced into hiding under the protection of the British government and police. The publication of the book and the fatwa sparked violence around the world, with bookstores being firebombed and public rallies in which copies of the book were burned. Also, several people associated with translating or publishing the book were attacked, seriously injured, and even killed. It is only within the last decade that Rushdie has been able to resume his normal literary life.
Rushdie has publish numerous other books including, Shame (1983), which won the Prix du Meilleur Livre Etranger; The Jaguar Smile (1987); Haroun and the Sea of Stories (1990), which won the Writers' Guild Award (Best Children's Book); Imaginary Homelands: Essays and Criticism 1981-1991 (1991); East, West (1994); The Moor's Last Sigh (1995); The Ground Beneath Her Feet (1999); Fury (2001); Step Across This Line: Collected Non-fiction 1992-2002 (2002); and Shalimar The Clown (2005). He is also co-author (with Tim Supple and Simon Reade) of the stage adaptation of Midnight's Children, premiered by the Royal Shakespeare Company in 2002.
Rushdie received the British Book Awards Author of the Year honor in 1996. He was awarded the Austrian State Prize for European Literature in 1993 and the Aristeion Literary Prize in 1996, and has received eight honorary doctorates. He was elected to the Board of American PEN in 2002.
Born in Bombay, India, Rushdie received a history degree from King's College, Cambridge. He currently serves as the Distinguished Writer in Residence at Emory University and was previously the Honorary Professor in the Humanities at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He was a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and a Distinguished Fellow in Literature at the University of East Anglia. |
