Winter/Spring 2019

February 5 James Dixon, Architect and expert on architectural styles in San Francisco and the Bay Area

Victorian/Edwardian Residential Architectural Styles in San Francisco

February 19 Steven Burchik, Veteran, Author, Photographer

Compass and a Camera: One Soldier’s View of the Vietnam War

March 5 Brian Merchant, Technology journalist and author of The One Device: The Secret History of the iPhone

The World Inside the iPhone

March 19 Caroline Winterer, Anthony P. Meier Professor in the
Humanities and Director of the Stanford Humanities Center

The Remarkable Genius of Benjamin Franklin

April 2 Elliot Engel, Emeritus English Professor, University of North Carolina, North Carolina State, and Duke University

Shakespeare 400 Years Later: More Alive Than Ever

April 16 Tomas Jimenez, Associate Professor of Sociology and Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity, Stanford University

Making Sense of Immigration Hysteria in the Nation of
Immigrants

May 7 Megan Smolenyak, Genealogist and Author

No Man Left Behind (Bringing our Soldiers Home from WWI, WWII, Korea, and Vietnam)

May 21 Andrew Fraknoi, Emeritus Chair, Astronomy Department,
Foothill College

Celebrating Stephen Hawking: His Amazing Life and Scientific Work

June 4 Richard Kogan, Julliard-trained concert pianist and Harvard-educated psychiatrist

The Mind and Music of George Gershwin

Fall/Winter 2018-2019

September 18 Janine Zacharia, Carlos Kelly McClatchy Lecturer, Stanford Department of Communication, former Jerusalem Bureau Chief for the Washington Post

The Era of Noise: From Fake News to the Future of Journalism

October 2 Chris Bliss, Tonight Show comedian, TED speaker, and Bill of Rights advocate

Comedy is Translation

October 16 Allison Hobbs, Associate History Professor and Director of African and African American Studies at Stanford University

A Chosen Exile: A History of Racial Passing in American Life

November 6 Joseph Luzzi, Author and Professor of Comparative Literature at Bard College

The Presidential Library: Books That Shaped Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, Roosevelt, and Other Commanders-in-Chief

November 20 Thomas Sanger, Author and Journalist

The Athena Story: The Forgotten Tale of a Passenger Ship Torpedoed on the First Day of WWII

December 4 Gregory Boyle, Founder, Homeboy Industries, the largest gang-intervention, rehabilitation. and re-entry program in the world

Lessons from the Field: Kinship as an Intervention

January 15 Laura Ling, Award-winning journalist and co-author of Somewhere Inside: One Sister’s Captivity in North Korea and the Other’s Fight to Bring Her Home

Journey of Hope

Fall/Winter 2017/2018

September 19 Adam Johnson, Phil and Penny Knight Professor of Creative Writing, Stanford University

Imagining North Korea

October 3 Robert Wittman, Former F.B.I. special agent; founder of the F.B.I. Art Crime Team

THE DEVIL’S DIARY: Alfred Rosenberg and the Stolen Secrets of the Third Reich

October 17 Denise Erickson, Professor of Art History, Canada College; lecturer at the Cantor Arts Center, Stanford University

Americans in Paris: Impressionism and the American Experience

November 7 Joel Pett, Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist

Real Cartoons in the Age of Fake News

November 21 Jessica Yu, Author; Academy Award-winning filmmaker

Sowing Hope: Stories from”The Garden of the Lost and Abandoned”

December 5 Chris McKay, Senior Scientist, NASA Ames Research Center

Life on Other Worlds

January 16 Rudy Maxa, Travel journalist; Emmy Award-winning host of “Rudy Maxa’s World”

The Transformational Power of Travel

Fall 2016

September 20 Nizar Ibraham, PhD.,  Lead author of a study on the creatures who lived 100 million years ago in North Africa and could swim

Spinosaurus: Lost Giant of the Cretaceous

October 4 Chef Roland Mesnier, Executive White House Chef, 1979-2004

All the Presidents’ Pastries

October 18 Rob Kapilow, Composer, conductor, author, NPR music commentator, along with the St. Lawrence String Quartet, ensemble-in-residence at Stanford University

Hayden and the Detective Novel: Does Music Have a Plot?

November 1 Mark D. Smith MD. MBA, Founder and CEO of California Health Care Foundation; Clinical faculty member, University of California, San Francisco

Making America’s Health Care Great (Again?)

November 15 Brigid Barton PhD., Professor Emerita, Art History, Santa Clara University; Lecturer, Stanford University Continuing Studies

Paris and Impressionism, the history of a new city and a new style; how Impressionist artists looked at Napolean III and Hausmann’s renovated Paris

December 6 Gary Griggs, Director of Marine Sciences, Distingished Professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences, University of California, Santa Cruz

Climate Change and the California Coast

 

January 17 Marc Lapadula, Playwright, screenwriter, and award-winning film producer; lecturer at Yale University on screen writing since 1992

Four Films that Changed America

Winter/Spring 2016

February 2 Lorrin Koran, MD., Professor of Psychiatry, Emeritus, Stanford University Medical Center and former Director, Stanford Medical Center, Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder Clinic and Research Program

Overcoming Obessions and Compulsions

February 16 Larry Gerston, PhD., Professor Emeritus of Political Science, San Jose State University

The 2016 Election: Why We Should Care (And Why Few People Do!)

March 1 Elizabeth J. Freeman, Director, VA Palo Alto Health Care System

VA Palo Alto Health Care System: The transformation of health care with a Veteran-centered focus

March 15 Rick Steves, Advocate of smart, independent travel; writer, producer of tv series “Rick Steves’ Europe”

Broadening Your Global Perspective Through Travel

April 5 Richard Blanco, Inaugural Poet Laureate

Becoming American: An Inaugural Poet’s Journey

April 19 Karl Eikenberry, Director of the U.S. Asia Security Initiative at the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center; Former Ambassador to Afghanistan (May 2009 – July 2011); Retired Lieutenant General, U.S. Army

America and Its Military – Drifting Apart

May 3 Maureen Corrigan, Book critic for NPR’s Fresh Air; Columnist for The Washington Post; Lecturer in English at Georgetown University

So We Read On: How The Great Gatsby Came to Be and Why It Endures

May 17 John King, San Francisco Chronicle’s Urban Design Critic; author of Citiscapes: San Francisco and its Buildings

What Yesterday’s Buildings Say About Today’s San Francisco

June 7 Hank Greely, Deane F. and Kate Edelman Johnson Professor of Law and Professor, by courtesy, of Genetics at Stanford University

The End of Sex: The Future of Human Reproduction

Fall 2015

September 15 Tim Farrell,  46 yr. English Teacher, Gunn High School, Palo Alto; Docent Emeritus, Filoli; Actor and IPA Brew Master

A “Not-so-Secret Life”: Charles Dickens in his novels

October 6 Victoria Lautman, Journalist, Art Historian and Indiaphile

Beyond the Taj Mahal: Inside India

October 20 Larry Hancock, General Director with Artists from the Opera San Jose; Mr. Hancock has been with OSJ for more than 30 years

Duets & Arias from Grand Opera

November 3 Denise Kiernan, Journalist, Producer and Author

The Girls of Atomic City – spies, secrecy and the Manhatten Project

November 17 Marcia Coyle, Chief Washington Correspondent for the National Law Journal, Lawyer and Journalist

The Impact of Recent Supreme Court Decisions

December 1 Kay Payne, Docent, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco

A Day in the Life of the Renaissance: A lively guided visit to Florence and Venice, via contemporary works by da Vinci, Botticelli, Raphael & more

 

January 19 Peter Walsh, Expert in organizational design; radio and tv personality; author

Its All Too Much: Living a Richer Life with Less Stuff

Winter/Spring 2015

 

February 3 Michael McFaul,  U.S. Ambassador to Russia, 2011-2014; Director of Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford

Causes and Consequences of Our Conflict with Russia

February 17 Adrienne Faillace, Producer, Archive of American Television

Capturing Television History One Voice at a Time

March 3 David Lenox, AIA, Stanford University Architect since 2005

Stanford University: Making Connections to the Past and the Future

March 17 Ellen Sussman, Author

A Writer’s Life

April 7 Severin Borenstein, E.T. Grether Professor of Business Administration and Public Policy at the Haas School of Business and Research Associate of the Energy Institute at Haas

Exciting Progress and Harsh Realities in the Race to Low-Carbon Energy

April 21 Karl Eikenberry, U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan, 2009-2011; Lt. General, U.S. Army (ret); faculty member, Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center at Stanford University

The Future of Sino-American Relations

May 5 James Delgado, Director of Maritime Heritage in the Office of National Marine Sanctuaries for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration

Diving and Documenting the Titanic Wreck Site: What We Are Still Learning

May 19 Simon Pennington, M.A., lecturer in Art History, Professor, Foothill College

Designing the Future: Modern Design and the Creative Economy

June 2 Helene Cooper, Liberian-born American journalist; New York Times Pentagon correspondent; previously New York Times White House correspondent; author – The House at Sugar Beach: In Search of a Lost African Childhood

All of This

Fall 2014

September 16 Martha Raddatz, ABC News Senior Global Affairs Correspondent

View from Washington

October 7 Hon. Karl Eikenberry, Former US Ambassador to Afghanistan and Lt. General, US Army; William J. Perry Fellow in International Security, Center for International Security and Cooperation; and faculty member, Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center, Stanford University

The End of America’s Long War in Afghanistan and Pakistan: Challenges and Opportunities

October 21 David Welch PhD, President, Infinera; Founder, Students Matter

Vergara v California: for a basically equal opportunity to a quality education

November 4 Susan Shillinglaw, PhD., Professor of English, San Jose State University; Scholar-in-Residence at the National Steinbeck Center in Salinas; Author

75th Anniversary of “Grapes of Wrath”

November 18 Temple Grandin, PhD, Professor of Animal Science, Colorado State University; Author; Autism Activist; Consultant to livestock industry

The Way I See It: A Personal Look at Autism & Asperger’s

December 2 Annie Griffiths, Photographer; Author

Connect with Anybody, Anywhere: on the road with National Geographic

January 20 Betty Ann Boeving, MA, International Policy Studies, Stanford University, specializing in International Conflict Resolution; Founder, Executive Director, Bay Area Anti-Trafficking Coalition

Get in the Game: Anti-Human Trafficking

Winter/Spring 2014

 

February 4 Christy Hanson, MPH, PhD, Hubert H. Humphrey Professor in International Studies, MacAlester College; Chief of Infectious Diseases Division for the Office of Health, Infectious Diseases and Nutrition at the US AID

The Greatest Story Never Told: Global Public Health Investments Are Paying Off

February 18 Glen Fukushima, Senior Fellow, Center for American Progress; former Vice President of AirBus SAS; Chairman and Director, AirBus Japan KK

Japan’s Economies: Prospects and Pitfalls

March 4 Scott Summit, , Founder and Chief Technology Officer, Bespoke Innovacatons

How 3D Printing is Changing the World

March 18 Robert Wittman, Former FBI Special Agent; Founder, FBI Art Crime Team

True Tales from the FBI’s Real Indiana Jones

April 1 Neal Benezra, Director, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

SFMOMA on the Go

April 15 G. Willow Wilson, Author, Essayist

The Butterfly Mosque: Women in Islam; a Memoir about Life in Egypt

May 6 Robert Kuhn, Associate Director, UC Santa Cruz Genome Browser, Jack Baskin School of Engineering  Coalition

The Human Genome – What We Know and What We Want to Know

June 3 Tom Djelton, Global and Economic Correspondent for NPR

The News From Washington

Fall 2013

September 17 Maria Echaveste, Co-Founder of the Neuva Vista Group, San Francisco; former Advisor and Deputy Chief of Staff to President Bill Clinton

Growing Hispanic Influence? What Happens to Immigration Reform?

October 1 Dr. Michael Kirst, Ph.D, President of the California State Board of Education; also served from 1977-81; Professor Emeritus of Education and Business Administration, Stanford University 

State Policy to Implement Common Core Standards in Education: It Changes Almost Everything

October 15 Philip Yun, J.D., Executive Director and COO, Ploughshares Fund, San Francisco; former Pantech Scholar in Korean Studies at the Walter Shorenstein Asia Pacific Research Center, Stanford University

The North Korea Problem

November 5 Francine Segan, Food Historian, author of seven cookbooks including the latest, Pasta Modern, to be released in October 2013; frequent guest on television’s Food Network

Dolci: Italy’s Sweets

November 19 Bill Coleman,Chairman and CEO, Resilient Network Sytems; Partner, Alsop Louie Partners; a director of Business Executives for National Security; Trustee of Santa Clara University; previously was Founder, Chairman, and CEO of Cassatt, Inc. and Founder, Chairman, and CEO of BEA Systems

The Challenges of Cyber Security: National and Personal

December 3 Alan Hess, Architect, Historian; Architecture Critic for the San Jose Mercury News; author of 19 Books on modern architecture and urbanism in the mid-twentieth century; His latest book on Frank Lloyd Wright was published in October 2012

Historic Sprawl: A History of California Suburbia

January 21 Jill Carroll, Ph.D., Author, former Director of the Boniuk Center for Religious Tolerance at Rice University; Founding Director of the Amazing Faith Project

The Challenges of Religious Tolerance

Lecture dates for the Morning Forum Winter/Spring 2014 series are:

February 4,18; March 4,18; April 1, 15; May 6,20; and June 3.