Convocation Series
Monday, September 8, 2008, 7:30 p.m.
An Evening with Stephen Sondheim and Frank Rich
“[Sondheim] is now the greatest and perhaps best-known artist in the American musical theater.”
“[Rich] sees politics as theater. His vision and his voice are the result of the skills honed as a theater critic who expanded his reach to broader cultural criticism and then narrowed it again to political criticism”
Wednesday, September 24, 2008, 8 p.m.
Newt Gingrich
What's at stake: Election 2008
“Leaders make things possible. Exceptional leaders make them inevitable. Newt Gingrich belongs in the category of the exceptional”
Tuesday, October 28, 2008, 8 p.m.
Michael Pollan
In Defense of Food: The Omnivore’s Solution
“Pollan … has emerged as an important critic of the industrial food complex that grows, processes and sells what we eat. He has ‘an enormous influence’ on how Americans think about food, says Marion Nestle, a professor of nutrition at New York University.”
Wednesday, February 4, 2009, 8 p.m.
Eric Bogosian
“Mr. Bogosian’s work has always trod the line betwen incisive character comedy and something deeper and scarier. At the heart of his vision of humanity is the idea that so-called civilized behavior is just a middle-class luxury”
Wednesday, March 4, 2009, 8 p.m.
Brian Greene
Physicist & String Theorist Author, The Elegant Universe
"He is the cutest thing to happen to cosmology since the neutrino, a particle that can easily pass through trillions of miles of lead. The neutrino's task is not unlike the one that Dr. Greene (who teaches at Columbia University) has assigned himself: explaining the weirdest, most arcane principles of cutting-edge physics to lay readers."
— Janet Maslin – The New York Times
Tuesday, March 31, 2009, 8 p.m.
Diane Rehm
A Conversation between Mother and Son
The Diane Rehm Show is “one of the most interesting talk shows in the country.”
Thursday, April 23, 2009, 8 p.m.
Toni Morrison
"Morrison's new book [A Mercy] evokes an America at least as fascinating as today's. Set in the late 17th century—before race-based enslavement became such a central American institution—it serves as a thought-provoking bookend to the era we are entering."
— Bob Thompson, Washington Post
About the Oberlin Convocation Series
The Oberlin Convocation Series, presented under the auspices of the Finney Lecture Committee and the Office of the President, presents free, public discussions of cutting-edge issues by some of the country’s most prominent thinkers. These talks are open to the public and take place in Finney Chapel. All lectures begin at 8 p.m. For additional information, please contact the Office of Public Programs at 440.775.6785.