Screening of 127 Hours Movie
Wednesday, August 24, 2022
6 p.m. Levan Center

Thursday, August 25, 2022
2 p.m. Levan Center
7 p.m. Indoor Theater, PAC Building

Aron Ralston's extraordinary story of survival after an 800-pound boulder trapped him in a remote Utah canyon captured global headlines in 2003. In his New York Times best seller, Between a Rock and a Hard Place, the Oscar-nominated film, 127 Hours, and on stage, Ralston takes audiences vicariously through those six days without water, means of communication, or hope of escape, to the ecstatic moments when he freed himself by severing his own arm.

Following a miraculous rescue spearheaded by his mom and with the aid of prosthetics he helped design, Aron returned to his outdoor passions, completing elite mountaineering projects which remain unrepeated, even to this day. He has interviewed with Tom Brokaw, David Letterman, and Jay Leno, and received standing ovations and industry-leading testimonials from over five hundred groups around the world. Attendees credit Ralston's story with encouraging them through disease, disability, and loss, even saving their lives from suicide and depression.

Aron's incredible triumph in the face of insurmountable odds inspires audiences to harness the power of their deepest motivations, relationships, and mindset to transform personal and professional "boulders" into their blessings. Today, Ralston continues to pursue high-altitude adventures, advocates for wilderness protection, and tries to keep up with his two spirited children, Leo and Elisabetta.

Thursday, September 8, 2022
2 p.m. Levan Center
7 p.m. Indoor Theater, PAC Building

An American-born author, mathematician, and political commentator, Dr. James Lindsay has written six books spanning a range of subjects including religion, the philosophy of science and postmodern theory. Dr. Lindsay is the Founder of New Discourses, an organization dedicated to shining the light of objective truth in subjective darkness.

Dr. Lindsay is the co-author of Cynical Theories: How Activist Scholarship Made Everything about Race, Gender, and Identity―and Why This Harms Everybody and is the author of his new book, Race Marxism.

Dr. Lindsay has been a featured guest on Fox News, Glenn Beck, Joe Rogan, and NPR.

Sunday, October 2, 2022
2 p.m. Renegade Ballroom, Campus Center

James Lawson was born in Pennsylvania in 1928. His father and grandfather were Methodist ministers, and Lawson received his local preacher's license in 1947, the year he graduated from high school. At his Methodist college in Ohio, he joined the Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR), America's oldest pacifist organization. Through FOR, he was first exposed to the nonviolent teachings of Gandhi and fellow black minister Howard Thurman.

After spending time in prison for refusing the Korean War draft, he obtained his B.A. in 1952, and spent the next three years as a campus minister and teacher at Hislop College in Nagpur, India. While in India, Lawson eagerly read of the Montgomery Bus Boycott and the emerging nonviolent resistance movement back in the United States. By 1957, Lawson decided he could no longer sit on the sidelines. He began holding seminars to train volunteers in Gandhian tactics of nonviolent direct action. James Lawson helped coordinate the Freedom Rides in 1961 and the Meredith March in 1966, and played a major role in the sanitation workers strike of 1968.

On the eve of his assassination, Martin Luther King called Lawson "the leading theorist and strategist of nonviolence in the world." Rev. James Lawson and Martin Luther KingIn 1974, Lawson moved to Los Angeles to be the pastor of Holman Methodist Church. He spoke out against racism, and challenged the cold war and U.S. military involvement throughout the world. Even after his retirement, Lawson was protesting with the Janitors for Justice in Los Angeles, and with gay and lesbian Methodists in Cleveland.

Tuesday, November 15, 2022
2 p.m. & 7 p.m.
Renegade Ballroom, Campus Center

Mark Rabbitt is a motivational speaker, trainer and ambassador of positive leadership. As a highly accomplished consultant, with an outstanding record of leadership performance in the United States Marine Corps and the Department of Defense, Mark leverages his extensive experience with management and group development to forge leaders of today.

Mark’s leadership experience has uniquely qualified him to provide a diversified perspective. His mastery in the areas of equal opportunity, Marine Corps Recruit Training, mediation, and diversity and inclusion, fosters insightful discourse with an equity lens. His innovative and transformational approach serves as a platform to facilitate continued self-exploration, resilience and camaraderie; igniting the leader in everyone and ensuring each individual has an equal opportunity to achieve their personal and professional goals.

Thursday, January 19, 2023
2 p.m. Levan Center
7 p.m. Indoor Theater, PAC Building

Evan Austin connects with audiences by discussing the struggles he faced growing up with a physical impairment and the resilience he had to have to become a Paralympic Gold and Bronze medalist. His keynote is constructed to show audiences that there are many roadblocks and deterrents on one’s path to success but that hard work and belief in oneself can combat any adversities that arise on the journey. Evan leads listeners on an emotional roller coaster as he illustrates, through his own personal experiences, some of the toughest failures and greatest successes a human can go through in a lifetime.

Evan is a 3-time Paralympic Swimmer, Team USA Captain, attended Indiana State University for his Bachelor’s degree in Recreation and Sport Management, and is a proud member of Pi Kappa Phi Fraternity. The now Gold and Bronze medalist is on the coaching staff of the Purdue University Swimming and Diving team as a Volunteer Assistant.

Social Media Links:

• Instagram: @e_a_swim
• LinkedIn: evan-ryan-austin-ply-522b50227

Thursday, February 9, 2023
2 p.m. Levan Center
7 p.m. Indoor Theater, PAC Building

Dr. Eddie R. Cole is Associate Professor of Higher Education and Organizational Change at UCLA. His research focuses on college presidents’ historic role in shaping racial policies and practices both inside and outside of the educational sphere. His book The Campus Color Line: College Presidents and the Struggle for Black Freedom - called “groundbreaking”, “essential”, and “required reading” by reviewers - was described by New York Times–bestselling author Ibram X. Kendi as “a stunning and ambitious origin story… embedded with breath-taking narratives recovered from meticulous research.”

Eddie’s scholarship and public writing has been featured in The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, and Chronicle of Higher Education, and he has appeared as an expert commentator on BBC World News and C-Span BookTV. In 2021 and 2022, he was named by Education Week as one of “the top university-based scholars in the U.S. who did the most last year to shape educational practice and policy.” He received the 2018 Early Career Award from the Association for the Study of Higher Education and in 2017 was recognized by the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation as a professor poised “to play a significant role in shaping American higher education.” Also notable is his selection as a 2015 National Academy of Education/Spencer Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship, one of the most prestigious awards for scholars working in critical areas of education research.

Eddie is frequently invited to participate in Dean’s Distinguished Speaker Series and is in high demand as a speaker for both campus and municipal MLK Day and Black History Month celebrations. An example of him addressing the community of students and faculty at Princeton University is available here.

Thursday, February 23, 2023
7 p.m. Indoor Theater, PAC Building

Exciting and erudite, Kwame Anthony Appiah challenges us to look beyond the boundaries—real and imagined—that divide us, and to celebrate our common humanity. Named one of Foreign Policy’s Top 100 public intellectuals, one of the Carnegie Corporation’s “Great Immigrants,” and awarded a National Humanities Medal by The White House, Appiah currently teaches at NYU, though he’s previously taught at Princeton, Harvard, Yale, Cornell, Duke, and the University of Ghana. He considers readers’ ethical quandaries in a weekly column as “The Ethicist” for The New York Times Magazine. From 2009 to 2012 he served as President of the PEN American Center, the world’s oldest human rights organization.

Anthony Appiah’s book Cosmopolitanism is a manifesto for a world where identity has become a weapon and where difference has become a cause of pain and suffering. Cosmopolitanism won the Arthur Ross Book Award, the most significant prize given to a book on international affairs. In The Honor Code: How Moral Revolutions Happen, Appiah lays out how honor propelled moral revolutions in the past—and could do so in the future. Walter Isaacson (Steve Jobs) calls it “an indispensable book for both moral philosophers and honorable citizens.” Among his most recent books are As If: Idealization and Ideals, an exploration of the way ideals facilitate human progress; Mistaken Identities, further explores subjects of his popular BBC series; and the brand new The Lies That Bind, an incandescent exploration of the nature and history of the identities that define us.

Thursday, March 2, 2023
2 p.m. Levan Center
7 p.m. Indoor Theater, PAC Building

Organization of American Historians Distinguished Lecturer and University Professor and professor of history at George Mason University, Rosemarie Zagarri is the author of Revolutionary Backlash: Women and Politics in the Early American Republic (2007), The Politics of Size: Representation in the United States, 1776-1850 (1987), and A Woman's Dilemma: Mercy Otis Warren and the American Revolution (1995), and the editor of David Humphreys' Life of General Washington: with George Washington's "Remarks" (1991).

A past president of Society for Historians of the Early American Republic, she has also served as a member of the Council of the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture. Professor Zagarri has appeared as an on-camera historian on C-SPAN's "Morning Journal," PBS's "George Washington: The Man Who Wouldn't Be King," and the Fairfax Television Network's "The Real Martha Washington." She is currently working on a book entitled "Liberty or Oppression?: Thomas Law and Enlightenment Imperialism in Colonial British India and the Early American Republic."

Thursday, March 23, 2023
2 p.m. Levan Center
7 p.m. Indoor Theater, PAC Building

Will Gadd is one of the top adventure sports athletes in the world, and has been at it for more than 30 years. He has safely led numerous large TV and research expeditions into highly dangerous—and rewarding—environments, climbed Niagara Falls, and taught his kids (and doctors and oil sands workers) to positively manage risk with the direct, entertaining and effective tools he learned through a lifetime of living on the edge.

Gadd speaks with personal humor and professional depth on effective and widely applicable tools to stay safe, build team resiliency, succeed in low-knowledge environments, and do what the experts said was, “Impossible!” He has presented more than 200 high-end presentations to groups from Exxon Mobil to incarcerated youth. Most recently he and his teams found new life forms in glacial caves for a Discovery TV show, and helped a planetary scientist sample the world’s oldest rocks in Canada’s Arctic.

Thursday, April 13, 2023
2 p.m. & 7 p.m.
Renegade Ballroom, Campus Center

Dr. Melanie Lundquist, LHD, is an activist philanthropist whose voice is as fearless as her charity work. Melanie and her husband Richard are agents of change and two of California’s most significant philanthropists. Their gifts have created the Partnership for Los Angeles Schools, a sustainable, national transformation model for underserved non-charter K-12 public schools and they have helped transform health care delivery and spur biomedical research and innovation as well as efforts to combat climate change.

Melanie and Richard have pledged more than $350 million over the last decade to support various education and cultural initiatives and health care efforts—almost all in Southern California, which they have called home their whole lives. They leverage their philanthropic commitments to affect significant and measurable impact through driving systemic change, focusing on areas where their gifts can change systems as well as fortunes, not just make incremental progress. They choose not to follow the crowd; instead, they seek to kick off a virtuous cycle that attracts other donors.

Melanie guides their efforts as an “activist philanthropist” who conducts extensive due diligence before involving herself in a non-profit, rolling up her sleeves to engage in all levels of the organization. Richard’s civic leadership and business acumen helps to make their vision for change a reality. And their philanthropy is creating the classrooms and laboratories of the future.