Jennifer Nuzzo is a nationally and globally recognized leader on global health security, public health preparedness and response, and health systems resilience. Together with colleagues from the Nuclear Threat Initiative and Economist Impact, she co-leads the development of the first-ever Global Health Security Index, which benchmarks 195 countries’ public health and healthcare capacities and capabilities, their commitment to international norms and global health security financing, and socioeconomic, political, and environmental risk environments.

The record-breaking heat of the last few years is, climate scientists say, “not just summer.” Two distinguished researchers, Mathew Barlow and Jeffrey Basara, discuss their recent important article about the sudden uptick in global temperature, why is worrying climate experts, how they analyze the global heat patternsand what must be done to address the problem.

Dr. Barlow’s expertise is in climate variability and change, particularly the influence of large-scale climate variability and change on local conditions of importance to society. His research areas include climate change, droughts, floods, and heat waves, with particular geographic interest in the Northeast U.S., North America, Southwest Asia, the Middle East, and Africa.

Humanities Workshop and Revolutionary Spaces invite you to The panel--Democracy Now--. It is an opportunity to hear from humanists whose daily work considers and shapes the state of our local and global democracies. Questions the conversation may explore include: What does active citizenship in a democracy look like? How do we prepare ourselves for the challenges that our democracy will face? How do we reform our democracy so that it serves all of its constituents?

The goal is for our panelists to help the audience interpret the current political moment and discover new pathways to citizen leadership.
Moderated by Simón Rios, WBUR reporter.

The Humanities Workshop—a consortium of public, private, and charter secondary school communities—believes in the critical importance of the humanities in addressing urgent social issues. The humanities educate our students to understand historical context, engage in perspective taking, hone critical thinking, and generate narrative. They believe a humanistic approach to social issues develops empathy in their students, inspiring them to engage deeply in the world around them, now and in the future, with their whole selves.

Born in Boston’s Jamaica Plain neighborhood, Simón Rios is an award-winning bilingual reporter in WBUR's newsroom. He graduated from Emerson College in 2005 with a bachelor's degree in writing, literature and journalism. At WBUR he covers the ways Greater Boston is changing, with an eye on demographics, immigration and inequality.

ELIZABETH HANSEN SHAPIRO is the CEO and co-founder of the National Trust for Local News, a nonprofit newspaper company dedicated to protecting and sustaining local news, by publishing sustainable community newspapers that safeguard the public trust, elevate facts, empower communities with solutions, and foster a strong sense of place.

CHAWKY FRENN was born in Zahlé, Lebanon. Before emigrating to the United States in 1981, he witnessed six years of civil war. Its devastating consequences have powerfully influenced his life and artwork. Frenn received a BFA from Mass College of Art and Design in Boston, MA in 1985, and an MFA from Tyler School of Art of Temple University in Philadelphia, PA in 1988. He is currently an Associate Professor at George Mason University in Fairfax, VA. Frenn has exhibited his work throughout the United States, and around the globe, and has received critical acclaim from publications including the New York Times, NY ARTS, Art New England, Boston Globe, Connecticut Post, Atlanta Magazine, and Pittsburgh Post-Gazette in the United States, as well as An-Nahar,

REBECA G. FIGUEROA is an Associate Justice of the Boston Municipal Court. She was appointed to the bench by Governor Maura Healey in 2024. As an associate justice, Judge Figueroa presides at the Dorchester Division of the Boston Municipal Court and is the presiding justice of the Dorchester Recovery Court.

DAYNA CUNNINGHAM is the Pierre and Pamela Omidyar Dean of Tufts University’s Jonathan M. Tisch College of Civic Life. Dean Cunningham has devoted her career to promoting civic participation, building community partnerships, and advocating for underrepresented communities. At Tisch College, she has articulated a bold vision for building robust, inclusive democracy for an increasingly multiracial society.

Mask work and puppetry have long been used as instruments for storytelling, both theatrically and therapeutically. The inanimate objects are vessels to be endowed with power, stemming from imagination, creativity, and memory. What drives us to utilize puppets and masks to tell stories of our origins, of our struggles, of our hardships? How do these objects give us permission to interact in unexpected ways and explore topics that might be considered taboo? How does interacting with a puppet or a mask change the performer? Or the audience? We’ve been leaning on these objects since prehistoric times to tell our stories and reenact our rituals. How do we use puppets and masks today?

Join Ronee Penoi and Professor Felice Amato, Dr. Jason Butler, and director Veronica Barron to explore the history and contemporary use of puppets and masks in ritual, performance, and therapies and learn how these vehicles unlock difficult topics.

About The Point
At ArtsEmerson, the art is the provocation; conversation is the point. The Point is a conversation series that invites audiences to explore big questions in intimate settings. Hosted by a member of the ArtsEmerson team, local and national luminaries will offer their points of view on the urgent questions surfaced by the artists on our stages.