Emerson Professor Dr. Mneesha Gellman, artist Cedric Douglas, and Boston’s Chief of Arts and Culture Joseph Henry will consider how communities remember, revisit, and reimagine the stories that define them; and the roles that memory, art, and civic life play in shaping our understanding of the past and the future.

Dr. Mneesha Gellman is professor of political science in the Marlboro Institute for Liberal Arts at Emerson College. She is a scholar of democratization and violence, and the author of numerous books and articles on human rights, memory politics, and education politics. She serves as an expert witness on Mexico and El Salvador in immigration courts. Dr. Gellman is the founder and director of the Emerson Prison Initiative, which brings a BA pathway to people incarcerated in Massachusetts.

Joseph Zeal-Henry is a designer, curator and public servant currently serving as Chief of Arts and Culture at the City of Boston and is an assistant professor at Columbia GSAPP. He has written for Tank Magazine, Dezeen and Casabella. Joseph was selected as the 2024 Artlab/Loeb Fellow at Harvard University GSD.

Vesko Garčević of Boston University’s Pardee School, sits down with Daniel O’Connor of the United Nations Association of Greater Boston to discuss multilateral diplomacy. They examine the role of multilateral institutions in addressing global challenges and how shifting geopolitical dynamics are reshaping international cooperation.

As Director of Programs at UNAGB, Dan oversees the coordination, execution, and continuous improvement of all UNAGB programs.

Vesko is Professor of the Practice of International Relations; Director of the Center for the Study of Europe at BU. He is the former Ambassador of Montenegro in Brussels (NATO) and Vienna (OSCE)

An expert panel will explain how Israel's electoral system works, break down the key parties and issues shaping the race, and explore what the results could mean for Israeli society, U.S.-Israel relations, and the Middle East.

Join us in person or over Zoom Webinar as the Boston Public Library welcomes Sarah Botstein as a speaker for the Lowell Lecture Series. As a filmmaker who has worked closely with Ken Burns for over 30 years as a part of Florentine Films, Sarah will talk about her latest film, PBS's The American Revolution, historical filmmaking, and the revolutionary techniques that Florentine Films uses to bring history to life.

Botstein will be in conversation with Imari Paris Jeffries from Embrace Boston and the program will be introduced by BPL President David Leonard.

After the main program, in-person audience members can meet the speaker in the Connector Space located just outside of Rabb Hall.

Harvard Book Store welcomes Ashia S. Ajani, storyteller, environmental educator, and author of the poetry collection Heirloom, for a discussion of their creative nonfiction debut, "Tending the Vines: Black Abundance in Eight Plants". They will be joined in conversation by Maria Pinto, local writer, editor, and educator.

This standout creative nonfiction debut explores the lives and histories of plants considered nonnative or invasive as metaphors for the Black experience in America.

In "Tending the Vines", Ashia S. Ajani illuminates how eight unique plants tell the story of the Black diaspora in America. Each chapter is a deep dive into one plant, including eucalyptus, passionflower, wild mustard, and kudzu, exploring their significance in African tradition, their role through the Middle Passage and Chattel Slavery, and their enduring importance in modern households and communities.

"Tending the Vines" unpacks the complex rhetorical lives of these plants, most of which have been used as both ugly metaphors for Black incursion as well as powerful symbols for Black liberation. It also highlights the ethnobotanical uses that have sustained displaced populations for centuries. Throughout, Ajani complicates our notions of “invasive” and belonging, by contextualizing how plants move, are moved, and, of course, move us.

Revolutionary Spaces launches their 2026–2027 program series, "Constitution, After the Declaration: The Origins, Evolution, and Impact of the U.S. Constitution", with a special Constitution Day program exploring the revolutionary nature of our nation’s founding document. The first program, "Constitution Day 2026: A Revolutionary View of Constitutional Supremacy", will take place on September 17 at the Old South Meeting House. Professors Nikolas Bowie and Daphna Renan will join Boston Globe reporter Brian MacQuarrie for a conversation examining the role of the U.S. Supreme Court in interpreting the Constitution and its authority to determine the constitutionality of laws enacted by Congress.

The principle of self-government was at the heart of the conflict between Colonial America and Great Britain in the 17th and 18th centuries. When the United States Constitution established the framework for our federal government in 1789, the power of the people to govern themselves was vested in Congress. Notably, however, the Constitution does not explicitly grant the judicial branch the authority to determine the constitutionality of laws enacted by the people’s elected representatives. Over time, the U.S. Supreme Court has asserted the power of “judicial supremacy,” allowing the Court to override congressional legislation. The tension between this authority and the power of Congress to carry out the will of the people is at the center of "Supremacy: How Rule by the Court Replaced Government by the People", the new book by Bowie and Renan.

The discussion will also explore a “lost” constitutional tradition shaped by abolitionists, labor leaders, suffragists, civil rights pioneers, and ordinary citizens throughout more than 200 years of American history. These individuals sought to shape national policy and civic life through Congress’s power to make laws that reflect the will of the people.