Forum Network

Free online lectures: Explore a world of ideas

Funding provided by:

Screen_Shot_2018-09-17_at_1.42.40_PM_B49jYB3.png

Ford Hall Forum

The Ford Hall Forum is the nation's oldest continuously operating free public lecture series. Its mission is to foster an informed and effective citizenry and to promote freedom of speech through the public presentation of lectures, debates, and discussions. Forum events illuminate the key issues facing our society by bringing to its podium knowledgeable and thought-provoking speakers. These speakers are presented in person, for free, and in settings, which facilitate frank and open debate.

http://www.fordhallforum.org/

The Enemy of the People? Freedom of the Press and Democracy

Wed, Feb 6, 2019

Marjorie Pritchard, deputy managing editor for the editorial page at The Boston Globe, and Bryan Trabold, author of Rhetorics of Resistance: Opposition Journalism in Apartheid South Africa and assistant professor and chair of the Suffolk University English Department, will examine The Boston Globe's response to President Trump's efforts to discredit the media. The Globe mobilized editorial boards of all political orientations across the country to argue that a free press is essential for sustaining democracy. This conversation will situate the Globe's initiative within Ford Hall Forum's tradition of promoting the free expression of ideas, as when Margaret Sanger, wearing a gag, defied the Boston ban on promotion of birth control in her 1929 address to the Ford Hall Forum and anti-apartheid activist Beyers Naudé delivered a blistering attack on the South African government in his 1985 forum address, despite repeated attempts to silence him. The Boston Globe's editorial initiative is thus part of a much longer history of challenging the powerful to promote freedom of expression.

Forum Network

Partner:

Ford Hall Forum
The Ongoing Life of Virginia Woolf

Thu, Jan 31, 2019

Recognizing Public Domain Day For the first time since the passage of the [Copyright Term Extension Act](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Term_Extension_Act "Wikipedia Entry") in 1998, works will enter the public domain in the United States due to the expiration of the copyright term. This event at Suffolk University celebrates the legal and public policy rationale behind copyright limits and the public domain, as well as the creativity of those individuals whose works will soon enter the public domain. Michael Cunningham, Pulitzer Prize winning author of _The Hours_ will participate with his lecture "Past Tense, Present Tense: The Ongoing Life of Virginia Woolf". Image: [George Charles Beresford - Virginia Woolf in 1902 via Wikimedia Commons](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:George_Charles_Beresford_-_Virginia_Woolf_in_1902_-_Restoration.jpg "")

Forum Network

Partner:

Ford Hall Forum
Surveillance Capitalism and Democracy

Wed, Jan 23, 2019

Surveillance capitalism is the foundation of a new economic order. Firms compete on the manufacture of "prediction products" traded in lucrative new "behavioral futures markets." Surveillance capitalism's proprietary digital architectures -- what Shoshana Zuboff calls "Big Other" -- are designed to capture and control human behavior for competitive advantage in these new markets, as the production of goods and services is subordinated to a new "means of behavioral modification" that favors private market outcomes free of democratic oversight or control. Acclaimed scholar and author Shoshana Zuboff, Ph.D., Harvard Business School professor emerita speaks on the publication of her new book, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight For a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power. The event is moderated by Christopher Lydon, radio host of WBUR's Open Source. Image: Book cover

Forum Network

Partner:

Ford Hall Forum
Gary Pomerantz: The Last Pass

Mon, Oct 29, 2018

Bob "Cooz" Cousy, the Hall of Fame Boston Celtics captain who led the team to its first six championships, has a lot to be proud of. But now, at age 90, he has one last piece of unfinished business. He seeks to make amends with his great partner on the Celtics, fellow Hall of Fame member Bill Russell, now 84. Cooz tells author Gary M. Pomerantz in the new book, [_The Last Pass_](http://www.garympomerantz.com/books/the-last-pass "The Last Pass book link"), that he should have been more publicly opposed to the prejudice Russell faced. **WATCH LIVE:** Join us for this important conversation about loyalty and bravery in the face of racism. Streaming here at 4 p.m. on October 29th.

Forum Network

Partner:

Ford Hall Forum
Daniel Ziblatt: How Democracies Die

Thu, Oct 11, 2018

Is American democracy at risk? Daniel Ziblatt, Harvard political scientist and coauthor of The New York Times bestseller, “How Democracies Die,” discusses how we can look to a wide range of historical and global examples, from 1930s Europe to contemporary Hungary, Turkey, and Venezuela, to the American South during Jim Crow to show how democracies die—and how ours can be saved. Professor Ziblatt’s talk is followed by a panel of Suffolk scholars –Brian Conley, Greg Fried, and Renee Landers – and is be moderated by Acting Provost Sebastian Royo. [http://www.lowellinstitute.org/](http://www.lowellinstitute.org/event/925/ "The Lowell Institute ")

Forum Network

Partner:

Ford Hall Forum
An Actor and A Gentleman

Mon, Nov 8, 2010

Lou Gossett, Jr. is one of the most respected African American stage and screen actors, rising to fame with his Emmy-winning role in the television miniseries Roots and Oscar-winning performance in An Officer and a Gentleman. From his early success on the New York stage appearing with Ruby Dee and Sidney Poitier in A Raisin in the Sun and through most of his long career in Hollywood, he has struggled to get leading roles and fair pay as a black actor. Gossett speaks frankly of his problem with drugs and alcohol that took years to overcome and his current work to eradicate racism and violence and give our children a better future. He is joined by his writer, Phyllis Karas, biographer and professor of journalism.

Forum Network

Partner:

Ford Hall Forum
Defending Guantanamo Bay Detainees

Thu, Mar 30, 2006

In a program cosponsored by Amnesty International USA, three lawyers currently defending prisoners in Guantanamo Bay talk about who the detainees are and why the United States continues to hold them. Since the attacks of September 11, 2001, the United States government has held hundreds of men at Guantanamo Bay as part of its "global war on terrorism." Some see the methods employed there as necessary to protect ourselves against new and horrifying threats to national security. However, the secrecy and questions about the legality of the imprisonments have drawn concern from lawmakers, foreign governments, and human rights groups. They claim that such measures violate the Geneva Conventions, inspire anti-Americanism, and infringe upon the very foundations of our civil rights.

Forum Network

Partner:

Ford Hall Forum
Role of Public Education and the Common Good

Thu, May 11, 2006

Thomas Payzant takes a hard look at the role of public schools in serving the common good. Among other tough questions, Payzant asks whether an increasingly negative view of government that has been growing in American society is at odds with the expectations for what public schools must accomplish. He wonders whether public school districts asked to do too much, and whether the intimate connection between compelling issues of social justice and the role of public schools is more at risk today than at any previous point in the past hundred years.

Forum Network

Partner:

Ford Hall Forum
Momsrising.org: The Motherhood Manifesto

Thu, Oct 18, 2007

Joan Blades, well known for co-founding the e-advocacy group MoveOn.org, discusses her new organization, Momsrising.org, and internet advocacy in general. With this new site, she hopes to build an army of citizen activists who will push for strong maternity leave laws, improved health care coverage, and fair wages, among other issues. Do more "family friendly" policies make economic sense for our country? Does an active online community necessarily translate into political influence? Blades screens her documentary film, *The Motherhood Manifesto*, and explores the Internet's ever-changing role in our political process.

Forum Network

Partner:

Ford Hall Forum
Yaron Brook on Ayn Rand: 'Apollo and Dionysus' Revisted

Thu, May 8, 2008

In 1969, Ayn Rand's Ford Hall Forum talk, 'Apollo and Dionysus,' addressed the near simultaneous events of Woodstock and the first lunar landing. Employing Greek mythology's god of the sun and god of wine, she compared the awe-inspiring accomplishments of NASA's Apollo space program to the famous three-day concert that has come to exemplify the counterculture of the 1960s and the "hippie era." Almost four decades later, Dr. Yaron Brook, President and Executive Director of the Ayn Rand Institute, reflects on her words and takes a new look at our society's drives toward individualism versus wholeness, light versus darkness, and civilization versus primal nature.

Forum Network

Partner:

Ford Hall Forum

What matters to you.