Wright State fall lecture series begins next week with former Smithsonian director

President Joe Biden presents the 2021 National Humanities Medal to Johnnetta Betsch Cole at White House in Washington, Tuesday, March 21, 2023. Cole will open Wright State University's fall lecture series Sept. 14. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)

Credit: AP

Credit: AP

President Joe Biden presents the 2021 National Humanities Medal to Johnnetta Betsch Cole at White House in Washington, Tuesday, March 21, 2023. Cole will open Wright State University's fall lecture series Sept. 14. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)

Wright State University’s College of Liberal Arts will present its “Democracy, Diversity and the Liberal Arts” Speaker Series beginning Thursday, Sept. 14 in Schuster Hall of the Creative Arts Center.

The three-guest series asks audiences to “consider some of the most universal, urgent questions of our time from the perspective of different liberal arts disciplines.”

Opening the series Thursday from 5:30 to 6:30 p.m. will be Dr. Johnnetta Betsch Cole, former director of the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art. She also served as the first Black female president of Spelman College and is a recipient of a National Humanities Medal. In addition to being a renowned anthropologist and professor and author of over 20 books, she is a feminist, a civil rights activist and defender of LGBTQ+ rights.

Cole’s lecture is titled “So What Do the Liberal Arts Have to Do with Democracy?” A reception will follow.

The series will continue on Wednesday, Oct. 18 with Jess T. Dugan, 2020-2021 Freund Teaching Fellow at the Sam Fox School of Design and Visual Arts at Washington University in St. Louis, and Thursday, Nov. 16 with Olúfemi O. Táíwò, professor of philosophy at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C.

The series is free and open to the public. For more information, email liberalarts@wright.edu.

ajc.com

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Credit: CONTRIBUTED

Wright State University is located at 3640 Col. Glenn Hwy., Dayton.

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