RYAN BUSSE, a former firearms executive pulls back the curtain on America's multibillion-dollar gun industry, exposing how it has fostered extremism and racism, radicalizing the nation and bringing cultural division to a boiling point. Busse provides consulting services to progressive organizations with the aim of undoing the country's dangerous radicalization. He lives in Montana.
Virtual
Clancy Martin is a Professor of Philosophy at the University of Missouri in Kansas City. He is also a happily married father of five children. His latest book, How Not to Kill Yourself is a portrait of the suicidal mind – his own – and in it he provides both a personal account of the multiple attempts he had made to end his life but also the positive strategies he has devised to safeguard his future and that of others.
Virtual
ELI MERRITT is a political historian at Vanderbilt University who specializes in the founding era of the United States and the intersection of demagogues and democracy. He has written for the American Journal of Legal History, The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and Chicago Tribune, among other publications. The editor of How to Save Democracy: Inspiration and Advice from 95 World Leaders, he also writes an online newsletter called American Commonwealth that explores the origins of the United States’ political discontents and solutions to them.
Old South Meeting House
Dr. Joe Roman
New England Aquarium
Steve Curwood is the executive producer and host of “Living on Earth.” He created the first pilot of “Living on Earth” in 1990 and the show has run continuously since April 1991. “Living on Earth” is currently aired on more than 250 National Public Radio/Public Radio International affiliates and XM/Sirius Satellite Radio.
Boston Public Library - Abbey Room
Dr. Michael E. O’Hanlon
Boston Public Library - Rabb Lecture Hall
CHARLOT LUCIEN is a Haitian storyteller, poet, visual artist, lecturer, and the founder of the Boston-based Haitian Artists Assembly of Massachusetts. He uses his art and writing to promote Haitian culture and advocate for many civil rights, public health, and humanitarian issues through his involvement with various cultural and civic organizations. Lucien has been a long-term public health manager for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and is a lecturer on Haiti-US historical connections with the OLLI Institute at the University of Massachusetts. He frequently participates as a guest speaker on Haiti’s culture and history in various academic and cultural venues in the US. He holds membership with various civic/humanitarian organizations, including the think-tank Groupe of Reflection and Action for a New Haiti (GRAHN-USA), the West African Research Association (WARA), Société des poètes francophones, the Haitian Americans United Inc (HAU), The National Museum of African American History and Culture, Haiti Projects. He is the recipient of several awards acknowledging his cultural contributions from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, the City of Boston, the Haitian Roundtable 1804 Haitian Americans Changemakers List, and various cultural and academic institutions. JOSEPH BOCCHICCHIO is an activist and community organizer having facilitated Poverty, Creative Writing and Theater of the Oppressed Workshops for the indigent and working poor. Bocchicchio worked for 24 years in Community Mental Health in Crisis Intervention and Suicide Prevention, and did grass roots organizing for opiate addiction treatment and suicide prevention for the Last Letter Project in Akron, Ohio. He now works part time for Revolutionary Spaces, where he researches and does presentations on various historical topics. His poetry and creative non-fiction have appeared in Ovunque Siamo, Cut-Throat, Up-street, Jawbone, Entropy, Panning for Poems, Enclave, and The Daily Clout. LYNN SMITH is a volunteer Board Member for the Friends of Linden Place, which oversees the operations of an 1810 Federal style mansion in Bristol, RI that was built from the profits of the DeWolf Family slave trading business. Smith is an interpreter there and helped Linden Place with re-evaluation and re-interpretation of its history, with input from leading scholars from the African American and Indigenous communities. She is currently mapping the neighborhood founded by the 1850 free black population of Bristol, called Goree. Most of her professional career was spent in commercial banking, first in Boston and then in New Haven. While living in Brockton, MA she helped found a number of neighborhood associations designed to increase citizen engagement, one of which was the Frederick Douglass Neighborhood Association.
Old South Meeting House
Ambassador Jorge Heine
Boston Public Library - Rabb Lecture Hall
JACQUELINE BEATTY is Assistant Professor of History at York College of Pennsylvania where she teaches courses on early American, women's, and public history. Her book, In Dependence: Women and the Patriarchal State in Revolutionary America, was published with NYU Press in April, 2023. Her previously published work includes "Privileged in the Patriarchy: How Charleston Wives Negotiated Financial Freedom in the Early Republic" (South Carolina Historical Magazine, July 2018), "Complicated Allegiances: Women, Politics, and Property in Post- Occupation Charleston" in Holly Mayer, ed., and Women Waging War in the American Revolution. She received a BA from Boston College in 2010, an MA from Villanova University in 2012, and a Ph.D. from George Mason University in 2016. DANIEL CARPENTER is the Allie S. Freed Professor of Government and Chair of the Department of Government in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. Professor Carpenter's research on petitioning appears in his book Democracy by Petition: Popular Politics in Transformation, 1790-1870, which was awarded the J. David Greenstone Prize of the American Political Science Association, the Seymour Martin Lipset Prize of the American Political Science Association and the James P. Hanlan Book Award of the New England Historical Association. He graduated from Georgetown University in 1989 with distinction in Honors Government and received his doctorate in political science from the University of Chicago in 1996. He taught previously at Princeton University (1995-1998) and the University of Michigan (1998-2002).
Old State House
Akhil Reed Amar is Sterling Professor of Law and Political Science at Yale University, where he teaches constitutional law in both Yale College and Yale Law School. Featuring: Felicia Ellsworth, Mark Perry, and Edwina Clark
Old South Meeting House
For the latest information regarding each event please contact the presenting organization.