Join us for a wide-ranging conversation with Henry Louis “Skip” Gates, Jr., one of the most influential voices in American academia today. Claude Steele, who has known Professor Gates over the course of his long, pioneering career, will guide an interview that illuminates various dimensions of this leading scholar’s life and work at Harvard, where he served as chair of the Department of African and African American Studies from 1991 to 2006, as a writer for The New Yorker under Tina Brown, as a film and television documentary producer, and as a keen observer of the role of race in American society and politics. Related Themes: education, politics, race, scholarship

In her latest book, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, journalist Naomi Klein exposes the strategies of powerful people who cash in on chaos and exploit catastrophe to remake our world in their image. But this is not the whole story: popular renewal and repair movements are gaining the strength not only to take back state power but to change the power structures of the state. Join us for a conversation that presents a new paradigm for understanding global politics and celebrates those who continue to work for justice against great odds. Related Themes: capitalism, democracy, globalization, hope

In her book, Talking to Strangers: Anxieties of Citizenship since Brown v. Board of Education, Danielle Allen discusses those sacrifices citizens make to keep democracy working in spite of the vices that often get in the way. One such vice is distrust of the stranger, which is overcome by the deliberate cultivation of what she calls “political friendship,” reaching out to others who appear to be different than ourselves. “To develop a cultural habit of such friendship would," Allen writes, “transform our political world.” In setting the context for our series on virtues and vices with the Center for Ethics, Danielle Allen will suggest ways people in institutions of higher education are prepared to effect this transformation by daring to imagine and act in accord with democratic ideals.

Related Themes: citizenship, education, vices, virtues

The Aurora Forum joins with Stanford Publishing Courses to present photographer Frans Lanting and his LIFE Project, a lyrical interpretation of the story of life on Earth that has been produced as a multimedia show for symphony orchestra with music by Philip Glass. For this evening’s photographic presentation, Lanting will be joined by his wife and partner, Christine Eckstrom, an editor, videographer, and former staff writer at National Geographic. For two decades, Frans and Chris have collaborated on fieldwork and publishing projects that have increased awareness of endangered ecological treasures. Related Themes: conservation, nature, photography

Novelist and travel writer Pico Iyer joins Robert Thurman, Columbia University professor and founder of Tibet House in New York City, for a conversation on the Fourteenth Dalai Lama, education, life on the road, and things that contribute to happiness and human well-being. Related Themes: Dalai Lama, happiness, hope, justice, Tibet