Dean Strang
"Part of the reason for having a strong defense team is to make sure that prosecutors and police follow the rules and don't cut corners, and that's something that goes beyond any individual case to benefit the system as a whole." -- Dean Strang, defense attorney, "Making a Murderer"
Van Jones
"The green economy should not just be about reclaiming throw-away stuff. It should be about reclaiming thrown-away communities. It should not just be about recycling things to give them a second life. We should also be gathering up people and giving them a second chance." Van Jones
Brittany Packnett
"We have the power to end this cycle and set a model for the rest of the nation. I believe in Ferguson; I believe in St. Louis; and I believe in our ability to pursue a more just region for all of our citizens. We must be the change we wish to see, and we cannot ignore the urgency of now for our community.” So states Brittany Packnett, who, since the tragic death of Michael Brown in 2014, has dedicated herself to achieving her dream of a more just and equitable society. -- Brittany Packnett. Packnett's talk, " Between the World and You: Our Duty to Fight for Freedom," will include commentary by faculty and students.
Garth Risk Hallberg
"The central question driving literary aesthetics in the age of the iPad is no longer 'How should novels be?' but 'Why write novels at all?"
Garth Risk Hallberg must have a good answer to this question, because his novel, "City on Fire," all 900 pages, was one of the most anticipated books of 2015 and landed on many of last year's "best books" lists. The WashU alumnus returns to campus to talk about two subjects he knows well: the novel and New York City.
Arsalan Iftikhar
Whenever some violent lunatic snaps and claims some kind of warped justification for his murderous acts as a so-called Muslim warrior, it’s not his damaged childhood or the flood of assault weapons in America or the climate of unrelenting violence in our country that gets blamed – it’s Islam, an ancient, Abrahamic religion.” -- Arsalan Iftikhar
Christopher Newfield
“It (a college education) changed everything for the family. It changed their economic position but it also changed their sense of the world; new possibilities opened up, there was more pleasure and leisure in their lives. There was also more innovation at work and at home. There was more value created for the economy and there was also just more of a sense of the possibilities of ordinary life for themselves, and they passed that along to their children.”
William McKinnon
“Planetary science, and especially planetary geology, is never, ever boring. New discoveries roll in endlessly, enriching and ennobling the common heritage of humankind.” -- Bill McKinnon
Doris Bergen
"Hatred alone does not result in genocide. Sadly, there's a lot of hatred in this world. What galvanizes or transforms it into action is usually, maybe always, leadership."
Gregory Radick
In “The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals," Darwin showed that humans of every race, throughout the globe, express their emotions identically. For instance, we all cry when we’re sad and smile when we’re happy. Darwin claimed that this identity amounted to a “new argument” for all the races descending from a single, common ancestral stock. In his talk, Darwinian scholar Radick will track the origins of Darwin’s research that led to this conclusion and offer a better understanding of how and why he first began to collect evidence on emotional expression across the human races. It can also help us see exactly how Darwin’s scientific work reflected his lifelong hatred of slavery.
Thomas Maier
“We are doctors, for Christ’s sake, and I simply want to know what happens to the body during sex." -- Michael Sheen as WashU doctor William Masters in the Showtime TV series, "Masters of Sex."