Former Secretary of Defense Leon Panettta is among the speakers scheduled. (Courtesy of AP)
Over the course of the 2013-14 school year, the SMU community will have the privilege of hosting 14 of the most influential people in today’s world.
Presented by the Willis M. Tate Distinguished Lecture Series, McFarlin auditorium hosts selected students, alum, and Dallas-area patrons alike. Audience members have the opportunity to engage in discussions surrounding some of the most significant progressions and conflicts happening worldwide.
The upcoming season will begin Sept. 17 to welcome former Presidential advisor and CNN political analyst David Gergen, former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, and former director of the CIA and most recent Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta.
Two-time Pulitzer prize-winning biographer Robert Caro is set to speak Oct. 29, and Khaled Hosseini – whose novel The Kite Runner spent more than five years on The New York Times bestseller list – will visit Feb. 11.
The season will close May 5 of next year with four of journalism’s first leading women: Cokie Roberts, Susan Stamberg, Nina Totenberg, and Linda Wertheimer. Other speakers to be featured are Sir Ken Robinson (Nov. 19), Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson (Dec. 3), Garry Kasparov (March 4), and A.J. Jacobs (April 1).
Tickets are free to students on a first-come, first-serve basis beginning an hour before the scheduled lecture, and certain scholarship programs provide tickets to their students.
Additionally, the Tate Lecture Series offers a unique opportunity for SMU students, faculty and staff, and local high school students in the afternoon prior to each lecture. During the Student Forum, attendees experience a far-more intimate question-and-answer style session with that evening’s lecturer(s). The Student Forum is free for the current SMU community with prior reservation, (forms are available at smu.edu/tateseries).
The Tate Lecture Series reportedly returns more than $800,000 annually to the University.
A good portion of these funds provide support for the President’s Scholars Program – the University’s full-tuition scholarship awarded to some of the strongest incoming students to carry them through their four years.
