Tate Series provides wide variety of speakers
From an Academy Award-winning actor to the vice president of the United States, the Hilltop will enjoy visits from a variety of prominent figures.
That’s thanks to the Willis M. Tate Distinguished Lecture Series. The Tate office recently unveiled its lineup, which begins its 2002-03 campaign on Sept. 17.
“We’re really excited about next year’s speakers,” Tate production assistant Erin Sutton said. “We feel like it offers a great variety of figures from a lot of different arenas of society.”
The series will begin with a panel discussion featuring Tom Friedman, Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for The New York Times, and Bernard Shaw, Emmy Award-winning former principal anchor for CNN. The lecture will be moderated by David Gergen, editor-at-large of U.S. News & World Report who will be making his fifth Tate appearance.
“Especially given the political situation in places like Afghanistan, and in Pakistan and India,” Sutton said, “it should be fascinating to hear what people who cover these stories have to say about it.”
The Tate Series will then bring Sidney Poitier to SMU on Oct. 1. Poitier, the star of such films as “Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner?”, is a two-time Academy Award winner.
Poitier, an African American, is one of three minorities and one female featured in the series, which brings 14 speakers total.
The series will close the fall semester with a Nov. 12 visit by Rosabeth Moss Kanter, an internationally known female business leader, educator and author, and a Dec. 10 encounter with Paul Sereno, a paleontologist and discoverer of the “SuperCroc.”
The spring semester begins with the appropriately titled “War of the Words” lecture on Feb. 16 featuring news rating contenders Chris Matthews of MSNBC’s “Hardball” and Fox’s Bill O’Reilly of “The O’Reilly Factor.”
“We’re able to attract great speakers because this series has a lot of notoriety,” Sutton said. “It’s known nationally as the benchmark for university lecture series.”
Charlie Rose of PBS’s “The Charlie Rose Show” will serve as moderator for the March 4 lecture featuring Ward Connerly, chairman of the American Civil Rights Institute, and Bob Gates, former director of the CIA.
After visits by John Irving, best-selling author of The Cider House Rules and The World According to Garp, on March 25, and Gary Hamel, acclaimed author on business and corporate strategy, on April 15, the lecture receives its most prominent visit.
Dick Cheney, vice president of the United States, will speak as part of the series on a date yet to be announced. Cheney also spoke in 1999 as part of the Tate Series.
“This season continues the Tate Series tradition of presenting a powerful slate of national and international speakers,” said Jeanne P. Whitman, SMU’s Vice President for Development and External Affairs. “Their presence at SMU provides the university and the Dallas community as a whole the opportunity for the audience to hear unique perspectives on policy, business, science and culture.”
The process for getting tickets to the series will remain the same for students. An allotted amount will be given for each speaker based on demand.
“Student ticket distribution begins at 7:30 p.m. in the basement of McFarlin Auditorium,” Sutton said. “Most of our lectures also have a student forum that begins at 4:30 p.m. in the Hughes-Trigg Student Center.”
