As one of the nation’s longest consecutive-running speaker series, Case Western Reserve University’s Think Forum series continues this spring with two journalists and authors pushing us to explore the edges of the Earth and the skies beyond.
The series, previously known as the Town Hall of Cleveland, has long featured a robust and diverse selection of political leaders, historians, journalists and cultural provocateurs ranging from Winston Churchill and Alex Haley to Barbara Walters and the Capitol Steps.
The 2023–24 series—which has featured award-winning author Ruha Benjamin and media personality and political analyst Tiffany Cross—continues Wednesday, March 20, with journalist, author and broadcaster David Baron.
An avid eclipse chaser, Baron has traveled the globe to stand in the moon’s shadow and witness nature’s grandest spectacle: a total eclipse of the sun. His lecture, “Scientific America: The Eclipse that Enlightened a Nation,” will provide a timely perspective ahead of the April 8 solar eclipse that will briefly cast Cleveland into darkness.
Baron’s 2017 book, American Eclipse, chronicles the stories of three scientists chasing the solar eclipse of 1878.
The lecture, which will begin at 7:30 p.m. at The Milton and Tamar Maltz Performing Arts Center at the Temple-Tifereth Israel at Case Western Reserve University, is free and open to the general public. Registration is required at case.edu/events/thinkforum.
On May 1, the Think Forum series will present the F. Joseph Callahan Distinguished Lecture featuring Pulitzer Prize-winning science writer and journalist Elizabeth Kolbert.
A staff writer at The New Yorker since 1999, Kolbert was awarded the 2015 Pulitzer Prize in the General Nonfiction category for her book, The Sixth Extinction. Her most recent book, Under a White Sky: The Nature of the Future, was a national bestseller and has been listed as one of the books of the year by the Washington Post, Time, Esquire and Smithsonian Magazine. Her upcoming book, H is for Hope will be released March 26.
Details for the May 1 event will be available at case.edu/events/thinkforum.