Town Hall of Cleveland at Case Western Reserve University announces 2014-15 speaker series schedule

Opens Sept. 9 with author, activist Gloria Steinem 

Gloria Steinem

The nation’s longest consecutive-running speaker series continues for the 2014-15 season with an exceptional lineup in a new home.

Town Hall of Cleveland at Case Western Reserve University, which reflects the recent transition of Town Hall of Cleveland’s operations to the university, features two events this fall and two early next year. The series moves this season to University Circle from Playhouse Square.

The 2014-15 series opens Sept. 9 at Severance Hall, with author and activist Gloria Steinem, whose appearance is presented in partnership with CWRU’s Flora Stone Mather Center for Women and celebrates the center’s 10th anniversary.

A noted writer, editor and feminist activist, Steinem travels the world as an organizer and lecturer and is a frequent media spokeswoman on issues of equality. She now lives in New York City and is working on Road to the Heart: America As if Everyone Mattered, a book about her more than 30 years on the road as a feminist organizer.

The Town Hall series continues at CWRU’s new Tinkham Veale University Center on:

  • Nov. 3, with Harvard University professor and bestselling author Cass Sunstein. The former White House administrator and founder/director of the Program on Behavioral Economics and Public Policy at Harvard Law School. Sunstein has testified before congressional committees on many subjects, and has been involved in constitution-making and law-reform activities internationally. Sunstein, co-author of Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness, is among the most frequently cited legal thinkers in America.
  • Feb. 9, 2015, featuring Sarah Lewis, bestselling author and art historian who served on President Barack Obama’s Arts Policy Committee and has been selected for Oprah Winfrey’s “Power List.” Lewis is a faculty member at Yale University’s School of Art and will be at Harvard University as a Du Bois Fellow this fall. Her latest book, The Rise: Creativity, the Gift of Failure, and the Search for Mastery, investigates how innovation, discovery and the creative progress are spurred by advantages gleaned from the improbable, the unlikely and even failure. The Power of Diversity Lecture is presented in partnership with the Office of Inclusion, Diversity & Equal Opportunity.
  • April 13, 2015, with Sherry Turkle, a professor, author, consultant, researcher and licensed clinical psychologist who has spent the last 30 years researching the psychology of people’s relationships with technology. Referred to by many as “the Margaret Mead of digital culture,” Turkle is the Abby Rockefeller Mauzé Professor of the Social Studies of Science and Technology in the Program in Science, Technology, and Society at MIT, and founder/director of the MIT Initiative on Technology and Self, a center of research and reflection on the evolving connections between people and artifacts. Turkle’s appearance is the F. Joseph Callahan Distinguished Lecture.

In keeping with Town Hall’s 83-year legacy, each program allows for audience interaction with question-and-answer sessions following each lecture.

A patron package with reserved seating for all four 2014-15 events is $150, including parking at the campus center garage adjacent to the Tinkham Veale University Center.

For tickets and more information, visit case.edu/events/townhall.

Town Hall of Cleveland was formed in 1931, making it the nation’s longest, consecutively running speaker series. The series has provided a public lecture forum for world leaders, dignitaries, artists, entertainers and more. Past speakers have included Winston Churchill, Henry Kissinger, Art Buchwald, Henry Fonda, Dan Rather, Barry Goldwater, Alistair Cooke and many more.

The program’s academic sponsor since 2010, Case Western Reserve assumed management and full operation of the series in July.