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Lecture Series 2012-2013
Heaven is for RealTHURSDAY, SEPT. 6, 2012 - Todd Burpo, Author of Heaven is for Real 5 p.m. and 8 p.m. Heaven Is for Real is the true story of the four-year old son of a small town Nebraska pastor who during emergency surgery slips from consciousness and enters heaven. He survives and begins talking about being able to look down and see the doctor operating and his dad praying in the waiting room. Colton describes the horse that only Jesus could ride, about how "reaaally big" God and his chair are, and how the Holy Spirit "shoots down power" from heaven to help us. Todd Burpo is the pastor of Crossroads Wesleyan Church in Imperial, Nebraska. Heaven is for Real has been on the New York Times bestseller list for 88 consecutive weeks. Sponsored by Sand Lake Wesleyan Church; hosted by the D. B. Reinhart Institute for Ethics in Leadership
Captain Charles Plumb, Vietnam Veteran and POWWEDNESDAY, SEPT. 19, 2012 7:00 p.m. Fine Arts Center Main Theatre
During his nearly six years of captivity, Charlie Plumb distinguished himself among his fellow prisoners as a professional in underground communications, and served for two of those years as the Chaplain in his camp. Since his return home, more than 4,500 audiences in nearly every industry have been spellbound as Captain Charlie Plumb draws parallels between his P.O.W. experience and the challenges of everyday life. He has shared his message to an even wider public through appearances on Good Morning America, Nightline, Larry King Live, and The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer.One of the most sought-after achievement speakers of his time, Charlie Plumb's presentations are as he is, sincere, straightforward, humorous, and tailored to motivate each specific audience he encounters. His insights on how to cope with the difficulties as well as the opportunities in life have a positive impact on those who hear his message, those who read his books, and those who come to know him as a friend. Captain Plumb's Military honors include two Purple Hearts, the Legion of Merit, the Silver Star, the Bronze Star and the P.O.W. Medal. Free and open to the public; no reservations required.
Lewis Feldstein, AuthorTUESDAY, OCTOBER 23, 2012 7 p.m. Fine Arts Center Recital Hall Feldstein was CEO and President of the New Hampshire Charitable Foundation from 1986 to 2010. Under his leadership, the Foundation became one of the largest funders of nonprofit organizations in northern New England, with assets growing from $25 million to $375 million at the end of 2008. Before serving on the foundation, Feldstein worked with the civil rights movement in Mississippi, served for seven years in senior staff positions to New York City Mayor John V. Lindsay, and was provost of the Antioch University New England Graduate School. He has played a lead role in building community foundations across Europe, and for seven years worked on the World Bank leadership team as the bank invested in and tested the role of community foundations and private philanthropy in the developing world. He has been listed among the Top 50 of nonprofit executives by the NonProfit Times and holds honorary doctorates from seven universities. Cosponsored by the Wisconsin Library Association. Free and open to the public; no reservations required.
Elizabeth Marquardt, Author"Is There Any Such Thing as a 'Good' Divorce?"THURSDAY NOVEMBER 8, 2012 7 p.m. Fine Arts Center Main Theatre
 Elizabeth Marquardt is director
of the Center for Marriage and Families at the Institute for American Values in
New York City. She is the author of Between Two Worlds: The Inner Lives of
Children of Divorce (Crown,
2005 and Three Rivers Press, 2006). Based on the first
nationally-representative study of grown children of divorce in the U.S.,
Marquardt argues that while an amicable divorce is better than a bitter one,
even amicable divorces profoundly shape the inner lives of children. The book
was reviewed in the Washington
Post and featured in Newsweek, the New York
Times, the Wall Street
Journal, Reader’s Digest,
and elsewhere. Marquardt has appeared three times on NBC’s Today Show as well as CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360 and Talk Back Live, ABC’s World News Tonight with Peter Jennings, Fox’s O’Reilly Factor, CBS’s Early Show, PBS’s Religion and Ethics Newsweekly, NPR’s All Things Considered Weekend Edition and Diane Rehm Show and The Michael Medved Show. Her writings have been published in the New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, Philadelphia Inquirer, Boston Globe, Christian Science Monitor, First Things, and Christian Century. She is co-author of a ground-breaking study on college women’s attitudes about sex and dating on campus, titled Hooking Up, Hanging Out, and Hoping for Mr. Right: College Women on Dating and Mating Today, featured widely in the media and by columnists including Maureen Dowd and William Raspberry. Marquardt is also principal investigator of an internationally-released report titled The Revolution in Parenthood: The Emerging Global Clash Between Adult Rights and Children’s Needs. She has been a blogger at the Family Scholars Blog since 2003. Marquardt holds an M.Div. and an M.A. in international relations from the University of Chicago and a B.A. in history and women’s studies from Wake Forest University. She has spoken to college audiences and presented at conferences around the country and lives near Chicago with her husband, Jim, a college professor, and their two young children.Co-sponsored by the Office of Marriage and Family Life, Diocese of La Crosse
DOCUMENTARY FILM: MY NEIGHBORHOODTUESDAY JANUARY 29, 2013
7 p.m. Fine Arts Center Main Theatre
 Mohammed
El Kurd is a Palestinian boy growing up in the neighbourhood of Sheikh Jarrah
in the heart of East Jerusalem. When Mohammed turns 11, his family is forced to
give up part of their home to Israeli settlers, who are leading a campaign of
court-sanctioned evictions to guarantee Jewish control of the area. The 25 minute film will be followed by a Q&A via Skype with Suhad Babaa, Community Outreach and Digital Resources Manager for Just Vision.
Carol Gilligan, Professor, New York University School of LawTHURSDAY MARCH 14, 2013 7:00 p.m. Fine Arts Center Main Theatre As a member of the Harvard faculty, she held the university's first chair in gender studies. She received a Senior Research Scholar Award from the Spencer Foundation, a Grawemeyer Award for her contributions to education, and a Heinz Award for her contributions to understanding the human condition. Her recent work includes The Deepening Darkness: patriarchy, resistance, and democracy's future, co-authored with NYU law professor David Richards and published by Cambridge University Press as well as The Scarlet Letter, a play inspired by Hawthorne’s novel and co-authored with her son Jonathan Gilligan. Carol Gilligan is currently a University Professor at New York University; she teaches in the law school, the Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development, and the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. Her latest book, Joining the Resistance, was published by Polity Press in 2011.
Sam Harris, Holocaust SurvivorTHURSDAY APRIL 11, 2013 7 p.m. Fine Arts Center Main Theatre
Today, Sam serves as President of the Holocaust Memorial Foundation of Illinois and is leading the efforts to build the new Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center. He continues to speak extensively on the local and state level about the lessons of the Holocaust and his experiences, which can be found in his memoir Sammy: A Child Survivor of the Holocaust. [from the Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center website]
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Captain
Charlie Plumb graduated from the Naval Academy
at Annapolis and went on to fly the F-4 Phantom jet on 74 successful
combat missions over Vietnam. On his 75th mission, with only five days before
he was to return home, Plumb was shot down, captured, tortured, and imprisoned
in an 8 foot x 8 foot cell. He spent the next 2,103 days as a
Prisoner Of War in Communist war prisons. .JPG "Feldstein3")
Lewis Feldstein has written and lectured widely
on social capital, community building and charitable giving, and has served on
numerous national boards of directors. With Robert Putnam of Harvard
University, he co-founded the Saguaro Seminar: Civic Engagement in America and
co-authored Better Together: Restoring the American Community (Simon &
Schuster, 2003). 
Psychologist,
professor, and novelist, Carol Gilligan was named by Time magazine
as one of 25 most influential Americans. Harvard University Press describes her
1982 book, In a Different Voice, as "the little book that
started a revolution." Her first novel Kyra published in
January 2008 was reviewed in the San Francisco Chronicle as
"a rare thing: an engrossing, deeply emotional, thinking person's love
story." Her 1992 co-authored book, Meeting at the Crossroads,
was a New York Times Notable book of the year. In 2002, The
Birth of Pleasure was praised by theTimes Literary Supplement as
a "thrilling new paradigm" and characterized by National Public Radio
as the work of a psychologist who writes like a novelist. 
Sam
Harris is a child survivor of the Holocaust. Sam was born Szlamek Rzeznik
in May 1935 in Deblin, Poland. Sam was only four years old when
World War II broke out in 1939. Upon Nazi occupation a portion of Deblin was
turned into a ghetto where Sammy and his family lived. Soon overcrowding,
lack of food and medication caused men, women and children to die on the
streets of Deblin from typhus, dysentery and starvation.