Friday afternoons on home football weekends featured lectures by national leaders, journalists, and writers on questions of meaning, values, and purpose. Each lecture was followed by a reception and both lecture and reception took place in the Stinson Remick Hall of Engineering from 4:00–6:00 p.m.

Here’s the lineup from the fall of 2022

September 9: How do we get past polarization?

Ralph McCloud, Director, Catholic Campaign for Human Development

From the event: “To overcome politicization, we must be willing to abandon our silos and embrace proximity. We must look at Pope Francis’ call to synodality with a sincere desire to be community in every sense of the word.”

Ralph McCloud is the Director of the Catholic Campaign for Human Development (CCHD), an anti-poverty program of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. It works to break the cycle of poverty by helping low-income people participate in decisions that affect their lives, families and communities. It has a complementary mission of educating on poverty and its causes. Ralph has served as the national director for eight years. Prior to working the USCCB, Ralph worked as Division Director of Pastoral and Community Services in the Diocese of Fort Worth Texas. In this capacity he supervised the Departments of Family Life, Peace and Justice, African American Ministry, Ministry to the Incarcerated, Ministry to People with Disabilities, Hospital Ministry and Hispanic Ministry.

September 16: How do we hope in hard times?

Norman Wirzba, Professor of Christian Theology, Duke University

From the event: “Hope isn’t a ‘thing’ we can give to people, like a vaccine that renders them immune to the troubles of this life. Instead, hope is a form of love that communicates to others that they belong, are cherished, and will not have to face alone whatever troubles might come their way.”

Norman Wirzba is the Gilbert T. Rowe Distinguished Professor of Theology at Duke University and a Senior Fellow at Duke’s Kenan Institute for Ethics. He is the author of several books, including, most recently, This Sacred Life: Humanity’s Place in a Wounded World and Agrarian Spirit: Cultivating Faith, Community, and the Land (published by the University of Notre Dame Press). He lectures widely across North America and Europe. When he is home he likes to make things with wood, enjoy meals with families and friends, and bake the German cakes his mother taught him.

October 21: What happens to people when work disappears?

Farah Stockman, Columnist and editorial board member, New York Times; author of American Made

From the event: “Jobs are the lifeblood of politics. Who we hire, who we train, whose jobs we protect and whose jobs we throw under the bus reveal the truth about where our loyalties lie.”

Farah Stockman is a Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist and a member of the New York Times editorial board. She joined the New York Times in 2016 as a reporter covering politics, social movements, and race for the national desk. She previously spent 16 years at the Boston Globe, serving as that paper’s foreign policy reporter in Washington and as a columnist. She has reported from Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, South Sudan, Rwanda, Guantánamo Bay, Kenya, Indonesia, and Japan. She won a Pulitzer Prize in 2016 for a series of columns about the legacy of efforts to desegregate schools in Boston. She is the author of American Made: What Happens to People When Work Disappears, a book about three steelworkers in Indiana who worked at a factory that moved to Mexico.

November 4: How do we cultivate character for the common good?

Anne Snyder, Editor-in-Chief, Comment magazine

From the event: “Community renewal is proving that…it’s not about over-institutionalizing a successful formula. It’s about initiating a logic that taps into the best of human instincts and seeing how that spark might be contagious, neighbor to neighbor, block by block.”

Anne Snyder is the editor-in-chief of Comment magazine and oversees its partner project, Breaking Ground. She is the host of The Whole Person Revolution podcast and co-editor of Breaking Ground: Charting Our Future in a Pandemic Year, published in January 2022. Prior to leading Comment, she directed The Philanthropy Roundtable‘s Character Initiative, a program seeking to help foundations and business leaders strengthen “the middle ring” of morally formative institutions. Her path-breaking guidebook, The Fabric of Character: A Wise Giver’s Guide to Renewing our Social and Moral Landscape, was published in 2019. From 2014 to 2017 Anne worked for Laity Lodge and the H.E. Butt Foundation in Texas, and before that, the Ethics and Public Policy Center, World Affairs Journal, and The New York Times. She is a Senior Fellow of The Trinity Forum and a Fellow at the Urban Reform Institute. She has published widely, including The Atlantic Monthly, the Washington Post, Bittersweet Monthly and of course Comment, and now serves as a trustee for Nyack College. Anne spent the formative years of her childhood overseas before earning a bachelor’s degree from Wheaton College (IL) and a master’s degree from Georgetown University. She lives in Washington, D.C.