MVP Fridays
Hosted by the institute on Friday afternoons of select home football weekends, MVP Fridays tackle big questions by inviting national leaders, journalists, and writers to speak on questions of meaning, values, and purpose. Each lecture takes place at 4:00 p.m. in the Geddes Hall Andrews Auditorium or Coffee House.
The 2025 Lineup
For the fall 2025 series, MVP Fridays brought to the institute Pulitzer Prize–winning and New York Times–bestselling author Viet Thanh Nguyen, Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist and award-winning author Timothy Egan, and popular podcaster and author Elizabeth Oldfield. Read more about each speaker below.
Viet Thanh Nguyen: “POV: Writing as Other”
Viet Thanh Nguyen spoke on “POV: Writing as Other” on September 19 in Andrews Auditorium. He was introduced by Azareen Van Der Vliet Oloomi, Dorothy G. Griffin College Professor of English, and his lecture was co-sponsored by the Creative Writing Program, the Department of American Studies, the Initiative on Race and Resilience, and the Liu Institute for Asia and Asian Studies.
Viet Thanh Nguyen’s novel The Sympathizer is a New York Times bestseller and won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Other honors include the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, the Edgar Award for Best First Novel from the Mystery Writers of America, the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction from the American Library Association, the First Novel Prize from the Center for Fiction, a Gold Medal in First Fiction from the California Book Awards, and the Asian/Pacific American Literature Award from the Asian/Pacific American Librarian Association. His other books are Nothing Ever Dies: Vietnam and the Memory of War (a finalist for the National Book Award in nonfiction and the National Book Critics Circle Award in General Nonfiction) and Race and Resistance: Literature and Politics in Asian America. He is a University Professor, the Aerol Arnold Chair of English, and a Professor of English, American Studies and Ethnicity, and Comparative Literature at the University of Southern California. Most recently he has been the recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim and MacArthur Foundations, and le Prix du meilleur livre étranger (Best Foreign Book in France), for The Sympathizer.
“Some of us are explicitly marked as ‘others’ by dominant society, however that’s going to be defined, but I think all of us also wrestle in some dimension with the otherness within ourselves, whether we acknowledge that otherness or whether we deny it.”
Timothy Egan: “Historical Echoes and the Klan in Indiana”
Timothy Egan spoke on “Historical Echoes and the Klan in Indiana on October 3 in Andrews Auditorium. He was introduced by Darren Dochuk, Andrew V. Tackes College Professor of History and William W. and Anna Jean Cushwa Co-director, Cushwa Center for the Study of American Catholicism. Egan’s lecture was co-sponsored by the Department of American Studies, the Department of History, the Department of Sociology, and the Initiative on Race and Resilience.
Timothy Egan is a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist and award-winning author. His most recent book, A Fever in the Heartland: The Ku Klux Klan’s Plot to Take Over America, and the Woman Who Stopped Them, is a historical thriller that was an immediate New York Times bestseller. Publishers Weekly, in a starred review, called it “a harrowing look at forgotten chapter in American history.”
The Immortal Irishman was a New York Times bestseller. His book on Edward Curtis, Short Nights of the Shadow Catcher, was awarded the Carnegie Award for best nonfiction. His account of the Dust Bowl,The Worst Hard Time, won the 2006 National Book Award and he was featured prominently in the 2012 Ken Burns film on the Dust Bowl.
A lifelong journalist, Mr. Egan worked as a national correspondent and opinion columnist for the New York Times, roaming the West. As a Times correspondent, he shared a Pulitzer Prize in 2001 with a team of reporters for its series, “How Race is Lived in America.” He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
“I’m always looking for people at the margins. History’s written by great men and about great men, but sometimes it’s the people in the margins who stop them. And I have to say, in all honesty, three was only one institution that truly stood up to a time when the Klan ran your state, and that was this University. And there was only one individual brought them down who was sort of an accidental heroine, and that’s my hero, Madge Oberholtzer.”
Elizabeth Oldfield: “Tending the Soul in Turbulent Times”
Elizabeth Oldfield spoke on “Tending the Soul in Turbulent Times” on October 10 in the Geddes Hall Coffee House. She was introduced by Paul Blaschko, director of Sheedy Family Program in Economy, Enterprise, and Society and assistant teaching professor of philosophy. Oldfield’s lecture was co-sponsored by the Department of Theology and the Nanovic Institute for European Studies.
Elizabeth Oldfield is the author of Fully Alive: Tending to the Soul in Turbulent Times, exploring how we can build spiritual core strength for an unstable age. She is also the host of The Sacred podcast, interviewing those who shape our common life about their deepest values.
She is an experienced broadcaster, writer and lecturer on themes related to public ethics, spirituality, wisdom and our common life, including on the BBC and in The Times, FT, The Economist, Prospect, and UnHerd, among others. For ten years she was Director of Theos, the UK’s leading religion and society think tank, building a healthy and human team culture alongside a commitment to excellence. She is the Chair of the Board of Directors of Larger Us, an organization working to help change-makers bridge divides rather than deepening them.
“One of the things I try and keep front of mind is, Who do I want to be become? I want to be as intentional intentional as I can about who I’m becoming, and so I have a vision of the kind of life I want to live: a life of beauty and moral courage.”