Endowed Lectures

Renowned Speakers Take the Stage

The first female Secretary of State. Pulitzer Prize Winners. Powerful activists. Best-selling authors. Renowned musicians. You’ll see them all at Bridgewater.

Endowed Lecture Series
2024-2025

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List
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We’ve had many amazing speakers and artists take the stage at Bridgewater College.

Acclaimed journalist, author and civil rights historian Wil Haygood delivered the keynote address for Bridgewater College’s Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day Celebration. Haygood discussed his award-winning book “Tigerland: 1968-1969: A City Divided, a Nation Torn Apart, and a Magical Season of Healing.” Haygood’s journalistic awards include a National Association of Black Journalists Award for Foreign Reporting and a New England Associated Press Award, and he was a finalist for the 1991 Pulitzer Prize in Feature Writing. In 2022, he received the Ambassador Richard Holbrooke Lifetime Distinguished Achievement Award, a prestigious literary award that has also been presented to former President Jimmy Carter and “The Handmaid’s Tale” author Margaret Atwood.
Award-winning journalist and public radio host Celeste Headlee presented an endowed lecture at Bridgewater College. Headlee’s lecture provided 10 science-based communication lessons on how to have better conversations, particularly in the wake of the 2024 U.S. presidential election. Headlee is best known for her 20 years in public radio, including as host of NPR programs “Tell Me More,” “Talk of the Nation,” “Here & Now,” “All Things Considered” and “Weekend Edition.”
Dr. David Hollinger, a historian specializing in American intellectual and religious history, discussed his most recent work, “Christianity’s American Fate: How Religion Became More Conservative and Society More Secular,” which was published in 2022. Hollinger is the Preston Hotchkis professor of history, emeritus, at the University of California, Berkeley. He is an elected member of the American Philosophical Society and the Society of American Historians. Hollinger also served as president of the Organization of American Historians from 2010-2011.
Two of America’s most experienced political analysts discussed national politics, current events and the 2024 election season. Jonah Goldberg, a popular conservative pundit, and veteran NPR reporter Mara Liasson paired up to deliver clear-cut analysis on the headlines impacting Americans in a panel discussion facilitated by Bobbi Gentry, Bridgewater College Associate Professor of Political Science. Gentry, an expert in elections and youth voting, was joined by BC undergraduate student Jory Cardoza ’26, a political science major.
Writer, researcher and entrepreneur Margot Lee Shetterly delivered the keynote address, “The Importance of Representation and Racial Progress,” as part of BC’s annual celebration of the life and legacy of Martin Luther King Jr. Shetterly is the author of Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Mathematicians Who Helped Win the Space Race, which was a top book of 2016 for both TIME and Publisher’s Weekly, a USA Today bestseller and an instant No. 1 New York Times bestseller.
Known for her humor and satire, Washington Post columnist Alexandra Petri addressed creative writing, the role of humor and satire in journalism, and the effects of A.I. on journalism. She is the author of A.P.’s U.S. History: Important American Documents (I Made Up) and the essay collections Nothing Is Wrong and Here Is Why and A Field Guide to Awkward Silences. Petri joined The Washington Post as an intern in 2010 after graduating from Harvard College.
Award-winning Black non-binary author and activist George M. Johnson used their inspiring life story to teach individuals, corporations and policymakers about LGBTQIA+ activism and social justice in healthcare. Johnson’s New York Times bestselling memoir All Boys Aren’t Blue, a powerful recounting of their adolescence growing up as a young Black queer boy in New Jersey, was called “an exuberant, unapologetic memoir infused with a deep but cleareyed love for its subjects” by the New York Times.
Award-winning author James McBride spoke about his latest novel Deacon King Kong, which tells the story of a 1969 shooting in Brooklyn and the strange intersections of the lives of the characters involved in the incident. Told with insight and wit, Deacon King Kong demonstrated that love and faith live in all of us.