Category Archives: Lecture

Today at noon – Legacies and Lunch with Bobby Roberts

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robertsThe Butler Center for Arkansas Studies and Clinton School of Public Service present today’s Legacies and Lunch program which features a conversation with Bobby Roberts.

Roberts has been the director of the Central Arkansas Library System (CALS) since 1989. During his tenure at CALS, it has been recognized as one of the premier library systems in the United States, noted for outstanding public service and innovative programming. Roberts is retiring from CALS on March 4. On March 2, he will talk with Clinton School of Public Service Dean Skip Rutherford at the Butler Center’s monthly Legacies & Lunch presentation series.

A native of Helena, Ark., Roberts became a historian and archivist, a writer of Civil War history, a university faculty member, and a member of Governor Bill Clinton’s staff before taking leadership at CALS. At Legacies & Lunch, Rutherford will interview Roberts about his interest in history and politics, the transformation of CALS, and what he sees for the future of the library system, the city of Little Rock, and the state of Arkansas. This special program is sponsored in part by the Arkansas Humanities Council.

Wednesday, March 2, 2016 at 12:00 Noon
CALS Ron Robinson Theater

The Honorable Timothy C. Evans delivers 2016 Arkansas Black Hall of Fame Laureate Lecture tonight at Mosaic Templars Cultural Center

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ABHOF TCE 2012The Arkansas Black Hall of Fame and the Mosaic Templars Cultural Center tonight present the The Honorable Timothy C. Evans as the Distinguished Laureate Lecture tonight (February 25) at 6pm.  Doors open at 5:30.

Native Arkansan, The Honorable Timothy C. Evans, is the Chief Judge of one of the largest circuit court systems in the world. He is the first African American to be elected to this position where he oversees 400 judges and more than 2,700 non-judicial employees. He is the recipient of the prestigious William H. Rehnquist Award for Judicial Excellence, presented annually by the Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court. Judge Evans is returning to Arkansas to share his experiences as Chief Judge and his insight on:

  • Social and racial Justice in America
  • Alternative sentencing for juveniles and nonviolent offenders
  • Criminal justice system reform
  • Interpretations of the laws governing Grand Jury decisions

The discussion of these and other topics from the perspective of an award winning judge, tasked with leading one of the largest judicial systems in the world, will provide additional insight as Little Rock and Arkansas address similar challenges.   Chicago has garnered national media attention with increased incidences of crime, violence and police shooting incidents in minority communities. This discussion is sure to evoke community conversations that will allow Arkansas to seek solutions for social and racial justice issues in our state, cities and communities.

To RSVP, click here.

 

THE WITTENBERG HERITAGE focus of Architecture & Design Network discussion this evening at 6pm at Arkansas Arts Center

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wittenberg-heritageIn 1919, young architects George Wittenberg and Lawson Delony co-founded the firm that would become, under the visionary leadership of George’s son Gordon, one of the largest, longest-lasting and most influential architectural firms in the state. During his thirty-year tenure (1952-1982) as head of Wittenberg Delony & Davidson Architects, the company had a significant role in the design of many city landmarks, winning more than thirty awards for its work. The Arkansas Chapter of the American Institute of Architects awarded its most prestigious prize, the Gold Medal, to Gordon Wittenberg in recognition of his many contributions to the profession. In view of his outstanding contributions to the field, he was elected a Fellow of the American Institute of Architects, an honor accorded a select few.

This evening (February 23) the Architecture and Design Network will feature Gordon Wittenberg in a program entitled THE WITTENBERG HERITAGE.  It begins at 6pm at the Arkansas Arts Center with a reception at 5:30pm preceding it.

Wittenberg will be joined by his colleagues in reflection on the firm’s nearly one hundred year history, a heritage that shaped spaces and places throughout the state and beyond. THE WITTENBERG HERITAGE a group presentation, chaired by Gordon Ducksworth, AIA, Senior Associate/Project Architect, Wittenberg, Delony & Davidson Inc. Architects, Little Rock, AR. Like other Architecture and Design Network (ADN) lectures, THE WITTENBERG HERITAGE is free and open to the public. The Architecture and Design Network (ADN), a non-profit organization, is supported in part by the Arkansas Arts Center, the Central Arkansas Section of the Arkansas Chapter of the American Institute of Architects, the University of Arkansas Fay Jones School of Architecture and friends in the community.

Today at noon at the Clinton School – A conversation about the upcoming Ark Rep productionof AN ILIAD

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Arkansas Repertory Theatre producing artistic director, Bob Hupp, will host a conversation with Joe Graves, star of the upcoming one-man show, “An Iliad.” This production adapts Homer’s Trojan War epic into a compelling monologue that captures both the heroism and horror of warfare, and answers the question: “What has really changed since the Trojan War?”

This production makes the western world’s oldest extant work of literature not only intelligible, but immediate, relevant and eerily fascinating—as if a storyteller were telling the oldest story in the book and making you believe it is being told for the very first time. Gods and goddesses, weak-tendoned heroes and the face that launched a thousand ships…it’s all just another (incredibly engrossing) yarn in this one-man adaptation, developed at the Sundance Theatre Institute.

Graves has appeared at Arkansas Rep in many productions including RED, OF MICE AND MEN, ALL MY SONS and MY FAIR LADY.

“The Good Story: Inspiring Leadership” is focus of Clinton School program this evening

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uacs hafreyLeigh Hafrey, author and a senior lecturer at the MIT Sloan School of Management, has worked in professional ethics for over two decades, with a focus on ethical leadership, teaching college courses at Harvard Business School and MIT and consulting for private organizations around the world. For 17 years, along with his wife, Sandra Naddaff, Hafrey was a co-Master of Mather House, one of the 12 residential complexes in Harvard College.

Hafrey is a sought after expert on the relationship between storytelling and inspiring leadership.  He has been featured at conferences all over the world discussing the connection between leadership and the ability to tell a good story.  As he told The Power of Storytelling in 2015:

Storytelling supplies a narrative logic to events past, present, and future. Presentations by definition work with the principles of storytelling: plot, place, character, conflict and resolution.  Some people do it better than others, and those individuals reach leadership positions in part because of their skill as storytellers. Think Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., Aung San Suu Kyi, Muhammad Yunus and Vaclav Havel.

In his most recent book, War Stories: Fighting, Competing, Imagining, Leading, Hafrey covers the arc of military American self-perception on the screen, in print, and in public conversation over the past 20 years.

Tonight at the Clinton School – Devery Anderson discusses the 1955 murder of Emmett Till

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Emmett Till bookThis evening at 6pm at the Clinton School, Devery Anderson discusses his book on the murder of Emmett Till. A book signing will follow.

Emmett Till: The Murder That Shocked the World and Propelled the Civil Rights Movement offers the first truly comprehensive account of the 1955 murder and its aftermath. It tells the story of Emmett Till, the fourteen-year-old African American boy from Chicago brutally lynched for a harmless flirtation at a country store in the Mississippi Delta. His death and the acquittal of his killers by an all-white jury set off a firestorm of protests that reverberated all over the world and spurred on the civil rights movement. Like no other event in modern history, the death of Emmett Till provoked people all over the United States to seek social change.

For six decades the Till story has continued to haunt the South as the lingering injustice of Till’s murder and the aftermath altered many lives. Fifty years after the murder, renewed interest in the case led the Justice Department to open an investigation into identifying and possibly prosecuting accomplices of the two men originally tried. Between 2004 and 2005, the Federal Bureau of Investigation conducted the first real probe into the killing and turned up important information that had been lost for decades.

This book will stand as the definitive work on Emmett Till for years to come. Incorporating much new information, the book demonstrates how the Emmett Till murder exemplifies the Jim Crow South at its nadir. The author accessed a wealth of new evidence. Anderson has made a dozen trips to Mississippi and Chicago to conduct research and interview witnesses and reporters who covered the trial. In Emmett Till Anderson corrects the historical record and presents this critical saga in its entirety.

Tonight at the Clinton School – Jeremy Haft speaks about Unmade in China

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uacs haft bookUnmade in China by Jeremy Haft, Thursday, February 11 at 6pm.

Jeremy Haft, author and adjunct professor at Georgetown University who lectures in both the Walsh School of Foreign Service and the McDonough School of Business, has spent two decades starting and building companies in China across sectors of the economy. In his book Unmade in China: The Hidden Truth about China’s Economic Miracle, Haft explores the hidden world of China’s intricate supply chains and tells the story of systemic risk in Chinese manufacturing and what this means for the United States.

If you look carefully at how things are actually made in China – from shirts to toys, apple juice to oil rigs – you see a reality that contradicts every widely-held notion about the world’s so-called economic powerhouse. From the inside looking out, China is not a manufacturing juggernaut. It’s a Lilliputian. Nor is it a killer of American jobs. It’s a huge job creator. Rising China is importing goods from America in such volume that millions of U.S. jobs are sustained through Chinese trade and investment.

In Unmade in China, entrepreneur and Georgetown University business professor Jeremy Haft lifts the lid on the hidden world of China’s intricate supply chains. Informed by years of experience building new companies in China, Haft’s unique, insider’s view reveals a startling picture of an economy which struggles to make baby formula safely, much less a nuclear power plant. Using firm-level data and recent case studies, Unmade in China tells the story of systemic risk in Chinese manufacturing and why this is both really bad and really good news for America.

He has also authored other books covering China’s economy, including All the Tea in China: How to Buy, Sell, and Make Money on the Mainland, which presents best practices for importing, exporting, and doing business in China.