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3.25.21 | 11:00am - 12:00pm (Recurring event)
The Phi Beta Kappa Society’s Zeta Chapter of Georgia at Mercer University will host the fourth annual Malcolm Lester Phi Beta Kappa Lectures on Liberal Arts and Public Life this spring.
Dr. William D. Adams, former chair of the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), will present three lectures on the theme “Getting Ready: The Liberal Arts and Sciences in the Post-Pandemic World” March 25-26. The lectures will be livestreamed at http://pbk.mercer.edu/.
Dr. Adams’ opening lecture is titled “Work Readiness” and will take place March 25 at 11 a.m. It will be followed by “Participation Readiness” March 25 at 5:30 p.m. and “Meaning Readiness” March 26 at 11 a.m.
Dr. Adams served as the 10th chair of NEH from 2014-2017. In that capacity, he initiated several new grantmaking programs under the banner of “The Common Good: The Humanities in the Public Square.” After leaving NEH, he was named a Senior Fellow at the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, where he continued his national advocacy on behalf of the humanities.
Dr. Adams previously served as president of Colby College from 2000-2014, president of Bucknell University from 1995-2000 and vice president and secretary of Wesleyan University from 1989-1995. He taught political philosophy at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and at Santa Clara University. He also coordinated the Great Works in Western Culture Program at Stanford University.
He earned his Ph.D. in the History of Consciousness Program at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and his B.A. in philosophy from Colorado College. He is currently working on a book about the French phenomenologist Maurice Merleau-Ponty and the painter Paul Cézanne.