Past Events

Teju Cole

Photography Critic, New York Times Magazine; Gore Vidal Professor of the Practice of Creative Writing at Harvard

September 26, 2018

And how long have you been talking to photographs?

Alexander Heffner

Host of "The Open Mind", PBS

September 19, 2018

Civil Discourse in an Uncivil Age: The Quest for a Post-Partisan Citizenship

Sam Quinones

Journalist, Storyteller, Author, and Former LA Times Reporter

June 6, 2018

“Dreamland: The True Tale of America's Opiate Epidemic”

Co-sponsored by the Department of Psychiatry

Ashley Merryman

New York Times best-selling author of Top Dog and Nurture Shock

May 1, 2018

“How to Be a Champion: The Science of Winning and Losing, from Olympic Trials to Final Exams and Beyond”

What does it take to perform under pressure in an exam, a game, or a job interview? A small but critical shift in mindset—from playing to win to playing not to lose—changes everything. Your strategy, psychology, even physiology. In this session, you’ll learn how military special operators keep their cool, and which mental strategies Olympians use to come back from defeat. This workshop is about finding the champion in you.

AJ Jacobs

journalist, author, and editor at large for Esquire magazine

April 26, 2018

The Politic Presents AJ Jacobs

Megumi Sasaki

Award-winning documentary filmmaker and journalist

April 25, 2018

“A Whale of a Tale”

Film screening followed by Q&A with director Megumi Sasaki

Entering the political fray of environmentalism versus tradition raging around the issue of dolphin hunting in Taiji, Japan since the 2009 release of The Cove, Megumi Sasaki’s documentary is the finely balanced film essay the frayed topic has been waiting for. A Whale of a Tale focuses on points of contact and communication between the two sides, foreign activists devoting years to the cause and agricultural workers who have developed a first-name familiarity.