The University Lectureship

The University Lecture was established at Boston University in 1950 for the purpose of honoring members of the faculty engaged in outstanding research. The lecture provides an opportunity for all members of the University community—as well as the general public—to meet a distinguished scholar discussing a topic of recognized excellence. Each spring, all members of the faculty are invited to make nominations for the subsequent year’s lecturer. The University Lecturers from the previous five years act as the Graduate School’s Nominating Committee. The lectures are open to the public.

• Brenton R. Lutz, The Living Blood Vessels, December 11, 1950
• Edgard Sheffield Brightman, Persons and Values, April 16, 1951
• Warren O. Ault, The Self-Directing Activities of Village Communities in Medieval England, December 10, 1951
• Sanford B. Hooker, The Individualities of the Human Blood, April 17, 1952
• Elmer A. Leslie, The Intimate Papers of Jeremiah, December 11, 1952
• Karl Geiringer, The Bachs—A Family Portrait, April 8, 1953
• William Malamud, Psychosomatics—A Medical Definition of Body-Mind Relationship, December 8, 1953
• Edward Wagenknecht, The Unknown Longfellow, April 8, 1954
• Walter G. Muelder, The Idea of a Responsible Society, December 9, 1954
• Albert Morris, Homicide: An Approach to the Problem of Crime, April 14, 1955
• Frank T. Nowak, Russian Imperial and Soviet Foreign Policy, December 6, 1955
• Chester S. Keefer, Medical Science and Society, April 10, 1956
• Gerald W. Brace, The Age of the Novel, December 11, 1956
• Donald D. Durrell, The Search for Better Schools, April 9, 1957
• William C. Boyd, Genetics and the Races of Man, December 11, 1957
• William O. Brown, Racial Issues in South Africa and the American South, April 24, 1958
• Leland C. Wyman, Navaho Indian Painting: Symbolism, Artistry, and Psychology, February 17, 1959
• Peter A. Bertocci, Education and the Vision of Excellence, March 23, 1960
• L. Harold Dewolf, Acknowledgement of Non-Christian Contributions to Christian Faith and Life, November 2, 1960
• Walter J. Gensler, Making Molecules: Ways to New Polyunsaturates, December 11, 1961
• Robert E. Moody, A Proprietary Experiment in Early New England History: Thomas Gorges and the Province of Maine, April 23, 1963
• Lashley G. Harvey, The “Walled” Towns of New England, April 15, 1964
• Amiya Chakravarty, The Emergent Design, April 22, 1965
• Franz J. Inglefinger, Medical Technosis, April 12, 1966
• David Aronson, Real and Unreal: The Double Nature of Art, May 9, 1967
• Robert S. Cohen, Science: Life and Death, April 25, 1968
• Theodore Brameld, Our Climactic Decades: Mandate to Education, May 14, 1969
• Albert R. Beisel Jr., Erotica and the Law, April 22, 1971
• John Malcolm Brinnin, Pray You, Undo this Button: The Sentimental Strategies, April 25, 1972
• Irwin T. Sanders, The Search for Community in a Complex Society, December 3, 1973
• Helen H. Vendler, The Recent Poetry of Robert Lowell, April 3, 1974
• Joseph H. Silverstein, The University Music School: Its Uses and Its Future, December 9, 1975
• Lynn Margulis, The Early Evolution of Life, January 26, 1978
• J. Michael Harrison, Sound and the Way It Controls Animal Behavior, November 8, 1978
• John Findlay, Ethics as an Art, March 12, 1980
• Paul N. Rosenstein-Rodan, The New International Economic Order—The Relation Between the Haves and the Have-Nots in the Year 2000, March 26, 1981
• Sidney A. Burrell, The Scottish Dimension in Irish History, April 1, 1982
• Millicent Bell, Meaning and Unmeaning: Henry James, April 11, 1983
• Richard H. Clarke, Star Wars Surgery: What Chemical Physics Has to Offer the Operating Room of the Eighties, April 9, 1984
• Howard Clark Kee, Medicine: Miracle and Magic in the Roman World, April 8, 1985
• Norman M. Naimark, Terrorism and the Fall of Imperial Russia, April 14, 1986
• William B. Kannel, Conquest of Coronary Heart Disease: Epidemiologic Contributions of the Framingham Study, March 23, 1987
• Peter L. Berger, Moral Judgment and Political Action, October 26, 1987
• Phyllis Curtin, Views of Life and Education Gleaned from Performance, October 27, 1988
• Stephen Grossberg, Human Vision and Neural Computation: Illusion and Reality in the Mind’s Eye, October 25, 1989
• Christopher Ricks, Literature and the Matter of Fact, October 30, 1990
• H. Eugene Stanley, Fractal Landscapes in Physics and Biology, October 21, 1991
• Jean Berko Gleason, Language Acquisition and Socialization, October 19, 1992
• Nancy Kopell, Rhythms and Clues: Mechanisms of Self-Organization in Nature, October 18, 1993
• Lukas Foss, A Twentieth-Century Composer’s Confessions About the Creative Process, October 24, 1994
• Roger Shattuck, The Rule of Excess: Faust and Frankenstein, October 10, 1995
• Glenn C. Loury, The Divided Society and the Democratic Idea, October 7, 1996
• Charles R. Cantor, After the Human Genome Project: a Peek at Future Biomedical Science and Technology, October 20, 1997
• Michael Mendillo, Astronomy through a Glass Darkly—Searching for Extended Atmospheres of Planets, Moons, and Comets, October 5, 1998
• Robert Dallek, Presidential “Disability”: An American Dilemma, October 18, 1999
• Robert G. Bone, From Judgment to Settlement: The Changing Character of American Courts, October 16, 2000
• David H. Barlow, The Origins of Anxiety and Its Disorders, October 15, 2001
• Stanley Rosen, Comfortable Virtue: Remarks on the Enlightenment, October 21, 2002
• Charles DeLisi, Crossing the Watershed: Biological and Other Worlds in the Post-Genomic Era, October 20, 2003
• William C. Carroll, Macbeth and the Show of Kings, April 28, 2005
• George Annas, American Bioethics after Nuremberg: Pragmatism, Politics, and Human Rights, November 10, 2005
• Barbara B. Diefendorf, Blood Wedding: The Saint Bartholomew’s Day Massacre in History and Memory, October 25, 2006
• Andrew Bacevich, Illusions of Managing History: The Enduring Relevance of Reinhold Niebuhr, October 9, 2007
• James J. Collins, Biology by Design, October 21, 2008
• Thomas H. Kunz, Aeroecology: The Next Frontier, October 19, 2009
• Jeremy Yudkin, Not a Note Too Many: Beethoven, McCartney, & Miles 2010, October 14, 2010