Levan Annual Distinguished Lecture Series

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• Nikki Giovanni - "Know Thyself" (2011-2012)

  February 22, 2012 Nikki Giovanni is a world-renowned poet, writer, commentator, activist and educator. As a young poet in the late 1960s, Giovanni gave voice to the passions of the black power movement. Over the past 40 years, her outspoken writing and lecturing have kept her boldly in the intersection of art and politics. One of the most widely read American poets, she prides herself on being a “Black American, a daughter, a mother, a professor of English.” Her focus is on the individual, specifically the power one has to make a difference in oneself, and thus in the lives of others. Over a distinguished career, Giovanni has received the NAACP Image Award for Literature and the Langston Hughes Medal for Distinguished Contributions to Arts and Letters. She has also received some 25 honorary degrees, and been named Woman of the Year by Mademoiselle, Ladies' Home Journal and Ebony. The prolific author’s recent books include The 100 Best African American Poems, Rosa and Bicycles: Love Poems. She is a University Distinguished Professor at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Virginia.

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• Danielle Allen - “ANONYMOUS: Political Discourse and Civility in the Digital Age” (2010-2011)

  October 13, 2010 Danielle Allen is a political theorist who has published broadly in democratic theory, political sociology, and the history of political thought. Widely known for her work on justice and citizenship in both ancient Athens and modern America, Allen is the author of The World of Prometheus: the Politics of Punishing in Democratic Athens (2000), Talking to Strangers: Anxieties of Citizenship since Brown vs. the Board of Education (2004), and Why Plato Wrote (2010).  In 2002 she was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship for her ability to combine "the classicist's careful attention to texts and language with the political theorist's sophisticated and informed engagement." Allen is currently working on books on the Declaration of Independence, citizenship in the digital age, and education and equality.

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• Anthony Kronman - "What is Education For?" (2009-2010)

  April 16, 2010 Anthony Kronman is Sterling Professor of Law at Yale Law School. A former Dean of Yale Law School, Professor Kronman is the author of Education's End: Why our Colleges and Universities Have Given Up on the Meaning of Life and teaches in the areas of contracts, bankruptcy, jurisprudence, social theory, and professional responsibility.