All lectures will require free tickets.
All lectures are held in the Rhinehart Music Center
Tickets must be picked up in person at the Marilyn and Jim Larson Ticket Office in the Gates Athletics Center between 12:30 and 6:30 p.m., Monday through Friday.
Tickets will be available three weeks prior to each lecture.
Tickets can also be obtained in person at the Schatzlein Box Office in the lobby of the Rhinehart Music Center, one hour before each lecture, if available.
Michele Norris
“The Grace of Silence and the Power of Words”
A recognizable voice that embodies authority and calm, Michele Norris is an award-winning journalist with more than two decades of experience. Since 2002, Norris has hosted NPR's newsmagazine All Things Considered, public radio's longest-running national program. Last year, Norris released her first book, The Grace of Silence: A Memoir, which focuses on how America talks about race in the wake of Barack Obama’s presidential election, and explores her own family's racial legacy. It has been called one of the best books of 2010 by The Christian Science Monitor.
Before coming to NPR, Norris was a correspondent for ABC News. She reported extensively on education, inner city issues, the nation's drug problem, and poverty, on the “Closer Look” segments of World News Tonight with Peter Jennings. Norris has also reported for the Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, and Los Angeles Times. Her Washington Post series about a six-year-old who lived in a crack house was reprinted in the book Ourselves Among Others, along with essays by Václav Havel, Nelson Mandela, Annie Dillard, and Gabriel García Márquez.
A four-time Pulitzer Prize entrant, Norris has received numerous awards for her work, including the Alfred I. DuPont-Columbia University Award for she and co-host Steve Inskeep’s program, “The York Project: Race and the 2008 Vote”; the 2009 Journalist of the Year award from the National Association of Black Journalists; the National Association of Black Journalists' 2006 Salute to Excellence Award, for her coverage of Hurricane Katrina; the University of Minnesota's Outstanding Achievement Award; and the 1990 Livingston Award. She was honored with Ebony Magazine's eighth Annual Outstanding Women in Marketing & Communications Award, and was named one of Essence Magazine’s “25 Most Influential Black Americans.” Norris also earned both an Emmy Award and Peabody Award for her contribution to ABC News' coverage of 9/11. She is a frequent guest on The Chris Matthews Show on NBC News.