[[{“type”:“media”,“view_mode”:“media_large”,“fid”:null,“attributes”:{“class”:“media-image alignnone size-full wp-image-29194”,“typeof”:“foaf:Image”,“style”:“”,“width”:“590”,“height”:“117”,“alt”:“Leading Voices in Higher Education”}}]]
Visit the Strategic Planning website for the most current “Leading Voices in Higher Education” information and schedule.
Social psychologist Roy Baumeister is the next speaker in the “Leading Voices in Higher Education” lecture series. His lecture will take place on Tuesday, March 27, at 4:30 p.m., in Moore Hall’s Filene Auditorium. The lecture is free and open to the public.
Roy Baumeister (photo courtesy of Roy Baumeister)
A professor of psychology at Florida State University, Baumeister is known for pioneering work on the self, social rejection, sexuality, self-esteem, aggression, and free will. He has written, co-written, or edited almost 30 books, the most recent of which is Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength.
In addition to willpower, Baumeister is currently working on studies involving the need to belong, human sexuality, consciousness, irrationality, and self-destructive behavior. “An enduring theme of my work is why people do stupid things. Self-defeating behavior is the essence of irrationality and thus shows the limits of human rationality,” he says.
About “Leading Voices in Higher Education”
The “Leading Voices” speaker series is part of Dartmouth’s strategic planning process, which began last summer.
Provost Carol Folt says, “We are drawing the best thinkers and innovators in higher education today. Ideas for the series are coming from our strategic planning working group members, who suggested speakers who will challenge and inspire our community as we work together to chart a course for Dartmouth’s future.”
Following Baumeister in the series will be Salman Khan, founder of Khan Academy, a free, online education source which has 3.7 million unique users a month. Khan will speak on “Rethinking Education,” on Monday, April 23, at 4:30 p.m., at a location to be announced.
Future speakers also include longtime Princeton Dean Nancy Weiss Malkiel, on May 1; sociologist and Columbia Provost Emeritus Jonathan R. Cole, May 8; and Freeman A. Hrabowski III, president of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. A date hasn’t yet been set for Hrabowski’s talk.
The Dartmouth community has heard from a number of speakers this year, including renowned humanities scholar Cathy Davidson, author of Now You See It: How the Brain Science of Attention Will Transform the Way We Live, Work, and Learn, and Pulitzer Prize-winning author Louis Menand, a writer at The New Yorker and Harvard professor who writes about the role of higher education in society.
To begin the series, Dartmouth Professor Vijay Govindarajan, the Earl C. Daum 1924 Professor of International Business at the Tuck School of Business, presented a strategic planning talk in which he asked the Dartmouth community to consider how education is changing.
“If we want to continue to be a leader, the question we need to ask is, ‘How is the world of higher education likely to change?’ If the 20th century is an American century, I say the 21st century is the global century,” said Govindarajan. “What are the implications of that for higher education?”
