Forum Network

Free online lectures: Explore a world of ideas

Funding provided by:

Screen_Shot_2018-09-17_at_1.42.40_PM_B49jYB3.png

Ford Hall Forum

The Ford Hall Forum is the nation's oldest continuously operating free public lecture series. Its mission is to foster an informed and effective citizenry and to promote freedom of speech through the public presentation of lectures, debates, and discussions. Forum events illuminate the key issues facing our society by bringing to its podium knowledgeable and thought-provoking speakers. These speakers are presented in person, for free, and in settings, which facilitate frank and open debate.

http://www.fordhallforum.org/

Nancy Nichols with Women Behind the Wheel

Thu, Apr 18, 2024

Suffolk University’s Ford Hall Forum; Communication, Journalism & Media, English, and the History, Language & Global Culture Departments, and Women’s & Gender Studies Program; present:

An evening with award-winning author Nancy A. Nichols, upon the publication of her new book Women Behind the Wheel: An Unexpected and Personal History of the Car. She will be joined in conversation by Amy Monticello, MFA, associate professor and chair, English Department, Suffolk University.

About Women Behind the Wheel

The invention of the automobile a little more than a century ago created a new and movable arena in which women’s struggle for power and autonomy would play out in myriad and often unexpected ways. Cars shaped the way women live, the way women work and date and dress, the way they care for their families, and the way they approach the elusive dream of work-life balance.

Yet despite its dramatic impact on the lives of women, few have stopped the speeding automobile in its tracks to document the impact this technology has had on women. The car may have been “born in a masculine manger,” but beyond this persistent men-and-machine myth lies a different story: women, too, have always loved their cars and the exhilarating freedom of the open road.

Blending cultural analysis, biography, literary criticism, and memoir, Women Behind the Wheel reclaims a neglected history and reveals how the car—and all that surrounds it—has become our most gendered technology.

Praise for Women Behind the Wheel
“Fascinating, funny, enraging and often very moving. For all its hard-edged machinery, gender warring and auto-business shenanigans, the emotional engine of this book is Nichols’s own poignant story.”—The New York Times

Forum Network

Partner:

Ford Hall Forum
Upward Mobility in Boston: 50 Years After Busing

Mon, May 06, 2024

Suffolk University's Ford Hall Forum and Moakley Archive & Institute, The Boston Desegregation and Busing Initiative, and GBH Forum Network, continue a series of programs examining the lasting impacts of the l974 landmark decision to desegregate Boston’s Public Schools. On May 6, the panel will discuss upward mobility in Boston, exploring the city’s historic institutional roadblocks that have hindered progress for people of color fifty years after busing. The panel will explore solutions to address these persistent issues such as enhancing educational opportunities, closing the wealth gap, increasing home ownership, and broadening access to job opportunities.

The evening’s panelists are Ron Bell, longtime community activist and founder of Dunk the Vote, and alumnus of Boston Latin School; Karilyn Crockett, Ph.D., assistant professor, Urban History, Public Policy & Planning, Massachusetts Institute of Technology; and Tatiana M. F. Cruz, Ph.D., assistant professor and interdisciplinary program director of Africana Studies, Department of Critical Race, Gender and Cultural Studies, Simmons University. The program’s moderator is Kris Hooks, editor-in-chief of The Boston Globe’s newsroom team, Money, Power, Inequality: Closing the Racial Wealth Gap, which focuses on addressing the racial wealth gap in Greater Boston.

Background
In our first program, Driving for Desegregation: Boston 50 Years After Busing, Adrian Walker, columnist for The Boston Globe, led a panel that explored the long-term impacts of busing on the city of Boston, including the current state of Boston’s public schools and racial equity in a myriad of arenas. In our second program held last week, our panel, moderated by Stephanie Leydon, GBH News, the panel explored race, housing, and education equity 50 years after busing. This discussion explored the impact of race-based discriminatory housing policies and education funding formulas while addressing the more recent problems of gentrification and housing affordability and how Boston positions itself to compete with its suburban neighbors when it comes to educational outcomes.

Forum Network

Busing Crisis in Boston

Partner:

Ford Hall Forum
Gender Equality and Reproductive Rights After Dobbs

Tue, Apr 02, 2024

The U.S. Supreme Court’s 2022 decision overturning Roe v. Wade sparked dramatic shifts in the abortion and reproductive rights landscape in the United States. These changes have cut to the core of the nature of democracy in America.

This panel examines the far-reaching consequences of restrictions on reproductive and LGBTQ rights nearly two years after the Dobbs decision. Gender equality activists and advocates discuss how reproductive justice is intertwined with the wider attack on bodily autonomy and what can we do to protect these rights in this election year and beyond.

The afternoon’s panelists are Dallas Ducar, RN, CEO, Transhealth; Polly Crozier, Esq., Director of Family Advocacy, GLBTQ Legal Advocates & Defenders (GLAD), and Kristie, Monast, MS Ed, Executive Director, HealthQ. The afternoon’s moderator is Shoshana Madmoni-Gerber, PhD, associate professor and chair, Communication, Journalism & Media Department, Suffolk University.

Forum Network

Partner:

Ford Hall Forum
Odie Henderson with Black Caesars And Foxy Cleopatras - A History of Blaxploitation Cinema

Wed, Feb 28, 2024

Black Caesars and Foxy Cleopatras is a definitive account of Blaxploitation cinema—the freewheeling, often shameless, and wildly influential genre—from a distinctive voice in film history and criticism

In 1971, two films grabbed the movie business, shook it up, and launched a genre that would help define the decade. Melvin Van Peebles’s Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song, an independently produced film about a male sex worker who beats up cops and gets away, and Gordon Parks’s Shaft, a studio-financed film with a killer soundtrack, were huge hits, making millions of dollars. Sweetback upended cultural expectations by having its Black rebel win in the end, and Shaft saved MGM from bankruptcy. Not for the last time did Hollywood discover that Black people went to movies too. The Blaxploitation era was born.

Written by Boston Globe film critic Odie Henderson, Black Caesars and Foxy Cleopatras is a spirited history of a genre and the movies that he grew up watching, which he loves without irony (but with plenty of self-awareness and humor.) Blaxploitation was a major trend, but it was never simple. The films mixed self-empowerment with exploitation, base stereotypes with essential representation that spoke to the lives and fantasies of Black viewers. The time is right for a reappraisal, understanding these films in the context of the time, and exploring their lasting influence.

Odie Henderson will be in conversation with Candace McDuffie, nationally acclaimed senior writer at The Root, who focuses on race, gender, and entertainment.

Forum Network

Partner:

Ford Hall Forum
50 Years After Busing: Race, Housing, and Education Equity in Boston

Thu, Feb 15, 2024

Suffolk University’s Ford Hall Forum, the Moakley Archive & Institute, and GBH Forum Network present a program exploring the relationship between access to affordable housing and educational opportunity in Boston’s public schools nearly fifty years after the school busing crisis. This program, moderated by Stephanie Leydon, Executive Producer of digital video at GBH News, is the second in a series examining the lasting impacts of the landmark decision to desegregate Boston’s Public Schools in 1974. This discussion will take a look back at the impact of race-based discriminatory housing policies and education funding formulas while addressing the more recent problems of gentrification and housing affordability. How does Boston position itself to compete with its suburban neighbors when it comes to educational outcomes?

Join us and lend your voice to this important discussion.

Event sponsored by The Boston Desegregation & Busing Initiative.

Explore the history of Boston’s busing crisis via the digital archives of The Boston Public Schools Desegregation Project, the GBH Archives, and Suffolk University’sMoakley Archive & Institute.

Forum Network

Busing Crisis in Boston

Partner:

Ford Hall Forum
The Soiling of Old Glory: The Story of a Photograph That Shocked America

Thu, Apr 11, 2024

Boston, April 5, 1976. As the city simmered with racial tension over forced school busing, newsman Forman photographed a white protester outside City Hall assaulting the Black attorney Landsmark with the American flag. The photograph shocked Boston and made front pages across the U.S. and the world and won a Pulitzer Prize. Masur has done extensive research, including personal interviews with those involved, to reveal the unknown story of what really happened that day and afterward. This evocative "biography of a photograph" unpacks this arresting image to trace the lives of the men who intersected at that moment, to examine the power of photography and the meaning of the flag, and to reveal how a single picture helped change race relations in Boston and America. The Soiling of Old Glory, like the photograph itself, offers a dramatic window into the turbulence of the 1970s and race relations in America.

Forum Network

Busing Crisis in Boston

Partner:

Ford Hall Forum
Driving for Desegregation: Boston 50 Years After Busing

Thu, Oct 26, 2023

Adrian Walker of The Boston Globe moderates a discussion with Zebulon V. Miletsky, PhD., associate professor of Africana Studies, Stonybrook University and the author of, A History of Boston’s Long Black Freedom Struggle, Alisa R. Drayton, Executive Director, Yawkey Club of Roxbury, and Marilyn Flowers-Marion, chairperson, Retired Teachers Chapter of the Boston Teachers Union, on their lived experiences of court-ordered busing in Boston during the 1970s. The panel also explores the long-term impacts of busing on the city of Boston, including the current state of Boston’s public schools and racial equity in a myriad of arenas. Looking to the future, the panel considers what a more equitable Boston Public School System might look like.

Forum Network

Busing Crisis in Boston

Partner:

Ford Hall Forum
The Road to 2024 - America’s Next Unprecedented Presidential Election

Fri, Oct 20, 2023

Each of the last presidential elections has presented its own unique challenges, from historically unpopular candidates to voting during a global pandemic. 2024 is shaping up to be no different. Join David Paleologos, Director of the Suffolk University Political Research Center and one of the United States’ most respected and trustworthy pollsters, to discuss our next unprecedented presidential election. Get the inside scoop on the swing states, critical voting blocs, and crucial issues that could make or break the 2024 elections. The afternoon's moderator is Latoyia Edwards, Emmy award-winning anchor on NBC10 Boston and NECN.

Forum Network

Partner:

Ford Hall Forum
Reimagining Shakespeare Through The Black Lens

Tue, Sep 12, 2023

Join Ford Hall Forum for a spirited conversation with Stevie Walker-Webb, acclaimed Tony-nominated director of Ain't No Mo', actor, activist and director of the play Fat Ham, Dawn Simmons, Associate Director of Fat Ham, and co-producing director of Front Porch Arts Collective, and Regine Vital, theatre artist, educator, and Actors' Shakespeare Project Associate Producer.
The evening's moderator is Pascale Florestal, Director of Education, Front Porch Arts Collective, and Visiting Guest Artist Professor in Practice at Suffolk University.

The panel discusses the evolution of Shakespeare's work and how race and other intersections influence these stories and reflect of the world today. They explore fresh new perspectives and distinct voices offered in two upcoming Boston theater productions, Fat Ham and The Taming of the Shrew.

Fat Ham, a Huntington Theatre production in partnership with front Porch Arts Collective and Alliance Theater, is a Pulitzer Prize-winning new play that is a smart and sharp reinvention of Shakespeare's masterpiece which took Broadway by storm this spring.

In The Taming of the Shrew, premiering at the Modern Theatre this fall, Artistic Director Christopher Edwards and the talented cast turn this beloved play inside out, flip it upside down and stretch it to the limits in a way that only Actors' Shakespeare Project can - to find what truly sits at the heart of this hilarious and contentious comedy.

Forum Network

Partner:

Ford Hall Forum
Middle-East to the Mid-West: A Palestinian Writer's Journey

Wed, Mar 29, 2023

Join for a presentation and a discussion with acclaimed Palestinian author and screenwriter, Sayed Kashua.

Prominent Palestinian author, screenwriter, and newspaper columnist, Sayed Kashua, once ‘The other” in his homeland of Israel now finds himself “the other”in his new home in the Midwest. Through humor and satire, Kashua shares the challenges and struggles of living in a foreign land and the difficulties of writing about home from a distance.

Forum Network

Partner:

Ford Hall Forum