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/

In Person

Dr. Joy Banner: From Plantation to Pollution

12:30pm Thu, Feb 5, 2026

How did the legacy of plantation slavery shape today’s environmental crises? Dr. Joy Banner will trace the “plantation to pollution” through line—from sugarcane cultivation built on extractive enslaved labor to the modern fertilizer and pesticide industries that now pollute the land, air, and water of Black communities along Louisiana’s Mississippi River corridor, often called "Cancer Alley."

Forum Network

Partner:

Ford Hall Forum
Lessons In Drag: A Queer Manual for Academics, Artists, and Aunties

Mon, Dec 15, 2025

"Lessons in Drag" author Kareem Khubchandani speaks with Kris Manjapra, as they discuss the power of Drag to hold together precarious communities through uncertain times.

Forum Network

Partner:

Ford Hall Forum
Jim Fruchterman: Technology For Good

Wed, Nov 19, 2025

Fruchterman will discuss his new book, "Technology for Good: How Nonprofit Leaders are Using Software and Data to Solve Our Most Pressing Problems," with Hiawatha Bray, technology writer for The Boston Globe.

Forum Network

Partner:

Ford Hall Forum
Red Baiting Then and Now — The Danger of Fascism Today

Tue, Oct 28, 2025

In his talk, Michael Meeropol, son of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg will be in conversation with Paul Solman, PBS NewsHour correspondent. They will examine the striking parallels—and crucial differences—between the Red Scare and the Trump era.

Forum Network

Partner:

Ford Hall Forum
Paul Starr on "American Contradiction: Revolution and Revenge from the 1950s to Now"

Wed, Nov 12, 2025

Paul Starr argues Americans' choices to elect Obama and Trump is no anomaly, but rather a manifestation of deep‐rooted tensions or “contradictions” in the nation’s character and institutions. Starr will be in conversation with Harvard Law School Professor Randall Kennedy.

Forum Network

Partner:

Ford Hall Forum
France as Freedom: The Paris Years of Richard Wright

Thu, Sep 11, 2025

Filmmaker Zachary James Miller discusses the life and work of author Richard Wright.

Forum Network

Partner:

Ford Hall Forum
Fannie Lou Hamer's America

Thu, Jun 12, 2025

Fannie Lou Hamer's America: An America ReFramed Special is a portrait of civil rights activist Fannie Lou Hamer and the injustices in America that made her work essential. Working with groups like the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), Fannie Lou Hamer devoted herself to fighting for voting rights and Black political representation. Her efforts would mobilize thousands of Black people to register to vote. Through public speeches, personal interviews, and powerful songs of the fearless Mississippi sharecropper-turned-human-rights-activist, Fannie Lou Hamer's America: An America ReFramed Special explores and celebrates the lesser-known life of one of the Civil Rights Movement’s greatest leaders.

After the screening, there will be a talkback with the film’s director and editor, Joy Davenport; Monica Land, executive producer and niece of Fannie Lou Hamer; and Kate Clifford Larson, bestselling author of the critically acclaimed biography Walk With Me: A Biography of Fannie Lou Hamer. The evening’s moderator is Thato R. Mwosa, an award-winning filmmaker, screenwriter, playwright, and illustrator.

Forum Network

Partner:

Ford Hall Forum
Boston’s Oldest Buildings and Where to Find Them

Wed, Apr 16, 2025

Explore Boston’s Oldest Buildings | A Conversation on Historic Architecture

Boston’s historical architecture is an essential part of the city’s enduring beauty and character. 'Boston’s Oldest Buildings and Where to Find Them' (Brandeis University Press) is the first book to dive into the city’s fifty oldest buildings.

City Archaeologist Joseph Bagley’s narrative introduces readers to Boston’s early history through maps, photographs, and an overview of the city’s historic preservation movement. As Boston approaches its four-hundredth anniversary, don’t miss this opportunity to learn more about our historic city.

Moderated by Robert J. Allison, Professor of History at Suffolk University.

Forum Network

Partner:

Ford Hall Forum Revolutionary Spaces
Alice Rothchild with 'Inspired and Outraged: The Making of a Feminist Physician'

Wed, Feb 19, 2025

Hear about the journey of a 1950s good girl to an irreverent, feisty, feminist physician with author Alice Rothchild in a conversation hosted by Our Bodies Ourselves Today and Ford Hall Forum at Suffolk University.

'Inspired and Outraged' is the intimate memoir of Alice Rothchild from her adolescence to her mid-40s and the experiences that contributed to her passion and power as a doctor, an activist, and a woman. Compiling stories of her life in verse, Rothchild explores the events of her childhood, her training as an obstetrician-gynecologist, and her discovery of feminism as a guiding force in her life.

Rothchild’s voice encapsulates her perseverance in the face of the male-dominated medical world and the shifting sexual politics of the late twentieth century. This memoir is both a record of the past and an urgent call to action.

She is in conversation with Amy Agigian, PhD, is an associate professor in the Department of Sociology and Criminal Justice at Suffolk University (Boston), where she is the founding director of the Center for Women's Health and Human Rights. She also serves as executive director of Our Bodies Ourselves at Suffolk University.

Forum Network

Partner:

Ford Hall Forum
Constructed Movements: Extraction and Resistance in Mexican Migrant Communities

Wed, Feb 5, 2025

Suffolk Law Professor Ragini Shah shares her research with stories from communities in Mexico profoundly affected by emigration to the United States to show how migration extracts resources along racial lines with Professor Shannon Gleeson, School of Industrial and Labor Relations and the Brooks School of Public Policy, Cornell University.

Her book, 'Constructed Movements: Extraction and Resistance in Mexican Migrant Communities' centers stories from communities in Mexico profoundly affected by emigration to the United States to show how migration extracts resources along racial lines. Shah chronicles how three interrelated dynamics—the maldistribution of public resources, the exploitation of migrant labor, and the US immigration enforcement regime—entrench the necessity of migration as a strategy for survival in Mexico. She also highlights the alternative visions elaborated by migrant community organizations that seek to end the conditions that force migration. Recognizing that reform without recompense will never right an unjust migratory system, Shah concludes with a forceful call for the US and Mexican governments to make abolitionist investments and reparative compensation to directly counteract this legacy of extraction.

Forum Network

Partner:

Ford Hall Forum