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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/

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.

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

6:00pm 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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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Nicholas Nugent with The Spice Ports: Mapping the Origins of Global Sea Trade

Tue, Jan 14, 2025

Join Ford Hall Forum at Suffolk University, in partnership with Brandeis University Press and American Ancestors for a wide-ranging discussion about a fascinating period of global history as experts from both sides of the Atlantic discuss maritime commerce--the innovation, benefits, and damages of the spice trade.

Learn how the drive of sea captains, worldwide consumers’ taste, and technical innovations—improvements in ship design, compasses, and mapping— enabled navigation across unprecedented distances, from such embarkation points as Venice, Amsterdam, Lisbon to the exotic ports of Malacca, Goa, Bombay, where they tracked down elusive spices. Such travels impacted art, literature, and science worldwide; and they were often disastrous for local populations, who were frequently exploited as slave plantation labor. This wide-ranging account of a fascinating period of global history uses original maps and contemporary artists’ views to tell the story of how each port developed individually; while also encouraging us to consider contrasting points of view of the benefits and the damages of the maritime spice trade.

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Truth in the Age of Disinformation, Misinformation, and AI

Tue, Oct 1, 2024

The 11th annual Masterman Speaker Series event presented by Suffolk University Law School, titled "Truth in the Age of Disinformation, Misinformation, and AI", explores truth in an age of rapid and ever-expanding access to extensive amounts of information from a myriad of sources of varying reliability.

This year, the Masterman Speaker Series will examine how influential members of society, including the media, lawyers, and journalists/journalism schools, are adjusting – or are trying to adjust – to this brave new world, where people are increasingly relying on sources that may have been generated by AI, that may be tainted by disinformation and/or misinformation, and that may be coming from outside the fourth estate.

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Miles Borrero with 'Beautiful Monster'

Thu, Nov 21, 2024

Ford Hall Forum at Suffolk University welcomes author Miles Borrero, upon the publication of his new book Beautiful Monster: A Becoming. The afternoon’s moderator is Pascale Florestal, director, dramaturge, and education director and associate producer of The Front Porch Arts Collective.

Nearing the age of forty, with an entire life already lived as a woman—half in Colombia, half in the US—Miles Borrero comes face to face with his father’s impending death. Suddenly realizing that he has been stalling his transition for fear of losing his family’s love, this moment catalyzes Miles’s determination to be fully known as his father’s son before it is too late.

In Beautiful Monster, Miles chronicles his unusual childhood, by turns riveting and hilarious, in ’80s and ’90s Colombia during the Pablo Escobar years, as well as his move to Salt Lake City to pursue acting and the winding trajectory that eventually lands him in the New York City yoga scene. Within these very different cultures, the realities of being queer and trans echo poignantly through the triumphs, heartbreaks, family dynamics, spiritual pursuits, and relationships that propel Miles along his path.

Sublimely nuanced and written in ravishing prose that is as unique and irresistible as its subject, Beautiful Monster is one person’s story of navigating the pressures to perform femininity while becoming a gender outlaw. Brimming with wonder, humor, and mythos, entertaining and enlightening in equal measure, this book offers a compelling case for embracing one’s true nature.

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