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Forum Network

Free online lectures: Explore a world of ideas

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All Speakers

  • Peter Karoff

  • Judy Norsigian

    Judy Norsigian, executive director and a founder of the Boston Women's Health Book Collective, is a co-author of *Our Bodies*, *Ourselves*, *Our Bodies*, *Ourselves: Menopause and Our Bodies*, *Ourselves: Pregnancy and Birth*. Judy speaks and writes frequently on a wide range of women's health concerns, including abortion and contraception, sexually transmitted infections, genetics and reproductive technologies, tobacco and women, women and health care reform, and midwifery advocacy. She has appeared on numerous national television and radio programs, including *Oprah*, *the Today show*, *Good Morning America*, *The Early Show* and *NBC Nightly News* with Tom Brokaw. She served on the board of the National Women's Health Network for 14 years and currently serves as a board member for Public Responsibility in Medicine and Research. Judy is a founder and longtime board member of Community Works, which raises funds for Boston area social change organizations through payroll deduction charitable giving programs. Her personal recognitions include: the Public Service Award from the Massachusetts Public Health Association (1989); Radcliffe College Alumnae Association Annual Recognition Award (1995); Boston YWCA's Academy of Women Achievers (1996); the 2002 Massachusetts Health Council Award; and an honorary doctorate degree from Boston University (2007).
  • Tom Brokaw

  • Deborah Leff

    Deborah Leff is president of the Public Welfare Foundation, a half-billion dollar philanthropy based in Washington, DC that is dedicated to ensuring fundamental rights and opportunities for people in need. From 2001-2006, Ms. Leff was director of the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum in Boston. She has held a variety of leadership positions in the public, private, and non-profit sectors including CEO of Feeding America (formerly known as America's Second Harvest), the nation's largest domestic hunger relief organization, and president of the Chicago-based Joyce Foundation. Ms. Leff was Senior Producer at *ABC News Nightline*, *ABC News World News Tonight*, and *ABC News 20/20* from 1983 to 1992, where she won DuPont and Emmy Awards for news coverage such as a week-long *World News Tonight* series. Ms. Leff has also held several positions with the federal government, including Trial Attorney with the Civil Rights Division of the US Department of Justice and Director of Public Affairs at the Federal Trade Commission. Ms. Leff received her undergraduate degree cum laude from Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School, where she was named a University Scholar. She earned her JD from the University of Chicago Law School.
  • Prudence Carter

    Prudence L. Carter is an associate professor in the School of Education and the Department of Sociology at Stanford. She teaches a range of courses on racial and ethnic relations, social and cultural inequality, the sociology of education, urban education and research methods. Professor Carter's first book, *Keepin' It Real: School Success beyond Black and White* (Oxford University Press 2005), is the 2006 co-winner of the Oliver Cromwell Cox Book Award, (Section on Racial and Ethnic Minorities, American Sociological Association) for its contribution to the eradication of racism; a 2005 finalist for the C. Wright Mills Book Award (Society for the Study of Social Problems); and an a 2007 honorable mention recipient of the distinguished book award (Section on Race, Class, and Gender, American Sociological Association). At present, Professor Carter is completing a book tentatively titled *The Paradoxes of Opportunity: Race, Culture, and Boundaries in "Good" Schools*, which documents a cross-national study of desegregated and majority-minority high schools in the United States and South Africa and examines how school practices can either facilitate or diminish academic and social divides in education.
  • Mica Pollock

  • Christopher Avery

    Christopher N. Avery, Roy E. Larsen Professor of Public Policy, teaches analytic courses in microeconomics and statistics. His first book, The Early Admissions Game, coauthored with Andrew Fairbanks and Richard Zeckhauser, was published by Harvard University Press in March 2003. In his current research, he studies college application patterns and college enrollment choices for high school students.
  • Bridget Terry Long

    Long's work applies the theory and methods of economics to examine various aspects of the market for higher education in the United States. Her research focuses on access and choice in higher education, the outcomes of college students, and the behavior of postsecondary institutions. Several of her research papers examine the enrollment and distributional effects of state and federal financial aid programs. In addition, Long has studied the effectiveness of postsecondary remediation and the impact of class size and faculty characteristics on student outcomes. Long received her doctorate and master's in economics from Harvard University and her bachelor's degree from Princeton University. She is a faculty research associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) and received the American Educational Research Association Dissertation Award. She was awarded the National Academy of Education/Spencer Postdoctoral Fellowship for 2002-2004, in July 2005, the Chronicle of Higher Education featured her as one of the "New Voices" in higher education, and in 2008, the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators (NASFAA) awarded her the Robert P. Huff Golden Quill Award for excellence in research and published works on student financial assistance. She has received numerous research grants from the National Science Foundation, Spencer Foundation, Lumina Foundation for Education, the Ford Foundation, and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
  • David Grissmer

    David Grissmer is a senior management scientist at RAND. He holds a PhD in physics from Purdue University. His education research includes teacher supply and demand, teacher compensation and attrition patterns, analysis of national test scores to determine the causes of changing trends, analyzing state test scores to determine causes of state differences, and effects of class size reductions. He is currently working with the Office of Science and Technology Policy in the White House to assess the federal research and development portfolio on children and methods of improving research on children. His current work also includes developing estimates of the number and location of children at educational risk in the U.S. and analyzing achievement patterns in central city, suburban, and rural schools. He has addressed U.S. senators and representatives at caucus retreats, members of the White House staff, top Cabinet officials, governors as well as legislators and policymakers from most states on the issues of effective use of resources in education.
  • Cristina Rathbone

  • Stephen C. Goss

  • Yung-Ping Chen