In this talk, GBH News reporter Jeremy Siegel moderates a talk with Transportation for MA, asking what, exactly, autonomous vehicles are and if they are safe.

Matthew Shaer is a contributing writer at The New York Times Magazine and a fellow at New America. His longform reporting regularly appears in Esquire, National Geographic, The Atlantic, and Harper's, among other magazines. He is also the host of the new weekly podcast Origin Stories, which explores the creative processes of some of the world's best novelists, playwrights, screenwriters, and journalists. Shaer lives in Atlanta with his family and a beagle named Salty Dog.

The Cambridge Forum holds a discussion on America’s cultural identity becoming inextricably linked to the automobile, examining how what began as a convenient, and often essential, mode of transportation has morphed for many into a tyrannical obsession symbolizing success and power.

In the past twenty years, cars have grown larger, heavier and more intimidating. Mimicking the appearance of military vehicles with names to match, massive SUVs dominate the landscape and the statistics are not pretty. Globally, cars directly take the lives of more than a million people annually. They also harm others through air pollution and environmental hazards, and increasingly they have the potential to be used as attack weapons.

Our growing dependency on cars is draining the earth’s natural resources, their carbon emissions drive climate change and they create unsafe streets and congestion, making the planet unlivable. We know this, yet we continue to ignore the negative consequences of our indulgent behavior and worship at the altar of the auto. Cars dominate our lives and we just love the personal comfort and distraction afforded by the gadgets behind the wheel.

The question for this panel: How long can we ignore the true costs of our driving habits on others and the planet, without paying the price?

Daniel Berger-Jones is an historian and Boston-based entrepreneur. He founded BHC and has 15 years experience conducting. He has won several awards,and worked with the Huntington. ART, Boston Symphony Orchestra, and others. He hosts several successful podcasts including A People’s History of Food and Drink but his interests span a plethora of fields including science, math and astronomy.

The Boston University School of Theology is proud to present the bi-annual Lowell Lecture, which features renowned speakers in fields related to theological studies.

This Lowell Lecture features Rev. Dr. Micah L. McCreary. He will explore the transformative journey of becoming a trauma-responsive leader by embracing, understanding, and transcending personal and collective wounds.

Join us at the Boston Public Library for a conversation with trailblazing costume designer Ruth E. Carter, the first Black woman to win two Academy Awards in Costume Design—for Black Panther and Black Panther: Wakanda Forever.

Over a four-decade career, Carter has brought history and Afrofuturism to life on screen through iconic collaborations with filmmakers like Spike Lee and Ava DuVernay. Her work on films such as Malcolm X, Selma, and Amistad has cemented her legacy as a master of visual storytelling.

Carter will be in conversation with former Boston Public Library Board Chair, Dr. Priscilla H. Douglas.

After the main program, meet Carter in the Connector Space located just outside of the library's Rabb Hall.

Ruth E. Carter is the 2019 Academy Award winner in Costume Design for Marvel’s Black Panther, making history as the first African-American to win in the category. Carter wows audiences and dazzles critics alike with Afro Future looks that empower the female form and turn a superhero into an African King.

Caitlin Dickerson is an award-winning investigative reporter and feature writer for The Atlantic. She won the 2023 Pulitzer Prize for explanatory reporting. Over nearly 15 years in journalism, Dickerson has also been awarded a Peabody, Edward R Murrow, Livingston, and Silvers-Dudley Prize for her writing and reporting. Before joining The Atlantic, she spent nearly five years as a reporter at The New York Times and five years as a producer and investigative reporter for NPR. Dickerson has reported on immigration, history, politics, and race in four continents and dozens of American cities. She is currently writing a book about the systemic impact of deportation on American society.

Cosponsored by the Winston Center for Leadership and Ethics.

The Lowell Humanities Series is sponsored by the Lowell Institute, Boston College's Institute for the Liberal Arts, and the Provost's Office.

The Boston College Poetry Days Series and The Lowell Humanities Series welcomed Philip Metres to campus in October, 2025. Metres has been called “one of the essential poets of our time,” whose work is “beautiful, powerful, magnetically original.” He is professor of English and director of the Peace, Justice, and Human Rights program at John Carroll University. He is the author of twelve books, including, "Fugitive/Refuge, Shrapnel Maps," "The Sound of Listening: Poetry as Refuge and Resistance," "Sand Opera," and "I Burned at the Feast: Selected Poems of Arseny Tarkovsky."

Metres work—poetry, translation, essays, fiction, criticism, and scholarship—has garnered fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Lannan Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Ohio Arts Council, and the Watson Foundation. He is the recipient of the Adrienne Rich Award, three Arab American Book Awards, the Lyric Poetry Prize, a Pushcart Prize, and the Cleveland Arts Prize.

The event was sponsored by the Lowell Institute, Boston College's Institute for the Liberal Arts, and the Provost's Office.

Tiya Miles' scholarship examines enslavement in the U.S. South. In this lecture, she discusses the stories of several enslaved, Black women who drew upon their experiences and relationships with the natural world to find hope and help them achieve the lives they imagined.

Miles has consulted with colleagues at historic sites and museums on representations of slavery, African American material culture, and the Black-Indigenous intertwined past, including, most recently, the “Fabric of a Nation” quilt exhibition at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston.

She is a MacArthur Genius and an award-winning author who has published eleven books, essays and reviews in The New York Times, The Boston Globe, The Atlantic, The New York Review of Books, as well as other publications. Her time-bridge novel The Cherokee Rose, is a ghost story set in the plantation South.

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This lecture is co-sponsored by Boston College History Department, American Studies, African and African Diaspora Studies, Women’s Studies, Environmental Studies, the Boisi Center for Religion and American Public Life, and the Forum for Racial Justice in America.

The Lowell Humanities Series is sponsored by the Lowell Institute, Boston College's Institute for the Liberal Arts, and the Provost's Office.