Scheduled Lectures 2011-2012 (Free and open to the public)

ANNUAL RICHMOND LECTURE to be given by Daniel Everett (Bentley U.) "Cognitive Fire: How Language Emerges to Serve Human Needs."

March 13, 2012, 8 pm, Brooks-Rogers Recital Hall

Everett is best known for his book Don't Sleep, There are Snakes: Life and Language in the Amazonian Jungle (Pantheon, 2009). Early in 2012 he will publish Language: The Cultural Tool, which continues his radical rethinking of the origins and significance of human language.

Annual Lectures

The Center sponsors the three annual lectures described below.

The W. Allison Davis 1924 and John A. Davis 1933 Lecture commemorates the remarkable work of two distinguished scholars, brothers who, throughout their adult lives, made important contributions to equal rights and opportunity in the United States. Allison Davis, valedictorian of the Class of 1924, was a pioneer in the social anthropological study of class and caste in the American South. John A. Davis pursued wide-ranging political science work on race in both the United States and Africa. The Davis Lecture is delivered each year by a scholar whose work concentrates on some aspect of race, class, or education in the United States.


Robin Kelley

Previous Davis Lecturers:

  • Robin D.G. Kelley
  • Angela Riley
  • Richard Thompson Ford
  • Charles H. Long
  • Pedro Noguera
  • Dorothy Roberts
  • Patricia Williams
  • Johnetta Cole
  • Frank Wu
  • Richard Rodriguez
  • Manning Marable
  • Michael Dorris
  • Ishmael Reed
  • Charles Joyner
  • David Levering Lewis
  • Lloyd Richards
  • Margaret Wilkinson
  • Toni Cade Bambara
  • Joseph E. Harris
  • Cornel West


  • The Richmond Lecture brings to campus authorities with broad scientific and humanistic interest, particularly those with some focus on the history or philosophy of science. This lectureship is made possible by an endowment established by Don Richmond, Professor of Mathematics at Williams for many years.

    Previous Richmond Lecturers:
    Sherry Turkle

  • Daniel Dennett
  • Ian Tattersall
  • Claudia Stevens
  • Lisa Randall
  • E.O. Wilson
  • Bruno Latour
  • Peter Galison
  • Peter Lipton
  • Katherine Park
  • Edward Larsen
  • Leo Marx
  • Merritt Roe Smith
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    The Andrew B. Weiss, M.D., Lecture on Medicine and Medical Ethics memorializes the life and work of the late Andrew Weiss, Williams Class of 1961, an orthopedic surgeon. This lecture promotes discussion of health care, broadly conceived, including the economics of health care as well as biomedical/ethical issues.


    Siddhartha Mukherjee

    Weiss Lecturers:

  • Siddhartha Mukherjee
  • Harold Varmus
  • Ronald M. Green
  • Helen Epstein
  • Kurt Eichenwald
  • Mitch Besser
  • Paul Farmer
  • Alice Pentland
  • Panel on "Health Care in Crisis" with John Cronin, Dr. Alan Sager, and Lara Shore-Sheppard