Dickinson College Announces November Public Lectures
Photo by Stephen Munchel.
Wednesday, Nov. 5, 7 p.m.
The Morgan Lecture: Love, Joy, Creativity & the Brain: The Heart of Culturally Responsive Education
Bettina L. Love, Columbia University
Anita Tuvin Schlechter Auditorium
Bettina L. Love will explore the transformative power of love in education—within the classroom and beyond. Rooted in the belief that love and joy are the foundations of meaningful learning and human connection, she blends compelling storytelling, evidence-based neuroscience research and practical strategies to show how emotionally grounded teaching can radically reshape educational spaces. She highlights how culturally responsive teaching, when combined with joy and emotional attunement, aligns both with how the brain learns best and how communities heal and thrive and presents creativity as a vital force inviting students into deeper engagement and a stronger sense of belonging. This keynote offers educators an inspiring and actionable vision for designing classrooms where every child feels seen, valued, and empowered to thrive. It is a call to reimagine education as a space of love, creativity, and collective liberation.
Love holds the esteemed William F. Russell Professorship at Teachers College, Columbia University, and is the uthor of the New York Times bestseller and Stowe Prize-winning Punished for Dreaming: How School Reform Harms Black Children and How We Heal. In 2022, Love was recognized by the Kennedy Center as one of the Next 50 Leaders dedicated to fostering inspiration, inclusivity, and compassion, and she received the Truth Award for Excellence in Education from Better Brothers Los Angeles and The Diva Foundation. Learn more about this speaker and event.
Tuesday, Nov. 11, 2025 – 5 p.m.
Film Screening of King Coal
Althouse Hall, Room 106
A lyrical tapestry of a place and people, King Coal meditates on the complex history and future of the coal industry, the communities it has shaped and the myths it has created. While intimately situated in the communities under the reign of King Coal, where McMillion Sheldon has lived and worked her entire life, the film transcends time and place, emphasizing the ways in which people are connected through an immersive mosaic of belonging, ritual, and imagination. The film untangles the pain from the beauty and illuminates the innately human capacity for change. The film premiered at Sundance in 2023 to critical acclaim. Learn more about this event.
Wednesday, Nov. 12, 7 p.m.
A Conversation on the Making of the Film King Coal
Elaine McMillion Sheldon, filmmaker
Sherry Harper-McCombs, Dickinson College
Anita Tuvin Schlechter Auditorium
Following a screening of King Coal the night before (Althouse 106 @ 5 p.m.), the film's director, Academy Award-nominated filmmaker Elaine McMillion Sheldon will reflect on her creative goals, the film's hybrid form—a blend of vérité, poetic narration, dance, and sound design--and how nonfiction storytelling can transcend the traditional bounds of documentary to express a region’s imagination and grief. A short presentation of select video and audio clips from the film will be followed by a ​conversation with Professor Emerita of Theatre & Dance Sherry Harper-McCombs and a Q&A.
Sheldon is known for her intimate portrayals of Appalachian, rural and Southern life. Her previous films include Emmy-winning Heroin(e) (Netflix), Recovery Boys (Netflix), and Hollow, a Peabody-winning interactive documentary. She is a recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Creative Capital Award and a USA Fellowship. Sherry Harper-McCombs is a Dickinson professor emerita; a costume designer, craftsperson and puppeteer; and a native of central Appalachia with strong interests in the culture and history of this diverse and artistically rich region. Learn more about this event.
Thursday, Nov. 13, 7 p.m.
Muslims and the Global War on Terror: How the Racialization of Muslims Justifies the Expansion of Policing and Surveillance
Saher Selod, Institute for Social Policy and Understanding
Anita Tuvin Schlechter Auditorium
Saher Selod will discuss her most recent co-authored book, A Global Racial Enemy: Muslims and 21st-Century Racism (2024), which examines how Muslims experience racialization on a global scale. With special attention paid to the United States, China, India and the United Kingdom, the authors examine both the unique national contexts and the shared characteristics of anti-Muslim racism. In this presentation Selod will discuss how a range of counterterrorism policies, from hyper-surveillance to racialized policing, and the ensuing representation of Islam have worked across borders to justify and institutionalize an acceptable, state-sponsored face of racism against Muslims.
Selod is the current director of research for the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding and author and co-author of books centering on the experiences of Muslims Learn more about this speaker and event.
Thursday, Nov. 20, 7 p.m.
We Are Called to Be a Movement
The Rev. William J. Barber II, Repairers of the Breach, Poor People’s Campaign
Anita Tuvin Schlechter Auditorium
The Rev. William J. Barber II is one of the most gifted moral-fusion organizers, strategists and orators in the country and an important figure in the public-policy and public-theology landscape. He believes it’s time for everyone who cares about the state of our nation to heed the call and join forces to redeem the soul of America; to come together and renounce the politics of rejection, division and greed; and to lift up the common good, move up to higher ground and revive the heart of democracy. During this inspiring keynote, the Rev. Barber makes an impassioned argument that it's time for change and the time needs you.
Barber is a New York Times-bestselling author, president and senior lecturer of Repairers of the Breach, co-chair of the Poor People’s Campaign and professor in the Practice of Public Theology & Public Policy and founding director of the Center for Public Theology & Public Policy at Yale Divinity School. Additionally, he is bishop with The Fellowship of Affirming Ministries, executive board member of the Christian Church Disciples of Christ, and a Kettering Foundation senior fellow.of the Poor People’s Campaign. He has given keynote addresses at hundreds of national and state conferences, including the 2016 Democratic National Convention and the 59th Inaugural Prayer Service for President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, and has spoken at Pope Francis’s encyclical “Laudato Si’: On Care for Our Common Home” and at the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences. In 2018, he addressed the 5th Uni Global Union World Congress to more than 25 countries. Learn more about this speaker and event.
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Published October 24, 2025