President's Lecture Series Speaker Preview

September 01, 2017

Roz Chast Michelle Alexander Charles Best

Oct. 5 at 7:30 p.m., Ted Constant Convocation Center Big Blue Room

40th Annual Literary Festival Speaker
Roz Chast
New Yorker Magazine Cartoonist & Author

Roz Chast, a cartoonist for The New Yorker since 1978, is the author of "Can't We Talk about Something More Pleasant?" It was the first graphic novel to win the National Book Critics Circle Award for autobiography. The book, which chronicles her relationship with her aging parents, also was a National Book Award finalist. Her recently released book, "Going Into Town: A Love Letter to New York," is a graphic memoir of her lifelong relationship with Manhattan.

Chast has written more than a dozen books for adults and others for children. She collaborated with comedian Steve Martin on "The Alphabet from A to Y with Bonus Letter Z!" Chast lives in Connecticut with her family and several parrots.

Jan. 16, 2018 at 7:30 p.m.,Ted Constant Convocation Center Big Blue Room

President's Task Force on Inclusive Excellence and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Observance Speaker
Michelle Alexander
The New York Times Best-Selling Author, Legal Scholar and Social Justice Advocate

Michelle Alexander offers powerful insights on mass incarceration in the United States, as well as eye-opening conversation on how we can end the racial caste system in America.

In her acclaimed best-seller, "The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness," Alexander peels back the curtain on systemic racism in the American prison system. The New York Review of Books said the book is "striking in the intelligence of her ideas, her powers of summary and the force of her writing."

Alexander, a legal scholar, social justice advocate and visiting professor at Union Theological Seminary in New York, employs equal force on stage to call for a multi-racial, multi-ethnic human rights movement for justice in America.

Feb. 27, 2018 at 7:30 p.m., Ted Constant Convocation Center Big Blue Room

Marc and Connie Jacobson Raoul Wallenberg Humanitarian Speaker
Charles Best
Founder and CEO of DonorsChoose.org

Charles Best leads DonorsChoose.org, a pioneering crowdfunding nonprofit organization. At DonorsChoose.org, public school teachers create classroom project requests, and donors can choose which projects to support.

Best launched the platform in 2000 out of the Bronx public high school where he taught history. Today, more than two-thirds of U.S. public schools have at least one teacher who has created a project request on DonorsChoose.org, and 1.8 million people have donated $360 million to classroom projects reaching 16 million students.

For three years, Fortune has listed Best among its "40 under 40 hottest rising stars in business." DonorsChoose.org also was the first charity to be featured on the cover of Fast Company as one of the "50 Most Innovative Companies in the World."

Old Dominion University's President's Lecture Series serves as a marketplace for ideas, featuring fascinating personalities who share their knowledge, experience, opinions and accomplishments. Discussing timely topics, the series puts diversity first, showcasing authors, educators, business innovators and political figures.