The Ford Hall Forum at Suffolk University will present timely public discussions of issues ranging from the #MeToo movement to the state of free speech in America to the challenges refugees face as they resettle here through a compelling spring 2019 schedule of events.

Celebrated guests include former Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court Chief Justice Margaret Marshall, Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer Greg Marinovich and Spanish filmmaker and human rights activist Emilio Aragón.

The Ford Hall Forum spring season includes the following discussions, performances and events:

The Enemy of the People?  Freedom of the Press and Democracy

6 – 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, Feb. 6, Modern Theatre, 525 Washington St., Boston

Marjorie Pritchard, deputy managing editor for the editorial page at the Boston Globe, and Professor Bryan Trabold, author of Rhetorics of Resistance: Opposition Journalism in Apartheid South Africa and chair of the Suffolk University English Department, will examine the Boston Globe’s response to President Trump’s efforts to discredit the media. The Globe mobilized editorial boards of all political orientations across the country to argue that a free press is essential for sustaining democracy. This conversation will situate the Globe’s initiative within Ford Hall Forum’s tradition of promoting the free expression of ideas, as when Margaret Sanger, wearing a gag, defied the Boston ban on promotion of birth control in her 1929 address to the Ford Hall Forum and anti-apartheid activist Beyers Naudé delivered a blistering attack on the South African government in his 1985 forum address, despite repeated attempts to silence him. The Boston Globe’s editorial initiative is thus part of a much longer history of challenging the powerful to promote freedom of expression.

An evening with Safi Bahcall, physicist and biotech entrepreneur, and the author of Loonshots.

6 ­– 7:30 p.m., Wednesday, March 20, Sargent Hall, Fifth Floor Commons, 120 Tremont St., Boston

What do James Bond and Lipitor have in common? Why do traffic jams appear out of nowhere on highways? What can we learn about human nature and world history from a glass of water? Physicist and biotech entrepreneur Safi Bahcall reveals a surprising new way of thinking about the mysteries of group behavior that challenges everything we thought we knew about radical breakthroughs. Bahcall shows why groups will suddenly change from embracing wild new ideas to rigidly rejecting them, just as flowing water will suddenly change into brittle ice. Mountains of print have been written about culture, yet Bahcall argues that small shifts in structure control these transitions, the same way that temperature controls the change from water to ice.

Political and Social Movements of the 1960s

6 – 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, March 26, Sargent Hall, Fifth Floor Commons, 120 Tremont St., Boston

Author Frye Gaillard will discuss his recent book, A Hard Rain: America in the 1960s, Our Decade of Hope, Possibility, and Innocence. In his book, Gaillard explores the competing story arcs of tragedy and hope through the political and social movements of the times—civil rights, black power, women’s liberation, the war in Vietnam and the protests against it.

Robert Poulton, vice president, marketing & branding, NBC10 Boston, NECN & Telemundo Boston, and a Ford Hall Forum advisory council member, will moderate the forum.

An Evening with the Hon. Margaret Marshall

6 – 7:30 p.m., Wednesday, April 10, Old South Meeting House, 310 Washington St., Boston

Former chief justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court Margaret Marshall, who authored many groundbreaking decisions, including the Massachusetts same-sex marriage case, dedicated her legal career “to ensuring that the law is a positive force in the lives of all people.”

WGBH’s Boston Public Radio cohost Margery Eagan will moderate.

The Power of Images and Pictures

6 – 7:30 p.m. Thursday, May 16, Sargent Hall, Fifth Floor Commons, 120 Tremont St., Boston

Ford Hall Forum presents an evening with Greg Marinovich, Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer and coauthor of The Bang Bang Club, a nonfiction book on South Africa's transition from apartheid to democracy. Marinovich will be joined by other award-winning photographers and photojournalists.

#MeToo

6 – 7:30 p.m. Thursday, May 23, Modern Theatre, 525 Washington St., Boston

Shirley Leung, interim editorial page editor of the Boston Globe, will moderate a discussion with prominent Boston business leaders and academics about the #MeToo movement. The panel will explore how this cultural movement has changed the rules of engagement in the workplace.

Previous 2019 forums

Public Domain Day

For the first time since the passage of the Copyright Term Extension Act in 1998, many works entered the public domain in the United States in January due to the expiration of their copyright terms. This event celebrated the legal and public policy rationale behind copyright limits and the public domain as well as the creativity of those individuals whose works are entering the public domain. Among the speakers were Michael Cunningham, Pulitzer Prize winning author of The Hours, and Lawrence Lessig,Roy L. Furman Professor of Law and Leadership at Harvard Law School, public domain advocate, and founder of Creative Commons.

Surveillance Capitalism and Democracy

Acclaimed author and Harvard Business School Professor Emerita Shoshana Zuboff discussed her latest book, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power. The Age of Surveillance Capitalism looks at the challenges presented by a form of power Zuboff refers to as “surveillance capitalism." It reveals what is at stake for humanity’s digital future as corporations predict and control people’s behavior and explores how control can be reclaimed by harnessing the power of indignant citizens, journalists and policymakers. Zuboff’s book lifts the lid off of surveillance capitalism’s economics, operations, secrets, power, and plan for society and consequences for humanity. Zuboff also is the author of In the Age of the Smart Machine: The Future of Work and Power, a seminal work on the social, economic and emotional consequences of computer technology.

An Evening with Emilio Aragón

Internationally recognized Spanish filmmaker, human rights activist, actor, producer and musician Emilio Aragón, a Suffolk alumnus, screened his latest documentary, which chronicles the humanitarian crisis of global hunger and its causal effects. The screening was followed by a talkback with Aragón, moderated by Suffolk Communication & Journalism Professor Shoshana Madmoni-Gerber. Aragón wrote, directed and hosted “Ni en vivo, ni en director” (Neither Live nor Direct), the first Spanish television program nominated for an International Emmy Award. He later founded Globomedia, an audiovisual important content-producer in Spain. In 2015, Aragón started a new phase in his artistic life, forming Caribe Group. He is vice president of Acción contra el Hambre (Action Against Hunger), an international NGO.

Babylon: Journeys of Refugees

Sandglass Theater’s new production looks at the relationship of refugees to their homelands—those left behind and those that take them in—as well as the conflicts that exist within the American communities where they have fled. The Sandglass Theater worked with the Vermont Refugee Resettlement Program to develop Babylon, interviewing new residents from Syria, Afghanistan, El Salvador and Burundi to gain firsthand insight into the challenges of resettlement. 

The tour of Babylon is supported by the National Endowment for the Arts and the Jim Henson Foundation, among others.