Distinguished Lecture Series
Friends' Central School's Distinguished Lecture Series seeks to inspire the next generation of writers, educators, scientists, researchers, policy makers, and thinkers by bringing renowned scholars to campus for courses and a public lecture. A core group of Friends' Central students prepare for the lectures in advance and participate in special classes and workshops both on campus and at the lecturer's home institution as part of the Distinguished Visiting Speaker program. These lectures are free and open to the public, but registration is required.
2025-2026 Distinguished Visiting Scientist:
April 23, 2026 - Professor Sara Seager, astrophysicist and a Professor of Physics, Professor of Planetary Science, and a Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Previous Lectures
- Drew Weissman
- Judith Giesberg
- Anne Pringle
- Andrew Nadkarni '13 & Nalini Nadkarni
- H. Bernard Hall
- Patrick Rosal
- Jon Grinspan '02
- J. Marshall Shepherd
- Tiffany Jewell
- James Ijames
- Robin Hopkins
- André Robert Lee
- Helen White
- Daniel Immerwahr ’98
- Steven Larson
- Rebecca Saxe
- Daniel Torday
- Mona Hanna-Attisha
- Douglas Emlen
- Janna Levin
- Elizabeth Milroy
- David Reich
- Asali Solomon
- David Charbonneau
- John Mather
- Lara Cohen '95 and Halimah Marcus '03
- Lawrence C. Smith
- Al Filreis
- Hopi Hoekstra
- Dan Biddle '71
- Brian Greene
- Ki Ann Goosens
- Eve Troutt Powell
- Laurel Ulrich
- Jared Diamond
- Jonathan Rieder '65
- Peter Demenocal
- Wade Davis
Helen White is Associate Professor of Chemistry and Environmental Studies and Director of The Marian E. Koshland Integrated Natural Sciences Center (KINSC) at Haverford College. Her work as a geochemist has focused on the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in a collaborative project that examined what happened chemically to the oil and to the dispersants used in the aftermath of the disaster. She is the winner of Haverford College's 2017 Henry Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award.
Dr. Steven Larson, subject of the HBO documentary Clínica de Migrantes, is Co-Founder and Executive Director of Puentes de Salud, a nonprofit organization that promotes the health and wellness of Philadelphia’s rapidly growing Latinx immigrant population. Dr. Larson is also Assistant Dean for Global Health Programs and an Associate Professor in the Department of Emergency Medicine at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania. 
Cognitive neuroscientist and professor in the MIT Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Dr. Saxe shared her research in her lecture entitled "It's the Thought that Counts: Progress Towards a Neuroscience of Theory of Mind."
Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha, whose research exposed the Flint water crisis, is a pediatrician, professor, public health advocate, and author of What the Eyes Don’t See: A Story of Crisis, Resistance, and Hope in an American City. Dr. Hanna-Attisha was Friends' Central's inaugural Distinguished Justice Leader.
Evolutionary biologist Douglas Emlen delivered a fascinating lecture titled "Extravagant Results of Nature's Arms Race." He spoke about the evolutionary forces that have made animal weapons so diverse. Emlen has received the Presidential Early Career Award in Science and Engineering from the Office of Science and Technology Policy at the White House, multiple research awards from the National Science Foundation, and the E. O. Wilson Naturalist Award from the American Society of Naturalists. He is the author of Animal Weapons: The Evolution of Battle. 
Dr. Janna Levin is the author of – among several books – Black Hole Blues and Other Songs from Outer Space. She is also director of sciences at Pioneer Works, a non-profit foundation in Brooklyn that fosters multidisciplinary creativity in the arts and sciences. Levin's Distinguished Lecture was entitled "Black Hole Blues and Other Songs from Outer Space: The Story of the Detection of Gravitational Waves."
Dr. Elizabeth Milroy, Professor and Department Head of Art and Art History in the Antoinette Westphal College of Media Arts & Design at Drexel University and author of The Grid and the River: Philadelphia’s Green Places, 1682-1876, delivered a lecture entitled, "Inventing Public Parks: Frederick Law Olmsted & Philadelphia's Green Places."
David Reich, Professor of Genetics at Harvard University and population genomic researcher delivered a fascinating lecture entitled "Ancient DNA and the New Science of the Human Past."
Asali Solomon, author of the critically acclaimed novel Disgruntled and Assistant Professor of English at Haverford College, spoke about her novel and about the creative writing process. Solomon's lecture was the culminating event in our yearlong community-wide exploration of the theme "Girls in Transition: Coming of Age Across Cultures."
David Charbonneau, Professor of Astronomy at Harvard University and astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics delivered a fantastic lecture entitled "The Fast Track to Finding an Inhabited Exoplanet." Charbonneau, whose area of study focuses on exoplanets –planets outside of our solar system – with a particular interest in finding planets like Earth, is currently involved in four projects: the MEarth Project, the Kepler Mission, the EPOXI Mission, and Exo Atmospheres.
Friends’ Central was thrilled to kick off its 2014-2015 Distinguished Visiting Scientist Program in October with a lecture by NASA Senior Scientist and Nobel Laureate John Mather (pictured below) entitled “The History of the Universe: How We Got Here, and Where We Are Going.”
Illustrious FCS graduates Lara Cohen ’95, Assistant Professor of English at Swarthmore College, and Halimah Marcus ’03, Editor-in-Chief, Electric Literature’s Recommended Reading, discussed the thread of American literary production from past to present: how stories are written, edited, published, and distributed, and what it means to be a literary entrepreneur in the democratic realm of the Internet.
One of the world’s most respected climate scientists, the work of Dr. Laurence Smith, Professor and Chair of Geography and Professor of Earth & Space Sciences at UCLA, envisions the future of a warmed planet. His debut book, The World in 2050: Four Forces Shaping Civilizations Northern Future, has received praise and critical acclaim for its assessment of future climate change and its effects on northern ecosystems and countries, including the United States. Smith has published over 70 articles in leading science journals, and his work has also been featured in The Wall Street Journal, The Economist, The LA Times, The Washington Post, NPR, BBC, and CBC Radio.
Al Filreis, Kelly Professor, Director of the Kelly Writers House, and Director of the Center for Programs in Contemporary Writing at the University of Pennsylvania, has prepared a mini-version of his hugely successful (online) Coursera course just for the FCS community. This exciting, dynamic course will focus on his trademark modern and contemporary American poetry work at Penn, as well as his Coursera course, popularly known as “ModPo.” Read more about his poetry at 
Hoekstra is the Alexander Agassiz Professor of Zoology, Professor of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology, Professor of Molecular and Cellular Biology, and Curator of Mammals in the Museum of Comparative Zoology with Harvard University's Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology. Her work involving the Evolutionary and Ecological Genetics of Adaptation and Speciation has been featured in many publications, including the New York Times, National Geographic, the Washington Post, and Popular Science, as well as television and radio networks, including MSNBC, NPR, CBC Radio, and BBC News.
Dan Biddle ’71 highlights Friends’ Central’s year-long celebration of the sesquicentennial of the Emancipation Proclamation. Hear Biddle and co-author Murray Dubin talk about their book, Tasting Freedom: Octavius Catto and the Battle for Equality in Civil War America, which the Philadelphia Inquirercalls, “A masterful history, centering on Philadelphia and 19th-century leader Octavius Catto.” While working for the Inquirer, Biddle and his investigative reporting team won a Pulitzer Prize for their series about injustice in the Philadelphia court system.
Columbia Professor, physicist, string theorist, and author Brian Greene has been described as “the single best explainer of abstruse concepts in the world today” by the Washington Post. Greene is the author of several New York Timesbestsellers including The Elegant Universe.
Ki Ann Goosens, Principal Investigator, MIT McGovern Institute for Brain Research & Assistant Professor, Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, MIT University, studies the relationship between fear, anxiety, and stress. She found that chronic stress increases the tendency to form fearful memories. Her current research is focused on understanding the basis of this effect. Goosens hopes that a better understanding of the brain's response to stress will lead to new therapeutic strategies for anxiety disorders, depression, and other psychiatric diseases. Later in the spring, the students visited Ki Ann Goosens at her laboratories at the McGovern Institute.
Eve Troutt Powell, an expert on Middle East history and a MacArthur Foundation Fellow, will speak about slavery in the Middle East and East Africa. Learn how the American Perception of "The Help" compares with the history of slavery in the Middle East and East Africa. Powell is Associate Professor of History at the University of Pennsylvania and the author of A Different Shade of Colonialism: Egypt, Great Britain and the Mastery of the Sudan.
Laurel Ulrich, 300th Anniversary Professor of History at Harvard University & Friends' Central School grandparent, is well known for her work in early American social history, women's history, and material cultures. Her book, A Midwife's Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard Based on Her Diary, 1785-1812, won the Pulitzer Prize in History and the Bancroft Prize in History in 1991.
Jared Diamond began his career as a biologist studying birds in Papua New Guinea. Today, the scope of his research includes some of the most challenging questions in the world:
In The Word of the Lord Is Upon Me, Jon Rieder '65, Professor of Sociology at Barnard College, Columbia University, takes us "deep into King’s backstage discussions [to tell] a powerful story about the tangle of race, talk, and identity in the life of one of America’s greatest moral and political leaders." (Harvard University Press)
On Thursday, April 10, 2008 the Friends' Central School Distinguished Scientist Program welcomed Peter DeMenocal, Associate Professor at the Earth Institute of Columbia University. DeMenocal is a paleocenaograher/marine geologist who uses geochemical analyses of marine sediment to understand how and why climates are changing. He was featured in the Leonardo DiCaprio film, The 11th Hour, and regularly lectures on impending changes the earth faces. He delivered portions of his recent paper, "Cultural Responses to Climate Change in the Late Holocene" which looks to past cultural adaptations to persistent climate change…[for] perspective on possible responses of modern societies to future climate change." Later in the year, a select group of Friends' Central students visited DeMenocal at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Obervatory in New York.
Davis, National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence, is an ethnobotanist and anthropologist who has spent the past 25 years studying the ways indigenous people live in harmony with the natural world. He has lived in Borneo, Australia, Tibet, Kenya, Haiti, the Arctic, and the Amazon exploring the connection between cultural and biodiversity. His new book, Light at the Edge of the World, is a collection of photographic essays documenting his time spent with vanishing cultures. Later in the spring, a select group of Friends’ Central students visited Davis at National Geographic in Washington, D.C.