Raymond F. West Memorial Lectures

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Harriet Hawkins

The Raymond F. West Memorial Lecture Series was established in 1910 by Mr. and Mrs. Frederic West of Seattle in memory of their son, a student at Stanford University. The lectures are to promote the subject of "immortality, human conduct, and human destiny."

Pictured: Harriet Hawkins, 2023


2022-2023

Harriet Hawkins, Geography, Royal Holloway, University of London
Imagine! Creating Earth Futures?

May 2023


2021-2022

Darby English, Art History, University of Chicago
"Scheme and Otherness in Our Work with Art," 

April 13, 2022


2018-2019

Lorraine Daston, Author
"Big Science, Big Humanities, and the Archives of the Year 3000," 

October 30, 2018


2014-2015

Samuel Scheffler, New York University
"Why Worry About Future Generations?" 

May 21, 2015


2012-2013

Amitav Ghosh, Author
"China and the Making of Modern India: A Story of Fantasy, Abuse, and Recovered Memory," 

December 3, 2012


2010-2011

Tim O'Brien, Winner of the National Book Award
"Writing and War," 

January 24, 2011


2008-2009

Caroline Walker Bynum, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, NJ
"Weeping Statues and Bleeding Bread: Miracles in the Later Middle Ages," 

February 23, 2009


"Holy Pieces: Attitudes toward Parts and Wholes in Late Medieval Devotion,"

February 25, 2009


2006-2007

Bernice Johnson Reagon, Historian, Composer, Musician, Civil Rights Activist
"Pioneering Gospel Music Performers; Song Culture of the Civil Rights Movement," 

March 5, 2007


2004-2005

Lorraine Daston, Director, Max-Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin
"Lives of the Mind," 

March 2, 2005


2002-2003

Peter Galison, Harvard University
"Thinking through Things," 

November 18, 2002


1996-1997

Michael Taussig, Columbia University
"Defacement: Where Faciality and Sacrilege Merge," 

November 11, 1996


1987-1988

Anthony Giddens, "Living in a Troubled World: The Consequences of Modernity"


1983-1984

Bernard M.W. Knox, "Mythinterpretation"


1978-1979

John R. Pierce, "Technology and Man's World"


1973-1974

Jurgens Moltmann, "Human Identity in Christian Faith"


1971-1972

Henry Nash Smith, "Higher Laws: Some Patterns of Transcendence in Nineteenth Century American Fiction"


1965-1966

Hans Kung, "Whither the Church?"
J.A.T. Robinson, "Exploration into God"


1962-1963

Abraham J. Heschel, "Who is Man?"


1957-1958

Joseph Wood Krutch, "Average, Normal and Ideal in Human Behavior"


1953-1954

Carlton J.H. Hayes, "Religious Influence on our Historic Civilization"


1944-1945

Ernest A. Hooten, "Determinants of Human Conduct"


1943-1944

Reinhold Niebuhr, "Foundations for a Democratic Civilization"


1940-1941

Rufus Jones, "Implications of Man's Mind"


1934-1935

James R. Angell, "The Higher Patriotism"

Carl L. Becker, "Progress and Power"


1931-1932

Julian S. Huxley, "Biology and Human Nature"


1929-1930

G.A. Johnston Ross, "Behavior and Destiny: Christian View"


1923-1924

Hugh Black, "The Adventure of Being Man"

Arthur Twining Hadley, "Conflict Between Liberty and Equality"


Early Lectures

  • Irvin Babbitt, "The Ethical Basis of Democracy"

  • Henry Osborn Taylor, "Freedom of Human Mind in History"

  • John Dewey, "Factors in Human Conduct"

  • Charles Lewis Slattery, "Gift of Immortality, Study of Responsibility"

  • Hastings Rashdall, "Is Conscience an Emotion?"

  • Samuel M. Crothers, "Three Lords of Destiny"

  • Charles Edward Jefferson, "Why We May Believe in Life After Death"