Lawson Lecture

The ability to engage with others in highly divisive times is a particularly timely topic, one that Mónica Guzmán, senior fellow for public practice at Braver Angels, spoke about with first-year students on Tuesday, Sept. 10, at a packed Langford Auditorium. Guzmán delivered the 18th annual Lawson Lecture, named in honor of the Rev. James Lawson, a renowned civil rights activist, professor, theoretician and pastor. Lawson also served as a Distinguished Professor at Vanderbilt from 2006 to 2009. Read More

Kevin Wilson, BA’00, the author of Now is Not the Time to Panic, this year’s Campus Reading, shared his experiences as a Vanderbilt student in the mid-1990s with more than 1,000 current first-year students on Sept. 10. Read More

This year’s Lawson Lecture featured Dolly Chugh, author of "The Person You Mean to Be," the 2020 Commons Reading for first-year and transfer students, and Dean of The Martha Rivers Ingram Commons Melissa Gesalfi in a fireside chat via webinar. Read More

Resilience—the ability to adjust to change, recover from setbacks or overcome life’s challenges—is a key theme being explored by first-year students on The Martha Rivers Ingram Commons during 2017-18. Read More

Watch video of the 10th Annual Lawson Lecture featuring Perry Wallace, Godfrey Dillard, and Andrew Maraniss. Read More

A tradition among first-year students to read and discuss a common text has inspired a campuswide initiative called “Human Identities: Global, Local, Personal,” designed to raise nuanced dialogue about gender and sexuality across the Vanderbilt community. Read More