Diversity Lecture Series X
2004-2005

Robert Thurman Kyle Maynard Bakari Kitwana Laurie Garrett

Robert Thurman - Wednesday, October 13
Kyle Maynard - Wednesday, November 17
Bakari Kitwana - Wednesday, February 9
Laurie Garrett - Wednesday, March 2


Free and open to the public, however, due to limited seating, tickets will be required. (Small fee for on-campus parking.) All lectures begin at 7:00 p.m. and take place in the Grand Rapids Community College Applied Technology Center Banquet Rooms (corner of Fountain Street and Ransom Avenue).

A book signing will follow each lecture.

For tickets and/or information, please call (616) 234-3390.


Robert ThurmanConquering Terror: The Art of Happiness in Time of Stress

Robert Thurman
Author, Scholar,
President of Tibet House

Robert Thurman, author of books and articles about Tibet, Buddhism, art, politics and culture, including Essential Tibetan Buddhism, The Tibetan Book of the Dead, and Wisdom and Compassion: The Sacred Art of Tibet.

Thurman has become one of America’s leading voices of sanity and peace in the new millennium. TIME magazine, which chose him as one of its 25 most influential Americans in 1997, described him as a “larger than life scholar-activist destined to convey the precious teachings of Siddartha, from Asia to America.”

Kyle MaynardSuccess Without Excuses

Kyle Maynard
Award Winning Athlete

Kyle Maynard personifies the phrase “no excuses.” Born with a congenital defect that robbed him of his arms below the elbow and his legs below the knee, it hasn’t stopped him from becoming a winning high school wrestler, weightlifter, and gifted student.

With little more than just his shoulders he can type fifty words per minute, eat and write without any adaptations. In this moving and eloquent presentation, full of examples from his life, Maynard outlines how his “No Excuses” philosophy can apply to the lives of all people.

Bakari KitwanaThe Hip-Hop Generation: Young Blacks and the Crisis in African-American Culture

Bakari Kitwana
Author, Editor, Music Critic

Bakari Kitwana is the author of several books on hip-hop culture, including his latest, The Hip-Hop Generation: Young Blacks and the Crisis in African American Culture.

Widely acknowledged as an expert on hip-hop politics by The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, CNN, The O’Reilly Factor, and other leading news outlets, his writings have appeared in The New York Times, The Boston Globe, Savoy, The Village Voice, Black Book, and other publications.

Laurie GarrettBetrayal of Trust: The Collapse of Global Public Health

Laurie Garrett
Journalist, Advocate, Author

Laurie Garrett is one of America’s premier authorities on healthcare and disease prevention, and a powerful advocate for a more forceful response to threats to human health.

She is the author of the best-selling books The Coming Plague: Newly Emerging Diseases in a World Out of Balance and Betrayal of Trust: The Collapse of Global Public Health, both of which have received wide-spread critical and popular acclaim.

She is the only person ever to have been awarded all three of the Big “Ps” of journalism: The Peabody, The Polk (twice), and The Pulitzer.

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