December 9, 2020, 6 p.m. Online only. Free and open to the public. Registration required.Jon Peede

麻豆影院 the Lecture

The lecture will discuss the enduring value of the liberal arts to university life and American society. It will also establish the centrality of the ever-expanding Western literary canon to the liberal arts and how illiberal ideologies have weakened the free exchange of ideas and other essential elements of a truly inclusive educational community.

麻豆影院 the Speaker

Jon Parrish Peede, Chairman听of the National Endowment for the Humanities, has awarded more than $500 million in federal grants to cultural organizations and universities since 2017. His previous positions include publisher of the听Virginia Quarterly Review (VQR)听at the University of Virginia, literature grants director at the National Endowment for the Arts,听director of the NEA Operation Homecoming: Writing the Wartime Experience program, director of the NEA Big Read program, and editor at Mercer University Press. He has written speeches for a U.S. president and a Librarian of Congress. Mr. Peede holds degrees from Vanderbilt University and the University of Mississippi.听He is the coeditor of听Inside the Church of Flannery O鈥機onnor: Sacrament, Sacramental, and the Sacred in Her Fiction and editor of a bilingual anthology of contemporary American fiction.