MACON, Ga. — The Phi Beta Kappa Society’s Zeta Chapter of Georgia at Mercer University will host the seventh annual Malcolm Lester Phi Beta Kappa Lectures on Liberal Arts and Public Life on March 31 and April 1 in the Presidents Dining Room on the Macon campus.
Holden Thorp, the editor-in-chief of the Science family of journals for the American Academy for the Advancement of Science, will present three lectures on the theme “Sticking to Our Values in a Chaotic Age: How to Rebuild the Partnership Between America and Higher Education.”
“Higher education is in yet another crisis. There couldn’t be a better time to take stock and gear up for the long, slow path back to a more generative relationship with the American public than now,” said Thorp. “I’m honored to be able to deliver the Malcolm Lester lectures and look forward to my time at Mercer.”
Thorp joined Science from Washington University, where he was provost from 2013 to 2019 and professor from 2013 to 2023. He is currently a professor at George Washington University and on leave to serve as the editor-in-chief at Science.
Prior to joining Washington University, Thorp spent three decades at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC) as a faculty member before serving as chancellor. He holds honorary degrees from Hofstra University and North Carolina Wesleyan College and is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the National Academy of Inventors and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
“Holden Thorp is an accomplished scientist, principled academic administrator and powerful advocate for scientific research and free inquiry,” said Dr. David A. Davis, chair of the Lester Lectures Committee. “These timely lectures will make a forceful argument for research as a public good and for a mutually beneficial relationship between the academy and the American people.”
Co-founder of Viamet Pharmaceuticals, Thorp is also on the board of directors of PBS, the College Advising Corps and Saint Louis University and serves on the scientific advisory boards of the Yale School of Medicine and the Underwriters’ Laboratories Research Institutes. Additionally, he has co-authored two books on higher education: Engines of Innovation: The Entrepreneurial University in the Twenty-First Century and Our Higher Calling: Rebuilding the Partnership Between America and its Colleges and Universities.
In this series of lectures, Thorp will discuss “the deterioration of public trust in higher education and the extent to which that has been enabled by external ideological attacks, internal detachment, and self-inflicted wounds.”
Lecture Schedule:
“How We Got Here: Attacks, Detachment, and Self-Inflicted Wounds”
Monday, March 31, at 10:10 a.m.
“Interregnum: Why Intercollegiate Athletics is Not a Hill to Die On”
Tuesday, April 1, at 11:15 a.m.
“Rebuilding the Partnership: Research Integrity as a Test Case for a New Model”
Tuesday, April 1, at 6:00 p.m.
The lectures are free and open to the public.
