E.N. Thompson Forum

Pearsall is a Professor of History at Johns Hopkins University and author of Freedom Round the Globe.

The discussion was moderated by Dr. Margaret Jacobs, Charles Mach Professor of History. With Sheldon Museum of Art and the Department of History

Social entrepreneur and coauthor of The Upswing: How America Came Together a Century Ago and How We Can Do It Again.

Communication strategist, creator of The Listening Table, and VP of Warmline.org, teaching communication skills to foster authentic human connection.

The E.N. Thompson Forum on World Issues is a cooperative project of the Cooper Foundation, Lied Center for Performing Arts, and University of Nebraska-Lincoln. It was established in 1988 with the purpose of bringing a diversity of viewpoints on international and public policy issues to the university and people of Nebraska to promote understanding and encourage debate.

19th & 21st Surgeon General of the United States and author of Together: The Healing Power of Human Connection in a Sometimes Lonely World.

Moderated by H. Dele Davies, MD, Interim Chancellor, UNMC

Poet, professor and author of World of Wonders: In Praise of Fireflies, Whale Sharks, & Other Astonishments, Barnes and Noble’s Book of the Year in 2020.

Governor’s Lecture in the Humanities, Humanities Nebraska

Acclaimed author of The Joy Luck Club, The Kitchen God’s Wife and others, including 2024’s illustrated nature journal The Backyard Bird Chronicles, a #1 New York Times bestseller.

Leilani Farha is the former UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Housing and Global Director of The Shift. Farha has helped develop global human rights standards on the right to housing, including through her topical reports on homelessness, the financialization of housing, informal settlements, rights-based housing strategies, and the first UN Guidelines for the implementation of the right to housing. She is the central character in the documentary PUSH regarding the financialization of housing. Farha launched The Shift in 2017 to advance the movement through advocacy, research and campaigning.

Lynsey Addario is an American photojournalist who has been covering humanitarian crises for The New York Times and National Geographic for more than two decades. Addario has covered conflicts in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Lebanon, Darfur, South Sudan, Somalia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Yemen, Syria, and Ukraine. American Photo Magazine named Addario as one of the five most influential photographers of the past 25 years. She received a Pulitzer Prize for reporting out of Afghanistan and Pakistan, and a MacArthur Fellowship. Addario has a bestselling memoir, It's What I Do, and a solo collection of photography, Of Love and War.

This interactive event will feature local students and young professionals sharing their lived experiences as immigrants and refugees. Each panelist will tell their story, presenting a multi-dimensional picture beyond what’s portrayed in the news. Panelists will then respond to questions on a range of relevant topics, moderated by Karla Hernandez Torrijos, the inaugural Student Storyteller in Residence with the Center for Great Plains Studies. Karla is an undergraduate student, poet and workshop facilitator whose writing “interrogates our understanding of home, displacement, and the liminal space in between.”