E.N. Thompson Forum

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.”

Martha Schwartz is a landscape architect, urbanist, and climate activist. Her work and teaching focuses on the urban public realm landscape and its importance in making cities “climate ready”. For more than 40 years, Martha Schwartz Partners has completed projects around the globe, from site-specific art installations to public spaces, parks, master-planning and reclamation. Schwartz is also a tenured Professor in Practice at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design and recently founded MAYDAY. Earth, a non-profit focused on communications and education about Nature Based and Geoengineering Solutions.

Tyler Riewer is Creative Director at charity: water, a $100M nonprofit organization that uses data and storytelling to connect donors to their impact and dream up new ways to think about sustainability in the water sector. As of today, charity: water has funded 91,414 projects to bring clean and safe water to 14,762,215 people. Riewer leads a team of designers and storytellers, and travels the globe capturing stories about local partners. He studied Advertising and Journalism at Nebraska and started his career at marketing agencies Archrival and Grady Britton.

Dr. Ali S. Khan is Dean and Tenured Professor of Epidemiology at the University of Nebraska Medical Center College of Public Health, and a Retired Assistant Surgeon General. He served at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) for 23 years before retiring as the director of the Office of Public Health Preparedness and Response. At the CDC, Dr. Khan led and responded to numerous high-profile public health emergencies, including Ebola, the Asian Tsunami, and Hurricane Katrina. In 2016 Dr. Khan published “The Next Pandemic: On the Front Lines Against Humankind’s Gravest Dangers” with William Patrick.

Candice Millard’s talk will touch on her four New York Times bestselling books. In her most recent book, “River of the Gods: Genius, Courage, and Betrayal in the Search for the Source of the Nile” focused on English explorers Richard Burton and John Hanning Speke, Millard tells a story of courage and adventure, set against the backdrop of the race to exploit Africa by the colonial powers. This book also profiles Sidi Mubarak Bombay, the formerly enslaved local guide who played a pivotal role in the expedition. Millard’s essays have appeared in the Guardian, National Geographic and TIME.

Echo-Hawk is President of the Pawnee Nation Business Council. He is an author, attorney, and and well-renowned legal scholar. A Pawnee Indian with a BA, Political Science, Oklahoma St. Univ. (1970) and JD, UNM (1973), he practices law in Oklahoma.