JFK Library Forums

US Department of Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julián Castro discussed social justice issues and current initiatives to expand opportunity for all Americans. Renée Loth, editor of ArchitectureBoston and columnist for The Boston Globe, moderated.

Patrick Hemingway bestowed the 2016 PEN Hemingway Award to Ottessa Moshfegh for her novel Eileen. James Wood, staff writer at The New Yorker and author of How Fiction Works, delivered the keynote address. The PEN New England Awards in Nonfiction, Poetry, and Fiction were also presented at the ceremony.

Historian Ellen Fitzpatrick discussed her new book, The Highest Glass Ceiling: Women’s Quest for the American Presidency, about the campaigns of Victoria Woodhull (1872), Margaret Chase Smith (1964), and Shirley Chisholm (1972), and how their journeys illuminate today’s political landscape. WGBH radio host and television commentator Callie Crossley moderated. New Frontier Network Steering Committee Member Yasmin Cruz introduced the forum.

Melanne Verveer and Kim Azzarelli, co-authors of Fast Forward: How Women Can Achieve Power and Purpose, discussed ways that some of the world's most inspiring women are using economic power to create success, meaning, and a better world. Jill Abramson, former editor of The New York Times, moderated. This forum was presented in partnership with the Massachusetts Women's Forum.

Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey discussed her first year in office and legal challenges facing the Commonwealth with Dean of Harvard Law School Martha Minow.

Evan Thomas discussed his new biography, Being Nixon: A Man Divided, with Tim Naftali, historian and former Director of the Richard M. Nixon Presidential Library and Museum.

Congressman Seth Moulton and presidential advisor David Gergen discussed issues related to the turmoil in the Middle East and the importance of national service.

Wil Haygood discussed his new book, Showdown: Thurgood Marshall and the Supreme Court Nomination That Changed America with civil rights leader Elaine Jones. Harvard Law Professor Kenneth Mack moderated.

Bob Schieffer, veteran broadcast journalist, long-time anchor of Face the Nation, and current Walter Shorenstein Media and Democracy Fellow at Harvard’s Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics, and Public Policy, discussed his distinguished career with WBZ-TV News anchor Lisa Hughes.

On the 20th anniversary of the assassination of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, Ira Glass, the host of This American Life, interviewed the show's longtime producer Nancy Updike and her husband Dan Ephron, former Jerusalem bureau chief for Newsweek.