Mr. Forbes is currently associate vice president in the Office of Government and Community Affairs at Columbia University. At 16 years old he became the youngest member of the Black Panther Party's Central Committee and was a senior member of that organization for a decade. He spent 4 years as a fugitive after being dispatched by Huey P. Newton to assassinate a witness against him and ultimately 4 years, 8 months, and 9 days as an inmate in Soledad and San Quentin Prisons in California. Flores has written a book on his experience, Will You Die With Me?, and will be giving a talk on the "real" political philosophies that informed the BPP (Fanon, Carlos Miraghella and Huey Newton's concept of the "Buddha Samurai") rather than the thinkers they exposed to the public.

The Journalist-In-Residence Lecture Series presents Daniel James Brown, New York Times bestselling author of "The Boys in the Boat". "The Boys in the Boat" celebrates the 1936 U.S. men's Olympic eight-oar rowing team-nine working class boys who stormed the rowing world, transformed the sport, and galvanized the attention of millions of Americans. The sons of loggers, shipyard workers, and farmers from the American West, the boys took on and defeated successive echelons of privilege and power.

Vincent Stanley, the current VP of marketing at the clothing company Patagonia, and co-author with Yvon Chouinard of "The Responsible Company: What We've Learned From Patagonia's First 40 Years" will speak on his recently published book and his experiences with Patagonia since the company's founding in 1973. Patagonia, named by Fortune in 2007 as the coolest company on the planet, has earned a reputation as much for its ground-breaking environmental and social practices as for the quality of its clothes. In "The Responsible Company," Chouinard and Stanley recount how the company and its culture gained the confidence, by step and misstep, to make its work progressively more responsible, and to ultimately share its discoveries with companies as large as Wal-Mart or as small as the corner bakery.

America is at a crossroads in its history. The world is changing rapidly. How we react to these changes, among them global climate change and shortages of key energy resources, will determine whether we prosper or flounder. Unfortunately, extremely powerful forces now prevent us from enacting the measures required to build a truly sustainable future based on a renewable energy economy. Dan Chiras is a visiting professor of environmental science and director of The Evergreen Institute in east-central Missouri.

Recorded April 27, 2011.

This year President Richard Celeste will award the 2011 Champion of the Rockies Award to conservationist, advocate for free speech, and author of "Refuge," Terry Tempest Williams. Terry Tempest Williams will then address the audience with several selected readings.

Recorded April 4, 2011.

David Philipps talks about his book, a chronicle of the Army unit from Fort Carson that was plagued by post-traumatic stress disorder. Misdiagnosed or untreated since returning from war, some soldiers from the unit embarked on drug-fueled crime sprees, some of which resulted in murder.

Recorded March 1, 2011.

Jaron Lanier—scientist, author, musician, and artist—visits campus to ruminate on "media technology as a grand exploration of unimagined human potential." Combining elements of cognition, Microsoft's XBOX, chemistry, and musical improvisation, among other things, Lanier takes us on a journey into the possibilities, pitfalls, and potential of New Media.

Lanier has been labeled the pioneer of virtual reality (a term he coined), and his 2010 bestseller "You Are Not a Gadget: A Manifesto," has been described by the New York Times as "necessary reading for anyone interested in how the web and the software we use every day are reshaping culture and the marketplace."

Recorded February 8, 2012.

Nolan Doesken is a state climatologist who has been monitoring Colorado’s climate for decades. Mike King is the executive director of Colorado Department of Natural Resources. Their combined expertise will offer a unique view of Colorado forests from a Colorado government perspective.

Recorded December 6, 2010.

Tony Dixon is the deputy regional forester of the Rocky Mountain Region and Jan Burke is the forest health coordinator for the White River National Forest. Their talk stems from their many years of experience working for the U.S. Forest Service in Colorado and examines the White River National Forest in Northwestern Colorado.

Recorded November 8, 2010.

David Weddle, professor of religion, will present his new book on miracles. The work examines the enduring interest in miracle stories in five world religions from tales of flying yogis and rebbes with healing power to levitating bodhisattvas, miracle-working saints, and disappearing Sufi masters.

Recorded November 9, 2010.