The Stephen A. Levin Family Dean’s Forum is an annual celebration of the arts and sciences.

Initiated in 1984, the Forum presents leading intellectual figures who exemplify the richness of the liberal arts. It also recognizes outstanding undergraduate and graduate students for their academic achievement and intellectual promise. The Levin Family Dean’s Forum is made possible by a generous gift from Stephen A. Levin, C’67, in honor of his son Eric T. Levin, C’92.

Penn Arts & Sciences is proud to welcome poet and author Margaret Atwood to the 2024 Stephen A. Levin Family Dean's Forum! 

Conversation moderated by Emily Wilson, College for Women Class of 1963 Term Professor in the Humanities and Professor of Classical Studies. 

Wednesday, April 17 - 4:30 p.m. 
Harrison Auditorium, Penn Museum
3260 South Street
Philadelphia, PA 19104

Ticket Info


Past Dean’s Forum Talks:

2023
Poetry, Prose, and Reckoning with History

Clint Smith, author and poet, in conversation with Mia Bay, Roy F. and Jeannette P. Nichols Chair in American History

2022
Crazy Determined Asians: Jon M. Chu and the Power of Representation

Jon M. Chu, director of the worldwide phenomenon Crazy Rich Asians, in conversation with David L. Eng, Richard L. Fisher Professor of English and Asian American Studies

2021
Range vs. Grit

featuring David Epstein, bestselling author and expert on the science of high performance, in conversation with Angela Duckworth, Rosa Lee and Egbert Professor and bestselling author 

2019
Art and Politics, from Graphic to Cinema

a conversation with Marjane Satrapi, bestselling artist/illustrator, filmmaker, and author

2018
American Exceptionalism: What Divides Americans from the World and from Each Other?

by Mugambi Jouet, Boulton Fellow, McGill Faculty of Law

2017
Fear Inc.: Confronting Islamophobia in America

by Reza Aslan, internationally renowned writer, commentator, professor, producer, and scholar of religions

2016
How Hollywood Is Spotlighting Social Change

a conversation with Josh Singer, Spotlight’s Oscar-winning producer and screenwriter; Neal Huff, the actor who played survivor Phil Saviano; Marci A. Hamilton, PRRUC Senior Fellow: Steven Berkowitz, Associate Professor of Clinical Psychiatry, Perelman School of Medicine: and Peter Decherney, Professor of English and Cinema Studies, Penn Arts and Sciences

2015
The Challenge of the 21st Century: Setting the Real Bottom Line in the Anthropocene

by David Suzuki, scientist, environmental activist, and award-winning broadcaster

2014
Connected: The Surprising Power of Our Social Networks and How They Shape Our Lives

by James Fowler, a professor of medical genetics and political science at the University of California, San Diego

2013
George Washington: A Life

by Ron Chernow, Pulitzer Prize winning author

2012
Justice and the Contemporary World

by Amartya Sen, Thomas W. Lamont University Professor and Professor of Economics and Philosophy at Harvard University

2011
Intuition: Marvels and Flaws

by Daniel Kahneman, world-renowned commentator on the economics of human behavior and Nobel Prize winner

2010
The Politics of Disgust

by Martha Nussbaum, The Ernst Freund Distinguished Service Professor of Law and Ethics at the University of Chicago

2009
Genetics and Genealogy

by Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Alphonse Fletcher University Professor and director of the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research at Harvard University

2008
The Stuff of Thought

by Dr. Steven Pinker, the Johnstone Family Professor of Psychology at Harvard

2007
AIDS in 2007: Building a Health Care Movement

by Dr. Paul Farmer, Maude and Lillian Presley Professor of Social Medicine, Harvard Medical School and Co-Founder, Partners in Health

2006
On Bulls**t

by Harry G. Frankfurt, Professor Emeritus of Philosophy, Princeton University, author of The Reasons of Love and On Bullshit

2005
The Fabric of the Cosmos: Space, Time and the Texture of Reality

by Brian Greene physicist, string theorist, author of The Elegant Universe

2004
Qualities of Leadership

by David McCullough, Pulitzer Prize-winning author and host of Smithsonian World and The American Experience

2003
Sequencing the Human Genome: The Gateway to a New Era in Science and Medicine

by J. Craig Venter, Founder of the Institute for Genome Research

2002
The Third Millennium and the Spirit of the Age

by Tom Wolfe, bestselling author of The Bonfire of the Vanities and I Am Charlotte Simmons

2000
Gertrude and Claudius

by John Updike, world-renowned novelist

1999
The Woman Warrior

by Maxine Hong Kingston, author of the 1998-99 Penn Reading Project text, The Woman Warrior

1998
Public Support for the Humanities

by Garry Wills, author of the 1997-98 Penn Reading Project text, Lincoln at Gettysburg, and recipient of the 1992 Pulitzer Prize.

1997
Knowing About Knowing About the Brain

by Floyd E. Bloom, M.D., Professor Emeritus, Department of Molecular and Integrative Neurosciences, Scripps Research Institute and former editor-in-chief of Science

1996
The After-Life of Plays

by Jonathan Miller, opera director, physician, medical historian

 

Other Dean's Forum Speakers:
 

Donald C. Johanson
Arthur Schlesinger
Philip Roth
Toni Morrison
Yevgeny Yevtushenko
Governors Dupont and Baliles
Gerald Edelman
Baruch Blumberg
James Watson
Susan Sontag
Arthur Miller