Dillard Notables of 2019: The Guest List
We’ve been able to bring a number of high quality speakers to campus. I have always believed that lectures from national experts are important out of class experiences for students. In April of 2013 we launched the Brain Food lecture series. For six years we provided these lectures to our campus community and invited the broader community to attend free of charge.
But I decided last year that the interest was not there. I always wondered why no university in the city had a lecture series when I arrived in 2012. With so many events happening all of the time, lectures can’t really compete. So while I won’t do a lecture series anymore, we will do occasional lectures; probably more during the day than trying to accommodate a large crowd in the evenings. We’ll see how it develops.
With 2019 being our sesquicentennial, all the Brain Food speakers were alums.
We also had an alum, board chair Michael Jones, speak for the annual Ortique lecture on law and society which was first given in 2010 by then Attorney General Eric Holder.
Commencement weekend always brings out special guests. With a gala this year celebrating our 150th we had a couple of extra special guests.
Patti LaBelle performed for our gala and brought down the house. And there were other guest performances this year.
We had guests all year, from near and far, visit Dillard in 2019. Here are some of the other notables.
Dr. Jack gave the quote of the year for 2019: “It’s not what you know or who you know, but who knows you and how well they do.”
We’ll continue to have great guests in 2020, starting with our MLK program featuring Dr. Freddy Haynes from Dallas TX!
The Prez
