Monday, April 10 / 8 pm / Campbell Hall / Free

French philosopher, war reporter and public intellectual Bernard-Henri Lévy is best known in the U.S. for his book Who Killed Daniel Pearl? Lévy is co-founder of the antiracist group SOS Racism and author of the recently published book American Vertigo: Traveling America in the Footsteps of Tocqueville.

A Herman P. and Sophia Taubman Foundation Endowed Symposium in Jewish Studies

Thursday, April 13 / 8 pm / Campbell Hall

Merwin is one of the great poets of our age. —Los Angeles Times

In a career spanning five decades, W.S. Merwin, poet, translator and environmental activist, has become one of the most widely read writers in America. The Pulitzer Prize-winner returns to Santa Barbara to read from his densely imagistic, dream-like poems that are full of praise for the natural world. His recent collection Migration, containing more than 400 poems, was a landmark event in the literary world.

General public $10 / UCSB students $8

A Santa Barbara Poetry Month Event. Supported by Solo Press.

Friday, April 28 / 7 pm / Campbell Hall

Kenyan Wangari Maathai, the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize laureate and the first African woman to receive the honor, is internationally recognized for her persistent struggle for democracy, human rights and environmental justice. For nearly thirty years, Maathai has mobilized poor women to plant 30 million trees through her organization the Pan African Green Belt Network.

General public $15 / UCSB students $10

Co-presented with the Walter H. Capps Center for the Study of Ethics, Religion and Public Life, in association with the Donald Bren School of Environmental Science & Management, and generously supported by Patagonia, Inc., Lynn Bremer and the Beth Chamberlin Endowment for Cultural Understanding

Monday, May 1 / 8 pm / Campbell Hall

Jane Fonda’s incredibly rich life has seen her in numerous roles, as an Academy Award-winning actress, controversial activist, best-selling aerobics instructor and generous philanthropist. Her presentation, like her recent memoir of the same name, will reveal intimate details and universal truths that she hopes “can provide a lens through which others can see their lives and how they can live them a little differently.”

General public $10 / UCSB students $8

Co-presented with the UCSB Center for Film, Television and New Media

Tuesday, May 9 / 8 pm / Campbell Hall

Santa Barbara-based Kevin McKiernan, a photo journalist for more than thirty years, wrote and directed the award-winning PBS documentary Good Kurds, Bad Kurds. His eye-opening illustrated lecture based on his just released book will explore the plight of the Kurds, the largest ethnic group in the world without their own state.

General public $10 / UCSB students $8

Saturday, May 13 / 3 pm / Victoria Hall Theater, 33 W. Victoria St.

Matthieu Ricard, a former molecular geneticist who gave up that career to become a Tibetan Buddhist monk, is the Dalai Lama’s interpreter in French, and the author of Journey to Enlightenment, and, with Jean-François Revel, The Monk and the Philosopher. Ricard and Pico Iyer will discuss how we can actualize our inherent potential based on understanding the true nature of mind.

General public $15 / UCSB students $10

Thursday, May 25 / 8 pm / Campbell Hall / Free

Mixing the lyrical with the colloquial, the tender with the tough, Ana Castillo has a deserved reputation as one of the country’s most powerful and entrancing writers, exploring Chicana and feminist themes in brilliant books like her groundbreaking debut The Mixquiahuala Letters and 1999’s Peel My Love like an Onion.