The Distinguished Lecture Series Committee crafted their final list Tuesday of nine guest lecturers they will invite to speak on the University of Wisconsin campus next year.
From a nominations list of 40 different speakers, the DLS Committee narrowed the list to nine speakers and nine alternates covering a range of topics from women’s issues to international politics and pop culture.
According to Aaron McKean, director of the DLS committee, the lists that were voted on are simply working lists. These are the speakers the committee would like to see on next year’s lineup, but McKean said it all depends on the speaker.
The proposed guest lecturers for next year include Sandra Day O’Connor, the first female member of the Supreme Court, Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, the current president of Liberia, and Tim Gunn, an American fashion consultant and mentor on the television show “Project Runway.”
The committee set a goal for themselves to have at least half of the speakers on the roster for the 2008-09 school year to be women. Though the finalized list was less than half women, members of the committee said they wanted a diverse range of topics as well as a diverse group of people.
“We need to decide how we want to let campus do the series, whether we care about diversity of speakers, literally the diversity of speakers, the diversity of issues or both,” incoming DLS Committee Director Eric Schmidt said. “It’s usually both.”
Committee member Kathryn Yoh said this year’s series had only one woman on the roster and the committee felt this was unacceptable.
But Schmidt said the demographic makeup of the lecturers is often out of the control of the committee.
“When you get a distinguished lecture series that seems like women are not properly represented, [it] sometimes is the result of the fact that the markets for female speakers are not as broad as the markets for male speakers,” Schmidt said.
Other speakers on the list include Ishmael Beah, author and former child soldier from Sierra Leone, and environmentalist Michael Pollen. Andrew Sullivan, who was scheduled to speak in this year’s series, will also be added to next year’s roster.
Each of the speakers placed on the committee’s list to speak next year will cost between $15,000 and $30,000. The committee has a budget based on student segregated fees, which will not be determined until late in the summer. Last year’s budget was about $150,000, McKean said.
They must now contact each of the speakers through agencies, McKean said.
However, the possibility of the lecture rests on availability, fee and, ultimately, desire of the speaker to do the lecture.
“When things fall into place, we will never get right off the bat those eight speakers that we’ve decided on tonight,” Schmidt said. “Hopefully we can get most of them, though.”
The process of nominating, narrowing down and selecting speakers for DLS started in January, Schmidt said. Nominations were accepted from students, staff and faculty, community members and audience members.
