Westminster Town Hall Forum

Leon Martel is the former Vice President of the Hudson Institute and an eminent futurist, author, and political scientist specializing in forecasting the future shape of our society.

Kurt Waldheim is a career diplomat, former Foreign Minister of Austria, and a University Research Professor of Diplomacy at Georgetown University. He served as Secretary-General of the United Nations from 1972 to 1982.

John Roach is the Archbishop of the Archdiocese of Saint Paul and Minneapolis and vice-president of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops. He is widely known for his leadership role on issues of peace and social justice.

J. Michael Quinlan is director of the Federal Bureau of Prisons, overseeing the confinement of 44,000 offenders committed to the custody of the Attorney General. A career public administrator in the Department of Justice, he is the fifth director of the Federal Bureau of Prisons since it was established in 1930. He began his career with the Bureau as an attorney in the Central Office and served as executive assistant to the warden at the federal penitentiary in Leavenworth, Kansas. He is currently co-vice chairman of the Committee on Prisons and Jail Problems for the American Bar Association.

Isaac Bashevis Singer began his literary career in his native Poland as a journalist for the Yiddish press. He published his first novel in 1935 and, in that same year, immigrated to the United States where his stories and novels have received high acclaim. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1978 and is the recipient of two National Book Awards and a grant from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters.

Eugenia Zukerman is a flutist, recording artist, novelist, and arts critic. She is the music commentator on CBS News' Sunday Morning and appears regularly as a soloist with major orchestras around the world.

Edson Spencer is Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer at Honeywell, Inc. He is known for his strong convictions on corporate responsibility. He joined Honeywell in 1954 and served as Honeywell's Far East regional manager from 1959 to 1964. Before becoming the company's CEO, he served as corporate vice president in charge of international operations.

Ron Markman is a forensic psychiatrist who has worked with alleged killers to assess their state of mental health. He determines whether someone who has killed is sane or insane and then testifies in a court of law. An attorney as well as a psychiatrist, he has a unique perspective on the legal process and has worked for both the defense and the prosecution. He will explore the challenges of our legal system and explore the common societal belief that a person must be mentally ill to commit a crime.

Donna Shalala - A Conversation With Secretary Donna Shalala - 04/27/95 by westminsterforum

Deborah Prothrow-Stith is a nationally recognized expert on teen violence and the assistant dean for Government and Community Programs at Harvard University's School of Public Health. She is the author of the first violence-prevention curriculum for schools and of the critically-acclaimed book, Deadly Consequences: How Violence Is Destroying Our Teenage Population and a Plan to Begin Solving the Problem. Her interest in adolescent violence began with her work as a staff physician in Boston area hospitals. An alumna of Spelman College and Harvard Medical School, she was the first woman, and the youngest person, to serve as Massachusetts Commissioner of Public Health.

Dean Rusk is professor of International Law at the University of Georgia. He served as U. S. Secretary of State from 1961-1969 and is a former president of the Rockefeller Foundation. He now serves as an advisor to the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency at the State Department.

Curtis and Lisa Sliwa are the founders of New York City's Guardian Angels. For the Guardian Angels, citizen involvement is the key to controlling crime in any community. They challenge traditional law-enforcement tactics and advise citizens to learn to defend themselves. Today, more than 5,000 Guardian Angels volunteers patrol subways, city streets, and suburban shopping malls in a number of American cities. They also offer training in self-defense methods.

Cornel West - The Politics Of Race In America - 10/13/94 by westminsterforum

Christine Vladimiroff - Hunger In The Land Of Plenty: A Paradox - 02/25/93 by westminsterforum

Wilma Mankiller was the first woman elected Principal Chief by the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma in a historic tribal election in 1987. She was re-elected in 1991. Her roots are deeply planted in the rural community of Rocky Mountain in Adair County, Oklahoma. She is committed to the empowerment of people at the local level, to rural development, and to the concept of community self-help. She is devoted to raising awareness of American Indian concerns and to strengthening intergovernmental relations.

Alan Page - The Student Athlete - 02/25/82 by westminsterforum

Ashley Montagu - To Die Young - As Late As Possible - 03/24/88 by westminsterforum

Sanford Ungar is a journalist with long experience in sub-Saharan Africa and the author of The People and Politics of an Emerging Continent. Noting the cultural gap between the Arab north and the rest of the continent, he is an observer and interpreter of the multi-faceted changes within the African continent and the African nations' relationship to the United States.

Dr Martin E. Marty - The Larger Vision In American Religion - 05/29/82 by westminsterforum

Abraham Verghese was born in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, and came to the U.S. in 1973. He attended medical school at East Tennessee State University, then accepted a position at Boston City Hospital conducting research. In 1985, he returned to Tennessee as an assistant professor at East Tennessee State University School of Medicine. In his role as an infectious disease specialist, he witnessed firsthand the rapid spread of AIDS. His book, My Own Country: A Doctor's Story, was selected by Time magazine as one of the top five books of 1994. In the book, he describes a community's reaction to AIDS, detailing one doctor's personal struggle to provide care to AIDS patients and their families. He currently serves as Professor of Medicine and Chief of Infectious Disease and Geriatrics at Texas Tech University in El Paso, Texas.