Nina Totenberg

SMU’s 32nd season of the Tate Distinguished Lecture Series features events such as a national security discussion with two former U.S. Secretaries of Defense; an award-winning presidential biographer on John F. Kennedy’s legacy 50 years after his assassination; an examination of the national debt by the men who created the Bowles-Simpson deficit plan; and an evening with the “Founding Mothers” of National Public Radio.

All lectures take place at 8 p.m. in McFarlin Auditorium.

The upcoming season at a glance:

• Tuesday, Sept. 17, 2013 – Senior statesmen and former U.S. Secretaries of Defense Robert Gates and Leon Panetta, joined by returning moderator David Gergen, former presidential advisor and CNN senior political commentator
• Tuesday, Oct. 29, 2013 – Robert Caro, winner of the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award for his acclaimed multivolume biography of Lyndon Baines Johnson
• Tuesday, Nov. 19, 2013 – Sir Ken Robinson, expert on creativity, innovation and human resources and author of New York Times bestseller Finding Your Element; named one of the Top 50 business thinkers in the world
• Tuesday, Dec. 3, 2013 – Erskine Bowles, former White House Chief of Staff for President Bill Clinton, and Alan Simpson, former U.S. Senator from Wyoming, co-chairs of the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform
• Thursday, March 4, 2014 – Garry Kasparov, world chess champion and global human rights activist; author of How Life Imitates Chess
• Tuesday, April 1, 2014 – A.J. Jacobs, Esquire editor-at-large and “human guinea pig”; author of the bestsellers Drop Dead Healthy and The Know-It-All
• Monday, May 5, 2014 – Longtime National Public Radio correspondents and news analysts Cokie Roberts, Susan Stamberg, Nina Totenberg and Linda Wertheimer

For more information, visit the Tate Distinguished Lecture Series website.