May 2021 Lectures

LOCATION

May lectures will be held online via Zoom Webinar on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 10:30-11:30 AM, with the exception of the May 24 lecture, which is on a Monday. We will send the Zoom link the morning of each lecture to those subscribed to the newsletter. 

Reservations not Required

Reservations are not required to receive the Zoom link and attend lectures in May. We will send the Zoom link the morning of each lecture. Each Friday newsletter will also have information about the following week's lectures.

Zoom webinar

We will be using Zoom Webinar for the May lecture series. Webinars provide for a more seamless experience for both speakers and participants when there is a large number in attendance. Zoom Webinars have the following format:

  • Attendees will see a notice that the Webinar has not yet started when clicking the link if it is before the start time. Once the Webinar is started, you will see the speaker.
  • You will only see the lecturer and person introducing him/her on the screen. You will not see yourself or other attendees.
  • Attendees microphones will be kept muted.
  • Questions will be taken at the end of the lecture for the speaker and managed through the Chat function.

Chat Function

You can find the chat function at the bottom of your Zoom screen in the middle. Above the word "Chat" is an icon of a quote bubble. If you’d like to ask a question during the lecture, click on "Chat." A white dialogue box will appear to the right. Select the option to send your question to both "Panelists and Attendees," type a question, and hit "Enter."

 

LECTURES

Bradley Graham and Lissa Muscatine, Politics and Prose
Tuesday, May 11
10:30-11:30 AM, via Zoom

Bradley Graham and Lissa Muscatine are co-owners of Politics and Prose bookstores in Washington, D.C. They purchased the company from the original owners in 2011.

Brad, in addition to his day-to-day involvement managing P&P, serves as a member of the board of the American Booksellers Association. Previously, he spent 30 years with the Washington Post as a reporter and editor focused mostly on foreign and national security affairs. He also has written two books—Hit to Kill, an account published in 2001 of renewed U.S. efforts to build a national missile defense system, and By His Own Rules, a biography of Donald Rumsfeld published in 2009. 

Lissa is a veteran of journalism, government, and politics. As a journalist, she started with the Delta Democrat-Times in Greenville, Mississippi, and the Washington Star before joining the Washington Post, where she spent 12 years covering local schools, higher education, Maryland state politics, and sports. Moving into government, she served in the Clinton administration as a presidential speechwriter, chief speechwriter to the First Lady and, in the final year of the administration, director of communications and press secretary to the First Lady. Later in the Obama administration, she was chief speechwriter and senior advisor to then-Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. She also served as a senior advisor on Mrs. Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign and a collaborator on Mrs. Clinton’s White House memoir, Living History. Currently, Lissa is writing her own book based on her work with Mrs. Clinton.

Christine Grady, Connecting Bioethics and COVID
Thursday, May 13
10:30-11:30 AM, via Zoom

Christine Grady is a nurse-bioethicist, senior investigator, and Chief of the Department of Bioethics at the National Institutes of Health Clinical Center.  Her research focuses on clinical research ethics, including informed consent, vulnerability, study design, and recruitment, international research ethics and on ethical issues faced by nurses and other healthcare providers.

Dr. Grady has authored more than 200 papers in the biomedical and bioethics literature and authored or edited several books, including The Oxford Textbook of Clinical Research Ethics. She is an elected fellow of the Hastings Center and the American Academy of Nursing, research fellow at Kennedy Institute of Ethics and an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine. Dr. Grady holds a BS in nursing and biology from Georgetown University, a MSN in community health nursing from Boston College, and a PhD in philosophy from Georgetown University.

Maria Arana, Silver, Sword, and Stone: Three Crucibles in the Latin American Story
Tuesday, May 18
10:30-11:30 AM, via Zoom

Marie Arana most recently was the Literary Director of the Library of Congress. Her newest book, Silver, Sword, and Stone: Three Crucibles in the Latin American Story explores three enduring themes have defined Latin America since pre-Columbian times: the foreign greed for its mineral riches, an ingrained propensity to violence, and the abiding power of religion. The book is available at Politics and Prose.  Among her other books is the widely praised biography of Simón Bolívar, Bolívar: American Liberator, and American Chica, which described her bicultural childhood between North and South Americas. That book was a finalist for the National Book Award, the PEN-Memoir Award, and chosen best book of the year by several publications. Marie is the former editor in chief of "Book World" at The Washington Post.

Rose Gottermoeller, Negotiating the New START Treaty
Monday, May 24
10:30-11:30 AM, via Zoom

Rose Gottemoeller is the Frank E. and Arthur W. Payne Distinguished Lecturer at Stanford University's Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and its Center for International Security and Cooperation.

Before joining Stanford Gottemoeller was the Deputy Secretary General of NATO from 2016 to 2019, where she helped to drive forward NATO’s adaptation to new security challenges in Europe and in the fight against terrorism.  Prior to NATO, she served for nearly five years as the Under Secretary for Arms Control and International Security at the U.S. Department of State, advising the Secretary of State on arms control, nonproliferation and political-military affairs. While Assistant Secretary of State for Arms Control, Verification and Compliance in 2009 and 2010, she was the chief U.S. negotiator of the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) with the Russian Federation. Her experience is described in a memoir, Negotiating the New START Treaty, recently published by Cambria Press.

Prior to her government service, she was a senior associate with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, with joint appointments to the Nonproliferation and Russia programs. She served as the Director of the Carnegie Moscow Center from 2006 to 2008, and is currently a nonresident fellow in Carnegie's Nuclear Policy Program. She is also a research fellow at the Hoover Institution. 

Daniel Goldman, Lessons Learned from the Impeachments of Donald Trump: Is Impeachment a Viable Means of Accountability?
Tuesday, May 25
10:30-11:30 AM, via Zoom

Daniel Goldman came to national prominence in 2019 as General Counsel for the House Intelligence Committee, where he was the lead lawyer during the first impeachment of Donald Trump. Goldman questioned witnesses on behalf of the majority during the public hearings in the Intelligence Committee and provided testimony himself at the public hearing of the House Judiciary Committee. From 2007 to 2017 he was an assistant United States attorney in Southern District of New York. Among his other high profile cases, he prosecuted the Genovese crime family in 2011. He is a frequent legal commentator on MSNBC and other media. Goldman is a native Washingtonian. He received his BA from Yale University and his JD at Stanford Law School.

 

OLLI does not endorse any of the viewpoints expressed by the speakers in its series.

 

We thank the Lecture Committee and all those who suggested and contacted speakers:
Paul Brown, Martha Cutts, Lesley Diaz (Staff Liaison), Chuck Edson, Judith Havemann,
Lynne Heneson, David Hensler, Jeanne Kent, Lynn Lewis, Mark Nadel (Chair),
Stan Newman, Diane Renfroe, Steve Sherman, and
Delbert Spurlock