The power of forgiveness, lessons in leadership, angels and aliens, providing healthcare in remote areas, and surveillance in the Medieval period will be the topics of discussion during Niagara University’s 2024 Fall Speaker Series. All presentations take place at 5 p.m. in the Castellani Art Museum on the Niagara University campus and are free and open to the public.
Launching the 2024 series on Thursday is Jade Twedt Strabbing, associate professor of philosophy at Wayne State University, who will present the Albert the Great Lecture: “The Secret Power of Forgiveness.” Twedt Strabbing is an internationally recognized scholar of the philosophy of forgiveness, atonement, and reconciliation, and has published in top-tier journals in her disciplines, including the Routledge Handbook of the Philosophy and Psychology of Forgiveness, Oxford Studies in Agency and Responsibility, Australasian Journal of Philosophy, Philosophical Studies, and The Philosophical Quarterly, among many others.
The series continues on Oct. 3, when Niagara University alumnus Maj. Gen. Vincent E. Boles (Ret.), presents the Peggy and John Day University Honors Lecture, “Leadership: It’s Not About Motivation.” Boles will discuss the lessons he learned leading and working with America’s “National Treasures” in significant times and critical missions over his distinguished 33-year career in the Army, during which he was twice awarded the Distinguished Service Medal, as well as the Legion of Merit, and the Bronze Star Medal three times.
On Oct. 10, Diana W. Pasulka, professor of religious studies at the University of North Carolina, Wilmington, will present the McNulty Lecture, “Angels or Aliens? Rethinking the Mystical in Modern Times.” Pasulka is a prolific scholar and has been interviewed by the History Channel and Showtime, and featured on podcasts including Vox Media’s Ezra Klein, Mysterious Universe, Coast to Coast, and Lex Fridman. Additionally, Dr. Pasulka consults about religion and history for movies and television, including 2013’s “The Conjuring.”
Dr. Shawn Vainio, a member of Niagara University’s Class of 1999, will discuss his humanitarian work as a medical doctor in remote areas around the world on Oct 17, during the Hughes Endowed Lecture in the Health Sciences. Vainio is a family practitioner with the Yukon Kuskokwim Health Corporation, where he provides emergency, in-patient, and obstetrical services to the native Alaskans living in the Yukon Kuskokwim Delta, and has worked extensively with the Himalayan Health Exchange, an organization that has brings medical and dental services to the rural Indio-Tibetan borderland regions of Himachal Pradesh and Ladakh.
The series wraps up on Oct. 24, with the Provost’s Special Lecture, “Surveillance and the Eye of God.” David Lyon, former director of the Surveillance Studies Centre, Queen’s University, Ont., has been studying surveillance since the mid-1980s and is a pioneer in the field of surveillance studies. His talk will focus on the forms of surveillance common to the Medieval period, which contrast profoundly with our modern understanding of surveillance.