Talk: "The Common Good and NEH at 50" by William Adams

• Event Date: Thursday, October 29, 2015
• Time: 7:30 pm (CDT)
• Location: Knight Auditorium, Spurlock Museum, 600 S. Gregory St., Urbana, IL
• Cost: Free Admission

• Talk

In celebration of the 50th anniversary of the National Endowment for the Humanities, Chairman William Adams will give a public address on "The Common Good and NEH at 50."

William Adams is the tenth chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities. Adams, president of Colby College in Waterville, Maine from 2000 until his retirement on June 30, 2014, is a committed advocate for liberal arts education and brings to the Endowment a long record of leadership in higher education and the humanities.

A native of Birmingham, Michigan, and son of an auto industry executive, Adams earned his undergraduate degree in philosophy at Colorado College and a Ph.D. from the University of California at Santa Cruz History of Consciousness Program. He studied in France as a Fulbright Scholar before beginning his career in higher education with appointments to teach political philosophy at Santa Clara University in California and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He went on to coordinate the Great Works in Western Culture program at Stanford University and to serve as vice president and Secretary of Wesleyan University. He became president of Bucknell University in 1995 and president of Colby College in 2000.

This Illinois Program for Research in the Humanities (IPRH) event is co-sponsored by the Spurlock Museum and is one of several events in IPRH's "Questions in Common@Illinois" series which aims to capitalize on the huge talents of faculty and students through conversation and dialogue—one of humanists’ major forms of experimentation and interpretive energy.