Salman Rushdie
Sunday, January 18, 6:30 p.m.

Salman Rushdie is the author of 10 novels including Midnight’s Children (1981), which won the Booker Prize and, in 1993, the “Booker of Bookers”; The Satanic Verses (1988), which won the Whitbread Book Award; The Moor’s Last Sigh (1995), which won the Whitbread Book Award; and most recently The Enchantress of Florence. In 2007, the British Crown appointed him a Knight Bachelor for “services to literature.”

Annual State of Anti-Semitism Lecture
Anna Deavere Smith Hatred Knows No Boundaries
Monday, February 2, 7 p.m.

Join groundbreaking playwright, author and actress Anna Deavere Smith for a unique address on hatred, racial conflict and genocide. Ms. Smith is a professor at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts. She founded and directed the institute on the Arts and Civic Dialogue, and is the author of Talk to Me: Listening Between the Lines and the forthcoming Letters to a Young Artist. Her articles have appeared in The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Newsweek, The New Yorker and other publications.

Rabbi Joseph Telushkin on “Living Jewish Ethics”
Tuesday, March 17, 7:15 p.m.

Join Rabbi Telushkin, one of today’s premier scholars on Jewish tradition and thought, for an extraordinary look at how to practice "loving they neighbor as thyself." Telushkin covers topics such as love and kindness, hospitality, visiting the sick, charity, tolerance, self-defense and end of-life issues, with practical examples from the Torah, the Talmud, the Midrash and contemporary anecdotes.

Carol Leifer in Conversation with Jerry Seinfeld
Tuesday, April 7, 7 p.m.

Stand-up comedian Carol Leifer is an Emmy Award winning writer and producer who has been involved in such television shows as Seinfeld, The Larry Sanders Show, Saturday Night Live and The Ellen Show. Leifer is the author of When You Lie About Your Age, The Terrorists Win, a laugh-out-loud look at life, love, family and the aging process. Legendary comedian, writer, and actor Jerry Seinfeld moderates.

Forum on Sustainable Global Enterprise
Al Gore, Stuart Hart, H. Fisk Johnson & Ratan Tata
Wednesday, June 3, 7 p.m.

This discussion is the culmination of a three-day Cornell Global Forum. At the forum, 100 pioneers will seek innovative ways to transform business and the environment, while exploring the intersection between clean technology and business development at the “Base of the Pyramid”, the socioeconomic designation of the world’s four-and-a-half billion poor. The goal is to create profitable businesses that raise the quality of life for the world's poor, respect cultural diversity and conserve the ecological integrity of the planet. Panelists include: former Vice President Al Gore, chairman, Generation Investment Management LLP; Cornell University's Stuart L. Hart, an authority on the implications of sustainable development and environmentalism for business strategy; H. Fisk Johnson, chairman, CEO and chairman of the board of S.C. Johnson & Son; and Ratan N. Tata, chairman of Tata Sons Limited, the holding company of the Tata Group, India's largest conglomerate.