Lectures and concerts are free and open to the public

SANTA FE, NM [January 20, 2026] — St. John’s College has announced its spring Dean’s Lecture and Concert Series. Each week, members of the St. John’s College community gather in the Great Hall to hear a lecture or concert from visiting scholars, artists, poets, or faculty. Lecturers include members of the St. John’s College faculty (known as tutors) and professors from notable universities across the country. Each lecture is followed by a question period and an engaging discussion between the lecturer and attendees.

“We are proud to bring world-class thought leaders and major musicians to Santa Fe,” says St. John’s College President J. Walter Sterling. “I encourage all members of the community to join us for the lectures and performances this spring.”

All lectures and concerts are held Fridays at 7 p.m. in the newly renovated Great Hall in the Pritzker Student Center at St. John’s College, 1160 Camino de Cruz Blanca, Santa Fe, NM 87505, unless otherwise noted. They are free and open to the public. Seating is available on a first-come, first-served basis. The full list of concerts and lectures is here: Dean’s Lecture and Concert Series on the Santa Fe Campus. Please visit this page for updates and lecture descriptions. Most lectures are also recorded and available on the college’s YouTube channel.

“The lecture series supplements our discussion-based program. It gives members of the community the opportunity to consider sustained arguments from scholars of diverse backgrounds across a wide variety of disciplines,” says Dean of the College Sarah Davis. “Attendees are invited to engage directly with the lecturer in the question period that follows, which is an integral and dynamic part of the event.”

The spring 2026 lectures and concerts are:

• January 23: Andrew Nicholson, Associate Professor of Asian and Asian American Studies at Stony Brook University, will deliver the annual Rohrbach Lecture. Note: this lecture will be held in the Meem Library.

• January 30: Sante Fe tutor Claudia Hauer will deliver the lecture “A Moral Philosophy That Will Change Your Life: On Emmanuel Levinas’s Totality and Infinity.”

  • Emmanuel Levinas is a moral philosopher of the highest order. His work, Totality and Infinity, distinguishes between Totalities (which include political regimes) that can ideally administer a lukewarm morality in the form of justice and human rights, and Infinities, which give expression to the infinite individuality of each human being. His secular ethics focus on looking into the eyes of the stranger, the Other, and opening ourselves to an individual with a unique story to tell. In this lecture, Ms. Hauer will expand upon the basics of Levinas’s ethics.

• February 6: Santa Fe tutor Ken Wolfe will present “Λόγος and Ἄνθρωπος: a Genealogy.”

  • In the Origin of Species, Darwin points to analogies between biological and linguistic evolution and classification. How strong are those analogies? Why do they exist? What do they tell us about human evolution? Mr. Wolfe’s lecture will move from Darwin’s theories to the history Indo-European languages, culminating in a consideration of Aristotle’s definition of a man.

• Wednesday, February 18, at 3:15 p.m.: Tutor emeritus Howard Fisher will deliver the lecture, “Telegraphy and Radiotelegraphy.”

  • Overland telegraph technology implicitly embodied a familiar image of electricity as being a mobile substance confined to conductors. But phenomena encountered in undersea telegraph cables presented a competing image, one far more suggestive of Faraday’s image of tension in a dielectric. Subsequent production of electromagnetic waves could be seen as the ultimate practical expression of Faraday’s “tension” image. But if they were to serve as a communications medium, electromagnetic waves had not only to be produced but be detected; and although various detecting mechanisms were developed, their operation was mysterious: the received images of electric current appeared to provide little clarity.

• February 20: Musicians Dmitry and Yulia Kouzov will perform a cello and piano concert.

• February 27 to March 1: In honor of the inauguration ceremony of St. John’s College President J. Walter Sterling, the college will host a series of special events open to the public during the inauguration weekend:

• Friday, February 27, at 8 p.m.: A Conversation with Shilo Brooks. Join alum Shilo Brooks (Annapolis Class of 2006) for a conversation on liberal education, democracy, and his experience reading and teaching Great Books. Shilo Brooks is President and CEO of the George W. Bush Presidential Center, the host of the podcast “Old School,” and Professor of Practice in the Department of Political Science at SMU. He was previously Executive Director of the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions at Princeton University, where he taught in the Department of Politics.

• Saturday, February 28, at 4 p.m.: “The Life of the Mind at Work in the World” Alumni Panel. Featuring leading international, national, and local alumni voices from literature, journalism, law, public ethics, and the arts including a National Book Award winner, a former ESPN sports journalist, a renowned bioethicist, and the executive director of Creative Santa Fe.

• Sunday, March 1, at 4 p.m.: Musa al-Gharbi will deliver a lecture. Al-Gharbi is a public intellectual and writer best known for his work on polarization and the value of heterodoxy in our thinking and in the academy.

• March 6: John Peters, Professor at Yale University, will deliver a lecture.

• April 3: Join Santa Fe tutors Alison Chapman, Krishnan Venkatesh, and David Carl for a panel on visual arts.

• April 10: Cornel West will deliver the annual Steiner Lecture, “The Legacies of Athens and Jerusalem in our Catastrophic Times.”

• Wednesday, April 15, at 3:15 p.m.: Tutor emeritus Howard Fisher will deliver the lecture, “The Vacuum Tube.”

  • A puzzling phenomenon observed by Edison in one of his early light bulbs seemed to imply a kind of electric current that did not fit either of the received images; for it was neither confined to a conductor, nor did it appear to consist in a discharge of tension. From this “Edison effect” arose the modern vacuum tube, which enabled, first, the detection of electromagnetic waves by a process readily understood (rectification), and second, a means for increasing the strength of an electric current (amplification). Both of these capabilities brought dramatic improvements in wireless telegraphy; but they also raised new questions concerning the nature of electric current and its relation to (or independence of) a conductor.

• April 17: The Atrium Quartet will perform a concert.

• April 24: Santa Fe tutor Jim Carey will deliver the lecture “Taking the Measure of Metaphysics.”

• Wednesday, April 29, at 3:15 p.m.: Tutor emeritus Howard Fisher will deliver the lecture, “Broadcast Radio.”

  • This talk will recount the paths by which the basic techniques of wireless signaling were adapted to make possible the wireless transmission of voice and sound—the technology we now call radio. Essential in this endeavor were additional capabilities of the vacuum tube: oscillation, which enabled production of electromagnetic waves having a defined frequency, and modulation, which varied the properties of electromagnetic waves. I will conclude by suggesting that technologies should not be viewed as being chiefly solutions to problems, but might also be seen as practical extensions of speculative thinking.

• May 1: Annapolis tutor Louis Petrich will deliver the lecture “Iago’s World, Our World.”

  • To think that Shakespeare felt Iago deeply, as he felt Othello and Desdemona. To authenticate what it’s like to corner human dispositions and fantastically turn all heads. To hear the vulgar tongue of the street on the most intimate and volatile matters. Discretion says, “be advised.” You may prefer to hear the musical tongues of men and women well-tuned for constant love and aromatic kisses. Honesty says, “leave them to time.” That is, to honest Iago, the timekeeper who makes hours seem short or seconds stretch forever. He makes only one mistake. That is enough, but we shall see. Shakespeare, when he engendered the double-timed action of Othello (and perhaps in no play did he stage a more satisfying action), probably conspired in these terms: “Iago, accomplice, let’s put people to extreme compulsion of good and evil. At stake is the determination of truth in history and the possession of unmasked souls by heaven or hell.” This lecture will notice things that matter to those outcomes—repetitive stuff, mainly, tracks in the dirt of Iago’s world. And unless my omissions and exaggerations fail to do their rhetorical job, that dirt and those tracks you may recognize as our world’s.

• May 8: Santa Fe tutor Sarah Stickney will deliver a lecture on Henry IV.

• May 15: Santa Fe tutor Michael Grenke will deliver a lecture on Herman Melville’s novella Benito Cereno.

ABOUT ST. JOHN’S COLLEGE
In an age of political division and digital distraction, St. John’s College offers the education America needs. Through close reading of 200 great books across 3,000 years—from Plato to Toni Morrison, Augustine to Charles Darwin, Euclid to Albert Einstein—students wrestle with the deepest questions of law, justice, freedom, and human good. At a time when many institutions chase trends, St. John’s returns to first principles. The third-oldest college in America, with campuses in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and Annapolis, Maryland, St. John’s is a refuge for civic renewal, civil discourse, and intellectual courage. Learn more about our undergraduate, graduate, and lifelong learning programs at sjc.edu.

“St. John’s is a high-achieving angel hovering over the landscape of American higher education” —Los Angeles Times

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