Reporters and researchers from around the world have visited SMU this year as Dallas prepares for the 50th anniversary of John F. Kennedy’s assassination on Friday, Nov. 22, 2013. They’ve worked with faculty experts; examined archived speeches, sermons and letters to Dallas Mayor Earl Cabell from the days surrounding the assassination; and visited an undergraduate class exploring the life, times and legend of JFK.
Learn more about the scholarly analysis, one-of-a kind archival material and citywide leadership SMU is providing as the world gathers to remember that tragic day in Dealey Plaza. See video clips and news stories featuring SMU experts at University’s microsite, The JFK Assassination.
Veteran luncheon: SMU is honoring U.S. Military Veteran students, faculty and staff at a luncheon on Nov. 14, 2013. U.S. Army Col. Miguel Howe (Ret.), director of the Military Service Initiative in the George W. Bush Presidential Center, is the keynote speaker. The luncheon is hosted by The Maguire Center in the Martha Proctor Mack Grand Ballroom from 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. Learn more about the luncheon and SMU Veterans Day 2013.
Crossing Borders Film: SMU International Student & Scholar Services is celebrating International Education Week Nov. 11-15. ISS invites you to a screening of Crossing Borders on Thursday Nov. 14 at 6 p.m. The film is about cross cultural understanding and will be at the Hughes-Trigg Student Center Theater. Following Thursday’s screening there will be a Crossing Borders Dialogue on Friday, Nov. 15 at noon. The lunch discussion is in Hughes-Trigg Forum and co-sponsoed by SMU Abroad. Contact Pamela Bishir for more information.
Friday Night with Meadows: On Friday Nov. 15, 2013 SMU Meadows School of the Arts will host two musical events. First, the Meadows Wind Ensemble will perform at 8 p.m. in Caruth Auditorium. MSE will perform works from Third Stream including: Schuller’s Symphony for Brass and Percussion, op. 16, Timothy Broege’s No Sun, No Shadow: Elegy for Charles Mingus and Charles Mingus’s Revelations. Immediately following the MWE, there will be a late night chamber music concert. Head to the Taubman Atrium at 10 p.m. for music and refreshments.
Covering a Crisis: In conjunction with the 50th anniversary of JFK’s assassination The Jones Collection of the SMU Hamon Arts Library will screen their footage from the President Kennedy’s 1963 visit and aftermath. The Jones Collection has raw, unedited 16 mm film that was shot for the Dallas area news stations, including scenes from Parkland Hospital and police headquarters. Aniko Bodroghkozy, Department of Media Studies for UVA, will speak at the event. Bodroghkozy is currently researching television coverage of the assassination. This event is on Friday, Nov. 15 at 7 p.m. in O’Donnell Hall of the Owen Arts Center. Admission is free but tickets are required; call 214.768.2787 for tickets.
Meadows Choirs: On Sunday, Nov. 17, Meadows Chorale, Meadows Concert Choir & Diva Dolce will host a concert with guest performer the Varsity Mixed Choir of Lovejoy High School. The theme of the concert is a celebration of the communion of all living creatures. Bethany Green and SMU alumnus Christopher Mason will direct the concert that starts at 8 p.m. in Caruth Auditorium. Admission is free but they are asking that you make a donation to the North Texas Food Bank or bring food items to donate to the concert. Please call 214.768.ARTS for more information.
An 1880 timetable from the Hannibal and St. Joseph Railroad Company (“Always On Time”) is an example of the finds that await in “Treasures of the DeGolyer Library: 100 Years of Collecting.” DeGolyer Director Russell Martin will lead a tour of the exhibition during SMU Staff Day, Oct. 31, 2013.
University staff members can learn more about everything from consumer rights in identity-theft cases to the new Residential Commons during SMU Staff DayThursday, Oct. 31 in the Hughes-Trigg Student Center lower level.
The event will feature a 50-year perspective on the Kennedy assassination, as well as the annual Staff Talent Show presented by the SMU Staff Association.
The planned sessions also include a workshop on stress management, an overview of SMU library services for staff, and a tour of the new exhibition Treasures of the DeGolyer Library: 100 Years of Collecting led by DeGolyer Director Russell Martin.
Lunch will be available during the Talent Show for $9.99 per person at the door. You may attend the Talent Show without buying lunch; a $2 contribution at the door is suggested.
Award-winning historian and author Robert A. Caro is at SMU Tuesday, Oct. 29 for the 2013-14 Tate Distinguished Lecture Series. He will give The Anita and Truman Arnold Lecture at 8 p.m. in McFarlin Auditorium.
Caro is a two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning historian for his biographies of Robert Moses and Lyndon Johnson. His piece on Moses, The Power Broker, was his first book and received praise from many organizations and publications – notably TIME Magazine, which called it “one of the hundred top nonfiction books of all time.” His biography of Lyndon Johnson is split into four volumes, the most recent installment of which is The Passage of Power.
In a recent interview with The Dallas Morning News, Caro explained that there are numerous books focusing on the assassination of Kennedy but none look at Johnson’s perspective. The United States lost a president on that day but it also created one; Caro focuses on this angle in his books.
“In The Passage of Power, I wanted to look at that day from Johnson’s point of view,” Caro says. “There was something magnificent in the way he took over. There are about 11 weeks between when a president is elected and when he takes office. Johnson had only two hours and six minutes.”
In 2010, Caro received the National Humanities Medal from President Barack Obama. “Caro has a unique place among American political biographers,” The Boston Globe said. “He has become, in many ways, the standard by which his fellows are measured.” A great deal of research goes into his books, including a move from New York to D.C. to live where Johnson grew up; this in-depth work has landed him more than 40 awards and honors throughout his lifetime.
Four volume biography of Lyndon Johnson (Image via Robet Caro website)
Caro was born and raised in New York City and attended Princeton for his undergraduate studies in English. He went on to become a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University and was once an investigative reporter for Newsday.
Tuesday’s lecture takes place less than a month before the 50th anniversary of President Kennedy’s death, and Caro will speak on the assassination and the events following as Johnson took over the presidency. The evening lecture is sold out, but SMU students may attend for free with their University ID if seats become available; meet in the basement of McFarlin Auditorium at 7 p.m.
Caro will answer questions from University community members and local high school students in the Turner Construction/Wells Fargo Student Forum at 4:30 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 29 in the Hughes-Trigg Student Center Ballroom. The Forum is free, but seating is limited. SMU faculty, staff and students are encouraged to attend; RSVP online to ensure a place.
To ask Caro a question via Twitter, send a tweet to @SMUtate with @RobertACaro and the hashtag #SMUtate.
Higher Education Colloquium: The Department of Education Policy and Leadership presents a panel on the impact of changes in national and state policy on college student success and financial aid. The panel includes Don Heller, Professor and Dean of the College of Education at Michigan State University, Michael McLendon, Professor and Associate Dean of the Simmons School of Education at Southern Methodist University, Laura Perna, Professor at University of Pennsylvania, and Scott Thomas, Professor and Dean of Educational Studies at Claremont Graduate University. Michael Harris, Associate Professor of the Simmons School of Education at Southern Methodist University, will moderate the panel. The event is on Thursday, Oct. 3 at 5:30 p.m. in McCord Auditorium; registration is required.
Family Weekend 2013: SMU families will arrive at the Hilltop for Family Weekend 2103, Oct. 4-6. The theme is SMU: Where Dreams Come True, and the weekend is full of activities from the Annual Taste of Dallas Dinner on Friday to the football game against Rutgers on Saturday. Read all the details here. Pony up!
MVP: The Meadows Virtuosi Players was formed in 2012 to showcase outstanding meadows students performing side by side with their faculty colleagues. Faculty artists Andrés Díaz and Matt Albert started the program and will perform alongside Ekaterina Gumenyuk and Hando NahkurSaturday, Oct. 5. Gumenyuk and Nahkur were the first two pianists accepted into the Meadows Artist Diploma Program. The concert is at 8 p.m. in Caruth Auditorium and is free and open to the public.
An official portrait of John F. Kennedy used in a memorial folio. From the Stanley Marcus Collection, used with permission of DeGolyer Library, SMU.
A panel of distinguished Texas journalists, including a longtime SMU professor, will share their insights during the 14th annual Rosine Smith Sammons Lecture in Media Ethics.
Legendary Dallas journalist Hugh Aynesworth will introduce and moderate a panel of journalists who covered the historic events of November 1963, including Bob Huffaker, S. Griffin Singer and SMU Professor Emeritus of Journalism Darwin Payne.
The discussion begins at 8 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 2 in Caruth Auditorium, Owen Arts Center. The event is free; however, tickets are required and must be reserved in advance by calling the Meadows Ticket Office at 214-768-2787 (214-SMU-ARTS).
The Sammons Lecture Series is presented by the Division of Journalism in SMU’s Meadows School of the Arts.
Hugh Aynesworth has been a reporter since 1948 and is widely considered the journalistic authority on the assassination of John F. Kennedy. As a reporter for The Dallas Morning News, he was an eyewitness to the assassination and covered every major event related to it, including the capture of Lee Harvey Oswald and his murder two days later by Jack Ruby. He is the author of November 22, 1963: Witness to History, published to mark the 50th anniversary of the JFK assassination.
Bob Huffaker, a reporter for KRLD and CBS, broadcast the JFK motorcade, the Parkland vigil and the Oswald shooting. He also interviewed Oswald’s mother and covered Jack Ruby’s trial. The Radio Television News Directors Association awarded his KRLD team its top honor for spot reporting. Huffaker became an English professor, then a Texas Monthly editor. He is a co-author (with his colleagues Wes Wise, Bill Mercer and George Phenix) of When the News Went Live, which next week is being published in a 50th anniversary edition.
Darwin Payne taught journalism at SMU for 30 years and is now professor emeritus. His career in journalism began as a reporter for the Fort Worth Press, and at the time of the Kennedy assassination he was a reporter for The Dallas Times-Herald. He has written several books on Dallas history, as well as biographies of writers Owen Wister and Frederick Lewis Allen, U.S. Judge Sarah T. Hughes, and Dallas’ first African-American judge, Louis A. Bedford Jr. He is the author of In Honor of the Mustangs, the centennial history of SMU athletics, and currently is writing the centennial history of SMU.
S. Griffin (Griff) Singer has devoted almost 60 years to journalism, in practice and as an educator. He retired from the University of Texas School of Journalism in 2003 but still is active part-time; seven of his former students have won Pulitzer Prizes. As a reporter and editor, he has worked at the Arlington Citizen-Journal, The Houston Chronicle and the San Antonio Light. A Dallas native, Singer was an assistant city editor at The Dallas Morning News at the time of the JFK assassination and the trial of Jack Ruby.
Three preeminent scholars of American history, including an SMU professor, will use Presidents Day and the upcoming 50th anniversary of President John F. Kennedy’s assassination as a springboard for examining the changing nature of memory.
The program features Edward T. Linenthal, professor of history at Indiana University Bloomington, and Timothy Naftali, senior research fellow with the New America Foundation’s National Security Studies program, both of whom have written extensively on the topic.
The 50th anniversary of the assassination presents a unique opportunity to reflect upon the changing nature of history and how it affects our own recollections and understanding of milestones. How has politics shaped our collective memory about this crucial 20th century event? How has our thinking about the tragedy been shaped by the media, ongoing investigations and the passage of time? What does this process tell us about what we choose to remember, what we forget and what we ultimately memorialize? Together the historians will explore the role that the politics of memory play in understanding the past.
“JFK, History and the Politics of Memory” is the first in a yearlong series of collaborative programs between The Sixth Floor Museum and SMU commemorating the assassination’s anniversary. This is the third consecutive year both have partnered to present a panel discussion surrounding Presidents Day.
Tickets are $25 per person. A combination ticket that provides access to The Sixth Floor Museum on the day of the event is $35. Tickets may be purchased online at www.jfk.org through Sunday, Feb. 17.
Seating is limited. For more information,visit www.jfk.org or call 214-747-6660.
