As part of its 30th anniversary celebration, the Dallas Institute of Humanities and Culture has announced it will be bringing top national and international experts to the Dallas Arts District and matching them with some of the city’s best minds for The Dallas Institute Festival of Ideas. On March 26, 2011, local audiences are invited to the Dallas Museum of Art for a day of original listening, thinking, and speaking – all aimed toward an intelligent, thoughtful exploration of four subjects of vital importance to the future of the city and the nation.

Date & Time: Saturday, March 26, 2011 10 – 4:00 p.m.
Location: Dallas Museum of Art, 1717 North Harwood Street, Dallas, TX 75201
Tickets: Members: $90, non-members: $110, students and teachers: $65. Register online

Schedule for The Dallas Institute Festival of Ideas

10 – 11:30 a.m. Morning Symposium at the Dallas Museum of Art. Opening Remarks by Lee Cullum. During this opening session, each keynote guest will give a brief statement about the future of his or her topic, and then Ms. Cullum will get the interaction started among both guests and Dallas panelists, the object being a many-faceted conversation centered around the festival theme.

11:30 – 12:30 p.m. Lunch in the 1717 Restaurant

12:30 – 2 p.m. Focus Forums with Festival Team. In four separate areas of the DMA, each guest speaker will join his or her festival team comprised of local panelists and moderator for a “Focus Forum.” The guest speaker will first make a brief presentation on the future of his or her area and then will engage with panelists for discussion, moderated by an expert facilitator. In the latter third of the session, the facilitator will open up the exchange to include the audience.

2:30 – 4 p.m. Roundtable Discussion. In four other areas of the DMA – different from the Focus Forum venues above – approximately 15-25 participants will gather with each festival team to continue the discussions of Focus Forums. These are true seminar sessions with the expert panelists and the participants jointly drilling down further to mine new ideas that have been struck during the day. Silent-gallery seating will be available for these segments.

Featured topics and speakers for The Dallas Institute Festival of Ideas include:

The Future of American Power
Politics, global conflict, the economy: will the U.S share power or continue to lead?

Keynote Speaker – Stephen Krasner. Krasner is the Graham H. Stuart Professor of International Relations at Stanford University and former director of the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law. Krasner is also deputy director and senior fellow of the Freeman Spogli Institute and senior fellow of the Hoover Institution.

Panelists – Seyom Brown, Lee Cullum and James Hollifield

University Partner: Tower Center for Political Studies, SMUThe Future of Journalism and the Media

The Future of Journalism and the Media
The public trust: how will journalism’s innovations inform us and affect our lives?

Keynote Speaker – Ken Auletta. Auletta, author and media columnist for The New Yorker, has been described by Business Week as “the James Bond of the media world,” and the Columbia Journalism Review ranked him as America’s premier media commentator. His book Googled: The End of the World As We Know It, is a New York Times bestseller.

Panelists – Christine Allison, George Getschow, Robert Mong, Shawn Williams

University Partner: Mayborn School of Journalism, UNT

The Future of Medicine and Health Care
“For the benefit of the sick”: Medical advances, medical ethics, and the business of healthcare.

Keynote Speakers – Ruth Faden and Tom Beauchamp. Ruth Faden is the Philip Franklin Wagley Professor of Biomedical Ethics and Executive Director of The Phoebe R. Berman Bioethics Institute at Johns Hopkins University. She is also a Senior Research Scholar at the Kennedy Institute of Ethics, Georgetown University. Dr. Faden is the author and editor of numerous books and articles on biomedical ethics and health policy.

Tom Beauchamp serves as Professor of Philosophy and Senior Research Scholar, Kennedy Institute of Ethics. Beauchamp’s research interests are in the ethics of human-subjects research, the place of universal principles and rights in biomedical ethics, methods of bioethics, Hume and the history of modern philosophy, and business ethics. Beauchamp is currently editing a 1,000-page book of original articles—The Oxford Handbook of Animal Ethics.

Panelists – Fabrice Jotterand, Lynne Kirk, David Markham and John Sadler

University Partner: UT-Southwestern Medical Center

The Future of Religion
Religious faith in a world both secular and sacred: prospects for conflict and concord.

Keynote Speaker – Mark Oppenheimer. Oppenheimer, author of three books, is presently the “Beliefs” columnist for The New York Times and freelance writer for many other publications. A lecturer in English and Political Science at Yale University and a teacher of creative writing at Wellesley College, Oppenheimer was the recipient of the 2010 Dallas Institute’s $50,000 Hiett Prize.

Panelists – Juan Rendon, Daniel Russ, Brian Schmisek, and Shaik Zia

University Partner: The School of Ministry of the University of Dallas

The festival will be a city-wide event, open to the public. Tickets include the full day’s events, buffet lunch, free parking, and access to Museum exhibitions.

Online registration will close at 9 pm on Friday, March 25. Walk-ins are welcome to register onsite at the DMA on Saturday morning.

Members: $90, non-members: $110, students and teachers: $65. Register online or contact Margaret Illingworth, (214) 981-8803, [email protected], for more information.