Carleton Convos

Environmental journalist, researcher, and filmmaker Ben Raines delivered the convocation address, “Finding Clotilda – The Last Slave Ship,” at Carleton's Skinner Chapel on Friday, February 2. Raines’s talk detailed his discovery of Clotilda, the last known slave ship carrying enslaved Africans to the United States, and how the histories of those on the ship continue to be profoundly important. His...

Stanford professor and author Francis Fukuyama delivered the convocation, “The Global Challenge of 2024,” at Carleton's Skinner Chapel on Friday, January 26. Fukuyama’s talk addressed the major setbacks the world has seen to liberal democracy, including the outbreak of two large wars, and asked the question: What are possible global outcomes that will emerge in the year 2024? Fukuyama is best know...

Award-winning dancer, writer, model, and disability rights advocate Jerron Herman delivered the convocation address, “EMBRACE: On kinship,” at Carleton's Skinner Chapel on Friday, January 19. Herman’s artistic process is supported by his personal history with disability as well as the social legacies of disability aesthetics; this process leads him to create art that undermines notions of producti...

Lis Frost ’99 delivered the convocation address at Carleton College on Friday, January 12 in Skinner Chapel. Frost is a lawyer with expertise in voting and constitutional law, particularly protecting and defending voting rights. In her talk, “Fighting for Democracy in Court: The Rise of Election Litigation, and Some of the More Hidden Threats to Voting Rights,” Frost spoke on the threats to Americ...

Staffan Ingemar Lindberg is a professor of political science, one of five principal investigators for Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem), and the founding director of the V-Dem Institute through the University of Gothenburg. He delivered the convocation address, “Democracy and Autocracy Worldwide: 3rd Wave of Autocratization Escalating,” at Carleton's Skinner Chapel on Friday, October 27. His address...

Bloomberg Opinion columnist and author Adam Minter delivered the convocation address, “How We Think About Waste is a Waste,” at Carleton's Skinner Chapel on Friday, October 20. Minter predominantly writes on technology, emerging markets, and waste, among other topics. Over the course of his career, Minter has been a correspondent across the globe. From 2004 to 2014, he was based in Shanghai, where...

Gregg Colburn P ’26, associate professor for the Runstad Department of Real Estate at the University of Washington College of Built Environments, delivered the Family Weekend convocation address at Carleton's Skinner Chapel on Friday, October 13. He spoke about the book he recently co-authored, Homelessness is a Housing Problem , which looks to statistically examine the conventional beliefs about...

Xiuhtezcatl Martinez , environmental activist and hip hop artist, delivered convocation at Carleton's Skinner Chapel on Friday, October 6. He spoke on how climate change is influencing the migration of people in South and Latin America. Martinez is known for his talent for connecting people through popular culture and sharing the message of his Indigenous roots in order to protect the planet and r...

Jazz Hampton is CEO and general counsel at TurnSignl, a Minnesota-based company that provides real-time legal guidance and de-escalation from attorneys to drivers who have been stopped by law enforcement or were involved in a car crash. Hampton delivered the convocation address at Carleton's Skinner Chapel on Friday, September 29.  TurnSignl is a proudly Black-owned tech company with an app that a...

Dr. Susan Jaret McKinstry, Helen F. Lewis Professor of English, delivered the Argument & Inquiry Convocation on Friday, September 22. The A&I convocation is a key aspect of the first-year A&I seminars—a class crafted for first-year students to get a grasp of college-level classes through the lens of a liberal arts school. In her address, “The Whole Story,” Jaret McKinstry highlighted t...

Dr. Kellie Carter Jackson is the Michael and Denise Kellen ’68 Associate Professor in the Department of Africana Studies at Wellesley College. Her research focuses on slavery and abolitionists, violence as a political discourse, historical film, and Black women’s history. Most recently, she has written and spoken on political threats to academic freedom. She is the author of the award-winning book...

Community activist, civil rights lawyer, and writer Arjun Singh Sethi delivered the convocation address at Carleton's Skinner Chapel on Friday, May 12. Sethi works closely with Muslim, Arab, South Asian, and Sikh communities and is an expert in policing and counter terrorism reform, racial and religious profiling, and the best practices to combat hate violence. He is also actively involved in dome...

Steven Levitsky delivered the convocation address at Carleton's Skinner Chapel on Friday, May 5. Levitsky is the David Rockefeller professor of Latin American studies and professor of government at Harvard University. Levitsky also serves as director of the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies at Harvard, which works to increase awareness of the histories, cultures, economics, and e...

Award-winning creator Diana Fraser ’14 delivered the convocation address at Carleton's Skinner Chapel on Friday, April 28. Fraser values critical thinking, social dialogue, and uplifting systemically marginalized and excluded communities. She leads savvy, relevant content creation for audiences with effective, streamlined, data-informed systems.  Fraser manages and designs multimedia projects, doc...

Violinist, songwriter, and disability rights advocate Gaelynn Lea delivered the convocation address at Carleton's Skinner Chapel on Friday, April 14. Lea is a renowned public speaker and advocate for disability rights and accessibility in the arts. She has shared her perspective on many platforms, including PBS NewsHour , On Being with Krista Tippett , The Moth Radio Hour , NowThis , The Science o...

Matthew MacWilliams—scholar, award-winning practitioner of American politics and recognized expert on authoritarianism—delivered the convocation address at Carleton's Skinner Chapel on Friday, April 7. Among MacWilliams’ more prominent works are his articles published in Politico, the London School of Economics Blog, and Vox, which sparked an international political debate that defined Donald Trum...