Student Programs | Degrees | Texas Leadership Forum | Lectures
Practical Workshops | Other Events | Journal of Practical Leadership | About Us
The Shepperd Distinguished Lecture Series
Please join us at the Wagner Noël Performing Arts Center for
"Guns on Campus"
click here to download Flyer
John R. Lott, Jr.
John Lott Jr., is an economist who has held research and/or teaching positions at the University of Chicago, Yale University, Stanford, UCLA, Wharton, and Rice and was the chief economist at the United States Sentencing Commission during 1988 and 1989. Lott has published over 100 articles in academic journals. He is the author of seven books including three editions of More Guns, Less Crime, Freedomnomics, and The Bias Against Guns. Lott is a FoxNews.com contributor and a weekly columnist for them. Opinion pieces by Lott have appeared in such places as The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The New York Post, USA Today, and The Chicago Tribune. He has appeared on such television programs as the ABC and NBC National Evening News broadcasts, Fox News, The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer and the Today Show.
He received his Ph.D. in economics from UCLA in 1984.
vs
Dr. Michael Shermer
Dr. Michael Shermer is the Founding Publisher of Skeptic magazine (www.skeptic.com), the Executive Director of the Skeptics Society, a monthly columnist for Scientific American, the host of the Skeptics Distinguished Science Lecture Series at Caltech, and Adjunct Professor at Claremont Graduate University and Chapman University.
Dr. Shermer’s latest book is The Believing Brain: From Ghosts and Gods to Politics and Conspiracies—How We Construct Beliefs and Reinforce Them as Truths. His last book was The Mind of the Market, on evolutionary economics. He is the author of Why Darwin Matters: Evolution and the Case Against Intelligent Design. Science Friction: Where the Known Meets the Unknown, about how the mind works and how thinking goes wrong. His book The Science of Good and Evil: Why People Cheat, Gossip, Share Care, and Follow the Golden Rule, is on the evolutionary origins of morality and how to be good without God. He wrote a biography, In Darwin’s Shadow, about the life and science of the co-discoverer of natural selection, Alfred Russel Wallace. He also wrote The Borderlands of Science, about the fuzzy land between science and pseudoscience, and Denying History, on Holocaust denial and other forms of pseudohistory. His book How We Believe: Science, Skepticism, and the Search for God, presents his theory on the origins of religion and why people believe in God. He is also the author of Why People Believe Weird Things on pseudoscience, superstitions, and other confusions of our time.
According to the late Stephen Jay Gould (from his Foreword to Why People Believe Weird Things): “Michael Shermer, as head of one of America’s leading skeptic organizations, and as a powerful activist and essayist in the service of this operational form of reason, is an important figure in American public life.”
Dr. Shermer received his B.A. in psychology from Pepperdine University, M.A. in experimental psychology from California State University, Fullerton, and his Ph.D. in the history of science from Claremont Graduate University (1991). He was a college professor for 20 years (1979-1998), teaching psychology, evolution, and the history of science at Occidental College (1989-1998), California State University Los Angeles, and Glendale College. Since his creation of the Skeptics Society, Skeptic magazine, and the Skeptics Distinguished Science Lecture Series at Caltech, he has appeared on such shows as The Colbert Report, 20/20, Dateline, Charlie Rose, Larry King Live, Tom Snyder, Donahue, Oprah, Lezza, Unsolved Mysteries (but, proudly, never Jerry Springer!), and other shows as a skeptic of weird and extraordinary claims, as well as interviews in countless documentaries aired on PBS, A&E, Discovery, The History Channel, The Science Channel, and The Learning Channel. Shermer was the co-host and co-producer of the 13-hour Family Channel television series, Exploring the Unknown.
Moderator
Patrick Canty
Patrick Canty has worked at Texas and California daily newspapers for more than 30 years, serving in a variety of capacities ranging from reporter and editor, to publisher, a position he has held with the Odessa American since the summer of 2003.
A native of San Antonio, Canty graduated with highest honors in 1982 from East Texas State University, where he studied photography and journalism. He has also participated in advanced executive programs at the American Press Institute, the Stanford Business School and the Media Management Center at Northwestern University.
In addition to his publishing duties at the OA, Canty serves on several community-related boards, including the Education Foundation of Odessa, the Midland-Odessa Symphony & Chorale, the School of Business advisory panel at the University of Texas of the Permian Basin and the university's Development Board. He is also a member of the Basin Public Broadcasting, Inc. advisory board.
He is member of the Southern Newspaper Publishers Association and is a past unit president of the California Newspaper Publishers Association. He currently serves as president of the Texas Daily Newspaper Association board of directors, and is a recipient of that group’s 2010 Frank W. Mayborn Award for Community Leadership.
He is married to Julie Canty, an Ector County Independent School District teacher, and they are the proud parents of an 18-year-old son, Sam.
Two college students viewpoints as well
UTPB - Student Senate President - Brittany Pitrucha
Midland College - Student Government Association President - Ernesto Macias
Thursday, March 21, 2013
7:00 PM
Free and Open to the Public (no tickets required)
Visit http://wagnernoel.com for location information
For timely information of all Shepperd events, subscribe to the Shepperd E-Leader.
4901 E. University . Odessa, Texas 79762 . (432) 552-2020