This event is canceled and will be rescheduled at a later date.
Rackham Auditorium 915 East Washington Street, Ann Arbor, MI 48104
Presented by the Institute for the Humanities in partnership with Wallace House
Museums are the classrooms of our country. They play a crucial role in helping us understand the nation’s complex past. Join us for a dynamic conversation with Lonnie G. Bunch III, Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution and Lynette Clemetson, director of Wallace House Center for Journalists, as they reflect on the significance of the 250th anniversary of the United States. At a moment in which discussions about our shared past and collective future feel especially urgent, this event offers an opportunity to learn from a leader who has devoted his career to informing and inspiring Americans to strive for the public good.
Q&A will follow, and copies of Secretary Bunch’s book, A Fool’s Errand: Creating the National Museum of African American History and Culture in the Age of Bush, Obama, and Trump, will be available for purchase.
About Speaker
Lonnie G. BunchIII is the 14th Secretary of the Smithsonian. He assumed his position June 16, 2019. As Secretary, he oversees 21 museums, 21 libraries, the National Zoo, numerous research centers, and several education units and centers. Two new museums—the National Museum of the American Latino and the Smithsonian American Women’s History Museum—are in development. Bunch was the founding director of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture. Bunch chronicled the creation of the museum in his book, A Fool’s Errand: Building the National Museum of African American History and Culture in the Age of Bush, Obama and Trump, and is the first historian to be Secretary of the Institution. Since 2024, Bunch has been Honorary Professor of Practice at Queen’s University Belfast. A member of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, Bunch received France’s highest award, The Legion of Honor, in 2021.
About the Moderator
Lynette Clemetson is the Charles R. Eisendrath Director of Wallace House Center for Journalists, home of the Knight-Wallace Fellowships for Journalists and the Livingston Awards for Young Journalists at the University of Michigan.
Free and open to the public. This is a non-ticketed event.
Covering Migration in Europe: Displacement, Trauma and Reporting on Vulnerable Sources
Across Europe, governments on the right, left, and center are rolling back protections for migrants and supporting new European Union proposals that would allow asylum seekers to be sent to third countries. Even as border crossings have dropped significantly in recent years, human rights groups warn that deterrence-focused policies and sealed borders are pushing people onto more dangerous routes, increasing the risk of abuse, displacement and trauma.
European media coverage of migration has largely centered on political debate, often leaving people’s lives and experiences out of the reporting. What does this imbalance mean for public understanding, and how can we responsibly cover Europe’s shifting migration politics, while ethically reporting on trauma and engaging vulnerable sources whose stories are too often overlooked?
The Eisendrath Symposium honors Charles R. Eisendrath, former director of Wallace House, and his lifelong commitment to international journalism.
About the Speakers
Ismail Einashe, 2025-2026 Knight-Wallace Fellow, is a London-based journalist and author whose work on migration and refugee issues has appeared in numerous publications – including Foreign Policy, The Guardian, BBC News, The Nation, The Sunday Times and ArtReview. He is the author of “Strangers” (2023), a book by Tate Publishing that explores migration through the lens of art, and he co-edited “Lost in Media: Migrant Perspectives and the Public Sphere” (2019), a collection of critical essays examining how migrants are represented in European media. Einashe is also part of a team of journalists working on a cross-border journalism collaborative called Lost in Europe, which investigates the disappearance of child migrants.
Jedrzej Slodkowski, 2025-2026 Knight-Wallace Fellow, is a reporter, editor and current deputy head of the culture section of “Gazeta Wyborcza,” Poland’s largest newspaper. He started his professional journalism career as a music critic 20 years ago. He now specializes in interviews with the most interesting figures in Polish culture. Recently, Słodkowski has focused on migration and refugee issues, editing an annual special edition of “Gazeta Wyborcza” authored by refugees themselves. He has also covered topics such as child slavery in Ghana, Kyiv’s music scene during the war and Nepalese mercenaries hired by Russia to fight in Ukraine.
Sarah Souli, 2025-2026 Knight-Wallace Fellow, has been living and reporting across the Mediterranean for more than a decade. Raised in the U.S. by a French mother and Tunisian father, her multicultural and multilingual background has deeply informed her perspective and work. She is most interested in how behemoth political structures intersect with the resilient and textured lived experiences of people. Her stories, including a multi-year investigation of a triple femicide on the Greek-Turkish border, have appeared in The Atavist, The Economist, POLITICO, The Guardian, Vice Magazine, Condé Nast Traveler and others. Prior to her work as an independent journalist, she was a staff writer for COLORS Magazine.
About the Moderator
Lynette Clemetson is the Charles R. Eisendrath Director of Wallace House Center for Journalists, home of the Knight-Wallace Fellowships for Journalists and the Livingston Awards for Young Journalists at the University of Michigan.
DEPORTATION NATION Chronicling Our Current Chapter in America’s Long History of Exclusion
An MLK Symposium Event
The Trump administration’s deportation campaign is having a profound impact on American institutions, from local governments and businesses to churches and schools, and has helped to cement immigration enforcement as one of the key civil rights issues of our time. But the system through which these mass deportations are being carried out has been in place for decades, and many of the issues drawing headlines — from overcrowded detention centers, to family separations, and deportations without due process — are nothing new.
In this conversation, Dickerson will debunk common misconceptions about how the American immigration system works and how it doesn’t. She will also discuss the United States’ complex history with immigrants, which includes a deeply ingrained, race-based fear that, for centuries, has been directed toward virtually every group of American immigrants, fuelling moments of intense backlash like the one we are in now.
Opening remarks by William Lopez, Clinical Associate Professor, School of Public Health.
About the speaker
Caitlin Dickerson has been a staff writer at The Atlantic since 2021. In 2023, she won the Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Reporting and the Livingston Award for National Reporting for “We Need to Take Away Children,” an in-depth examination of the U.S. government’s child separation policy during the first Trump administration. Before joining The Atlantic, Dickerson spent five years as a reporter for The New York Times and five years as a producer and reporter for NPR. Her investigative reporting and long-form feature writing have also been recognized with a Peabody, an Edward R. Murrow award, and two National Association of Black Journalists Salute to Excellence awards.
About the moderator
Lynette Clemetson is the Charles R. Eisendrath Director of Wallace House Center for Journalists, home of the Knight-Wallace Fellowships for Journalists and the Livingston Awards for Young Journalists at the University of Michigan.
This is an in-person event. The event will also be livestreamed here.
Join Jake Tapper in conversation with Javed Ali as they discuss Tapper’s newly released nonfiction thriller, “Race Against Terror: Chasing an Al Qaeda Killer at the Dawn of the Forever War.” With the rigor of investigative reporting, Tapper follows two U.S. attorneys racing to prosecute an al Qaeda operative after a 2011 confession and traces the global hunt for justice in a dramatic, little-known case of the War on Terror. Hear how prosecutors, soldiers, and intelligence agents worked across continents — and what this case reveals about the threats we still face today.
Signed copies of Tapper’s newly released book, “Race Against Terror,” will be available for purchase at the event by bookseller Literati.
About Jake Tapper
Jake Tapper is a CNN anchor and chief Washington correspondent. Jake Tapper joined the network in January 2013. Tapper currently anchors a two-hour weekday program, “The Lead with Jake Tapper,” which debuted in March 2013. He has hosted CNN’s Sunday morning show, “State of the Union,” since June 2015. In April 2021, he became the lead anchor for CNN for Washington, D.C. events. In addition to Tapper’s reporting, he is also the New York Times bestselling author of several books, including “Race Against Terror: Chasing an Al Qaeda Killer at the Dawn of the Forever War” and “The Outpost: An Untold Story of American Valor,” as well as three novels “The Hellfire Club,” “The Devil May Dance,” and” All the Demons Are Here.”
About Javed Ali
Javed Ali is an associate professor of practice at the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy.He joined the Weiser Diplomacy Center in 2021. Ali brings more than 20 years of professional experience in national security and intelligence issues in Washington, D.C. He writes and provides commentary across a number of media sites and platforms, including MSNBC, CBS, CNN, ABC, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Hill, and Newsweek.
A SAVAGE ART: THE LIFE & CARTOONS OF PAT OLIPHANT chronicles the life and career of Australian-born Oliphant, whose tenure as a political cartoonist spanned five decades and ten U.S. Presidents. In 1990, The New York Times called him “the most influential editorial cartoonist now working.” The film explores the history and significance of political cartoons in global democracies, as well as the decline of the profession and the newspaper industry. It also highlights the effects of extreme political partisanship on media and editorial cartooning – illustrating how Oliphant applied his biting wit, sharp critical eye, and masterful drawing skills to take on presidents, popes, and the powers that be.
Beginning in 1990, Oliphant made annual visits to Wallace House, where he met with journalism fellows as a seminar speaker. During his sessions, he drew sketches of American political figures ranging from Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford to Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama; many of these original works hang in Wallace House today.
Following the film, director Bill Banowsky will be joined by journalist Charles Eisendrath and political cartoonist Mike Thompson for a conversation moderated by Lynette Clemetson, director of Wallace House Center for Journalists.
About the panel
Bill Banowsky is an entrepreneur and filmmaker who began his career as an attorney and later served as general counsel to several publicly traded media companies. He served as CEO of Landmark Theaters, which at the time was the largest chain of art-house cinemas in the USA. He has started several companies, including Magnolia Pictures, Violet Crown Cinemas, Nuckolls Brewing Co., and Sky Railway. He was Executive Producer of Alex Gibney’s 2010 film about corrupt lobbyist Jack Abramoff, “Casino Jack and the United States of Money,” and the producer of “Starving the Beast,” a film about the systemic defunding of public higher education in the USA. “A Savage Art”is Banowsky’s directorial debut.
Charles R. Eisendrath is a journalist, inventor and author. He served as director of the Knight-Wallace Fellowships for Journalists at the University of Michigan from 1986 to 2016, shaping three decades of transformative professional development for mid-career journalists. Eisendrath is also the founding director of the Livingston Awards, which, for more than forty years, have recognized outstanding young journalists and fostered the next generation of newsroom leaders. Before his leadership at Wallace House, Eisendrath was a distinguished correspondent for TIME magazine, reporting from Washington, London, and Paris, and later serving as bureau chief in Buenos Aires. He is the author of the memoir, “Downstream from Here: A Foreign Correspondent Discovers Home.
Mike Thompson, a four-time Pulitzer finalist, is the former staff editorial cartoonist/visual journalist for USA Today, The Detroit Free Press and the Minnesota Star Tribune. He is a past recipient of the Robert F. Kennedy Award, the Overseas Press Club Award, the National Press Foundation Award, the National Headliner Award, the Scripps Howard national award, the Women in Communications Clarion Award and is a two-time winner of the Society of Professional Journalists national Sigma Delta Chi award. His work was syndicated globally to more than 200 newspapers.
About the moderator
Lynette Clemetson is the Charles R. Eisendrath Director of Wallace House, home of the Knight-Wallace Fellowships for Journalists and the Livingston Awards for Young Journalists at the University of Michigan. She is a 2010 Knight-Wallace alum and came to the university from NPR where she was Senior Director of Strategy and Content Initiatives. As a reporter, she was a Washington-based correspondent for The New York Times and Newsweek, writing about politics, social issues and demographic change. Prior to her domestic correspondent work, she was an international correspondent for Newsweek based in Hong Kong, where she covered the former British colony’s return to Chinese rule in 1997. She transitioned into digital strategy and leadership in 2008 as the founding managing editor of TheRoot.com, a website launched by The Washington Post Company in collaboration with Henry Louis Gates Jr. She is also the former Director of Content Strategy at the Pew Center on the States.
“Empire of AI: Dreams and Nightmares in Sam Altman’s OpenAI”
5 PM | MONDAY, OCT 20, 2025
Rackham Auditorium 915 E. Washington Street
This event is free and open to the public.
Register for this event. Registrations are not required, but allow us to send you event updates and reminders.
As Artificial Intelligence claims increasing influence over our lives, it’s easy to believe AI’s creeping dominance is inevitable. But is it?
Join award-winning journalist Karen Hao and Patrick Barry, clinical assistant professor at the University of Michigan Law School, for an eye-opening discussion on Hao’s best-selling book, “Empire of AI.”
As the first reporter to gain extensive access to OpenAI when its founder, Sam Altman, promoted it as an altruistic research non-profit, Hao has followed the company’s meteoric rise. Drawing on seven years of reporting across five continents, Hao sheds light on the hidden impacts of AI — from the exploitation of data workers in the Global South to the immense environmental costs of its energy and water consumption. Discover whose priorities are being advanced, whose voices are overlooked, and how we can work together to build a more equitable future for the world with AI.
“Empire of AI” will be available for purchase from BookSweet at the event. The author will stay for a short book signing after the program.
About the speaker Karen Hao is an author and award-winning journalist covering the intersections of AI and society. She is a contributor to The Atlantic and leads the Pulitzer Center’s AI Spotlight Series, a program training thousands of journalists around the world on how to cover AI. Previously, she was a foreign correspondent for The Wall Street Journal and a senior editor at MIT Technology Review. Hao was recognized with an American National Magazine Award in 2022 for “outstanding achievement for magazine journalists under the age of 30,” and an American Humanist Media Award in 2024. Her book, “The Empire of AI: Dreams and Nightmares in Sam Altman’s OpenAI,” was published in May 2025 and was an instant New York Times bestseller.
About the moderator Patrick Barry is a clinical assistant professor and the director of digital academic initiatives at the University of Michigan Law School, as well as a visiting lecturer at the University of Chicago Law School and the UCLA School of Law. His research interests include persuasion, creativity, team dynamics, and artificial intelligence. He is the author of twelve books and has created several online series for the educational platform Coursera, including “Good with Words: Writing and Editing” and “AI for Lawyers and Other Advocates.”
In 1999, filmmaker Davy Rothbart gave nine-year-old Emmanual Sanford-Durant a camera. The boy and his family began filming their daily lives in America’s most dangerous neighborhood — just 17 blocks behind the U.S. Capitol. Together, Davy and the Sanfords kept filming and collaborating for 20 years. This critically acclaimed documentary illuminates a nation’s ongoing crisis through one family’s raw, stirring and deeply personal saga.
A native of Ann Arbor, Davy Rothbart is a 2024-25 Knight-Wallace Fellow, Emmy Award-winning filmmaker, bestselling author, journalist, creator of Found Magazine and frequent contributor to public radio’s “This American Life.”
His previous documentary “Medora,” about a resilient high-school basketball team in a dwindling Indiana town, based on The New York Times story by Pulitzer Prize winner John Branch, was executive produced by Steve Buscemi and Stanley Tucci, and premiered at the 2013 SXSW Film Festival.
Rothbart’s work has appeared in The New York Times, New York Magazine, The California Sunday Magazine, GQ and Grantland, while his stories on “This American Life” have amassed more than 30 million listeners. Rothbart is the author of the bestselling essay collection “My Heart Is an Idiot,” and he contributed writing to the Oscar-winning short “The Neighbor’s Window.” He is also the founder of Washington To Washington, an annual hiking adventure for kids from underserved communities.
In 1999, filmmaker Davy Rothbart gave nine-year-old Emmanual Sanford-Durant a camera. The boy and his family began filming their daily lives in America’s most dangerous neighborhood — just 17 blocks behind the U.S. Capitol. Together, Davy and the Sanfords kept filming and collaborating for 20 years. This critically acclaimed documentary illuminates a nation’s ongoing crisis through one family’s raw, stirring and deeply personal saga.
A native of Ann Arbor, Davy Rothbart is a 2024-25 Knight-Wallace Fellow, Emmy Award-winning filmmaker, bestselling author, journalist, creator of Found Magazine and frequent contributor to public radio’s “This American Life.”
His previous documentary “Medora,” about a resilient high-school basketball team in a dwindling Indiana town, based on The New York Times story by Pulitzer Prize winner John Branch, was executive produced by Steve Buscemi and Stanley Tucci, and premiered at the 2013 SXSW Film Festival.
Rothbart’s work has appeared in The New York Times, New York Magazine, The California Sunday Magazine, GQ and Grantland, while his stories on “This American Life” have amassed more than 30 million listeners. Rothbart is the author of the bestselling essay collection “My Heart Is an Idiot,” and he contributed writing to the Oscar-winning short “The Neighbor’s Window.” He is also the founder of Washington To Washington, an annual hiking adventure for kids from underserved communities.
Free and open to the public. This is a non-ticketed event.
Press Freedom in Central and Eastern Europe in the Age of Putin
In the wake of Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, the Kremlin has taken extraordinary steps to try to silence independent media through bans, censorship and repressive labels like “foreign agents.” This crackdown has spread to Central and Eastern Europe and Central Asia, where some governments are mirroring not only Putin’s laws but also his actions — arresting and even killing journalists to suppress free speech.
How can journalists safeguard access to accurate information and combat disinformation in the face of these escalating threats?
Join our panel of journalists from the region, featuring Knight-Wallace Fellows Baktygul Chynybaeva of Kyrgyzstan and Holger Roonemaa of Estonia, and Joseph Sywenkyj of Ukraine and the U.S., WCEE Distinguished Fellow and Knight-Wallace Fellow. Moderated by Geneviève Zubrzycki, Director of the Weiser Center for Europe and Eurasia, the group will discuss these critical issues and why their work matters to us all.
The Eisendrath Symposium honors Charles R. Eisendrath, former director of Wallace House, and his lifelong commitment to international journalism.
About the Speakers
Baktygul Chynybaeva, 2024-25 Knight-Wallace Fellow, is a journalist from Kyrgyzstan with more than 20 years of experience covering healthcare, environmental and human rights issues. Fluent in five languages, she serves as a correspondent for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty’s central newsroom in Prague. Her investigative reporting on the dire condition of children’s cancer care in Kyrgyzstan inspired significant reforms in the country’s policies. Chynybaeva is also actively involved in organizing training sessions and capacity-building programs for journalists across Central Asian countries.
Holger Roonemaa, 2024-25 Knight-Wallace Fellow, manages the investigative and fact-checking team at the daily news site Delfi Estonia. He is also an editor with the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP). He has covered money laundering, corruption and evasion of sanctions, and topics related to national security, espionage and propaganda. In recent years, most of his investigations have focused on Russian security threats in Baltic countries. He led and coordinated the “Kremlin Papers” project, a high-profile investigative collaboration that detailed election interference, information manipulation and territorial aggression by Russian president Vladimir Putin.
Joseph Sywenkyj, 2024-25 WCEE Distinguished Fellow and Knight-Wallace Fellow, is an American photographer of Ukrainian descent who has lived and worked in Ukraine for approximately 20 years. His photography throughout Ukraine, Eastern Europe and Central Asia has been published regularly in The Wall Street Journal, as well as in The New York Times. His ongoing photographic series, “Wounds,” is an intimate study of Ukrainian activists and soldiers who were severely wounded during the Euromaidan Revolution and Russia’s current war against Ukraine. Sywenkyj has exhibited his photographs in numerous galleries and museums in both the United States and abroad. He was the recipient of two Fulbright scholarships, one as a student and the other as a scholar, and also received a W. Eugene Smith Grant and an Aftermath Project Grant.
About the Moderator
Geneviève Zubrzycki is the Weiser Family Professor of European and Eurasian Studies and the William H. Sewell, Jr. Collegiate Professor of Sociology at U-M. She is the director of WCEE and the Copernicus Center for Polish Studies. She previously served as director of the Center for Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies and the Center for European Studies. Her research focuses on nationalism and religion, collective memory, the post-communist transition, and cultural politics in Eastern Europe and North America. Her award-winning books have been translated into Polish and French. In 2021, she was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship and the Bronisław Malinowski Prize in the Social Sciences from the Polish Institute of Arts and Sciences of America (PIASA). She serves on the Board of Directors of The Reckoning Project, an NGO investigating war crimes committed against civilian populations in Ukraine; the Polish Institute of Arts and Sciences of America; and the Centre de recherche interdisciplinaire sur la diversité et la démocratie(CRIDAQ) at the Université du Québec à Montréal.
(left to right) New York Times columnists Bret Stephens and Lydia Polgreen, ABC News’ María Elena Salinas, University of Michigan professor Vincent Hutchings and WDET’s Stephen Henderson
WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 23, 2024 | 6 PM
Rackham Auditorium 915 E Washington St Ann Arbor, MI 48109
Join Wallace House and theInstitute for Social Research for a live conversation driven by journalism and social science in the run-up to the presidential election. Hear special guests Bret Stephens and Lydia Polgreen of The New York Times, María Elena Salinas of ABC News, and Vincent Hutchings of U-M Center for Political Studies in conversation with veteran Michigan journalist Stephen Henderson. As part of the University of Michigan’s Year of Democracy, Civic Empowerment, and Global Engagement initiative, this special event will provide insights on critical issues shaping the 2024 election and social science research on the American voting public.
Drawing on findings from the 75-year-long American National Election Studies, the discussion will explore the dramatic rise of political polarization, the significant decline in public trust in government — which has dropped from 80% in the 1950s to just 20% today — and other key factors influencing voter behavior. Don’t miss this opportunity to hear diverse perspectives on the forces shaping the upcoming election.
About the Speakers
Vincent Hutchings is a professor of political science at the University of Michigan and an expert in public opinion, elections, voting behavior and African American politics. He was one of the principal investigators for the American National Election Studies (ANES) from 2010 to 2017. The ANES is the premier academic survey of American voting, public opinion, and political participation. The ANES was launched at the University of Michigan during the 1948 presidential election and has collected the highest quality national survey data, with questions dating as far back as the 1950s and 1960s, in every presidential election since then.
Lydia Polgreen is an opinion columnist at The New York Times and a co-host of the “Matter of Opinion” podcast. Previously, she served as managing director of Gimlet, a podcast studio at Spotify, and as editor-in-chief of HuffPost, leading a team of hundreds of journalists publishing 16 editions across the globe in nine languages. Her leadership at HuffPost followed a 15-year career at The New York Times that included roles as associate masthead editor, deputy international editor, South Africa bureau chief, a correspondent for the New Delhi bureau and chief of the West Africa bureau. Before joining The Times, Polgreen was a staff writer for the Orlando Sentinel and the Albany Times Union. She received the 2009 Livingston Award for international reporting for her series, “The Spoils,” an account of how mineral wealth brought misery and exploitation to much of Africa.
María Elena Salinas is a contributor to ABC News. For more than 30 years, she served as co-anchor of Univision Network’s flagship daily newscast, “Noticiero Univision,” and for 18 years she was the co-host and correspondent for the network’s weekly newsmagazine, “Aquí y Ahora.” Called the “Voice of Hispanic America” by The New York Times, Salinas is the most recognized Hispanic female journalist in the United States. Most recently, Salinas served as a contributor for CBS News, where she reported across platforms and on coverage of the 2020 presidential election. She also anchored the award-winning documentary, “Pandemia: Latinos in Crisis,” which looked at how COVID-19 has affected the Latinx community.
Bret Stephens is an opinion columnist for The New York Times, writing about foreign policy, domestic politics and cultural issues. He also has a weekly published conversation on current affairs with his colleague, Gail Collins. Previously, he was the foreign affairs columnist for The Wall Street Journal, a member of the Journal’s editorial board and the deputy editor of the editorial page, responsible for international opinion. Stephens was awarded the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for Commentary for his column “Global View,” receiving the honor for “his incisive columns on American foreign policy and domestic politics, often enlivened by a contrarian twist.”
About the moderator
Stephen Henderson hosts the daily radio show “Created Equal” on WDET, Detroit’s public radio station, and is the longtime host of “American Black Journal” and a regular contributor to “One Detroit” on Detroit PBS. Previously, he was the editorial page editor and a columnist for the Detroit Free Press. He has also worked for the Chicago Tribune and the Baltimore Sun and spent four years covering the Supreme Court for Knight Ridder’s Washington Bureau. He is a graduate of the University of Michigan and a former editorial page editor of The Michigan Daily, the school’s 125-year-old daily student newspaper.
Co-Sponsors Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy Institute for Social Research U-M’s Year of Democracy, Civic Empowerment and Global Engagement initiative DPTV
