Spring 2025 Lectures

LOCATION

Spring lectures will be held in-person at OLLI: 4801 Massachusetts Ave. NW, in Room A on the first floor. Lectures are on Fridays from 1:30-2:30 PM.

Registration

Registration is required to attend in-person lectures and will open at 10:00 AM on the Friday prior to each in-person lecture. Registration is via an event on the OLLI website events calendar. The direct registration link will be included in the Friday newsletter the week prior to each lecture. Lectures are free and open to the public, but you must have an OLLI account to register. If you do not have one, you can create an account when going to register. Each registrant may reserve up to two seats. Your name must be on the list of registrants to enter the lecture and you must be in your seat five minutes before the lecture starts to guarantee your seat.

Lectures

Debra Bruno, New York's Enslaving Past—Memory and Historical Reckoning
March 7
1:30 PM
In-Person

Debra Bruno is a longtime Washington journalist and teacher, with a career covering law, politics, the arts, books, culture, health, and international issues. She has worked at Moment Magazine, Legal Times, and Roll Call.

From 2011-2014, she was a freelance writer in Beijing, covering subjects as diverse as expat divorce and post-nuptial agreements for the Wall Street Journal, about rowing in a dragon boat for the Washington Post, and about Chinese hutongs for Atlantic’s CityLab. After returning from China, she learned from a historian friend that if she had ancestors in New York’s Hudson Valley, especially if they were Dutch, they were likely enslavers. She hadn’t known about New York’s 200 years of enslavement and was stunned to realize that her small hometown of Athens held so many hidden stories.

That story first appeared as a 2020 article in the Washington Post magazine and is now a book—A Hudson Valley Reckoning: Discovering the Forgotten History of Slaveholding in my Dutch American Family, published by Cornell’s Three Hills imprint.

 

Sunil Félix, Nuclear Energy and Sustainable Development
March 14
1:30 PM
In-Person

Since the first nuclear plant in the 1950s, the world has been divided on the use of nuclear power for energy. Using the case of France, Dr. Sunil Félix will discuss the advantages and disadvantages of nuclear energy and its contribution to sustainable growth of a country. 

Dr. Félix has been the Nuclear Counsellor at the French Embassy in Washington, DC since 2020, having previously served in the same position at the French Embassies in South Korea, India, and Japan. Following a PhD and post-doctoral studies in Mathematics, he joined the French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission (CEA – France) in 1990. Since then, he has been working as a research engineer in the Structural Analysis field. He was also the Personal Assistant to the Chairman of the Generation IV International Forum (GIF), from 2006 to 2010 during the French Presidency of the Forum. Dr. Félix was awarded the National Order of Merit by the French National Authorities in 2015.

 

Undine Nash, The Jefferson Building of the Library of Congress: Read It Like a Book
March 21
1:30 PM
In-Person

Undine Nash is a volunteer docent at the Library of Congress where she provides tours of the Jefferson Building for the public and dignitaries, interpreting the architecture and symbolism of it both in English and German. During her professional career as a microbiologist, she taught at medical schools and acted as chief infection control officer of two university hospitals. She also worked as an editor for a scientific journal published by Elsevier.

 

Lance George, Manufactured Homes: Affordable Housing Solution? … Or Trap?
March 28
1:30 PM
In-Person

Lance George is the Director of Research and Information at the Housing Assistance Council. With more than 20 years of experience, Lance leads the organization’s research, data, and information efforts. He works at the intersection of housing, research, and data to help Americans who have quality and safe homes, understand and care about those who do not. Lance’s research encompasses a wide array of issues and topics related to demographics and housing. A displaced Kentuckian, who currently splits his time between Washington, DC and Minnesota, Lance embodies the adage, “Northern Charm and Southern Efficiency.”

 

Charles Trueheart, Diplomats at War
April 4
1:30 PM
In-Person

Charles Trueheart is the author of Diplomats at War: Friendship and Betrayal on the Brink of the Vietnam Conflict (University of Virginia Press), winner of the 2024 Douglas Dillon Award for the best book of the year on American diplomacy. He was director of the American Library in Paris from 2007 to 2017. Most of his earlier career was in journalism, including 15 years at the Washington Post, first covering book publishing and literary topics, then as a correspondent in Canada and France. Before joining the Post, Trueheart was associate director of the Institute of Politics at Harvard University and director of the Kennedy School of Government’s Public Affairs Forum. His writing has appeared in the Atlantic Monthly and the American Scholar, where he is a contributing editor. Trueheart was educated at Exeter and Amherst. He and his wife, Anne Swardson, live in Paris and Staunton, Virginia.

 

Liza Mundy, The Sisterhood: The Secret History of Women at the CIA
April 18
1:30 PM
In-Person

Liza Mundy is an award-winning journalist and the New York Times-bestselling author of five books, including her latest work, The Sisterhood: The Secret History of Women at the CIA (2023). The Sisterhood recounts the true story of the women espionage officers—tough, brilliant, resilient—who helped build the world’s foremost spy agency. It received starred reviews from Booklist and Kirkus, which named it one of the most anticipated non-fiction titles of fall 2023.

Her previous book, Code Girls: The Untold Story of the American Women Code Breakers of World War II (2017), tells another true story of women’s contributions to American intelligence, recounting the lives and legacy of more than 10,000 women recruited to break Axis codes during World War II. 

A former staff writer for the Washington Post, Mundy is also the New York Times-bestselling author of Michelle: A Biography, a 2008 biography of former First Lady Michelle Obama; and The Richer Sex, which explored the forces behind women’s rising economic power. She has appeared on numerous television and radio news shows. She writes for the Atlantic, Politico, and Smithsonian, among others. She lives in Washington, DC—not far from the sites of both the Army and Navy WWII codebreaking operations—and in Los Angeles, CA.

 

Terry Hartle, American Colleges and Universities: Challenges on the Road Ahead
April 25
1:30 PM
In-Person

Terry W. Hartle was senior vice president of the American Council on Education’s Government Relations and Public Affairs division from 1993 to 2023. At ACE he engaged federal policymakers on issues of student aid, government regulation, scientific research, and tax policy.

Prior to joining ACE, he was education staff director for the Senate Committee on Labor and Human Resources. He also worked at the American Enterprise Institute and the Educational Testing Service. Hartle has authored and co-authored numerous publications and contributes regular book reviews to The Christian Science Monitor. He is a member of Smith College’s board of trustees.

Hartle received a doctorate from The George Washington University (GWU); a master’s from the Maxwell School at Syracuse University; and a bachelor’s degree, summa cum laude, from Hiram College. He has been awarded honorary doctoral degrees from Northeastern University and the University of Redlands. In 2021, Hartle and ACE’s Government Relations and Public Affairs team received an Outstanding Contribution to Higher Education Award in recognition of their advocacy in response to the crisis the COVID pandemic posed for institutions and students.

 

Alexa Chopivsky, A Generational Battle for our Shared Future: The Necessity to the West of a Free, Secure, and Prosperous Ukraine
May 2
1:30 PM
In-Person

Alexa Chopivsky is the Executive Director of the Women's Foreign Policy Group. Previously, as the inaugural Executive Director of Ukraine House Davos, Ms. Chopivsky led the creation and elevation of Ukraine’s country investment promotion platform alongside the World Economic Forum, both before and after the war. She serves as deputy Chairwoman of the Supervisory Board at Ukraine Invest and was an adviser to the Minister of Economic Development, Trade, and Agriculture of Ukraine. Since 2012, she has served as the Director of the Program on the World Economy at the Aspen Institute. 

Ms. Chopivsky started her career as a journalist at NBC News in the New York, Washington, and London bureaus. She later moved to Kyiv, where she was a consultant for an American firm and a freelance journalist. Ms. Chopivsky is the Founder of Transnational Education Group and served as Executive Director of the American Center for a European Ukraine.  She currently serves on the boards of Teach for Ukraine, the Orchestra of the Americas Group, and Ukrainian Freedom Fund. In 2021, the President of Ukraine awarded Ms. Chopivsky the Order of Princess Olga.

Ms. Chopivsky received a BA from Yale University with distinction, an MS from Columbia University Journalism School and an MIPP from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.

 

Robert J. Lieber, Is the US Still Indispensable? 
May 9
1:30 PM
In-Person

Robert J. Lieber is Professor Emeritus of Government and International Affairs at Georgetown University where he previously served as Chair of the Government Department and Interim Chair of Psychology. He is author or editor of 18 books on international relations and US foreign policy and has been an advisor to presidential campaigns, to the State Department, and to the drafters of US National Intelligence Estimates. His latest book is Indispensable Nation: American Foreign Policy in a Turbulent World, published in 2022 by Yale University Press. His other recent books include Retreat and Its Consequences: American Foreign Policy and the Problem of World Order (Cambridge University Press, 2016); and Power and Willpower in the American Future: Why the United States Is Not Destined to Decline (Cambridge, 2012). He also taught at Harvard, Oxford, and the University of California-Davis, and has been Visiting Fellow at the Fondation Nationale des Sciences Politiques in Paris, the Brookings Institution, and Fudan University in Shanghai. He received his undergraduate education at the University of Wisconsin and earned his PhD at Harvard. In addition, he has been a recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim, Rockefeller, and Ford Foundations. He is an avid tennis player, and among his other credits is a walk-on part in the Alfred Hitchcock film classic, North by Northwest.

 

OLLI does not endorse any of the viewpoints expressed by the speakers in its series.

We thank the Lecture Committee and all those who suggested and contacted speakers: Ellen Babby, Joe Belden (Chair), Tamara Belden, Helen Blank, Jim Blasiak, Ethan Buyon, Edward Cohen, Martha Cutts, Lisa Harper, Dave Hensler, Jeanne Kent, Lynn Lewis, Mark Nadel, Irvin Nathan, Paul Vamvas, and Marc Pearl.