February 8, 2007

Lectures: Former Cub, 'Lost' author and first person accounts of Iraq war

Feb. 20 - Former Cub Girardi to receive alumni award, give talk

Joe Girardi, an alumnus and former catcher for the Chicago Cubs, will receive the Distinguished Alumnus Award Feb. 20 from the department of industrial engineering and management sciences in the McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science.

Girardi, who graduated from the University in 1986 with a bachelor’s degree in industrial engineering, will be honored at a special event at 3:30 p.m. in Room M345 of the Technological Institute. After receiving his award, he will discuss the influence his Northwestern education has had on his career. Faculty, staff and students are invited to attend.

While at Northwestern Girardi played baseball and was a three-time Academic All-American and two-time All-Big 10 selection. He played for 15 seasons as a catcher with the Chicago Cubs, Colorado Rockies, St. Louis Cardinals and New York Yankees. Girardi was a member of three World Series Championship squads in New York. He retired as a catcher in 2004.

In 2006, Girardi was manager of the Florida Marlins and received the National League Manager of the Year Award. He now works as a broadcaster for the YES Network.

Feb. 20 - “Lost” author to discuss history, Holocaust, memory

Daniel Mendelsohn — whose highly acclaimed book “Lost: A Search for Six out of Six Million” describes his quest to discover the history of the part of his family killed by the Nazis — will talk about the making of the book Feb. 20.

Free and open to the public, Mendelsohn will speak on “Lost Between Memory and History: Writing the Holocaust for the Next Generation” when he delivers The Allan Harris Memorial Lecture in Jewish Studies at 5 p.m. in the McCormick Tribune Center Forum.

In describing the search to discover his relatives and his attempts to better comprehend the history of the Holocaust, Mendelsohn traveled to a dozen countries and four continents. Upon meeting people who knew his great uncle and the experiences he and his family had undergone first-hand, Mendelsohn became obsessed with discovering not only how they lived but also how they met their deaths.

He will discuss the limitations of both memory and history and the responsibilities and difficulties of transmitting stories of the Holocaust to the next generation.

Mendelsohn’s work has appeared in The New Yorker, New York Times, Esquire and Travel and Leisure.

Feb. 12, 26 - Lecture series includes first person accounts of war in Iraq

Three speakers with three distinct points of view will discuss the war in Iraq and a U.S. career diplomat will talk about the future of U.S. foreign policy in a series of free, public lectures titled “The United States and the Battle for Iraq.”

New York Times war correspondent Dexter Filkins speaks Feb. 12; Iraqi journalist Huda Ahmed speaks Feb. 12; and Marine Capt. James Haunty, now a student in the Kellogg School of Management, speaks Feb. 26.

The guests will reflect on their time in the vortex of America’s most intense war since Vietnam. Each has intimate personal experience of the Iraq war.

All lectures except the Feb. 12 lecture with Dexter Filkins will take place in Room 122 of University Hall. Filkins’ Feb. 19 lecture will be held at McCormick Tribune Center Forum. All lectures begin at 7 p.m.