Women’s Lecture Luncheon Series set for 2016-17 season

Brazosport College’s Women’s Lecture Luncheon Series is set for another big season, bringing in empowering and interesting guests to speak to the local community.

This year’s lineup features a diverse group of speakers and a variety of topics. 

Among the speakers scheduled for the 2016-17 Women’s Lecture Luncheon Series are nationally recognized legal scholar Jonathan Turley, 1994 Rwandan genocide survivor Immaculèe Ilibagiza and actress Linda Evans.

All three guests will speak of their experiences and how they overcame adversity while finding personal success.

The year begins with Turley on Oct. 13, followed by Ilibagiza on Feb. 16 and Evans on April 6.

The Women’s Lecture Luncheon Series was created by the Brazosport College Foundation to promote cultural enrichment for all women. The mission of the BC Foundation is to raise and administer funds for the enhancement of educational opportunities at Brazosport College.

The cost is $180 and includes all three lectures with lunch. Please make your series reservations by Sept. 16.

To learn more about Brazosport College’s Women’s Lecture Luncheon Series and its 2016-17 guests, contact the Brazosport College Foundation at (979) 230-3234.

The following is more information about this season’s guests:

Oct. 13, 2016: Jonathan Turley
“Separation Anxiety: The Rise of Presidential Power and the ‘Fourth Branch’ in the Madisonian System”

Professor Jonathan Turley is a nationally recognized legal scholar who has written extensively in areas ranging from constitutional law to legal theory to tort law. He has written more than three dozen academic articles that have appeared in many leading law journals at Cornell, Duke, Georgetown, Harvard and other schools. Turley has earned the prestigious Shapiro Chair for Public Interest Law and has served as counsel in some of the most notable cases in the last two decades, including the representation of whistleblowers, military personnel, judges, members of Congress and a wide range of other clients. He is also one of the few attorneys to successfully challenge both a federal and a state law. 

Turley was ranked as 38th in the top 100 most cited “public intellectuals” in the recent study by Judge Richard Posner and has been repeatedly ranked in the nation’s top 500 lawyers in annual surveys, one of only a handful of academics. 

Feb. 16, 2017: Immaculèe Ilibagiza
“Left to Tell: Discovering God Amidst the Rwandan Holocaust”

Ilibagiza is a survivor of the 1994 Rwandan genocide that took the lives of nearly one million Tutsis. Men, women and children, including her entire family except for one of her brothers, were massacred at the hands of Hutu marauders. Ilibagiza found shelter at a pastor’s home, where she and seven other women hid from the deadly rebel mob in a 3-by-4-foot bathroom for 91 days. During those 91 days of unimaginable suffering, Ilibagiza found her faith, taught herself English, and most incredibly, committed herself to a life of peace, hope and forgiveness, even for those who had murdered her family. 

Ilibagiza has gone on to work at the United Nations, received five honorary doctoral degrees, written seven books about her faith and her life journey, and is the recipient of the Mahatma Gandhi International Award for Reconciliation and Peace. Today, she is regarded as one of world’s leading speakers on faith, hope and forgiveness. She has shared this universal message with world leaders, school children, multinational corporations, churches and at events and conferences around the world. A major motion picture about her story is under production with an international release in theaters in spring 2018.

Actress Linda Evans has personified beauty and grace to American television viewers for more than five decades, from her role as Audra Barkley on “The Big Valley” to the glamorous Krystle Carrington on “Dynasty” to “Hell’s Kitchen,” the British competitive cooking reality show she won in 2009. 

For her role in “Dynasty,” Evans became one of the most celebrated female television stars of the 1980s. She was nominated five times for the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in a TV Drama, and won the award in 1982, sharing the honor with Barbara Bel Geddes of rival prime time television soap opera Dallas. Evans won five People’s Choice Awards as Favorite Actress in a Drama Series in 1982, 1983, 1984, 1985 and 1986, and was nominated for an Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead actress in a Drama Series in 1983. For her contribution to the television industry, Evans has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. She has dined with queens and presidents, been romanced by the rich and famous and, today, what Evans treasures most is the wisdom she has gained along the way.