Marshall Ganz, senior lecturer in public policy at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government.

Marshall Ganz, an expert in public policy at Harvard, discusses the leadership of social movements in the annual Andrews Lecture at 4:30 p.m. Wednesday, Nov. 14, in the Gomes Chapel, 275 College St.

Admission is open to the public at no cost. For more information please call 207-786-8272 or email lthomps2@bates.edu.

Ganz’s talk is titled Leading Change: Story, Strategy, Action. The Andrews Lecture is sponsored by the Multifaith Chaplaincy, the Office of Intercultural Education, the Harward Center for Community Partnerships, the college’s social sciences division and the departments of politics, history and education.

Ganz, senior lecturer in public policy at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, has nearly 50 years of experience with the craft of leading social movements. He teaches, researches and writes on leadership, organization and strategy in social movements, civic associations and politics.

Ganz entered Harvard College in the fall of 1960, and in 1964, a year before graduating, he left to volunteer as a civil rights organizer in Mississippi. In 1965, he joined Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers. Over the next 16 years he gained experience in union, community, issue and political organizing, and ultimately became director of organizing.

During the 1980s, Ganz worked with grassroots groups to develop effective organizing programs, designing innovative voter mobilization strategies for electoral campaigns at every level.

In 1991, in order to deepen his understanding of his work, he returned to Harvard and, after a 28-year “leave of absence,” completed his undergraduate degree in history and government. He received a master’s degree in public administration from the Kennedy School in 1993 and completed his doctorate in sociology in 2000.

A signature talk at Bates since 1975, the Bertha May Bell Andrews Lecture commemorates Andrews, who served on the Bates faculty from 1913 to 1917 and created the women’s physical education program at the college. Her son, Dr. Carl B. Andrews, of the Bates class of 1940, established the lectureship.

The public is invited to attend the 2011 Bertha May Bell Andrews Lecture at no cost. Part of an innovative series of activities at the college exploring ways to dial down the digital barrage and reconnect with the capacity for contemplation, the event is presented by the Multifaith Chaplaincy.

It is co-sponsored by Bates Information and Library Services, the Harward Center for Community Partnerships, the Learning Commons, the Communications Office, the Career Development Center and the Office of the President. For more information, please contact 207-786-8272.

Belsky’s talk, Present Tense: Being Here and Now in a Non-Stop World, will explore the disappearing opportunities for reflection and contemplation, which he refers to as “sacred space.” Such deep thought is often challenged by technology-induced opportunities and demands, leading to reactive and dependent behavior from both individuals and institutions.

“Despite the incredible power and potential of sacred spaces, they are quickly becoming extinct,” Belsky notes on the website, the99percent.com. “We are depriving ourselves of every opportunity for disconnection. And our imaginations suffer the consequences.”

Belsky believes that people and organizations succeed by making opportunities for creative, concentrated attention. During his Bates residency, he will help the college reaffirm its commitment to deep thinking and understand how “reactionary workflow” works against such commitments. He’ll also offer guidance in approaching technology deliberately and productively, and in working more creatively overall.

Belsky’s visit is the centerpiece of a bold initiative that the Multifaith Chaplaincy describes as a “Bates community experiment.”

“The idea is not that these technologies are bad, but simply that we need to be more mindful about how we relate to them,” says Emily Wright-Magoon, associate multifaith chaplain.

The day after the lecture, in an experience called UnDay: A Day to Unplug and Unwind, students, staff and faculty will pledge to experiment with refraining from the technology of their choice for one full day.

The following day, a campus conversation will be held to assess how it went and what came up. Additionally, throughout the week there will be opportunities for meditation, yoga, massage, mindful eating and discussion.

Belsky has spent his professional life in technology, social media and the creative industry. He is the author of the best-selling book Making Ideas Happen (Portfolio, 2010), and is the founder and CEO of Behance, a company that develops products and services for the creative industries. In 2010, he was included in Fast Company’s list of “100 Most Creative People in Business.”

Belsky is a frequent contributor on MSNBC, and has worked with such leading organizations as General Electric, Hewlett-Packard and Proctor & Gamble, as well as with the U.S. State Department and the CIA.

He attended Cornell University as an undergraduate and received his master’s in business administration from Harvard Business School.

The Andrews Lecture, a signature talk at Bates since 1975, is a memorial to Bertha May Bell Andrews, who served on the Bates faculty from 1913 to 1917 and established the women’s physical education program at the college. Her son, Dr. Carl B. Andrews of the Bates class of 1940, established the lectureship.

Paul Solman, an economics, business and occasional art correspondent to The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, speaks at 7 p.m. Monday, Oct. 5, and 7 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 7, in Chase Hall, 56 Campus Ave. He offers two lectures on a common theme, The Divided Self: Money, God and Neighbor. The Oct. 5 talk is titled Spending Beyond Our Means and Are We Screwed If We Don’t? and the Oct. 7 talk, IS Money The Root of All Evil?

The Right Rev. V. Gene Robinson, bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of New Hampshire and the first openly gay, non-celibate bishop in a major Christian denomination, speaks at noon Thursday, Oct. 15, in the College Chapel, College Street. His talk is called Religion and Gay Marriage: Why They Matter So Much.

All three lectures are made possible by the Andrews Lectureship in Ethics and Education at Bates. For more information, please call 207-786-8272.

Solman has reported for NewsHour since 1985 and has won numerous Emmys and two Peabody Awards for his work. Founding editor of the alternative Boston weekly The Real Paper, he turned to business journalism as a Nieman Fellow, studying at Harvard Business School in 1976. He has been the business reporter at WGBH Boston since 1977, was named a member of TV Guide’s Dream Team of TV reporters and was the co-originator and executive editor of PBS’s business documentary series Enterprise.

As a member of the Harvard Business School faculty, Solman has taught media, finance and business history. With Thomas Friedman, he co-authored Life and Death on the Corporate Battlefield (Bookthrift, revised edition, 1987), which also appeared in Japanese and German editions. With sociologist Morrie Schwartz, he helped create (and wrote the introduction to) the book Morrie: In His Own Words (Walker & Company, 1999).

Solman has written for numerous publications including both Forbes and Mother Jones magazines. A one-time cab driver, kindergarten teacher and management consultant, he is also the presenter for and author of Discovering Economics with Paul Solman, a series of videos distributed by McGraw-Hill to accompany the company’s introductory economics textbooks.

V. Gene Robinson became bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of New Hampshire in 2003.

He has been active particularly in advocating for full civil rights for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered people. Working at the state, national and international levels, he has lobbied for equal protection under the law and full civil marriage rights. He has been honored by many LGBT organizations for this work, including The Human Rights Campaign, the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force and the Equality Forum.

Robinson has done AIDS educational work in the United States and in Uganda and South Africa. He has been an advocate for anti-racism training in the diocese and wider church. He helped build the Diocese of New Hampshire’s close working partnership with the New Hampshire Community Loan Fund, advocated for debt relief for the world’s most impoverished nations and lobbied for socially responsible investment within and beyond the church.

Robinson’s story is featured in the 2007 feature-length documentary film, For the Bible Tells Me So. He is the author of In the Eye of the Storm: Swept to the Center by God (Seabury Books, 2008).

Robinson was invited by Barack Obama to give the invocation at the opening presidential inauguration ceremonies at the Lincoln Memorial on Jan. 18, 2009.

The Andrews Lecture, a signature talk at Bates since 1975, commemorates Bertha May Bell Andrews. A faculty member from 1913 to 1917, she established the college’s women’s physical education program. Her son, Dr. Carl B. Andrews, class of 1940, established the annual lectureship.

Ruth Wilson Gilmore, writer, professor of geography and director of the Program in American Studies and Ethnicity at the University of Southern California, will give a presentation titled The Prison Industrial Complex After 25 Years at 7 p.m. Thursday, March 22, in Chase Hall Lounge, 56 Campus Ave.

The public is invited to attend the 2007 Bertha May Bell Andrews Lecture, sponsored by the chaplain’s office, free of charge. For more information, call the chaplain’s office at 207-786-8272.

A founding member of Critical Resistance, an important national anti-prison organization in the United States, Gilmore is active in the Prison Moratorium Project and California Prison Focus. Her new book, Golden Gulag: Prisons, Surplus, Crisis and Occupation in Globalizing California (University of California Press, 2007), analyzes the economic and political changes that led to California’s prison-building boom. She examines the emergence of movements working to dismantle what she calls the prison industrial complex, highlighting the ways community-based activism has been successful in bridging urban-rural, racial and other divides to achieve victories against the growing prison system.

Gilmore received her doctorate from Rutgers University. A widely published author, her interests include race and gender, labor and social movements, uneven development, politics and culture, California, North America and the African Diaspora. Gilmore says, “I became a geographer to engage with questions of how we make the world and ourselves, and to study how everyday people do so with the dream of justice, equality, and beauty for all.”

A signature talk at Bates since 1975, the Andrews Lecture is a memorial to Bertha May Bell Andrews, who served on the Bates faculty from 1913 to 1917 and established the women’s physical education program at the college. Her son, Dr. Carl B. Andrews ’40, established the lectureship.

Mairs, a regular columnist for The Christian Century, will explore the topic of assisted suicide in the broad context of the communal life in the late 20th century, according to Bates College Chaplain Kerry Ann Maloney.

As a woman who has lived with multiple sclerosis for 30 years, the last 10 of them in a wheelchair, Mairs wrote, “A life commonly held to be insufferable can be full and funny. I’m living the life.” The New York Times Book Review called Mairs “a relentlessly physical writer, as fiercely committed to her art as to her spiritual development.” The San Francisco Chronicle called her essays “so touching and heartbreakingly honest that one often has to put the book down and rest emotionally before reading on.”

Winner of the 1995 EDI Media Award for Print Journalism, Mairs is the author of several books, including Voice Lessons (Beacon Press, 1997), Ordinary Time (Beacon Press, 1994), Remembering the Bone House (Beacon Press, 1995), Plaintext (University of Arizona Press, 1992) and Carnal Acts (Beacon Press, 2 ed., 1996). She lives in Tucson, Ariz., with her husband, George.

A fixture at Bates since 1975, the Andrews Lecture is a memorial to Bertha May Bell Andrews, who served on the Bates faculty from 1913 to 1917 and established the women’s physical education program at the college. The lectureship was established by her son, Dr. Carl B. Andrews of the Bates class of 1940.

The Rev. Eugene F. Rivers III, pastor of the Azusa Christian Community in the Four Corners area of Dorchester, Mass., one of Boston’s poorest and most dangerous neighborhoods, will discuss Beyond Nationalism of Fools: Toward A New Agenda For Intellectuals.

Rivers will also lead a chapel service, open to the public, at 4 p.m. Feb. 4  in the College Chapel.

“Our goal is empowerment,” he said of the Azusa Christian Community, a group of approximately 30 middle-class individuals dedicated to revitalization and outreach in their community. “But the power we are fighting for does not derive its strength from the state and the institution of government. It emerges from the collective energies of ordinary folk . . . The truth of the matter is this: The solutions have to be worked out in the streets. Those who are able must devote themselves to the hard work of establishing a true sense of community in neighborhoods devastated by the harshness of urban poverty.”

A fixture at Bates since 1975, the Andrews Lecture is a memorial to Bertha May Bell Andrews, who served on the Bates faculty from 1913 to 1917 and established the women’s physical education program at the college. The lectureship was established by her son, Dr. Carl B. Andrews ’40.