The Hopkins Lecture Series, a group within the Hopkins Student Organization for Programming, was formed following the merger of the Milton S. Eisenhower Symposium (MSE) and the Foreign Affairs Symposium (FAS). The Lecture Series hosts year-round programming on Homewood Campus and aims to facilitate dialogue at Hopkins and within the greater Baltimore community.
In an interview with The News-Letter, executive co-chair of the Lecture Series Yasmine Mettawa described the benefits of combining MSE and FAS for programming, emphasizing that the two formerly separate organizations are now able to expand their capacity to plan and host events.
“When the two organizations combined to make the Hopkins Lecture Series, I stayed on in the fall, because I think it’s really cool that we are combining this year to bring consistency and plan events that we wouldn’t have been able to if only one of our organizations [was involved],” she said. “We only have so much money each of us, and combining our resources is a good way of having better events.”
Akshat Sinha, the other executive co-chair of the Lecture Series, highlighted that another benefit of the merger was that the series was able to recruit and showcase speakers from a range of fields in an interview with The News-Letter.
“At the end of the day, merging the two organizations allows us to get speakers from a wide variety of fields. Previously, FAS was restricted to things that would be focused around foreign affairs, whereas MSE would be able to do that or they’d be focused on entertainment and the fine arts,” he said. “By merging these two, [we] broaden the horizon for the organization as a whole.”
The group’s first event took place on Sept. 26 and featured founder of the Forward Party Andrew Yang and former United States Congressman Adam Kinzinger in a discussion on the role of the two party system in modern politics.
Mettawa reflected on the event’s success, both in terms of attendance and effectively facilitating discourse and dialogue in the Hopkins community about important issues.
“My favorite part is that for our last event, we had an incredible turnout and people really seemed to enjoy it,” she said. “Seeing people really excited and coming up to me after and being like ‘That was a great event!’ was very fulfilling, because then I could see that my work paid off and that it did, in fact, bring about conversation in the community.”
Sinha also reflected on how the success of the event was made possible by MSE and FAS joining forces, highlighting the engagement between the speakers and student attendees.
“To be honest, I do not believe that in the past [and] when FAS and MSE were separated, we would have been able to organize such an event, due to both budget and logistic issues. But, in this case, since there was one combined organization, we were able to pull it off,” he said. “At the end of the event, Andrew Yang just popped off the stage and started talking with students in the crowd, and so did Adam Kinzinger.”
The next event in the Lecture Series’ line-up is scheduled to take place on Oct. 29 with Maryland Senator Ben Cardin, and the Series plans to continue programming throughout the fall and spring semesters.
In an interview with The News-Letter, Aneesh Swaminathan, the Director of Development for the Lecture Series, shared what drew him to the Lecture Series as a freshman and how his role in the organization is aligned with his broader interest in fostering dialogue on campus.
“I myself joined the Lecture Series my freshman year after watching a stellar affirmative action debate at Shriver Hall with high profile speakers from both sides of the aisle whom I recognized,” he said. “My work in the lecture series has aligned with my interests in fostering rich dialogue and inviting intellectually challenging discourse to our campus (and for our campus), surrounding some of our time’s most pressing issues.”
In an interview with The News-Letter, Mettawa shared her optimism about the future of the Lecture Series and highlighted that she hopes that the series will be differentiated from MSE and FAS going forward.
“Considering that this was the first year, I think that we were kind of concerned about what this would mean because we are used to the Foreign Affairs Symposium and MSE Symposium being their own organizations,” she said. “But, I think that me and my co-chair Akshat Sinha have done a good job of branding the Hopkins Lecture Series, so in the future people will just know this organization.”
Riley Strait and Leo Qi contributed reporting to this article.
