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Michele Norris, the longtime cohost of NPR’s All Things Considered, kicks off the 2016-17 Convocation Series.

Norris is an Emmy and Peabody Award-winning journalist with more than two decades of experience, including work with ABC’s World News Tonight, the Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, and the Los Angeles Times. She was a mainstay at NPR for 13 years.

She is founder of the six-year-old Race Card Project, a national conversation about America’s honest views about race, identity, and aging. Norris has received numerous awards, including the Alfred I. DuPont-Columbia University Award, Journalist of the Year from the National Association of Black Journalists, and the Livingston Award. Essence magazine named her one of the “25 Most Influential Black Americans.”

Norris will give a talk titled “Eavesdropping on America’s Conversation on Race” at 8 p.m. Tuesday, September 13, in Finney Chapel. The event is free and open to the public; no ticket required.

On October 25, Eboo Patel, founder and president of the Chicago-based Interfaith Youth Core (IFYC) and a member of President Barack Obama’s inaugural Advisory Council on Faith-Based Neighborhood Partnerships, will give a talk “On Building a Diverse Democracy: Justice and Identity in the 21st Century.”

Patel is the author of Acts of Faith, which won the Louisville Grawemeyer Award in Religion for its significant contributions to religious and spiritual understanding; Sacred Ground, and the forthcoming Interfaith Leadership: A Primer. A frequent speaker and guest lecturer at colleges and universities across the United States, Patel holds a doctorate in the sociology of religion from Oxford University, where he was a Rhodes Scholar.

The 91ֱ�� Convocation Series presents free, public discussions of cutting-edge issues by some of the country’s most prominent thinkers from an array of disciplines and professional fields. The lectures take place in Finney Chapel.