The Barbara Sabol Memorial Lecture
The Barbara Sabol Memorial Lecture Series is designed to promote awareness of peace and social issues by bringing recognized personalities to speak to the local community. The lecture is named for a founding member of the Peace and Justice Center who died in 1997.
Fall 2025 Sabol Lecture:
The Peace and Justice Center, the King’s College International Relations and Strategy Program, the Department of English, and the Women’s Studies Program have joined to co-sponsor the 2025 Barbara Sabol Lecture to foster conversation among college students and the larger Northeast Pennsylvania community on the importance of human rights for asylum seekers in the United States
The Sabol lecture will feature anthropology and sexuality studies scholar Rhoda Kanaaneh, Ph.D. Her talk, “Narrow Pathways: Gender, Sexuality and Arab American Asylum Seekers in the United States,” will be given at the Burke Auditorium on the King’s College campus on Wednesday, November 5, 2025, at 7:00 p.m. The talk will be followed by a discussion period in which community members, as well as students and faculty from King’s College, Wilkes University, and Misericordia University, are encouraged to participate. The event is free and open to the public.
Kanaaneh has taught anthropology and gender and sexuality studies at NYU, American University in Washington, DC, Columbia, and Fordham. She has held fellowships at Harvard and the European University Institute and is the author of a number of books and articles on reproductive politics, militarization, and gendered racialization in Israel and Palestine. Her most recent book, The Right Kind of Suffering: Gender, Sexuality and Arab Asylum Seekers in America, won the Evelyn Shakir Book Award in 2024.
Past Sabol Lectures:
Spring 2025: A conversation with attorneys on Immigration, Employment, LGBTQI+, and other forms of Legal Support.
Featuring multiple local and regional attorneys with a wide range of experience and knowledge, speakers included: Nesta N. Johnson, a family law attorney; Cheryl Sobeski-Reedy, a 25+-year staff attorney of the Luzerne County Public Defender’s Office; John Byrd, managing attorney at North Penn Legal Services; Melissa Evans, Managing Attorney of the Economic Security Unit at Neighborhood Legal Services in Pittsburgh; and Arlene Rivera, an immigration and family law attorney who practices in New York. Organized by the Community Justice Alliance–the Peace and Justice Center, B’nai B’rith, and the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Wyoming Valley and sponsored by the Peace and Justice Center and the King’s College Department of Economics, the event took place March 26, 7:00 p.m., at King’s College in the Burke Auditorium inside The McGowan School of Business. The event is available to stream online through YouTube Live at this link. And Community Justice Alliance Resources are available here.
2024 Lecture: “An Ethnography of Jewish Solidarity with Palestinians”
Atalia Omer, Professor of Religion, Conflict, and Peace Studies at the Keough School of Global Affairs at Notre Dame University, who recently wrote Decolonizing Religion and Peacebuilding (2023, Oxford University Press), addressed decolonial scholarship across multiple fields of study to examine how and why the practices of religion and peacebuilding/development both reinforce and exceed global structural, neocolonial, and epistemic forms of violence. The event took place on Thursday, October 17, at 7:00 p.m., in King’s College’s Burke Auditorium.
2023 Lecture:
Josh Fox, the Emmy-winning and Academy Award-nominated director of the film Gasland, spoke about his film, ‘”The Edge of Nature,” focusing on climate change and how we almost solved the problem during the COVID-19 lockdown. The presentation, which included selected scenes of the work-in-progress film, a question and answer opportunity, as well as a bit of banjo playing, took place in Burke Auditorium at King’s College on Wednesday, Oct. 11, at 6 pm. The event was co-sponsored by the Peace and Justice Center, NEPA Green Coalition, King’s College Economics Department, and the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Wyoming Valley. The film premiered at the Byron Bay International Film Festival in Australia on October 20, 2023. The trailer for the film is available here: https://youtu.be/EQF5AdIBy2c?si=NVt5E3mkmxy1Hwhg
2023 Lecture:
Offie Wortham shared his reflections from a lifetime of civil rights activism starting in the 1950s in a talk entitled “My Life Outside the Box: The Journey of a Civil Rights Activist.”This event was co-sponsored with the NAACP of Luzerne County and the the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Wyoming Valley. King’s College, Snyder Room, 15 January 2023, beginning at 3:00 p.m. Watch a streaming video of this presentation here: Offie Wortham on Civil Rights and Building Community
2021 Lecture:
Ron Jones of Dialogues on Diversity performed “MLK and the Strength of Shared Dreams” as the Peace and Justice Center’s 2021 Sabol Memorial Lecture. For more information about Dialogues on Diversity, please visit their website at dialoguesondiversity.com/about. The event took place on 26 October 2021, in the Burke Auditorium at King’s College.
2020 Lecture:
“Women Power the Vote,” Dr. Susan Poulson, Professor of History at The University of Scranton, author of Suffrage: The Epic Struggle for Women’s Right to Vote, and Dr. Teri Finneman, Assistant Professor of Journalism at the University of Kansas, and author of Press Portrayals of Women Politicians: 1870s to 2000s. September 21, 2020 via Zoom.
2018 Lecture:
“The Trouble with My Name.” Dr. Javier Ávila. professor of English at Northampton Community College, and Pennsylvania’s 2015 Professor of the Year awardee by the Council for Advancement and Support of Education and the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. King’s College Burke Auditorium. April 7, 2018.
2017 Lecture:
“Re-establishing Law over War.” Dr. Mary Ellen O’Connell, Robert and Marion Short Professor of Law and Research Professor of International Dispute Resolution, at the University of Notre Dame. King’s College. September 21, 2017.
Fall 2016 Lecture:
“Another World Is Possible.” Shane Claiborne, founder and board member of The Simple Way, a faith community in inner-city Philadelphia. Misericordia University, September 30, 2016.
Spring 2016 Lecture:
“Old Poison in New Bottles: How Racism Thrives in Integrated Schools and Why This Is a Problem of Justice,” Dr. Derrick Darby, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Michigan and Visiting Professor of Law at the University of Chicago School of Law. King’s College, April 5, 2016.
2014 Lecture:
“Bread, Roses, and Rest: Securing Meaningful Retirement for All.” Teresa Ghilarducci, Ph.D., the Irene and Bernard L. Schwartz Chair of Economic Policy Analysis at The New School for Social Research King’s College, September 3, 2014.
2013 Lecture:
“Visiting the Prisoner: Theological-Ethical Reflections on a Forgotten Place,” Kathryn Getek Soltis, Director of the Center for Peace and Justice Education at Villanova University. King’s College, September 26, 2013.
2009 Lecture:
“Courage and Commitment: How Women Are Changing the World,” Pamela Varkony, a nationally recognized writer and commentator. King’s College, October 19, 2009.
2007 Lecture (10th Annual Lecture):
David Kaczynski, executive director of New Yorkers against the Death Penalty delivered the Peace and Justice Center’s 10th annual Barbara Sabol Memorial Lecture,
King’s College, October, 2007.
2006 Lecture:
Rev. Dr. Bob Edgar, General Secretary of the National Council of Churches.
