Four Arts speakers series includes Mattis, Hiaasen, Josh Groban

From former Defense Secretary James Mattis, to Islam critic Ayaan Hirsi Ali, along with lighter touches from humorist P.J. O’Rourke and Florida author Carl Hiaasen, The Society of the Four Arts will offer a broadly engaging series of speakers for the season.

The society announced last week a lineup of 14 guests in its Esther B. O’Keeffe Speakers Series, which will run from early January to late March in the Gubelmann Auditorium on the Four Arts campus. Six of the talks are presented as memorial lectures, and given in honor of prominent late supporters of the Four Arts.

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Speeches are given at 3 p.m. each Tuesday for the three months of the series. Admission for non-members of the society is $50 per lecture, and tickets go on sale the Wednesday before each event, if they are available.

Scheduled speakers are:

Jan. 4: Sir Alex Younger, former head of MI6, the British Secret Intelligence Service. Younger’s talk is titled “Cybersecurity: Assessing Global Threats,” and will examine future security threats and how society can protect itself from them by mastering emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence.

Jan. 11: Paul Tudor Jones, billionaire hedge fund manager who founded the Tudor Investment Corp. as well as its affiliated financial companies, all under the umbrella of The Tudor Group. Jones’ topic will be “Views on ‘22.”

Jan. 18: P.J. O’Rourke: The political satirist and prolific writer’s latest book, released last year, is “A Cry from the Far Middle: Dispatches from a Divided Land”; his talk carries the same title.

Jan. 25: Sally Mann, the Virginia-based photographer who came to wider attention in the 1990s with her black-and-white images of her children. Mann’s lecture is titled “Down the Rabbit Hole.”

Feb. 1: Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a Somali-born writer and former member of the Dutch Parliament, has been a prominent critic of Islam, the faith she was born into. Her talk is titled “On the Clash of Civilizations.”

Feb. 8: Peter Zeihan, a geopolitical analyst and prognosticator whose books include 2020’s “Disunited Nations: The Scramble for Power in an Ungoverned World.” Zeihan will give a lecture called “Living in the Lightning.”

Feb. 15: Chris Wallace, the outgoing Fox News broadcast journalist and author who will be joining the new streaming service CNN+ to host a weekday show. Wallace is scheduled to give a talk called “A View from Washington.”

Feb. 22: Josh Groban, the popular singer and actor who recently starred in the Broadway musical “Natasha, Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812.” Groban’s appearance is billed as “An Afternoon Conversation.”

March 1: Kathy Sullivan, former NASA astronaut who became the first woman to walk in space in 1984, and a former administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Sullivan’s lecture will be titled “Handprints on Hubble: An Astronaut’s Story of Invention.”

March 8: James Mattis, former U.S. secretary of defense and a retired Marine four-star general. His speech will cover the topic “Lessons in Servant Leadership and Leading by Example.”

March 15: Peter Schweizer, writer and founder of the Government Accountability Institute, a conservative think tank. His speech is called “China and America’s Corrupt Political and Business Class.”

March 22: Carl Hiaasen, former Miami Herald journalist and writer of popular novels about Florida, including his most recent, “Squeeze Me,” which is set in Palm Beach. Hiaasen’s lecture is titled “In the Shadows of the Sunshine State.”

March 29: David Rubenstein and Kaywin Feldman, a joint appearance in which Rubenstein, co-founder of alternative asset management firm The Carlyle Group, will talk with Feldman, the director of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. Feldman is the first female director of the museum.

For more information, call The Society of the Four Arts at 561-665-7226.

This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Daily News: Mattis, Hiaasen, Jones among Four Arts speakers this season