Event details

Journalist and Pulitzer Prize-winning author Elizabeth Kolbert will present, “Welcome to the Anthropocene: Lecture I — What on Earth Have We Done?” for the first in her two-part Tanner Lecture on Human Values. The second lecture will be held Friday, April 29.

This event will be livestreamed via Princeton's Media Central Live and held in-person in the Friend Center, Lecture Hall 101. Registration is REQUIRED for in-person attendance and is free and open to members of the public who are fully immunized against COVID-19.

For the first lecture, Kolbert will discuss the ways humans are changing the world on a geological scale, with a focus on changes to the atmosphere, ocean chemistry, and the rearrangement of the biosphere. She will be joined in discussion by geologist and science writer Marcia Bjornerud, professor of geology and environmental studies at Lawrence University, and Arun Majumdar, the Jay Precourt Professor of mechanical engineering at Stanford University.

Hosted by the University Center for Human Values, the Tannner Lectures provide a forum for eminent scholars and public figures to reflect on learning related to values pertinent to the human condition. Kolbert’s lectures are cosponsored by the High Meadows Environmental Institute (HMEI), the Department of Geosciences, the Department of Politics, Princeton University Public Lectures, the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs, and the Humanities Council.

Kolbert last spoke at Princeton in 2019 as part of the Taplin Environmental Lecture Series sponsored by HMEI.