LITERATURE + LECTURES

Jane Goodall, Ph.D. DBE, appears at The Progressive Forum March 9, 2011. One of the world’s most famous scientists, Jane Goodall, will appear at The Progressive Forum Wednesday, March 9, 2011, at the Wortham Center, Cullen Theater, at 7:30 PM. The event is presented in association with the Houston Zoo. The title of her program is Gombe and Beyond: The Next 50 Years.

Dr. Goodall is founder of the Jane Goodall Institute and a United Nations Messenger of Peace. She is celebrating the 50th anniversary of the summer when she ventured into the African forest to study chimpanzee behavior with a global lecture tour and the release of her book, Jane Goodall: 50 Years at Gombe. She will greet fans and sign books at the end of the evening.

Rick Barongi will introduce Jane Goodall at the event. He’s director of the Houston Zoo, an advisory director of the Jane Goodall Institute, and a long time friend of Jane Goodall who visited the Houston Zoo’s African Forest exhibit just before it opened.

Randall Morton, Progressive Forum president, said, “Jane Goodall’s work has forever changed our understanding of what it means to be human. It’s exciting that Houston will be a part of this important 50 year anniversary of a planetary hero.”

The research Goodall pioneered at what is now Gombe National Park in Tanzania has expanded into a global mission to empower people to make a difference for all living things. In July 1960, Jane Goodall began her landmark study of chimpanzees in what is now Tanzania under the mentorship of famed anthropologist and paleontologist Dr. Louis Leakey. Her work at Gombe Stream would become the foundation of future primatological research and redefine the relationship between humans and animals.

In 1962, she entered Cambridge University as a Ph.D. candidate, one of the very few people to be admitted without a college degree. She earned her Ph.D. in ethology in 1965. In 1977, Dr. Goodall established the Jane Goodall Institute (JGI), which continues the Gombe research and is a global leader in the effort to protect chimpanzees and their habitats. Today, the Institute is widely recognized for establishing innovative, community-centered conservation and development programs in Africa, and Jane Goodall’s Roots & Shoots, JGI’s global environmental and humanitarian youth network, which has groups in more than 120 countries.

Dr. Goodall travels an average of 300 days per year, speaking about the threats facing chimpanzees, other environmental crises, and her reasons for hope that humankind will solve the problems it has imposed on our planet. She continually urges her audiences to recognize their personal responsibility and ability to effect change. “Every individual counts,” she says. “Every individual has a role to play. Every individual makes a difference.”

Dr. Goodall’s scores of honors include the Medal of Tanzania, the National Geographic Society’s Hubbard Medal, Japan’s prestigious Kyoto Prize, Spain’s Prince of Asturias Award for Technical and Scientific Research, the Benjamin Franklin Medal in Life Science, and the Gandhi/King Award for Nonviolence. In April 2002, Secretary-General Kofi Annan named Dr. Goodall a United Nations Messenger of Peace, and she was reappointed in June 2007 by Secretary General Ban Ki-moon. In 2004, in a ceremony at Buckingham Palace, Dr. Goodall was invested as a Dame of the British Empire, the female equivalent of knighthood. In 2006, Dr. Goodall received the French Legion of Honor, presented by Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin, as well as the UNESCO Gold Medal Award.

Dr. Goodall’s list of publications includes Hope for Animals and Their World: How Endangered Species are Being Rescued from the Brink, two overviews of her work at Gombe — In the Shadow of Man and Through a Window — as well as two autobiographies in letters, the best- selling autobiography Reason for Hope and many children’s books. The Chimpanzees of Gombe: Patterns of Behavior is the definitive scientific work on chimpanzees and is the culmination of Dr. Goodall’s scientific career.

She has been the subject of numerous television documentaries and is featured in the largescreen format film Jane Goodall's Wild Chimpanzees (2002). She also has been featured in five Animal Planet specials—Jane Goodall’s Return to Gombe, Jane Goodall’s State of the Great Ape, Jane Goodall’s Heroes, When Animals Talk and most recently, Almost Human.

Tickets range from $14 to $54. A limited number of $74 tickets are available which includes a pre-event reception with Goodall at 6:15 PM and center-front seating. Tickets are available at www.progressiveforumhouston.org  or by calling 832-251-0706. There is no physical box office except at the theater on event night.

Sponsors of the event include the Houston Zoo which opened its new African Forest in December 2010, The Cynthia and George Mitchell Foundation, and an anonymous donor.
 
The Progressive Forum is a nonprofit 501(C)(3) civic speaker organization presenting its events at The Wortham Center. It’s the only civic speaker organization in America dedicated expressly to progressive values. Its purpose is to enrich our democracy and culture by striving to present the greatest minds from all the fields of human endeavor, the sciences and the humanities as well as politics and public affairs, great minds it believes are advancing the success of individuals, our species, and life on the earth.

The last year of 2010 marked the fifth anniversary of The Progressive Forum. The Progressive Forum premiered on June 13, 2005, with Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and Houston Mayor Bill White in a program called “Our Environmental Challenges.” Al Gore launched An Inconvenient Truth at The Progressive Forum June 7, 2006, his first U.S. book event for that title. On September 17, 2008, Gloria Steinem celebrated the 30th anniversary of the historic National Women’s Conference held in Houston. On March 27, 2008, Robert Redford introduced a film he produced and narrated, Fighting Goliath:Texas Coal Wars, a documentary about 32 Texas cities banding together opposing coal plant permits. In June 12, 2009, Nancy Pelosi became the first sitting U.S. House Speaker to make a public appearance in Houston in modern times.

On December 7, 2009, The Progressive Forum produced the national launch event for the first book by premier climatologist James Hansen of NASA, Storms of My Grandchildren: The Truth about the Coming Climate Catastrophe and Our last Chance to Save Humanity. And in 2010, The Progressive Forum presented John Paul Stevens, the first U.S. Supreme Court Justice to appear in a public event in Houston.

Other speakers have included Karen Armstrong, Lester Brown, Ken Burns, Richard Dawkins, Jared Diamond, Elizabeth Edwards, Tim Flannery, Brian Greene, Arianna Huffington, Seymour Hersh, Molly Ivins, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., George Soros, Edward O. Wilson, Frank Rich, Garrison Keillor, Joe Klein, Anna Deavere Smith, George Lakoff, Richard Leakey, Bill McKibben, Eric Schlosser, T. Boone Pickens, Larry Wilmore, and Edward O. Wilson.

The Progressive Forum originated a new model in civic speaker organizations in Houston to deliver a larger audience and a higher quality experience in a theater rather than a hotel luncheon as with traditional speaker organizations. The Progressive Forum model is similar to a performing arts company by using the finest theaters, paying speaker fees to present the top intellectual stars, and marketing throughout the region. It offers convenient box office services through its website allowing ticket buyers to print tickets at their computer in addition to traditional phone sales.

Founder and president, Randall R. Morton has owned Randall Morton International, Inc. for 34 years, an advertising and public relations agency whose clients have included leading oil equipment in the U.S., Japan, Mexico, and Europe. Morton created, produced, and hosted the Oilfield Breakfast Forum from 1994 to 2003, a another speaker platform which is still the largest in the oil industry. While earning a degree in government from Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., he served as an issue writer for the Democratic National Committee.