Nuveen Lecture

The John Nuveen Lecture was established in 1972 by the trustees of the Baptist Theological Union, which oversees an endowment that helps support the University of Chicago Divinity School. Each year, a prominent member of the University's faculty is invited by the Divinity School to deliver the lecture.

John S. Nuveen was one of Chicago's most important and influential business leaders as well as a civic leader who served his country in a number of posts, here and abroad. He was active in Chicago-area civic and cultural organizations. He also had deep ties to a number of educational institutions, including the University of Chicago. He served as chairman of the University of Chicago's Alumni Association and as a trustee of the Baptist Theological Union.

Past lectures

Nuveen Lecture speakers and titles, 2025 to 1973, most recent first

Year	Speaker	Lecture
2025	Daniel Holz	“Reflections on the Beginning and End of Everything”
2024	Hans Joas	“Against the Hegelian Temptation: Global History Without Teleology”
2023	Ada Palmer	“Why We Censor, from the Inquisition to the Internet”
2022	Tahera Qutbuddin	“Early Islamic Oration: Rhetoric, Religion, and Ritual”
2021	Agnes Callard	“Socratic Politics”
2020	No lecture held.
2019	Aden Kumler	“Unmade by design: The Eucharist and other medieval works of art”
2018	Wu Hung	“Miraculous Icons and Dynastic Time: Narrating Buddhist Images in Medieval China”
2017	Andrew Abbott	“Religion as a Social Process”
2016	Kenneth Warren	“William Faulkner and the Franchise”
2015	Panel discussion: Larry L. Greenfield, Martin E. Marty, and Daniel L. Meyer
2014	Donald G. York	“It's not the Heat, it's the Humility: The Limits of Knowledge”
2013	Daniel Sulmasy, MD	“Medicine as Spiritual Discipline: Lessons from Fred”
2012	No lecture held.
2011	John Cacioppo	“Invisible Forces Revealed Through Studies of Social Isolation”
2010	Anne Walters Robertson	“Music for the Mass and the New Christology of Fifteenth-Century Europe”
2009	David Nirenberg	“Scriptural Conflict, Scriptural Community: Judaism, Christianity, Islam”
2008	Leon Kass	“Defending Human Dignity: What it is and Why it Matters”
2007	Jonathan Lear	“The Transformation of Courage”
2006	Geoffrey Stone	“The Constitution in the 21st Century”
2005	Janet Davison Rowley	“Embryonic Stem Cell Research: Ethics in the Midst of Scientific Turmoil”
2004	Mark Strand	“Man and Camel”
2003	Tanya Luhrmann	“Trauma, Trance and God: How the New Style in American Religion Might Be Changing the Psychiatric Symptoms of Trauma”
2002	Marshall Sahlins	“The Making of National History by Family Melodrama: The Iconization of Elian Gonzalez”
2001	Daniel Garber	“Religion and Science, Faith and Reason: Some Pascalian Reflections”
2000	Rob Nelson	“Hagia Sophia: From Istanbul to South Shore”
1999	Arnold Davidson
1998	Sander L. Gilman
1997	Richard P. Saller
1996	Françoise Meltzer	“Simone Weil and the Problem of Work”
1995	Robert B. Pippin
1994	Jonathan Z. Smith
1993	Michael Murrin
1992	Christine Cassel, MD
1991	William Julius Wilson
1990	Lecture canceled due to the death of the lecturer, J. David Greenstone.
1989	Jean Comaroff	“Missionaries and Mechanical Clocks: Religion and History in South Africa”
1988	Karl Weintraub	“In the Sweat of thy Face”
1987	William McNeill
1986	D. Gale Johnson	“Agricultural Reforms in China”
1985	Fazlur Rahman
1984	Wayne Booth	“Deconstruction in a Religious Revival”
1983	Joseph Kitagawa	“Legacy of the 1893 Parliament of World Religions”
1982	Hanna Gray	“Ancients and Moderns in 15th century Humanism”
1981	Alan Donagan	“Philosophy and the Possibility of Religious Orthodoxy”
1980	Arthur Mann	“Socialism: Lost Cause in American History”
1979	Stephen Toulmin	“The Future of Cosmology”
1978	Jarl Dyrul, MD	“The Practice of Religion”
1977	Langdon Gilkey	“The Mystery of Being and Non-Being”
1976	Jerald Brauer	“Conversion: From Puritanism to Revivalism”
1975	James Barr	“Story and History in Biblical Theology”
1974	Mircea Eliade	“Some Observations on European Witchcraft”
1973	Paul Ricoeur	“Philosophy and Religious Language”