Best-selling author and Maine native delivering 2024 Libby Lecture
Colin Woodard, a New York Times bestselling author, award-winning journalist and environmentalist, will present the University of Maine’s sixth annual Libby Lecture in Natural Resource Policy at 3 p.m. on Thursday, Sept. 26, in the Bangor Room of the Memorial Union.
Woodard’s talk is titled “American Democracy on the Brink: How We Got Here and the Implications for the Natural Environment.” Woodard has reported from more than 50 countries and seven continents, providing extensive coverage of environmental and climate issues. He won a 2012 George Polk Award and was a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize in 2016 for his investigative work at the Portland Press Herald. He also received the Tides Foundation’s Jane Bagley Lehman Award for his coverage of the global crisis in the oceans.
His six books — including “American Nations, Lobster Coast, Ocean’s End” and “The Republic of Pirates” — have been published in a dozen foreign languages and inspired a prime-time NBC television series and an Ubisoft video game. Currently, he is the director of Nationhood Lab at Salve Regina University’s Pell Center for International Relations and Public Policy.
A native of Maine, Woodard is a graduate of Mt. Abram High School, Tufts University and the University of Chicago, a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society and a former trustee of the Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences.
The event is free and open to the public. More information, as well as a Q&A with Woodard, can be found online.
The Libby Lecture in Natural Resource Policy was established with a gift from Lawrence W. Libby ’62 and Lois Murdock Libby ’63. The annual lecture is a collaborative event coordinated by the College of Earth, Life, and Health Sciences and the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.