’Hurst hosts summit speakers

Leighann Sallick, Contributing writer

This year, Mercyhurst University is proud to announce that it will be one of the locations hosting the Jefferson Educational Society’s Global Summit Speaker Series. The Global Summit is a month-long event that consists of multiple speakers. These lecturers give talks on a “broad range of globally important issues.”

This event has been going on since November 2009, and has been a big impact on the awareness of global topics. These topics range from wildnerss preservation to space travel.

The first speaker at Mercyhurst is Fred Barnes on Nov. 14 at 7:30 p.m. Barnes is an American political commentator who is the executive editor and co-founder for “The Weekly Standard”, which has been praised by various critics and is known as the “the gold standard for political coverage with a conservative slant.”

The second speaker at Mercyhurst is Doris Kearns Goodwin on Nov. 15 at 7:30 p.m. Goodwin is a presidential historian and Pulitzer Prize-winning author of six critically-acclaimed and New York Times best-selling books. Her books that have been awarded the Pulitzer prize include “Wait Till Next Year” and “No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front in World War II” and so on. Goodwin will have much insight and commentary over the presidential race.

The third speaker at Mercyhurst is Antoine Willem van Agtmael on Nov. 17 at 7:30 p.m. Agtmael serves as the president, chief executive officer, and chief investment officer of Emerging Markets Investors Corporation. He is also the founder of Ashmore EMM, L.L.C. Agtmael will be speaking on the topic “Smartest Places on Earth: Why Rustbelts are the Emerging Hotspots of Global Innovation.”
During his lecture, van Agtmael will “examine the changing dynamic and the transformation of former industrial centers of the U.S. and Europe into ‘brain belts’ of design and innovation.”

The last speaker at Mercyhurst is Tom Ridge, who will be speaking on Nov. 18 at 7:30 p.m. Ridge has had much success in his life, which include graduating from Harvard, and serving as 43rd governor of Pennsylvania, fthe irst Secretary of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, six-term former U.S. congressman and the CEO of Ridge Global, LLC, a Washington D.C.-based security consulting firm. The talk is entitled “The Digital Forevermore: Are We Ready?” He will be discussing solutions to cyber security, international security and risk management issues.

Tickets to attend all these speakers can be found in the PAC center, and they are free for Mercyhurst students with their student ID.