President’s Speaker Series

The George Fox Civility Project hosts Christian political commentator and attorney David French. Masks required for in-person event. Watch livestream

Pearce is a Catholic author and biographer who has written about subjects as various as GK Chesterton, economics, and Shakespeare. His latest book, Race with the Devil, chronicles his conversion from racial hatred to Catholicism. He is also the Director of the Center for Faith & Culture and Writer-in-Residence at Aquinas College in Nashville as well as the editor of St. Austin Review.

Joseph Pearce is Senior Editor at the Augustine Institute, 

People today are not asking, "Is Christianity true?" They're asking, "Why are Christians such bigots?" Nancy Pearcey, professor of apologetics at Houston Baptist University, takes on the headline issues of our day: abortion, assisted suicide, homosexuality, transgenderism, and the hook-up culture. She shows that we will be much more effective if we dig down to the worldview level. The secular ethic rests on a radically dehumanizing worldview that denigrates the body and demeans the person. By contrast, Pearcey shows how to craft the biblical ethic in a way that is more positive and more appealing than the secular ethic.

Pearcey is the author of Love Thy Body: Answering Hard Questions about Life and Sexuality. Her earlier books include The Soul of Science, Saving Leonardo, Finding Truth, and two ECPA Gold Medallion Award Winners: How Now Shall We Live (coauthored with Harold Fickett and Chuck Colson) and Total Truth. Her books have been translated into eight languages.

She is professor and scholar in residence at Houston Baptist University. A former agnostic, Pearcey has spoken at universities such as Princeton, Stanford, USC, and Dartmouth. She was highlighted as one of the five top women apologists by Christianity Today and was hailed in The Economist as "America's pre-eminent evangelical Protestant female intellectual."

Patti Callahan Henry is a New York Times and USA Today best-selling author of sixteen novels and podcast host. She is the recipient of The Christy Award — A 2019 Winner “Book of the Year”; The Harper Lee Distinguished Writer of the Year for 2020 and the Alabama Library Association Book of the Year for 2019. She is the co-host and co-creator of the popular weekly online Friends and Fiction live web show and podcast. Patti is also a contributor to the weekly life lesson essay column for Parade Magazine. A full-time author and mother of three children, she now resides in both Mountain Brook, Alabama, and Bluffton, South Carolina with her husband.

Executive Dean Joseph Clair and Pastor and Professor Dominic Done take a deep dive into the subject of God’s calling, both for the individual and the collective Church. In a recent Barna poll, 40 percent of Christians admitted to having no clear sense of God’s calling on their lives. But God is using the disruption of 2020-21 to get our attention and, if we let Him, bring us to a place of healthy reconstruction. Join us, for this rich dialogue between two colleagues and friends about finding true and lasting purpose—not because of the things we do, but because of who we can become in Christ. Watch video.

Giboney has served as a delegate for the Democratic National Convention and as the co-chair of Obama for America's Gen44-Atlanta initiative. Together with Michael Wear and Chris Butler, Giboney published Compassion (&) Conviction: The AND Campaign's Guide to Faithful Civic Engagement .

Giboney addresses the George Fox community about being a faithful Christian witness and all that entails. Watch video

An hour-long conversation with Jemar Tisby, a public historian with the ability to explore racial justice solutions and cultural conversations that compel audiences to action. Tisby brings history to bear with contemporary relevance. His style offers richly-informed explorations, unflinching moral insight, and clear paths forward. Moderated by provost Andrea Scott and professor Joseph Clair.

George Fox University provost Andrea Scott dives into an interview with Antipas Harris, author of Is Christianity the White Man's Religion?: How the Bible Is Good News for People of Color. Follow along as they tackle the book's themes and discuss its takeaways.

This fall, every employee is reading the book and engaged in discussions around it as part of George Fox's commitment to initiatives and programs surrounding diversity and change in our university. Watch video

Sunggu Yang joined George Fox’s College of Christian Studies in 2017 as an assistant professor of Christian ministries. Before his arrival, Yang served as the Louisville Institute’s Post-Doctoral Teaching Fellow at Wake Forest University School of Divinity, where he taught courses ranging from homiletics and worship to prophetic ministry. One of his innovative courses was “Film & Preaching: The Gospel According to Hollywood.”

Yang is the author of two books, King’s Speech: Preaching Reconciliation in a World of Violence and Chasm (2019) and Evangelical Pilgrims from the East: Faith Fundamentals of Korean American Protestant Diasporas (2016), and two books that are in progress, Picasso and Preaching: An Aesthetic Homiletic for the 21st Century and Sacred Waters: Pastoral Essays for Aspiring Preachers.

Ordained by the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), Yang has preached at various venues around the nation. He holds a PhD in religion from Vanderbilt University (2015), a master’s degree in liturgical studies from Yale Divinity School (2010), an MDiv from the Candler School of Theology at Emory University (2009), and a bachelor’s degree in theology from the College of Theology at Yonsei University in Seoul, South Korea. He lives in Sherwood with his wife, Rebecca Jeong, and their daughter, Stella.

Scott Finnie, PhD, has been a faculty member in Eastern Washington University’s Africana Education Program and history department since 1992 and currently serves as director of Africana studies and as director of race and cultural studies. He has made more than 40 presentations worldwide in the last 10 years, including visits to Oxford in England, Mexico City, Atlanta, San Francisco, San Diego, Sao Paulo, and Honolulu. His presentations have covered themes surrounding civil rights, affirmative action, servant leadership, diversity and cross-cultural communication, the American criminal justice system, and faculty hiring in higher education.

In addition, he has published a dozen articles in numerous publications, including The National Social Science Journal, Investigating Diversity: Race, Ethnicity and Beyond, The Oxford Round Table Journal, The Council on Undergraduate Research Quarterly, and The International Journal of Servant Leadership.

Pat Gelsinger, CEO of VMware, spoke on balancing work, family and faith. VMware is a global leader in cloud infrastructure and digital workspace technology, and a recent article on VMware in Forbes described the company this way: “It’s not an exaggeration to say that VMware stands at the center of the IT universe. The company’s software touches nearly every element of modern IT architecture.” VMware employs more than 24,000 employees and revenue for fiscal 2018 was nearly $9 billion.

Gelsinger brings almost 40 years of technology and leadership experience. Since coming to VMware in 2012, he has doubled the size of VMware, which software powers the world’s complex digital infrastructure. The company’s compute, cloud, mobility, networking, and security offerings provide a dynamic and efficient digital foundation to over 500,000 customers globally, aided by an ecosystem of 75,000 partners. Based on his efforts, Fortune Magazine named Gelsinger one of its top “Businesspersons of the Year” in 2018.

Prior to joining VMware, Gelsinger was president and chief operating officer of EMC’s Infrastructure and Products Group. There, he was responsible for all of EMC’s products – including storage, data analytics, security, management and data protection products, analytics, and the large majority of EMC’s revenue.