Welcome to The Norfolk Forum Web Site

Founded in 1933, the Norfolk Forum is the oldest publicly-subscribed speakers' forum in the country. Each year in Norfolk's Chrysler Hall, the Forum presents four, thought-provoking public figures that in different ways help shape American thought and opinion. After each presentation, speakers engage the audience in a question and answer session.

We are pleased to announce that the 2011-12 series will feature Tony Blair, Edward Ayers, Frank Deford and Jeb Bush. They will address topics as diverse as world affairs, public policy, education, and popular culture.

To purchase tickets, please visit the Tickets section of this website. Tickets prior to October 5, 2011 were only available on a full-season basis. After October 6, a partial season ticket for the final 3 speakers is available for sale for $100. All buyers of partial season tickets will be included as Season Ticket holders for priority consideration of season ticket sales for the following year.

We hope that you choose to join us at the upcoming season of the Norfolk Forum. We look forward to another very exciting series. As we proudly claim, it's the best ticket in town.

William M. Furr, President

 

2011-12 Speakers
Programs are held at 8:15 pm in Chrysler Hall, Norfolk.

TONY BLAIR
Wednesday, October 5, 2011 – 8:15 p.m.

Tony Blair served as Prime Minister of Great Britain and Northern Ireland from May 1997 to June 2007. He was also the leader of Britain's Labour Party (1994 to 2007) and the Member of Parliament for Sedgefield, England (1983 to 2007).

Blair continues to be active in public life. He has many interests, not least his current role in the Middle East, which takes up the largest proportion of his time. He is working for the USA, UN, Russia and EU as the Quartet Representative, helping the Palestinians to prepare for statehood as part of the international community's effort to secure peace.

Blair has launched the Tony Blair Faith Foundation to promote respect and understanding of and between the major religions and to make the case for faith as a force for good in the modern world. The foundation will work with Christians, Muslims, Jews, Hindus, Sikhs and Buddhists. Blair believes that faith will have great influence in how the challenges that globalisation presents will be met.

The Foundation will show the good of faith in action by mobilising faith communities to work together in pursuit of the Millennium Development Goals to tackle global poverty and conflict. The Foundation's first aim is the eradication of deaths from malaria through multi-faith action. It is also focusing on other critical areas such as its education programme, which will create innovative ways for young people of different faiths to learn with, from and about each other. The Foundation also will seek to work with the world's most respected scholars, economists, business people and politicians to deepen the understanding of the relationship between faith and globalisation. As an initial step, the Foundation will support a high-quality academic course at Yale University, where Blair will be teaching a seminar class, to explore these issues and disseminate findings around the world.

In addition he will continue to be an advocate on the issues he cares about such as Africa and climate change. On Africa, Blair is a member of the Africa Progress Panel, which was established following the Gleneagles G8 to keep world leaders' attention on Africa and the commitments made on development. In addition, Blair is working on governance projects in Rwanda and Sierra Leone, advising President Koroma and President Kagame respectively on policy delivery and attracting investment, with a team of his staff working full-time with both countries.

On climate change, Blair published the first report from his 'Breaking the Climate Deadlock' initiative in June, which set out the framework for a new global deal for a low carbon future. It answered a series of practical questions about how the world can move to a low carbon economy. The project will now continue to identify the actions and questions that need to be resolved by political and business leaders to achieve a successful outcome to the UN climate change negotiations in Copenhagen in December 2009.

During his ten years as Prime Minister, Blair transformed Britain's public services through a program of investment and reform in schools and hospitals, resulting in more children achieving better school results and more people receiving faster access to health care, with improved survival rates for cancer and coronary heart disease.

Blair has always been a strong advocate of a values-based, activist and multilateralist foreign policy-an agenda that combined tackling terrorism and intervention in Iraq, Afghanistan, Kosovo and Sierra Leone, with action on issues like climate change, global poverty, Africa and the Middle East Peace Process. Blair is also widely credited for his contribution towards assisting the Northern Ireland Peace Process by helping jointly to negotiate the Good Friday Agreement and deliver a power-sharing government.

In recognition of his debt to the North East, he has also launched the Tony Blair Sports Foundation, which will increase participation in sport by young people, particularly those who are currently socially excluded–by inspiring more adults to become trained coaches; by providing access to high quality nationally-accredited training for those we recruit; and by helping to match coaches with the schools and sports clubs which need them. Blair's memoir, A Journey: My Political Life, was released in September 2010 and made The New York Times Best-seller List within a week of its release.

 

EDWARD AYERS
Tuesday, January 10, 2012 – 8:15 p.m.

In July 2007, Edward Ayers assumed the presidency of the University of Richmond. Previously Dean of Arts and Sciences at the University of Virginia, where he began teaching in 1980, Ayers was named the National Professor of the Year by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching in 2003.

A historian of the American South, Ayers has written and edited ten books. The Promise of the New South: Life After Reconstruction was a finalist for both the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize. In the Presence of Mine Enemies: Civil War in the Heart of America won the Bancroft Prize for distinguished writing in American history and the Beveridge Prize for the best book in English on the history of the Americas since 1492. A pioneer in digital history, Ayers created The Valley of the Shadow: Two Communities in the American Civil War, a Web site that has attracted millions of users and won major prizes in the teaching of history.

Ayers has received a presidential appointment to the National Council on the Humanities, served as a Fulbright professor in the Netherlands, and been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

 

FRANK DEFORD
Tuesday, February 28, 2012 – 8:15 p.m.

Among the most versatile of writers, Frank Deford’s work has appeared in virtually every medium. In magazines, he is the Senior Contributing Writer at Sports Illustrated. On radio, he may be heard as a commentator every Wednesday on Morning Edition on National Public Radio and, on television, he is a regular correspondent on the HBO show,“RealSports With Bryant Gumbel.”

Moreover, Deford is the author of fourteen books, two of which -- the novel, Everybody’s All-American, and Alex: The Life Of A Child, his memoir about his daughter who died of cystic fibrosis -- have been made into movies. His most recent book, The Old Ball Game, about Christy Mathewson and John McGraw and baseball at the turn of the century, was published last year by Grove/Atlantic. Deford’s latest original screenplay, Four Minutes, about Roger Bannister and the four-minute mile, appeared last fall on ESPN.

As a journalist, Deford was most recently presented with the National Magazine Award for profiles for his story on Bill Russell. He has been elected to the Hall of Fame of the National Association of Sportscasters and Sportswriters. Six times Deford was voted by his peers as U.S. Sportswriter of The Year. The American Journalism Review has likewise cited him as the nation’s finest sportswriter, and twice he was voted Magazine Writer of The Year by the Washington Journalism Review.

Deford has been presented with a Christopher Award and journalism Honor Awards from the University of Missouri and Northeastern University, and he has received many honorary degrees. The Sporting News has described Deford as “the most influential sports voice among members of the print media,” and the magazine GQ has called him, simply, “the world’s greatest sportswriter.” In broadcast, Deford has won both an Emmy and a George Foster Peabody Award. A television biography of Deford’s life and work, You
Write Better Than You Play, premiered on ESPN last August.

For sixteen years, Deford served as national chairman of the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, and he remains chairman emeritus. He resides in Westport, Connecticut with his wife, Carol. They have two children -- a son, Christian, and a daughter, Scarlet. A native of Baltimore, Deford is a graduate of Princeton University, where he has taught in American Studies.

 

JEB BUSH
Tuesday, April 24, 2012 – 8:15 p.m.

Jeb Bush was elected the 43rd Governor of the state of Florida on November 3, 1998, and was reelected by a wide margin in 2002. His second term as Governor ended in January 2007.

Bush earned a bachelor's degree in Latin American Affairs from the University of Texas at Austin and moved to Florida in 1981. With partner Amando Codina, he started a small real estate development company, which grew to become the largest, full-service commercial real estate company in South Florida.

Bush served as Florida's secretary of commerce under Bob Martinez, Florida's 40th governor. As secretary of commerce, he promoted Florida's business climate worldwide. Following an unsuccessful bid for Governor in 1994, Bush founded the non-profit Foundation for Florida's Future, which joined forces with the Greater Miami Urban League to establish one of the state's first charter schools. He also co-authored Profiles in Character, a book profiling 14 of Florida's civic heroes-people making a difference without claiming a single news headline.

After his election, Bush focused on reforming education. Florida students have made the greatest gains in achievement and Florida is one of a handful of states that have closed the achievement gap. In addition, Bush cut taxes every year during his tenure as Governor and Florida lead the nation in job growth. Bush put Florida on the forefront of consumer healthcare advances by signing Medicaid reform legislation, "Empowered Care," in June 2006.

Bush is currently the head of his own successful consulting business, Jeb Bush and Associates, where his clients range from small technology start-ups to well-known Fortune 500 companies. He is also the chairman of Foundation for Excellence in Education, a national foundation focused on education reform.

Bush is the son of former President George H.W. Bush and Barbara Bush. He lives in Miami with his wife Columba, and they have three children.

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