Brinkley to Deliver 15th Annual Culver Lecture

Douglas Brinkley, presidential historian and commentator, will deliver the 15th Annual Culver Lecture, “Growing Green: George W. Carver to Jimmy Carter,” at 7 p.m., Thursday, March 26, 2026, in Pote Theatre, Blank Performing Arts Center on the Simpson College campus. Following the lecture, Brinkley will sign copies of his most recent book, “Silent Spring Revolution:  John F. Kennedy, Rachel Carson, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, and the Great Environmental Awakening.” The event is free and open to the public.

Brinkley is the Katherine Tsanoff Brown Chair in humanities and professor of history at Rice University and a frequent commentator on CBS News, MSNow and CNN. He is the author or editor of 24 books, including works on Presidents Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Kennedy, Nixon, Ford, Carter, and Reagan. He has also written extensively on American popular culture, music, social movements, civil rights, and the environmental movement. Brinkley serves as presidential historian for the New York Historical Society and contributing editor at Vanity Fair. Brinkley is a trustee for the Madison Council at the Library of Congress, the National Archives Foundation, the Bruce Springsteen Archives and Center for American Music, the Woody Guthrie Center, the Bob Dylan Center, the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library, and the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library. Six of his nonfiction books have been chosen as New York Times’s “Notable Book of the Year.”

“The John C. Culver Public Policy Center is excited to welcome Dr. Brinkley to Simpson College,” said Seth Andersen, director of the Culver Center. “Brinkley stands not only as one of our nation’s pre-eminent presidential historians, but as a leading scholar of the green revolution in agriculture and the modern environmental movement. He also enjoyed a friendship with the late Senator John C. Culver, who contributed to landmark legislation establishing the Endangered Species Act and the Environmental Protection Agency.”

Brinkley is the recipient of environmental leadership prizes such as the Frances K. Hutchison Medal (Garden Club of America), Robin W. Winks Award for Enhancing Public Understanding of National Parks (National Parks Conservation Association), and the US Fish and Wildlife Service’s Lifetime Heritage Award. His book, “The Great Deluge: Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans, and the Mississippi Gulf Coast,” received the Robert F. Kennedy Book Award.

The Culver Lecture is one of many Simpson events being presented to celebrate the 250^th anniversary of the founding of the United States in 1776. Throughout 2026, Simpson will commemorate America 250 through a series of major lectures, panel discussions, and student-led initiatives to bring American history to life.