Ware Lecture
2023 Ware Lecture: Imani Perry
The 2023 address will take place at 7:00 p.m. Eastern on Saturday, June 24. In-person registration is required to attend the event in Pittsburgh. In-person or full virtual registration is required to live-stream the event on June 24, or access the video on-demand when it is posted.

Imani Perry is the Hughes-Rogers Professor of African American Studies at Princeton University and a faculty associate with Gender and Sexuality Studies and Jazz Studies. In the summer of 2023 she will join the faculty at Harvard University as a Radcliffe Professor. Perry is also a contributing writer for The Atlantic, Perry is the author of seven books, most recently South to America: A Journey Below the Mason-Dixon to Understand the Soul of a Nation (Ecco Books, 2022), which received the 2022 National Book Award for Nonfiction and was an instant New York Times bestseller and Indie bestseller. South to America was named one of President Obama’s favorite books of 2022, and included in numerous end-of-year best-of lists. Her book Breathe: A Letter to My Sons (Beacon Press, 2019) was a finalist for the 2020 Chautauqua Prize and a finalist for the NAACP Image Award for Excellence in Nonfiction. She is also the author of Looking for Lorraine: The Radiant and Radical Life of Lorraine Hansberry (Beacon Press, 2018), which received the Pen Bograd-Weld Award for Biography, the Phi Beta Kappa Christian Gauss Award for outstanding work in literary scholarship, the Lambda Literary Award for LGBTQ Nonfiction and the Shilts-Grahn Award for nonfiction from the Publishing Triangle. Looking for Lorraine was also named a 2018 notable book by the New York Times, and an honor book by the Black Caucus of the American Library Association. It was a finalist for the African American Intellectual History Society Pauli Murray Book Prize. Her book May We Forever Stand: A History of the Black National Anthem (University of North Carolina Press, 2018) was a winner of the 2019 American Studies Association John Hope Franklin Book Award for the best book in American Studies, the Hurston Wright Award for Nonfiction, and finalist for an NAACP Image Award in Nonfiction. Perry has written for numerous publications including The New York Times Magazine, The Progressive, New York Magazine, Harpers, and The Paris Review.
She is a scholar of law, literary and cultural studies, and an author of creative nonfiction. She earned her Ph.D. in American Studies from Harvard University, a J.D. from Harvard Law School, an LLM from Georgetown University Law Center, and a BA from Yale College in Literature and American Studies. Her writing and scholarship primarily focus on the history of Black thought, art, and imagination. She seeks to understand the processes of retrenchment after moments of social progress, and how freedom dreams are nevertheless sustained. Her book: Vexy Thing: On Gender and Liberation (Duke University Press, 2018) is a work of critical theory that describes the formation of modern patriarchy at the dawn of capitalism, the transatlantic slave trade and the age of conquest, and traces it through to the contemporary hypermedia neoliberal era. Her book More Beautiful and More Terrible: The Embrace and Transcendence of Racial Inequality in the United States (NYU Press, 2011) is an examination of contemporary practices of racial inequality that are sustained and extended through a broad matrix of cultural habits despite formal declarations of racial equality. Her first book, Prophets of the Hood: Politics and Poetics in Hip Hop (Duke Press, 2004) was one of the earliest scholarly examinations of the music and culture.
History of the Ware Lecture
The Unitarian Universalist Association (UUA) President, in consultation with the General Assembly Planning Committee, invites a distinguished guest each year to address the General Assembly as the Ware Lecturer.
In 1920, Harriet E. Ware of Milton, MA, bequeathed $5,000 to the American Unitarian Association (AUA) for its unrestricted use. Two years later, on the evening of May 24, 1922, the first Ware Lecture was given by the Rev. Frederick W. Norwood, pastor of the City Temple in London, England. The lecture had been "established in honor of the distinguished services of three generations of the Ware family to the cause of Pure Christianity."
The lecture has been given every year at the former May Meetings of the AUA and since 1961 at the General Assembly. No lecture was scheduled for 1945 due to World War II, although Morris S. Lazaron delivered an address on May 23, 1945 at All Souls Church in Washington, DC, which is referred to as a Ware lecture. There was no lecture in 1950 when the Unitarians celebrated their 125th anniversary.
The Harvard Square Library maintains a history of the Ware Lecture, including illustrated biographical notes.
Previous Ware Lecturers
Previous Ware Lecturers have included the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., Kurt Vonnegut, and poet Mary Oliver.
- 2022 Dr. Ibram X. Kendi (video not available)
- 2021 Stacey Abrams and Desmond Meade (Vimeo 61 minutes)
- 2020 Naomi Klein (Vimeo 63 minutes)
- 2019 Richard Blanco
- 2018 Brittany Packnett
- 2017 Bryan Stevenson
- 2016 Krista Tippett
- 2015 Cornel West
- 2014 Sister Simone Campbell
- 2013 Eboo Patel
- 2012 Maria Hinojosa
- 2011 Karen Armstrong
- 2010 Winona LaDuke
- 2009 Melissa Harris-Lacewell
- 2008 Van Jones
- 2007 Rashid Khalidi
- 2006 Mary Oliver
- 2005 Dr. Elaine Pagels
- 2004 Holly Near
- 2003 Julian Bond
- 2002 Stephen Lewis
- 2001 Rev. Dr. James A. Forbes
- 2000 Morris Dees
- 1999 Mary Pipher
- 1998 Amitai Etzioni
- 1997 Rev. Joan Brown Campbell
- 1996 Sylvia Ann Hewlett
- 1995 Norman Lear
- 1994 Dr. Holland Hendrix
- 1993 Marian Wright Edelman
- 1992 Mel Hurtig
- 1991 Elizabeth Dodson Gray
- 1990 Schuyler Chapin
- 1989 Sissela Bok
- 1988 Robert Coles
- 1987 Anthony Lewis
- 1986 Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
- 1985 Shirley Chisholm
- 1984 Dr. Helen Caldicott
- 1983 Thomas R. Berger
- 1982 May Sarton
- 1981 Vernon Jordan, Jr.
- 1980 LaDonna Harris
- 1979 Jesse Jackson
- 1978 Jean Mayer
- 1977 Milton R. Konvitze
- 1976 Bruce Murray
- 1975 John Beecher
- 1974 Elliot Richardson
- 1973 John Coleman
- 1972 Malvina Reynolds
- 1971 Alvin Toffler
- 1970 Rollo May
- 1969 Martin E. Marty, Bernard Delfgaauw, R.J. Werblowsky
- 1968 Carl B. Stokes
- 1967 Saul Alinsky
- 1966 Martin Luther King, Jr.
- 1965 Harry D. Gideonse
- 1964 Linus Pauling
- 1963 F.S.C. Northrop
- 1962 Walter Kaufmann
- 1961 Abram Sachar
- 1960 Harold Taylor
- 1959 George Wald
- 1958 Edward A. Weeks, Jr.
- 1957 Charles Frankel
- 1956 Howard Thurman
- 1955 Henry DeWolf Smyth
- 1954 Agnes Ernst Meyer
- 1953 Howard Mumford Jones
- 1952 Henry Steele Commager
- 1951 T.V. Smith
- 1950 No lecture due to 125th Anniversary of Unitarians
- 1949 Erwin D. Canham
- 1948 Henry J. Cadbury
- 1947 Brock Chisholm
- 1946 George D. Stoddard
- 1945 No lecture due to World War II
- 1944 Max Lerner
- 1943 Walter Francis White
- 1942 Alfred M. Bingham
- 1941 Harry D. Gideonse
- 1940 Adolph Agustus Berle, Jr.
- 1939 Eduard C. Lindeman
- 1938 John Haynes Holmes
- 1937 Michael Williams
- 1936 James G. McDonald
- 1935 Frederick B. Fisher
- 1934 Reinhold Niebuhr
- 1933 Jesse H. Holmes
- 1932 Aurelia Henry Reinhardt
- 1931 Jane Addams
- 1930 William L. Sullivan
- 1929 Francis J. McConnell
- 1928 Frank Oliver Hall
- 1927 William Ellery Sweet
- 1926 James Smyth
- 1925 Ambrose W. Vernon
- 1924 John H. Finley
- 1923 K.H. Roessingh
- 1922 Rev. Frederick W. Norwood