Lectures at Clare Hall

The Tanner Lecture on Human Values

The Tanner Lecture on Human Values is a multi-university lecture series in the humanities, established in 1976 by the American philanthropist and scholar Obert Clark Tanner. The purpose of the Tanner Lectures is to advance and reflect upon the scholarly and scientific learning relating to human values.

The Tanner Lectures are funded by a charitable trust set up by Obert C. Tanner, who was Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at the University of Utah, and his wife Grace A. Tanner, whose academic interests inclined toward the sciences – especially biology and anthropology. The founding trustees held their first meeting at Clare Hall in 1978.

Clare Hall hosts the Obert C. Tanner Lecture in Cambridge. Tanner Lectures are also held annually at Harvard University, Princeton University, Yale University, University of California, Berkeley, Stanford University, University of Utah, University of Michigan and in Oxford at Linacre College.

The Ashby Lecture

Since 1985, Clare Hall has hosted the Ashby Lecture, a widely acclaimed event in Cambridge, running within the Obert C. Tanner Lecture series. Named after one of the founders of Clare Hall, the Ashby Lecture focuses on the presentation and discussion of ideas that inspire human values in a wider sense: values that relate, in compelling and contemporary ways, to philosophical questioning about the nature of life and society.

The King Lecture

Clare Hall established the King Lectures in Biomedical Sciences in 2016. This lecture series is made possible through a generous gift from Professor Donald West King. Professor King is a pathologist and has held faculty positions in Pathology at Yale, University of Colorado, Columbia University, and the University of Chicago. He is a Life Member of Clare Hall.