A lecture series that debuts Wednesday, Nov. 5, will honor the memory of a former Cal Poly Pomona professor who also was an award-winning journalist, filmmaker and human rights activist.
The late Professor Emeritus Saul Landau was the first holder of the Hugh O. La Bounty Chair for Interdisciplinary and Applied Knowledge at Cal Poly Pomona. Later, he taught in the history department and served as chair of Digital and Media Studies. Landau invited and interviewed journalists, scholars, artists and celebrities about world and U.S. issues, the media, the death penalty and other topics at a series of events he called the Campus Forum. He died Sept. 9, 2013, after battling cancer.
In his memory, the College of Letters, Arts & Social Sciences is re-instituting the Campus Forum and renaming it the Saul Landau Lecture Series.
"We thought it was a fitting way to honor Saul's memory and carry on his legacy to future generations of students," says Geography and Anthropology Professor Dorothy Wills, who served on a committee that made the proposal.
The Nov. 5 forum is the first in the renewed series. Landau's son, Greg, and collaborator Jon Alpert will show and discuss "La Lucha Continua," the last documentary film that Saul Landau worked on before he died. The film examines the plight of LGBT people in Cuba, a country that Landau had visited many times.
The lecture will be held from 4 to 6 p.m. in the Bronco Student Center's Centaurus Room. The event is free and sponsored by the president's office, CLASS, the California Faculty Association and The Anthropological Society.
The film is emblematic of Landau's career, which included producing more than 40 films on social, political, historical and human rights issues. The films covered such topics as documentaries on Cuba, the election of Chilean President Salvador Allende and health hazards related to 1950s nuclear weapons testing.
In addition, Landau wrote 14 books and was published in The New York Times and The Washington Post, and was a regular columnist for The San Francisco Chronicle. He was also a fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies.
He won numerous awards for his work, including an Emmy, the George Polk Award for Investigative Reporting, the First Amendment Award, the Edgar Allen Poe Award and the Letelier-Moffitt Human Rights Award.
Landau came to Cal Poly Pomona in 1999. In addition to teaching history and digital and media studies, he oversaw international outreach programs and developed a study-abroad program in Cuba. He retired from Cal Poly Pomona in 2006.
For more information about the lectures, please contact Wills at ddwills@cpp.edu or (909) 869-3582.