A pulitzer prize-winning American historian and professor will be the first speaker in NIU’s newly-established “Distinguished Lecturer Series.”

Arthur Scheslinger, Jr. will discuss the post-Cold War world in a free public lecture Nov. 14 at 8 p.m. in the Holmes Student Center’s Carl Sandberg Auditorium.

The new series will continue an NIU tradition established by a recently concluded speakers series on the Bicentennial of the U.S. Constitution, said NIU Provost Kendall Baker.

“I envision the series bringing to campus outstanding individuals from a wide variety of disciplines and interdisciplinary areas who can … engage students, faculty, and the larger community in discussions of significant contemporary issues,” Baker said.

NIU history professor Jordan Shwarz, chairman of the Bicentennial Series, will chair the faculty committee that will select speakers. The group plans to schedule two speakers each year and urges all interested persons to send nominations and recommendations to him.

“The lecture series will certainly support and enhance the intellectual environment of the university,” Shwarz said. The series will be funded by the provost’s office.

Although Schlesinger classifies himself as a writer and history educator, he probably became best known to the public in the early 1960s as a special assistant to then President John F. Kennedy, ranking as a leading member of Kennedy’s controversial “Harvard Brain Trust.”

A native of Columbus, Ohio, Schesinger, 73, graduated summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa from Harvard in 1938, then was a fellow at Cambridge.