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Devotional and forum schedule for winter 2022 semester

At the heart of a BYU experience and education are devotional and forum addresses. Presented by industry experts, innovative thinkers and religious leaders, these speeches “assist individuals in their quest for perfection and eternal life.” Join BYU students, faculty and staff each Tuesday at 11:05 a.m. in the Marriott Center as they gather to experience spiritual and temporal edification.

Specific details on the delivery format for each devotional and forum will be forthcoming.

WINTER 2022 DEVOTIONAL AND FORUM SCHEDULE

January

  • 18: Elder Jeffrey R. Holland, Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
  • 25: Shankar Vedantam, journalist (forum)

February

  • 1: Justin Collings, BYU J. Reuben Clark Law School (devotional)
  • 8: Elder Clark G. Gilbert, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (devotional)
  • 15: James and Deborah Fallows, writers and journalists (forum)

March

  • 1: Elder Vern P. Stanfill, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (devotional)
  • 8: Megan Sanborn Jones, BYU College of Fine Arts and Communications (devotional)
  • 15: Elder Kelly R. Johnson, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (devotional)
  • 22: Elder D. Todd Christofferson, Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (devotional)
  • 29: Amy Chua, legal scholar and writer (forum)

April

  • 5: Anthony Sweat, BYU Religious Education (devotional)
  • 12: Unforum
Marriott Center in winter
Photo by Nate Edwards

More about the devotional and forum speakers:

Elder Jeffrey R. Holland
January 18, 2022, Devotional

Elder Jeffrey R. Holland was ordained a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints on June 23, 1994.

At the time of his call to the Quorum of the Twelve, Elder Holland was serving as a member of the First Quorum of the Seventy, to which he had been called on April 1, 1989. From 1980 until his call as a General Authority in 1989, Elder Holland served as the ninth president of Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah. He is a former Church commissioner of education and dean of Religious Education at BYU.

Elder Holland received his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in English and religious education, respectively, from Brigham Young University. He obtained master and doctor of philosophy degrees in American Studies from Yale University.

Shankar Vedantam
January 25, 2022, Forum

Vedantam is the host and creator of the podcast, "Hidden Brain," which receives more than three million downloads per week. He was NPR's social science correspondent between 2011 and 2020 and spent 10 years as a reporter at The Washington Post. From 2007 to 2009, he was also a columnist and wrote the “Department of Human Behavior” column for the Post. In 2009 and 2010, Vedantam served as a fellow at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University.

Vedantam is the author of the nonfiction book “The Hidden Brain: How Our Unconscious Minds Elect Presidents, Control Markets, Wage Wars and Save Our Lives.” He is also co-author, with Bill Mesler, of the 2021 book “Useful Delusions: The Power and Paradox of the Self-Deceiving Brain.”

Justin Collings
February 1, 2022, Devotional

Justin Collings is professor of law and associate dean for faculty and curriculum at BYU's J. Reuben Clark Law School, where he began teaching in 2013. Collings is a teacher and scholar of constitutional law and constitutional history, and he is the author of two academic books, both published by Oxford University Press, as well as numerous scholarly articles and book chapters. He studied at Brigham Young University, where he double-majored in English and Italian, as well as at Yale University, where he earned both a J.D. and a Ph.D. in history. During the 2012–13 judicial term, he was a law clerk to the Honorable Guido Calabresi of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. He is fluent in Italian and German and has a reading knowledge of French.

Professor Collings is married to the former Lia Suttner, who graduated magna cum laude from BYU with a degree in classics, and they are the parents of seven children.

Elder Clark G. Gilbert
February 8, 2022, Devotional

Elder Clark G. Gilbert was sustained as a General Authority Seventy of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints on April 3, 2021, and has been the Church Commissioner of Education since August of that year.

Elder Gilbert received a Bachelor of Arts degree in international relations from Brigham Young University in 1994. In 1995 he received a Master of Arts degree in Asian studies from Stanford University. In 2001 he received a Doctor of Business Administration degree from Harvard University.

Elder Gilbert worked as an assistant professor at Harvard University from 2001 to 2006. He then served as associate academic vice president of Brigham Young University–Idaho until 2009, at which time he began working as chief executive officer for Deseret News and Deseret Digital Media. In 2015 he became president of Brigham Young University–Idaho and two years later was named the president of BYU–Pathway Worldwide.

James and Deborah Fallows
February 15, 2022, Forum

James Fallows is an American writer and journalist. He has been a staff writer for The Atlantic since the late 1970s. He and his wife, Deborah Fallows, are the authors of the 2018 book “Our Towns: A 100,000-Mile Journey into the Heart of America,” which was a national best-seller and is the basis of an HBO documentary. His work has also appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The New York Review of Books, The New Yorker and The American Prospect, among others.

Fallows is a former editor of U.S. News & World Report. He has written several books and has won the National Magazine Award, American Book Award and a New York Emmy for a documentary series on China. He also worked for President Jimmy Carter as chief speechwriter.

A Harvard graduate with a Ph.D, in linguistics, Deborah Fallows is an author whose writing on women, education, work and travel has appeared in, among others, The Atlantic Monthly, National Geographic and Newsweek. She has turned her careful observations and beautiful prose to the small towns and industries that shape the United States.

Elder Vern P. Stanfill
March 1, 2022, Devotional

Elder Vern P. Stanfill was sustained as a General Authority Seventy of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints on April 4, 2015.

After his call as a General Authority, Elder Stanfill served in the Africa West Area Presidency. He has served in a number of committee assignments at Church headquarters and in the North America Northeast Area and North America Southeast Area Presidencies. Elder Stanfill is currently serving as president of the North America Southeast Area.

A native of Montana, he started his career managing his family’s ranch, which involved large cattle, hay and grain operations. He sold this business in 1998 and became involved in managing family assets and trusts. He has managed a portfolio of real estate and financial instruments and structured philanthropic and estate matters. As an aircraft pilot, he holds both commercial fixed wing and rotorcraft ratings and has been involved in aviation for both business and pleasure.

Megan Sanborn Jones
March 8, 2022, Devotional

Megan Sanborn Jones is the chair of the Department of Theater and Media Arts at BYU. She is an author and editor and is an active member of the American Society of Theatre Researchers, the Association of Theatre in Higher Education, the American Theatre and Drama Society and the Mormon History Association.

Her work has been published in the publications Theatre Journal, Theatre History Studies, Theatre Topics and Ecumenica. Her first book, “Performing American Identity in Anti-Mormon Melodrama” from Routledge Press, won the Mormon History Association Smith-Pettit Best First Book Award (2010) and her second book, “Contemporary Mormon Pageantry: Seeking After Our Dead” from the University of Michigan Press, was published in October 2018. She is currently working on an essay about representations of Jesus Christ as a character in twenty-first-century musicals and on a detailed history of the Hill Cumorah Pageant.

Sanborn Jones is also a director and choreographer whose credits at BYU include “Crazy for You,” “Arabian Nights,” Young Company’s “Twelfth Night,” “Princess Academy” and “Much Ado About Nothing.” Megan and her husband, Dr. Glen Jones, are the happy parents of two teenagers.

Elder Kelly R. Johnson
March 15, 2022, Devotional

Elder Kelly R. Johnson was sustained as a General Authority Seventy of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints on April 4, 2020, at age 57. He is currently serving at Church headquarters as Second Counselor in the North America Northeast Area Presidency.

He began his career in 1989 as a forensic accountant for KPMG. At the time of his call as a General Authority, he was a forensic accountant and partner for Norman, Townsend & Johnson, LLC.

He received a Bachelor of Science degree in accounting from Weber State University in 1987. In 1989 he received a Master of Business Administration degree from Brigham Young University.

Elder D. Todd Christofferson
March 22, 2022, Devotional

Elder D. Todd Christofferson was called to the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints on April 5, 2008. At the time of his call to the Quorum of the Twelve, he was serving in the Presidency of the Seventy.

Prior to his call to serve as a full-time General Authority of the Church, Elder Christofferson was associate general counsel of NationsBank Corporation (now Bank of America) in Charlotte, North Carolina. Previously, he was senior vice president and general counsel for Commerce Union Bank of Tennessee in Nashville, where he was also active in community affairs and interfaith organizations. From 1975 to 1980, Elder Christofferson practiced law in Washington, D.C., after serving as a law clerk to U.S. District Judge John J. Sirica during the trials and other proceedings known as Watergate (1972–74).

Elder Christofferson graduated from high school in New Jersey, earned his bachelor’s degree from Brigham Young University (where he was an Edwin S. Hinckley Scholar) and his law degree from Duke University.

Amy Chua
March 29, 2022, Forum

Amy Chua is a professor of law (graduate of Harvard Law) and a writer who currently teaches at Yale Law School, where she is the John M. Duff Jr. Professor of Law; before starting at Yale in 2001, she had taught at Duke for seven years. Her expertise is in international business transactions, law and development, ethnic conflict and globalization and the law.

Chua has written several books, including two studies of international affairs, a parenting memoir (“Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother”), a book on ethnic-American culture and its correlation with socio-economic success within the United States and, most recently, a book about the role of tribal loyalties in American politics and its foreign policy (“Political Tribes”). This most recent book explores the often-underestimated power of group identity and affiliation through a review of historical events (such as the U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War) and the current social and political climate. She is the daughter of ethnic Chinese parents who emigrated to the United States from the Philippines.

Anthony Sweat
April 5, 2022, Devotional

Anthony R. Sweat is an associate teaching professor of Church history and doctrine at BYU. He is the author of several books and articles related to the teachings of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. His research centers on factors that influence effective religious education. As a practicing artist, his paintings center on previously underrepresented, important aspects of Church history to promote visual learning.

He received a bachelor’s in fine arts in painting and drawing from the University of Utah and his master’s in education and Ph.D. from Utah State University. Before joining the religion faculty at BYU, he worked for thirteen years with Seminaries and Institutes of Religion. Anthony and his wife, Cindy, are the parents of seven children.

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