Jackson Katz to deliver annual McBride Lecture

Internationally renowned activist on issues of gender, race and violence, Jackson Katz, is set to deliver the annual McBride and Veteran’s Day Lecture at Simpson College on Wednesday, Nov. 6. 

His lecture, The Macho Paradox: Transforming Rape Culture at its Roots, begins at 1 p.m. in Hubbell Hall. The event is free and open to the public.

Katz is a co-founder of the multiracial, mixed-gender Mentors in Violence Prevention (MVP), one of the longest-running and most widely influential gender violence prevention programs in North America. MVP — which is utilized at Simpson —  is the first major program of its kind in the sports culture and the military. It introduced the ‘bystander’ approach to the sexual assault and relationship abuse fields, and Katz is a key architect of this now broadly popular strategy. 

He is the founder and president of MVP Strategies, which provides sexual harassment and gender violence prevention training for small and large corporations, educational institutions and community organizations. He has appeared on “The Today Show” and  “The Oprah Winfrey Show” and his TED Talk, “Violence Against Women is a Men’s Issue,” has been viewed more than 4 million times. 

Katz became the first man at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst to earn a minor in women’s studies. He holds a Master’s degree from the Harvard Graduate School of Education, and a Ph.D. in cultural studies and education from UCLA. 

About the McBride Lecture
The McBride Lectureship was established by the Simpson College Board of Trustees in 1987 in honor of Drs. Robert and Luella McBride. From 1979 to 1987, Robert McBride served as the 19th president of Simpson College. Through this lectureship, the McBrides are recognized for their service to the community and commitment to Simpson. The endowed fund for the lectureship was created with gifts from trustees, alumni and friends for the purpose of exposing students to great minds, critical thinking, the search for meaning, and the issues of personal integrity, moral responsibility, social justice, humane sensitivity and the cause of citizenship.