Julia Whitehead to Deliver Lecture on Kurt Vonnegut’s Legacy Whitehead is the founding CEO of the Kurt Vonnegut Museum and Library.

By Emily Innes Stanley
September 30, 2025

Julia Whitehead, founding CEO of the Kurt Vonnegut Museum and Library, will deliver a lecture titled “Free Speech and Common Decency: Vonnegut’s Legacy in a Time of Book Bans and Free Expression Overload” at Washington and Lee University at 4 p.m. on Oct. 8 in the Houston H. Harte Center Gallery in Leyburn Library. The talk is free and open to the public.

The lecture is sponsored by the University Library as part of the annual celebration of Freedom to Read Week, which celebrates the importance of open and free access to information.

In her lecture, Whitehead will bring Vonnegut’s passionate defense of free expression into today’s urgent conversation about the rise in censorship across the U.S. and balancing liberty with humanity.

Whitehead founded the Kurt Vonnegut Memorial Museum and Library in 2009. Located in Indianapolis, Indiana, the museum champions the literary, artistic and cultural contributions of the late writer, artist, teacher and Indianapolis native. The institution serves as a cultural and educational resource with a national reach, and sponsors programming and advocacy centered on First Amendment rights to free speech and expression, including the freedom to read and freedom from censorship.

Vonnegut’s legacy will also be celebrated with a screening of the 2015 documentary, “A Writer’s Roots: Kurt Vonnegut’s Indianapolis,” at noon on Oct. 8 in the Harte Center Gallery, followed by a question-and-answer session with Whitehead, who is featured in the documentary. The documentary was produced by Kevin Finch, associate professor of journalism at W&L and chair of the University Library Committee. Through footage from Indianapolis landmarks, archival photos and interviews with Vonnegut’s contemporaries and fans, the documentary explores Vonnegut’s hometown and the people and places that shaped him.