About

Guilford College’s Bryan Series enriches the educational and cultural experience for residents of Greensboro and the central North Carolina region with provocative speaker programs featuring well-known figures in the arts, humanities and public affairs.

Past speakers have included President Bill Clinton, Mikhail Gorbachev, Madeleine Albright, Desmond Tutu, Sidney Poitier, Bill Bradley, Bill Moyers and Toni Morrison. Five heads of state, five Nobel Prize laureates, two former U.S. Secretaries of State and winners of MacArthur Fellowships and Academy, Tony, Grammy and Emmy Awards have been speakers in the series.

The Bryan Series is presented at 2,400-seat War Memorial Auditorium in the Greensboro Coliseum Complex.  In the fall of 2010, the event featuring President Clinton was presented to a crowd of 4,200 in the Coliseum Arena.

The series subscription program was established in 2005 and has been sold out two of the past three years.  Patrons are from more than 40 cities and towns across central North Carolina.  In 2011, the Bryan Series Legacy Society was established with premium benefits.

College trustee Joseph M. Bryan Jr. established the Bryan Distinguished Visiting Professorship in the Arts Humanities and Public Affairs with a gift to the College in 1994. Speaker events began in 1996 and the lectures became the “Bryan Series” in 2002.  Until 2005, events were presented on campus.