Jefferson Lecture in the Humanities

EVENT UPDATE: The 51st Jefferson Lecture in the Humanities has been postponed.

Due to the devastating wildfires in the greater Los Angeles area, the lecture has been postponed. Please check back soon for the updated date and time, or sign up to receive news and updates from NEH.

If you are a member of the Los Angeles community and are seeking federal assistance, please see FEMA.gov.

See Sam Mihara deliver the Jefferson Lecture in the Humanities in Los Angeles, on January 15.

Sam Mihara, public speaker, historian, and educator, will deliver the 2024 Jefferson Lecture in the Humanities, “Memories of Injustice,” at 6 p.m. PST on January 15, 2025, in Los Angeles.

The lecture will be hosted at the Japanese American National Museum and the Japanese American Cultural & Community Center in Little Tokyo. Mihara will speak about the history of Japanese American incarceration during World War II and his personal experiences as a prisoner at a U.S. relocation camp near Heart Mountain, Wyoming. The lecture is free and open to the public.

NEH’s Jefferson Lecture is the highest honor the federal government bestows for distinguished intellectual achievement in the humanities.

Sam Mihara is a second-generation Japanese American (Nisei), born and raised in San Francisco. When World War II broke out, the U.S. government forced Sam, age nine, and his family to move to the Heart Mountain War Relocation Camp in Wyoming—one of ten Pr*son camps across the country used for the internment of more than 120,000 Japanese Americans evicted from their homes following the bombing of Pearl Harbor in December 1941. Mihara lived with his family in a one-room Heart Mountain barrack for three years, held captive against their will by barbed wire fences and armed sentries.

After the war ended, Mihara’s family returned home to San Francisco. He went on to earn bachelor’s and master’s degrees in engineering from the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of California, Los Angeles, and worked for more than four decades as a rocket scientist, including as an executive on space programs for the Boeing Company.

Following retirement, Mihara chose to become active in public education about Japanese American relocation and internment and in the preservation of the Heart Mountain historic Pr*son site where he and his family were incarcerated. He has spoken to over 120,000 students of all ages in the U.S., Asia, and Europe about his experiences, and he tours nationally to speak to educators, schools, historians, law firms, law schools, and government agencies. Mihara has been a board member of the Heart Mountain Wyoming Foundation, the nonprofit organization that oversees the National Historic Landmark site, since 2014, and has served as a faculty member at NEH-supported Landmarks of American History and Culture workshops for educators at Heart Mountain.

Tickets to the lecture are free of charge and distributed on a first-come, first-served basis.

The Jefferson Lecture will also be livestreamed at neh.gov for audiences outside Los Angeles. Sign up to receive updates from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH).

About the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH):Created in 1965 as an independent federal agency, the National Endowment for the Humanities supports research and learning in history, literature, philosophy, and other areas of the humanities by funding selected, peer-reviewed proposals from around the nation. Additional information about the National Endowment for the Humanities and its grant programs is available at .

The 2024 Jefferson Lecture in the Humanities is partially funded by the Mellon Foundation.

Host or Publisher National Endowment for the Humanities