The Willi Unsoeld Seminar is bringing noted author and psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton to The Evergreen State College on Tuesday, April 25th at 8 p.m. The free event takes place in the Communications Building Recital Hall at Evergreen’s Olympia campus. It is open to the public.

The annual lecture series, which celebrates its 20th anniversary this year, honors Willi Unsoeld, leader of the first American expedition to reach the summit of Mt. Everest on May 22, 1963. A philosopher, theologian and mountaineer, Unsoeld was a founding member of the Evergreen faculty. He died in an avalanche on Mount Rainier in March 1979.

This year’s speaker, Dr. Robert Jay Lifton, has spent his life trying to understand the horror and violence that is an undeniable part of human experience. Following September 11, 2001, he undertook a study of Islamist apocalyptic violence and American responses to 9/11, culminating in his 2003 book Superpower Syndrome: America's Apocalyptic Confrontation with the World.

His newest book, Crimes of War – Iraq, coedited with Richard Falk and Irene Gendzier, was published in February 2006.

Lifton is lecturer in psychiatry at the Harvard Medical School and the Cambridge Health Alliance, and distinguished professor emeritus of psychiatry and psychology at The City University of New York. He was formerly director of The Center on Violence and Human Survival at John Jay College of Criminal Justice and had previously held the Foundations’ Fund Research Professorship of Psychiatry at Yale University for more than two decades.

Lifton’s work fits in well with the philosophy of Willi Unsoeld. “For me, the ultimate goal of all education is to help people treat each other better,