Montgomery County Community College’s annual Presidential Symposium on Diversity will feature American historian and writer, Tara Westover, who will speak about her courageous educational journey as documented in her New York Times best-seller, “Educated.”

The Symposium is free and open to the community and will be held on Tuesday, Nov. 12, at 12:30 p.m. in MCCC’s Health Sciences Center – Main Gym, 340 DeKalb Pike, Blue Bell, with a simulcast to South Hall Room 221, West Campus, 101 College Drive, Pottstown and The Culinary Arts Institute, Room 217, 1400 Forty Foot Road, Lansdale. Reserve your free ticket at mc3.edu/educated.

Westover was born to Mormon survivalist parents opposed to public education. She never attended school. She spent her days working in her father’s junkyard or stewing herbs for her mother, who was a midwife and healer, until she decided to get an education and experience the world outside of her community.

To attend college, Westover taught herself enough mathematics, grammar, and science to take the ACT and was admitted to Brigham Young University. She was seventeen the first time she set foot in a classroom and continued learning for a decade, graduating magna cum laude from Brigham Young University in 2008 and subsequently winning a Gates Cambridge Scholarship. She earned an MPhil from Trinity College, Cambridge in 2009, and in 2010 was a visiting fellow at Harvard University. She returned to Cambridge, where she was awarded a Ph.D. in history in 2014.

Her book, “Educated,” is an account of the struggle for self-invention. It is a story that gets to the heart of what education is and what it offers: the perspective to see one’s life through new eyes, and the will to change it. Westover argues that education is not just about job training, but a powerful tool of self-invention. “Educated” was long-listed for the 2019 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence and has spent 83 weeks on The New York Times Best-Sellers list. Former U.S. President Barack Obama named “Educated” as one of the books on his summer reading list of 2018.

MCCC’s annual Presidential Symposium is a capstone event that advances and facilitates ongoing public dialogue on diversity and inclusiveness among students, employees and community members. Past keynote speakers have included Rinku Sen, Derrick Pitts, Wes Moore, Richard Blanco, Charles Johnson, Jacqueline Woodson and Judy Shephard. 

Photo: Montgomery County Community College’s Presidential Symposium will feature author/historian Tara Westover, who will speak about her courageous educational journey as documented in her book, “Educated.” Photo by Paul Stuart