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About the Forum

WHO WE ARE

The Westminster Town Hall Forum is a lecture series focused on issues of the day from an ethical perspective. The Forum is not a religious organization. People of all faiths and no faith are welcome at everything we do. We have a longstanding partnership with Westminster Presbyterian Church, which has been the home of the Town Hall Forum since our inception in 1980.

The Forum began as the brainchild of Westminster members Diane and Paul Niemann who relocated to the Twin Cities from Pittsburgh, where they had attended a local lecture series. They believed a city as great as Minneapolis deserved its own world-class speaker series.

So, under the leadership of Westminster’s senior pastor, The Rev. Dr. Don Meisel, the Forum launched in 1980 with its first speaker—Watergate special prosecutor Archibald Cox. Its mission: to invite voices of conscience to address the issues of the day from an ethical perspective. Since then, more than 350 speakers have addressed Forum audiences, including, among others, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Elie Wiesel, Thomas Friedman, Maya Angelou, Kathleen Hall Jamieson, DavidMcCullough, Marcus Borg, Marian Wright Edelman, Barbara Brown Taylor, David Brooks, Salman Rushdie, Gwen Ifill, and Bryan Stevenson. While the issues and speakers have changed over the years, the Forum has retained its core value: Ethics matter.

GOVERNANCE

The Town Hall Forum is guided by a volunteer advisory board comprised of Westminster Church members and at-large community leaders. Our board meets throughout the year and provides support, oversight, and guidance in the areas of policy, community relations, development, and programming. The Forum is also led and managed by a paid director.

OUR EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR

In August 2025, the Forum hired a new Executive Director, Sara Wilhelm Garbers. Sara has a doctorate degree in philosophy—with a focus on ethics—from Loyola University in Chicago, and she brings a broad range of experience, having worked with colleges, universities, non-profits, and churches. She grew up listening to the Forum broadcast on MPR, and is deeply committed to its mission: “Ethics matter, and in this moment, they are profoundly vital for the flourishing of our lives, our communities, our institutions, and our democracy.”

OUR BOARD

The current board members are Co-Chairs Sandy Wolfe Wood and Steve Snyder, Luna Allen-Bakerian, Darlynn Benjamin, Ben Knoll, Gretchen Musicant, Buffy Smith, Monica Westerlund, and The Rev. Dr. Jessica Patchett, Pastor Liaison.

OUR PHOTOGRAPHERS

The Forum has long benefitted from the talents of two gifted photographers:

Tom Northenscold is responsible for all of the photographs on this website. You may notice him on Forum days, camera-in-hand, capturing key moments with our speakers, between members of the audience, during our reception: his artistic eye and his sense of lighting makes thius website sing, and we are so grateful for his contribution to the Forum.

Doug Knutson has documented our speakers for almost 30 years. It is a Forum tradition for Doug to meet with each speaker beforehand and shoot his or her portrait. Doug will engage a speaker in conversation, put that person at ease, and in doing so, capture that person’s personality beautifully. Take time to visit our ‘speaker wall’ — a compendium of Doug’s Forum portraits — to the left of the stairs as you walk up from the garage; you will see how many people you recognize who have spoken over the years at the Westminster Town Hall Forum.