Thurman, a Daytona Beach native, was a spiritual adviser to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and was hailed as one of the greatest pastors of the Twentieth Century. He was the first African American Dean of the Marsh Chapel at Boston University and co-founder of The Fellowship Church for All Peoples in San Francisco, the first interracially co-pastored church in America. Through the Howard Thurman Lecture Series, Stetson hosts monthly world-class speakers who challenge the University’s internal as well as external audiences to seek solutions to social, religious, and ethnic problems both in America and around the world. In addition to public lectures, each speaker visits classes or holds workshops with Stetson students and faculty, offering them new perspectives on social justice and encouraging them to bridge the intellectual work of the classroom to work in forwarding justice in the world.

Recent Thurman speakers have included Derrick Bell, Taylor Branch, Angela Davis, Cain Felder, John Lewis, Fred Shuttlesworth, Randall Robinson, Calvin Butts, and Andrea Young.