The Dallas Institute of Humanities and Culture will present a daylong symposium for the city, “Understanding Tragedy: the Impact of the JFK Assassination on Dallas,” that will bring national and local leaders and experts together to explore the topic with Dallas citizens.

Veteran journalists Jim Lehrer and Lee Cullum, award-winning author Richard Rodriguez, U.S. Secret Service Director Julia Pierson (the agency’s first woman director), leading political, ethics and law intellectual Stephen Carter and many others will convene to discuss the impact of the assassination from four perspectives: Journalism, Politics, Art and the Humanities and Religion. The symposium will be not a tribute to or eulogy for Kennedy but rather an in-depth revisiting of what many consider to have been the most significant occurrence within the U.S. of the last half of the 20th Century.

In advance of the Symposium, the Ochberg Society for Trauma Journalism will offer two preview discussion panels on Friday, November 1, at the Sixth Floor Museum. Tickets for the event, which is open to the public, go on sale in mid-September at the Dallas Institute, but you can make a reservation in advance by calling the Institute Registrar at (214) 981-8803.