DLS Home 2025
Welcome to Riverside Theatre's Distinguished Lecturer Series
The longest continuously-running lecture series in Vero Beach.
The Riverside Theatre Distinguished Lecturer Series is proud to enter its 27th season of bringing the finest and most diversified guest lecturers to one of the preeminent theatre locations on the Treasure Coast. We invite you to join us this season as we celebrate our rich and notable past, and our exciting future. Learn more about the Lecturer Series.
Vero’s premiere lecturer series is proud of its distinguished and diversified list of speakers this year. We promise you will learn, you will think, you will be stimulated, and you will be entertained. View our past speakers.
January 20, 2025
PM Naftali Bennett*
Israel’s 13th Prime Minister
Throughout his decade in Israeli politics Bennett served as Minister of Economy, Minister of Education and Minister of Defense, where he was known for his innovations and bold reforms.
LECTURE TIMES: 4:00 p.m. and 6:00 p.m.
*1/6/25: Updated speaker due to unavoidable cancellation
February 10, 2025
Michael Gallagher
China
Mike Gallagher is a distinguished fellow at Hudson Institute.
Dr. Gallagher represented Wisconsin’s Eighth District in the United States House of Representatives from 2017 to 2024. In the 118th Congress, he served as the founding chairman of the Select Committee on Strategic Competition between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party, as chairman of the House Armed Services Subcommittee on Cyber, Information Technologies, and Innovation, and on the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. From 2019 to 2021, he served as cochairman of the Cyberspace Solarium Commission.
LECTURE TIMES: 4:00 p.m. and 6:00 p.m.
March 31, 2025
Bari Weiss
Media and Politics
Bari Weiss is the founder and editor of The Free Press and host of the podcast Honestly. From 2017 to 2020 Weiss was an opinion writer and editor at The New York Times. Before that, she was an op-ed and book review editor at The Wall Street Journal and a senior editor at Tablet Magazine.
LECTURE TIMES: 4:00 p.m. and 6:00 p.m.
April 21, 2025
David Roscoe
Artificial Intelligence
David l. Roscoe is currently the Chair of The Hastings Center Advisory Council and Board Chair Emeritus, and in those capacities has represented The Hastings Center, an independent non-profit bioethics research institute, as an active participant in the global AI community since 2017. Drawing on insights gained from this experience, over the past eight years he has spoken frequently to many private clubs and associations with the aim of making AI intelligible to general audiences and highlighting the many social, economic, geopolitical and ethical issues created by this transformative technology.
LECTURE TIMES: 4:00 p.m. and 6:00 p.m.
HAVE A QUESTION FOR ONE OF OUR SPEAKERS?
Send it to us on our contact page.
As in past years, the expertise and notoriety of our guest lecturers can lead to sold out performances. We encourage you to subscribe now to ensure your choice of performance time and seat selection.
Riverside Theatre is the preeminent entertainment venue for Vero Beach and surrounding areas. Riverside Theatre Distinguished Lecturer Series has welcomed over 100 distinguished lecturers over the past 26 years and is a major fundraiser for Riverside Theatre.