St. John's College has thrown open its Annapolis campus to the public this fall, offering a free lecture series that runs through December and mixes visiting scholars, musicians, poets, and the school's own tutors in front of anyone who wants to walk in and listen. Most evening programs land on Fridays at 7:30 p.m. in Francis Scott Key Auditorium inside Mellon Hall, with seating available on a first-come, first-served basis. Each talk is followed by an open audience question-and-answer session before the crowd files out.
The lineup, first detailed by Eye On Annapolis, kicked off with a lecture the college itself says opened even earlier than local coverage indicated. According to St. John's College, the Annapolis series actually began on August 28 with Annapolis Dean Suzy Paalman's talk, “Marital Flaws and Moral Education in Pride and Prejudice,” a session that predates the September dates circulating in regional press notices. The college credits Paalman and her Santa Fe counterpart, Dean Sarah Davis, with curating the parallel fall programs running on both of the school's campuses.
David Townsend opens the publicly reported stretch of the schedule this Friday, September 4, with “The Spirit of America: Our Apophatic Community of Love.” Guha Krishnamurthi, a Maryland Carey Law professor, follows on September 15 with “Affirmative Action and Antidiscrimination Law Under the Roberts Court” — though that talk breaks from the usual Friday rhythm. Per Eye On Annapolis, the Constitution Day lecture lands on a Wednesday evening and moves to McDowell Hall's Great Hall rather than the auditorium.
A Colonial Mansion and a Neutra-Designed Auditorium
The venue switch for Constitution Day is no small detail. McDowell Hall was originally commissioned in 1742 as Maryland's colonial governor's mansion, nicknamed “Bladen's Folly,” before St. John's acquired the building in 1784, according to a history posted on The Johnnie Chair. It remains one of the oldest academic buildings in continuous use in the country.
Francis Scott Key Auditorium, where most of the fall's other events take place, sits inside Mellon Hall, a midcentury modernist building designed by architect Richard Neutra. St. John's notes the hall was dedicated in 1958 with a visit from President Dwight D. Eisenhower, and it remains one of the few surviving Neutra-designed structures on the East Coast. The auditorium's namesake, Francis Scott Key, graduated from St. John's in 1796 before writing “The Star-Spangled Banner” during the 1814 bombardment of Fort McHenry.
Music, Law, and Poetry Fill Out September and October
Grammy-nominated vocal ensemble New York Polyphony performs its 20th anniversary concert at the auditorium on September 18. The group made its public debut in Times Square in September 2006, and its current tour, marking two decades since that founding, spans major venues nationally and internationally through 2026 and 2027, according to OperaWire.
Travis Price appears September 25, followed on October 2 by Phillip Donnelly, a Baylor University professor. Fordham University professor Lawrence Kramer speaks October 16, and Loyola professor Fritz Bauerschmidt follows on October 23. The schedule lists a lecture slot on October 30 with no speaker yet announced.
November and December Bring Scholars and Student Theater
Georgia State University professor Sebastian Rand takes the stage November 13, followed by Wyoming Catholic College professor Pavlos Papadopoulos on November 20. The King William Players, St. John's student-run theater troupe, perform a production the following weekend, November 21 and 22. The group's namesake traces to King William's School, the 1696 precursor institution from which St. John's descends, per the college's own account of its student organizations, which operate autonomously and perform for both students and local residents.
St. John's tutor Stella Zhu speaks December 4, and the King William Players close out the calendar with another production December 11 and 12. St. John's traces its roots to that 1696 founding and was chartered as St. John's College in 1784, making it the third-oldest college in the United States, according to Encyclopædia Britannica. The school adopted its all-required Great Books curriculum, which replaced standard majors and electives with a discussion-centered program, in 1937.
Most lectures are recorded and posted later on St. John's College's YouTube channel, and recordings are also made available on Apple Podcasts alongside a digital archive stretching back several decades, per the college. All programs in the series are free and open to the public, with the auditorium located at St. John's College, 60 College Avenue in Annapolis. The full schedule, along with additional public events, is listed on the college's events calendar and at sjc.edu/annapolis-lectures.
St. John's operates two campuses, in Annapolis and Santa Fe, New Mexico, that run parallel free public lecture series throughout the academic year under the same Great Books curriculum and Friday-night tradition. Local audiences will get another look inside the auditorium later this fall when the Naptown Philharmonic, as Hoodline reported, performs there on October 25 as part of its 2026-27 season.
