BLACKSBURG – Best-selling author, filmmaker, and journalist Sebastian Junger will speak April 11 at Virginia Tech as part of the Virginia Tech Corps of Cadets’ Cutchins Leadership Lecture Series.
Junger’s address will be at 7 p.m. in Burruss Auditorium on the Blacksburg campus. The event is free and open to the public. No tickets are necessary.
Much of Junger’s work deals with war and its effects on society.
Cadets are reading his newest book, “Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging,” this semester. The book examines the issues soldiers face after they leave the close bonds forged in their units and return home.
Understanding that need to belong to a small group — or tribe — and the effects losing that connection can have on a person will be valuable to cadets, whether they go on to careers in the military, in government, or in the private sector, said Maj. Gen. Randal Fullhart, commandant of cadets.
“Sebastian Junger has experienced the issue from all sides,” Fullhart said. “As a war correspondent, he has seen battlefields from the perspectives of soldiers. As an author, he has studied why our veterans struggle after they come home.”
Junger’s other books include “The Perfect Storm,” “War,” “A Death in Belmont,” and “Fire.”
As a filmmaker, Junger co-directed the documentary “Restrepo” with photojournalist Tim Hetherington, which shows the war in Afghanistan as seen by soldiers. It was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary, and it won the 2010 Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival.
He also produced “Korengal” that shows the psychological effects of deployment on soldiers, and “Hell on Earth: The Fall of Syria and the Rise of ISIS” that focuses on the refugees of war in Syria.
He is a contributing editor to Vanity Fair magazine and a contributor to ABC News.
The Cutchins Leadership Lecture Series is part of the cadet Corps Lab curriculum, housed in the Pamplin College of Business. The lecture series is named for the late Clifford A. Cutchins III, a former bank chairman and Virginia Tech Board of Visitors rector. A member of the Class of 1944, Cutchins received his degree in accounting as a member of the Corps of Cadets.
Public seating is available in the back of the auditorium behind the cadets, who have assigned seating in the front.