Entity titleOscar Mendelsohn CommitteeEntity identifier136Entity typeAgencyDate range2004 - DescriptionIn 1970 Oscar Mendelsohn gave $8,000 for the establishment of a fund to enable Monash University to provide free public lectures. The aim of the lectures was to promote the study of humanism, materialism, positivism and other effects of the application of the scientific attitude to human affairs and thought. The lecturer was chosen by the Oscar Mendelsohn Lectures Committee, comprising 3-5 members including one whose special field was science. The committee reported to the Professorial Board. The inaugural Oscar Mendelsohn Lecture was presented by Sir MacFarlane Burnett on 6 June 1971 and titled "Personal and national objectives in a sceptical age". The first committee meeting was held on 14 January 1971, and the committee met 24 times between then and 1980.
The committee was reconstituted as a standing committee of Academic Board in 2004. There were no lectures between 1988 and the first of 2005 (October). An amendment to the lecture fund regulations in 2009 replaced Academic Board with the Faculty Board of the Faculty of Arts.
