A former U.S. senator and a Pulitzer Prize-winning poet are among the presenters for the 2004-2005 Humanities Lecture Series, Kansas University officials announced Thursday.

The series, sponsored by the Hall Center for the Humanities, is free and open to the public.

The line-up:

• Former U.S. Sen. Gary Hart, who will speak on “Security in the New Age of the 21st Century” at 7:30 p.m. Sept. 30 at the Lied Center.

Hart, a Democrat, represented Colorado in the Senate from 1975 to 1987 and ran for president twice in the 1980s. He was born in Ottawa and has written several books, including “Restoration of the Republic: The Jeffersonian Ideal in 21st Century America,” published in 2002.

• Steven Pinker, a cognitive psychologist from Harvard University who will speak on “The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature” at 7:30 p.m. Oct. 28 in the Lied Center.

Pinker will discuss society’s unwillingness to see human behavior as “nature rather than nurture.”

• Poet Rita Dove, who will speak at 7:30 p.m. Nov. 11 at the Lied Center.

Dove won the 1987 Pulitzer Prize for poetry and is a former poet laureate of the United States. She will give readings of her poems interspersed with commentary and discussion of her life. Dove currently is an English professor at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville.

• Akbar Ahmed, a scholar on contemporary Islam, will speak at 7 p.m. Feb. 17 at Woodruff Auditorium in the Kansas Union.

Ahmed’s lecture will draw from his most recent book, “Islam Under Siege: Living Dangerously in a Post-Honor World.” He is chair of Islamic studies and professor of international relations at the American University in Washington, D.C.

• Ted Wilson, Kansas University professor of history, who will speak on “The GI Generation: Sending American Soldiers into Battle in World War II.” A date and location for that lecture have not been set.

Wilson will discuss how the actual makeup of American forces compares with the popular image painted by movies and television.