Speaker Schedule for 2008-2009

David Gergen

Thursday, September 18, 2008, 7:30 p.m.

The Governor's Lecture in the Humanities presented in collaboration with the Nebraska Humanities Council, - Eyewitness to Power: Leadership in America

Commentator, editor, teacher, public servant, best-selling author and adviser to presidents-for 30 years, David Gergen has been an active participant in American national life. He served as director of communications for President Reagan and held positions in the administrations of Presidents Nixon and Ford. In 1993, he served as counselor to President Clinton on both foreign policy and domestic affairs, then as special international adviser to the president and to Secretary of State Warren Christopher.

Gergen currently serves as editor-at-large at U.S. News & World Report and as a regular television commentator. He was moderator of World @ Large, a 13-part PBS discussion series for two seasons. He is also a professor of public service at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government and is director of its Center for Public Leadership. In the fall of 2000, he published the best-selling book "Eyewitness to Power: The Essence of Leadership, Nixon to Clinton."

A native of Durham, North Carolina, he is an honors graduate of Yale University and Harvard Law School. He is a member of the District of Columbia bar. In addition, he served for three-and-a-half years in the United States Navy, where he was posted for about two years to a ship home-ported in Japan. Gergen is active on many nonprofit boards and he is chairman of the National Selection Committee for the Innovations in American Government. He frequently lectures in the United States and overseas and holds 14 honorary degrees.

Ronald Dworkin

Tuesday, October 28, 2008, 7 p.m.

The Kripke Lecture presented in collaboration with the UNL Norman and Bernice Harris Center for Judaic Studies - Democracy and Religion: America and Israel

Ronald Dworkin is an American legal philosopher, and professor of Jurisprudence at University College London, Frank Henry Sommer Professor of Law at the New York University School of Law, and Professor of Philosophy at NYU. He is known for his contributions to legal philosophy and political philosophy. His theory of law as integrity is one of the leading contemporary views of the nature of law. Dworkin received degrees from both Harvard College and Oxford University, and an LLB from Harvard Law School. He is a Fellow of the British Academy and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Dworkin is the author of numerous articles in philosophical and legal journals, as well as articles on legal and political topics in the New York Review of Books. He has written "Taking Rights Seriously," "A Matter of Principle," "Law's Empire," "Philosophical Issues in Senile Dementia," "A Bill of Rights for Britain," "Life's Dominion," and "Freedom's Law." Several of these books have been translated into the major European languages, Japanese and Chinese.

In September 2007, Dworkin was awarded the Holberg International Memorial Prize by the University of Bergen in Norway. The committee responsible for the award stressed Dworkin's effort to develop "an original and highly influential legal theory grounding law in morality, characterized by a unique ability to tie together abstract philosophical ideas and arguments with concrete everyday concerns in law, morals, and politics."

Ted Sorensen

Tuesday, November 18, 2008, 7 p.m.

Counselor: A Life at the Edge of History

Theodore "Ted" Sorensen is of Counsel (retired Senior Partner) at the law firm of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP and writer, best known as President John F. Kennedy's Special Counsel & Adviser, legendary speechwriter, and "alter-ego." President Kennedy once called him his "intellectual blood bank."

President Kennedy's Special Counsel & Adviser and primary speechwriter is the role for which Sorenson is best remembered today. His inaugural address for the new president exhorted listeners to "Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country". This call to service is the phrase still most closely associated with the Kennedy administration today. Although Sorensen played an important part in the composition of the Inaugural Address, the famous turn of phrase that everyone remembers from that speech was actually written by Kennedy himself, and taken from Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. This has been acknowledged by Sorensen as well as documented in several substantive biographies of JFK, most notably Profile of Power by Richard Reeves.

F.W. de Klerk

Tuesday, February 10, 2009, 7 p.m.

The Lewis E. Harris Lecture on Public Policy - Bridging the Gap: Globalization without Isolation

Frederik Willem de Klerk served as state president of South Africa until President Nelson Mandela's inauguration on 10 May 1994. During this period, he initiated and presided over the inclusive negotiations that led to the dismantling of "apartheid" and the adoption of South Africa's first fully democratic constitution in December 1993.

He has received numerous national and international honors and honorary doctorates. In 1981, he was awarded the South African Decoration for Meritorious Service. In 1992, he received the Prix du Courage Internationale (The Prize for Political Courage) and was co-recipient of the UNESCO Houphouet-Boigny Prize. He was also awarded the Prince of Asturias Prize in Spain during the same year. In July 1993, together with Mr. Nelson Mandela, de Klerk received the Philadelphia Peace Prize, and on 10 December the same year, was the co-recipient, also with Nelson Mandela, of the Nobel Peace Prize.

In 1999, de Klerk published his autobiography, "The Last Trek: A New Beginning," and established the F. W. de Klerk Foundation, which is dedicated to the promotion of peace in multi-communal societies. He makes numerous speeches around the world and actively participates as an elder statesman in international conferences on the promotion of harmonious relations in multicommunal societies, the future of Africa and South Africa, and the challenges facing the world during the new millennium.

He established the Global Leadership Foundation in March 2004. Its objective is to play a constructive role in the promotion of peace, democracy, and development worldwide. The organization helps national leaders who face complex economic and political challenges, by providing confidential advice, especially but not exclusively in the developing world and emerging markets. A number of internationally respected former leaders and experts have joined Mr. de Klerk in this new initiative.

Sarah Chayes

Wednesday, March 4, 2009, 7 p.m.

Afghanistan: Notes from the 'Other' War

Sarah Chayes served as an overseas correspondent for National Public Radio (NPR), covering the war in Bosnia and then reporting from Paris, as well as covering conflicts in Israel/Palestine, Algeria and Lebanon. When war broke out in Afghanistan in 2001, she was sent there by NPR to report from Quetta, Pakistan and then from inside Afghanistan as the Taliban fell. In 2002, she left NPR to take a position running a non-governmental aid organization, Afghans for Civil Society, founded by the Karzai family.

Chayes has lived in Kandahar, Afghanistan since 2002. Having learned to speak the Pashto language, she has helped rebuild homes and set up a dairy cooperative. In May 2005, she established the Arghand Cooperative, a venture that encourages local Afghan farmers to produce flowers, fruits, and herbs instead of opium poppies, by buying their products and producing soaps and other scented products from them for export.

Her work as a correspondent for NPR during the Kosovo crisis earned her the 1999 Foreign Press Club and Sigma Delta Chi awards, together with other members of the NPR team. She graduated from Harvard University, earning the Radcliffe College History Prize. She served in the Peace Corps in Morocco, then returned to Harvard to earn a master's degree in History and Middle Eastern Studies, specializing in the medieval Islamic period. She is the author of "The Punishment of Virtue: Inside Afghanistan After the Taliban."

Dr. Michael Olivas and Dr. Vernon Briggs

Wednesday, March 25, 2009, 7 p.m.

The Charles and Linda Wilson Dialogue on Domestic Issues - Illegal Immigrants: A Path to Citizenship?

Michael A. Olivas is the William B. Bates Distinguished Chair of Law and Director of the Institute of Higher Education Law & Governance-which he founded in 1982—at the University of Houston. He is a recognized expert on immigration law and policy, student higher education financing, and financial aid.

Olivas served two terms as general counsel of the American Association of University Professors. A prolific scholar, his writings are cited in the popular press and debated in academic institutions across the United States. He was selected to the American Law Institute, and is a member of the National Academy of Education; he is the only person to hold membership in both academies. He has also served three times as chair of the Law and Education Section of AALS, and twice as chair of the AALS Immigration Law Section.

He served as the Law Center's Associate Dean for Faculty Research from 1990-1995 and has held several system, campus and Law Center committee chairs. From 2002-2005, he served as the UH Law Center's Associate Dean for Student Life. In 2000, he was awarded the UH's highest faculty honor, the Esther Farfel Award.

Vernon M. Briggs, Jr. is professor emeritus of labor economics at the New York State School of Labor and Industrial Relations at Cornell University. He specializes in human resource economics and public policy. Immigration policy and its effects on American workers is also a frequent subject of his research.

Throughout his career, Briggs's research has embraced such subjects as minority participation in apprenticeship training; southern rural labor market analysis; direct job creation strategies, Chicano employment issues; and immigration policy and the American labor force. In addition to the extensive publications of his research, he has served as a member of the National Council on Employment Policy, and has been on the Board of Directors of the Corporation for Public and Private Ventures and the Center for Immigration Studies. He has also served on the editorial boards of several professional journals, including "Industrial and Labor Relations Review," "Journal of Human Resources," "The Texas Business Review," and "The Journal of Economic Issues."

Briggs was born in Washington, D.C. and spent his first 22 years living in the Maryland suburbs. He attended the University of Maryland, where he majored in economics and was elected president of the student government association during his senior year. Upon graduation in 1959, he undertook graduate studies in labor economics at Michigan State University where he received a master's degree in 1960 and a doctorate in 1965.

Colin Campbell

Tuesday, April 14, 2009, 7 p.m.

Citizenship in a Global Age

Colin G. Campbell is chairman, president, and chief executive officer of the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation. He was elected a member of the Foundation's Board of Trustees in 1989, and became its chairman nine years later. His appointment to the additional responsibilities of president and chief executive was in April 2000.

Prior to accepting his current job, Campbell was president of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund. The Fund was created by John D. Rockefeller, Jr., who was also the principle benefactor of the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation. Before joining RBF, he was president of Wesleyan University, a position he held for eighteen years. Campbell came to Wesleyan in 1967 from his post as vice president of the Planning and Government Affairs Division of the American Stock Exchange.

Among his many civic activities, Campbell currently serves as vice chair of the steering committee of Jamestown 2007, the group coordinating the activities associated with the commemoration of the 400th anniversary of the first permanent English settlement at Jamestown, Virginia. He also serves as a member of the management committee for the commemoration. He has served as a trustee of the New York Historical Society and chairman of the Public Broadcasting Service board of directors. He has been a member of several corporate boards of directors and currently serves as chairman of Rockefeller and Company. He has received honorary degrees from 11 colleges and universities as well as the DeWitt Clinton Medal from the New York Historical Society.