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| PROGRAM NOTES FOR RECENT DISTINGUISHED CARLSON LECTURERS |
 GENERAL COLIN POWELL, USA (Ret.), became the 65th Secretary of State on January 20, 2001. As he stated in his confirmation hearing, the guiding principle of U.S. foreign policy during his tenure was that “America stands ready to help any country that wishes to join the democratic world.” As the 2006 Distinguished Carlson lecturer, Powell spoke to this message in his speech on leadership and foreign affairs.
General Powell brought extensive experience with him to office. Before becoming Secretary of State, Powell served as a key aide to the Secretary of Defense and National Security Advisor to President Reagan. He also served 35 years in the United States Army, rising to the rank of Four-Star General and serving as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (1989–1993). During this time he oversaw 28 crises, including the Panama intervention of 1989 and Operation Desert Storm. (October 2006)
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 BILL CLINTON was elected President of the United States in 1992, and again in 1996—the first Democratic president to be awarded a second term in six decades. Under his leadership, the United States enjoyed the strongest economy in a generation and the longest economic expansion in U.S. history. President Clinton’s core values of building community, creating opportunity, and demanding responsibility resulted in unprecedented progress for America, including moving the nation from record deficits to record surpluses; the creation of over 22 million jobs—more than any other administration; low levels of unemployment, poverty and crime; and the highest homeownership and college enrollment rates in history.
His accomplishments as president include increasing investment in education, providing tax relief for working families, helping millions of Americans move from welfare to work, expanding access to technology,encouraging investment in underserved communities, protecting the environment, countering the threat of terrorism and promoting peace and strengthening democracy around the world. President Clinton previously served as the Governor of Arkansas, chairman of the National Governors’ Association and Attorney General of Arkansas. As former chairman of the Democratic Leadership Council, he is one of the original architects and leading advocates of the Third Way movement.
Print a transcript of President Clinton's November 5 speech
(November 2005) |
 THE RIGHT HONORABLE JEAN CHRéTIEN was sworn in as Prime Minister of Canada on November 4, 1993. He led his party to three consecutive majorities in the House of Commons and became one of the world’s most respected leaders during his 10-year term. Prime Minister Chrétien retired in 2003, but continues to lecture on the most pressing global and geopolitical issues facing organizations today. He is responsible for the largest expansion of national parks in Canada’s history and advocates for enhanced protection for existing park land and expanded protections for wilderness, including marine conservation areas.
(September 2004) |
 HER MAJESTY QUEEN SILVIA of Sweden, founder and honorary chair of the World Childhood Foundation.
A mother of three, H.M. Queen Silvia is deeply committed to the welfare of children. She has worked to help young people with disabilities for more than 20 years and is active in the fight against the sexual exploitation of children. After the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child in 1989, the Queen helped to found the World Childhood Foundation to promote better living conditions for children all over the world. Dedicated to helping vulnerable children worldwide, the foundation's first efforts are directed toward children in Brazil, Russia, and the Baltic countries of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania.
(February 2002) |
HIS HOLINESS the 14th DALAI LAMA travels throughout the world with his message of kindness, compassion, tolerance, and peace. From his home in exile in Dharamsala, India, he has made it his life's mission to facilitate the return of peace to his homeland of Tibet, which has been occupied by China since 1950. Winner of the 1989 Nobel Peace Prize, His Holiness the Dalai Lama promotes unity and understanding among the different religions and countries of the world.
(May 2001) |
 TOM BROKAW, anchor and managing editor of "NBC Nightly News with Tom Brokaw," is equally at ease covering news events from the world's capitals or in small towns across America. In his more than thirty years with NBC News, he has held numerous posts including reporter, anchor, and editor, and has played key roles in countless news specials and in-depth reports.
Brokaw has received many awards for his work, including a Peabody for his report, "To be an American." He received Emmys for his "China in Crisis" special report and for his reporting on the 1992 floods in the Midwest. He earned an Alfred I. DuPont-Columbia University Award for his 1997 documentary examining the hidden realities of racial separation in America's suburbs. He was honored recently with a Fred Friendly First Amendment Award, recognizing his consistent devotion to freedom of speech and the principles of the First Amendment.
Brokaw began his journalism career in 1962 at KMTV, Omaha, after graduating from the University of South Dakota.
(September 1999) |
 Born in Romania, ELIE WIESEL and his family were deported by the Nazis to Auschwitz when he was fifteen years old. Wiesel was separated from his mother and younger sister and never saw them again. For one year, Wiesel was able to remain with his father, who died in the last months of the war. Wiesel was interred in three other concentration camps---Buna, Buchenwald, and Gleiwitz. After the war ended, he learned two remaining sisters had survived. In 1948, Wiesel studied and worked as a journalist in Paris. He has written extensively about his experiences as a Holocaust survivor and is the author of more than thirty-five books, several of which have won numerous awards.
Wiesel became a U. S. citizen in 1963 and has taught at Boston University since 1976. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1986 and established the Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity that same year. The foundation's mission is to advance human rights and peace worldwide by creating a forum for discussing urgent ethical issues.
In 1997, the Swiss government appointed Wiesel honorary chair of the board that will supervise a multimillion-dollar fund for Holocaust victims.
(November 1998) |
 TONI MORRISON was awarded the 1993 Nobel Prize for Literature. Her novels have been described as "infused with an urgency that only a black writer can have about our society." Another literary biographer said that Morrison's most important gift, the one which gives her a significant author's universality, is the insight with which she writes of problems all humans face. "At the core of all her novels is a penetrating view of the unyielding, heartbreaking dilemmas which torment people of all races," according to the Dictionary of Literary Biography Yearbook.
In addition to a Nobel Prize, Morrison won a Pulitzer Prize in 1988 and a National Book Critics Award in 1977. She has been nominated twice for the National Book Award.
Although best known as a writer, Morrison was a senior editor at Random House publishers for 20 years. She has degrees from Howard and Cornell universities, and has received honorary degrees from numerous universities, including Harvard, Yale, Georgetown, Brown, and Dartmouth.
Morrison is the Robert F. Goheen Professor in the Council of the Humanities at Princeton University.
(May 1996) |
 HARRY WU's recent expulsion from China was the latest act in his 38-year struggle to document human rights abuses in his native country.
In 1957, Wu criticized Chinese government support for the Soviet invasion of Hungary, was labeled a counter revolutionary rightist by the Communist Party, and jailed. He spent 19 years as a political prisoner in China's laogai, or prison camp system. Wu founded the Laogai Research Foundation in 1992 to publicize human rights violations in the campus. He returned to China several times to secretly fil activities htere, most recently in June. Wu was detained by Chinese officials, tried and convicted of illegal entry and espionage, and immediately expelled from the country.
Last month, Wu, a naturalized American, said: "I have a nice house, my wife, of course. I want to enjoy life, but I cannot turn my back on my former inmates, my countrymen, my parents. I will continue my job to expose the laogai system, the torture, the violation of human rights. They told me, 'Don't come back. If you come back, you'll serve your 15 years.' I told them I have so many things to do."
(October 1995) |
 HANAN ASHRAWI first came to international prominence on ABC television's "Nightline" in 1988, giving the Palestinian cause a new spokesperson. She has been called the most powerful woman in the Palestinian movement and, possibly, in the Arab world itself.
Ashrawi has been a lifelong Palestinian activist. She founded and serves as commissioner general of the Palestinian Independent Commission for Citizen's Rights. The commission's goal is to put civil liberties on the Palestinian agenda. She also helps direct Jerusalem Link, a feminist alliance she co-founded with an Israeli Knesset member. She twice has turned down offers to become information minister of the Palestinian National Authority.
Ashrawi spent the early seventies at the University of Virginia, where she earned a doctorate in English literature. She is an English professor at Birzeit University on the West Bank. From 1991 through 1993, she was the official spokesperson for the Palestinian delegation to the Middle East peace talks. She continues to represent Palestinian opinion in international conferences, policy-making meetings, and public appearances.
(January 1995) |
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