Athens, Ga. – Due to overwhelming response,
registration has been closed for the Friday, Jan. 19 academic portion of the
conference, “The Carter Presidency: Lessons for the 21st Century.”
Registrations still are available for the Saturday and Sunday, Jan 20 – 21,
portions of the conference in which former President Jimmy Carter, former Vice
President Walter Mondale, members of the Carter administration, other
high-ranking government officials, scholars and journalists will gather at UGA
for the 30th anniversary of Carter’s inauguration as the 39th president of the United States.
In three days of discussions and speeches, they will explore
the major issues of the Carter presidency and how those experiences can be
applied to the challenges the U.S.
and the world are facing today.
Key conference participants, along with Carter and Mondale,
include Rosalynn Carter, former First Lady; Madeleine Albright, former U.S.
Secretary of State; Howard Baker, former Senate Majority Leader and Tennessee
senator; Nancy Kassebaum Baker, former senator; Michael Beschloss, presidential
historian; Stephen Breyer, U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice; Zbigniew
Brzezinski, Carter’s principal foreign policy advisor and national security
advisor; Stuart Eizenstat, Carter’s chief domestic policy advisor; Jay Hakes,
director of The Jimmy Carter Presidential Library and Museum; John Hardman,
executive director of the Carter Center; Peter Hart, public opinion
analyst; David Hawkins, director of the
Natural Resources Defense Council’s Climate Center; John Head, journalist and
recipient of the Rosalynn Carter Fellowship for Mental Health Journalism; Kay
Jamison, leading researcher and writer on manic-depressive illness, mood
disorders and psychotherapy; Tom Johnson, former president of CNN; Hamilton
Jordan, Carter’s chief of staff; Chris Matthews, host of Hardball with Chris Matthews; Jon Meacham, editor of Newsweek; Robert Pastor, former director
of Latin American affairs on the National Security Council; Jody Powell,
Carter’s former press secretary; Gerald Rafshoon, Carter’s White House
communications director; Robert
Rubin, former
U.S. Treasury Secretary; Stansfield Turner, former director of Central
Intelligence Agency; Brian Williams, NBC
Nightly News anchor, Judy Woodruff, television news anchor and PBS
contributor; and Jim Wooten of ABC news.
The three-day conference is attracting leading scholars,
Carter administration officials and journalists to the UGA campus to discuss
the lessons learned from the Carter years on such issues as energy policy, the
Middle East, Islamic fundamentalism, environmental concerns, human rights,
regulatory reform and mental health.
UGA students also will participate in the conference during
the student panel entitled, “Lessons Learned: Policy Advice for the 21st
Century,” on Friday afternoon. A group of 26 UGA students has worked with
faculty volunteers to research topics of importance to the Carter
administration. The following students will serve as panelists with Carter:
Sarah Bellamy, a third-year Foundation Fellow from Austin, Texas majoring in
international affairs; Ben Cobb, a third-year Foundation Fellow from
Huntsville, Ala.; Yannick Morgan, a fourth-year Foundation Fellow from Tampa,
Fla. majoring in international affairs and French; Balaji Narain, a third-year
Honors student from Macon majoring in economics and finance; Deep Shah, a
third-year Foundation fellow from Duluth majoring in international affairs and
biology; and Helen Smith, a fourth-year Foundation fellow from Charlotte, N.C.
majoring in international affairs.
In
addition to academic presentations and panel discussions, the conference will
include a town hall meeting with the president and First Lady Rosalynn Carter.
The meeting is free and open to the public, but with limited seating. Overflow
seating with a closed circuit feed will be available in other rooms of the Georgia Center and at Stegeman Coliseum. The
town hall meeting also will be broadcast live on University Channel 15 on
University Cable and Charter Cable.
Tickets to the Saturday dinner, where Carter will deliver a
keynote address on the 30th anniversary to the day of his
inauguration, are available for purchase separately from conference
registration.
Those registered for the Saturday and Sunday portions of the
conference are invited to the Friday evening reception which honors Mondale and
his wife, Joan.
The conference is co-sponsored by Cox Enterprises, Inc. and
The Coca-Cola Company. It is organized by UGA’s School of Public
and International Affairs (SPIA) and the Carl Vinson Institute of
Government. For more information on registration and the conference,
visit http://www.uga.edu/carterconference/registration.html.
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