FAYETTEVILLE : CNN’s Cooper to speak on UA campus March 7
Posted on Thursday, February 21, 2008
Broadcast journalist Anderson Cooper will speak at the University of Arkansas next month as part of the Fayetteville campus’s student-financed Distinguished Lecture Series.
Cooper, anchor of CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360, is scheduled for 8 p. m. March 7 in Barnhill Arena, UA officials announced Wednesday.
Justine Middleton, a secondyear law student who co-chairs the campus committee overseeing the lecture series, said the group plans two more lectures this spring.
Speed skater and two-time Olympic gold medalist Apolo Anton Ohno is scheduled to speak April 1, and author Malcolm Gladwell is planned for April 29, Middleton said.
Cooper fits the series’ goal of finding speakers from a variety of backgrounds who offer name recognition and appeal to young adults, she said.
“We always like to find someone who is relevant to people of college age,” she said.
The CNN anchor once worked as a correspondent for Channel One News, a network geared to teenagers that began broadcasting in 1990. It delivers 12-minute broadcasts daily to more than 6 million teens in middle and high schools around the country, according to its Web site.
Cooper also was a correspon- dent with ABC News, where he once anchored its late-night news program geared toward insomniacs and night owls, World News Now.
UA students in March 2002 approved a 45 cents per credithour student fee that supports the lectures, which have always been offered to the general public for free. A student carrying a typical 15 credit-hour load would pay $ 6. 75 in a semester.
The series has brought in speakers such as former prime minister Benazir Bhutto of Pakistan, who was assassinated in December.
Bhutto appeared in October 2002 alongside former prime minister Ehud Barak of Israel, where the two encouraged President Bush to get the backing of the United Nations Security Council in dealing with Iraq and Saddam Hussein.
Other lecturers included actors Robert Redford and James Earl Jones, author Salman Rushdie, humor columnist Dave Barry, former vice presidential candidate Geraldine Ferraro and pundits Al Franken, Ben Stein, Mary Matalin and James Carville.
Cooper’s contract provides a speaking fee of $ 75, 000, plus lodging, travel and other expenses, said UA spokesman Steve Voorhies.
Like past speakers for the series, the CNN journalist’s contract has some “out” clauses, he added.
“It’s in his contract pretty much that if some big news event happens and he has to cover it, then he will be let out of his contract,” Voorhies said, in which case UA would not owe the speaker’s fee and would try to reschedule.
In November 2005, the university’s fall lecturer for the series, Pulitzer Prize-winning print journalist Seymour Hersh, canceled en route to Fayetteville after fog left him stranded at an Atlanta airport, but the Distinguished Lecture Committee was unable to reschedule him.
For the Cooper lecture, doors will open an hour before the 8 p. m. start time, Middleton said. The audience is not required to obtain advance “free” tickets for the lecture.
The Cooper talk marks a return of the event to Barnhill, which Voorhies said can accommodate 3, 000-5, 000 people for speaker or concert events.
The last two speakers — Rushdie and Ferraro on separate dates in April 2007 — were held at the Fayetteville Town Center, which can hold 1, 435.
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