Fayetteville : Bhutto, Barak to speak at UA
Posted on Friday, October 4, 2002
FAYETTEVILLE — University of Arkansas students who voted in a hefty fee earlier this year to bring more high-profile speakers to campus soon will see the results on an international scale.
Former prime ministers Benazir Bhutto of Pakistan and Ehud Barak of Israel will speak Oct. 24 at a forum in Barnhill Arena.
Bhutto and Barak will share their views on America’s future in the age of terrorism, future foreign partnerships, and the conflicts among Judaism, Islam and Christianity, UA officials announced Thursday.
Although the event is free to students and the public, tickets are required for admission. The university estimated that the tickets will be available at the Arkansas Union information desk starting Wednesday.
The forum will have a mixed format that includes 15 minutes of prepared comments from each former world leader followed by a moderator-led discussion and time for audience questions.
The university will pay each speaker a $50,000 lecturer’s fee, said Kathryn Sampson, an associate clinical professor of law who serves on the University Distinguished Lecturers Committee.
Students made the event possible last spring. The Associated Student Government passed legislation for a 45-cent-percredit-hour distinguished lecturers fee, which the student body then approved 1,518-1,028 in a March referendum. The fee later cleared the UA board of trustees.
A UA student carrying a typical 14-hour load in a semester would pay $6.30 for the fee.
As originally envisioned by the ASG’s Ben Hood, the fee would raise about $150,000 a year for two lecturers — one a world leader and the other from the entertainment or sports fields, said Sampson, who represents the Winthrop Rockefeller Distinguished Lecturers Advisory Board on the UA committee.
This academic year, the committee will have enough money for a third 2002-03 speaker because the fees for Bhutto and Barak were relatively low and enrollment increased this fall.
The committee has conservatively budgeted $177,000 for speakers this year and is now negotiating with actor James Earl Jones to be the series’ third speaker next spring, Sampson said.
The UA committee is a 50-50 mix of faculty and students. "The students who are on this committee now have been really active in the planning," Sampson said. "Their voice on the committee is a real important part of this process."
In 1988, Bhutto was elected as Pakistan’s and the Muslim world’s first female prime minister at age 35. Twenty months later, her government was deposed. Then in 1993, she was elected again but lost power three years later.
Bhutto chose to live in selfimposed exile rather than appear on charges of corruption, but contends that she is innocent. Recently, Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf — who took the country by coup in 1999 — barred Bhutto from challenging him in Pakistan’s Oct. 10 elections. She has accused Musharraf of aiding al-Qaida sympathizers while claiming to be Washington’s key ally in the war on terrorism.
Bhutto has asked for United States intervention in the election process.
Her U.S. lectures include one last month at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock.
While the Israeli prime minister, Barak offered Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat an independent state and more than 90 percent of the occupied territories during 2000 peace negotiations at Camp David, an offer that Arafat rejected.
UA spokesman Rebecca Wood said officials expected the tickets to become available Wednesday at the earliest because of the printers’ schedule.
More ticket information is available by calling (479) 575-2304 or (479) 575-5205.
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