Distributed March 3, 2003
For Immediate Release

News Service Contact: Mary Jo Curtis

Meiklejohn Lecture

Former Attorney General Janet Reno to speak on terrorism March 17

Former U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno will deliver a Meiklejohn Lecture Monday, March 17, 2003, at 7:30 p.m. in the Salomon Center for Teaching. Reno will speak on “Freedom and Terrorism.” This event is free and open to the public.

Change of venue:
Please note that Janet Reno will present the Meiklejohn Lecture in the Salomon Center for Teaching, not in Sayles Hall as originally announced. Television coverage of President Bush’s address to the nation will be carried live in Salomon at 8 p.m. immediately following Reno’s lecture. A question-and-answer period will follow.

PROVIDENCE, R.I. – Former Attorney General Janet Reno will deliver a Meiklejohn Lecture, speaking on “Freedom and Terrorism,” on Monday, March 17, 2003, at 7:30 p.m. in the Salomon Center for Teaching, located on The College Green.

Reno was the first woman appointed as U.S. attorney general, serving under President Clinton from 1993 until 2001, the second-longest term in the country’s history. She most recently ran for the Democratic nomination for governor in her home state of Florida.

Janet Reno
Former U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno will deliver the Alexander Meiklejohn Lecture at 7:30 p.m. Monday, March 17, in the Salomon Center for Teaching. The lecture honors Meiklejohn, a civil libertarian, staunch advocate of free speech, and Brown faculty member and dean from 1897 to 1912. Reno will speak on “Freedom and Terrorism.”

As the nation’s chief law enforcement officer, Reno authorized the independent counsel to proceed with the Whitewater investigation into the Clintons’ finances, which eventually led to the Lewinsky revelations. Her tenure was also marked by her dogged pursuit of antitrust violators, which resulted in the imprisonment of several corporate executives for price fixing and the levying of fines totaling hundreds of millions of dollars against their companies. Prior to her service as U.S. attorney general, Reno was appointed by Florida Gov. Reuben Askew as state attorney for the 11^th Circuit of Florida, a position she held for 15 years. Reno is a graduate of Cornell University, where she earned a bachelor’s degree in chemistry, and Harvard Law School, where she received an LL.B.

The Meiklejohn Lecture honors the memory of the distinguished educator, alumnus and civil libertarian Alexander Meiklejohn. Meiklejohn graduated from Brown in 1893, earned a master’s in philosophy at Brown in 1895, and joined the Brown faculty in 1897. He served as dean of the University from 1901 to 1912, becoming president of Amherst College in 1913. The lectureship was endowed by Louis Schweitzer.

This event is free and open to the public. For more information, call (401) 863-2201.

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