Barack Obama, the Democratic junior senator from Illinois, will visit Brown University on Thursday, Oct. 12, 2006, to deliver the Gov. Frank Licht Lecture. “An Evening with Barack Obama,” sponsored by the Taubman Center for Public Policy and American Institutions, begins at 9 p.m. in the Salomon Center for Teaching, Room 101. It is free and open to the public. Seating is on a first-come, first-served basis.

PROVIDENCE, R.I. — Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) will deliver the fourth annual Gov. Frank Licht Lecture on Thursday, Oct. 12, 2006, in the Salomon Center for Teaching, Room 101. “An Evening with Barack Obama” is sponsored by the A. Alfred Taubman Center for Public Policy and American Institutions. It is free and open to the public.

Doors will open at 7:30 p.m. Seating will be determined on a first-come, first-served basis. No backpacks, posters or banners of any kind will be permitted at the event.

Endowed by a gift from former Rhode Island First Lady Dottie Licht,  the Gov. Frank Licht Lecture Series was established by the Taubman Center in 2004 to bring newsmakers and prominent public affairs speakers to Brown. Past lecturers include Newsweek political reporter Howard Fineman, Washington Post national political correspondent David Broder, and Sen, John Kerry (D-Mass.).

Sen. Barack Obama

Obama was elected a U.S. senator from Illinois in November 2004, capturing 70 percent of the vote. Focusing on promoting economic growth and bringing jobs to his state, he sits on the Environment and Public Works Committee, the Veterans’ Affairs Committee, and the Foreign Relations Committee. Prior to his election to federal office, he served as a civil rights attorney and community organizer and sat in the Illinois State Senate for seven years. While a member of that body, he helped create the state earned income tax credit, which in three years provided more than $100 million in tax cuts to families. He also helped enact an expansion of early childhood education and, following the discovery that several state death row inmates were innocent of their crimes, drafted legislation to require the videotaping of interrogations and confessions in all capital cases.

Obama is a 1983 graduate of Columbia University and a 1991 graduate of Harvard Law School, where he was the first African American editor of the Harvard Law Review.

Gov. Frank Licht

During a public career of nearly 25 years, Frank Licht, the valedictorian of Brown’s Class of 1938, served the public in all three branches of Rhode Island government. First elected governor in 1968, he served two terms as the state’s chief executive. A graduate of Harvard Law School, Licht was elected to the Rhode Island State Senate in 1949 and served there until 1956, when he was appointed as an associate justice of Rhode Island Superior Court. In 1986, the Providence County Court House was named in his honor as The Frank Licht Judicial Complex; today it serves as a living memorial to the governor’s contributions to the state.

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