MEDFORD/SOMERVILLE, Mass. –President Bill Clinton, founder of the William J. Clinton Foundation and 42nd president of the United States, will deliver the Issam M. Fares Lecture on Sunday, Nov. 6, at 6:00 P.M. in the Gantcher Family Sports and Convocation Center on Tufts University's Medford/Somerville campus. Tickets will be offered to members of the Tufts community; details will be announced in October. Members of the news media should contact Katie Cinnamond at 617-627-4703 or Katherine.cinnamond@tufts.edu, or the Tufts public relations office at 617-627-3069, for information on press credentialing.
"We are privileged that President Clinton, who delivered the Fares Lecture at the dedication of Tufts' Fares Center for Lebanese and Eastern Mediterranean Studies almost 10 years ago, will be returning to Tufts," said Tufts University President Anthony P. Monaco. "This lecture series brings to Tufts some of the world's most influential leaders, and we know that President Clinton will once again challenge, engage and inspire our students and the broader Tufts community."
The Issam M. Fares Lecture series began at Tufts in 1993. Other speakers have included former President George H. W. Bush; former Prime Ministers of Great Britain and Northern Ireland Tony Blair and Margaret Thatcher; former President of France Valery Giscard d'Estaing; Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, then U.S. senator; former Secretaries of State Madeleine Albright, James A. Baker, III and Colin Powell, and former Sen. George Mitchell.
The Issam M. Fares Lecture is supported by an endowment from the Issam M. Fares family through the WEDGE Foundation. The endowment enables Tufts University's Fares Center for Eastern Mediterranean Studies to implement a program for promoting Middle Eastern studies in the humanities, social sciences and arts, including history, political science, economics, sociology, anthropology, demographic studies and languages.
Tufts' Fares Center for Eastern Mediterranean Studies, sponsor of the Issam M. Fares Lecture, opened in 2002. Its mission is to create an academic environment that promotes a greater understanding of the rich heritage of the Eastern Mediterranean, and of the significant challenges that this region faces at the beginning of the 21st century.
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Tufts University, located on three Massachusetts campuses in Boston, Medford/Somerville, and Grafton, and in Talloires, France, is recognized among the premier research universities in the United States. Tufts enjoys a global reputation for academic excellence and for the preparation of students as leaders in a wide range of professions. A growing number of innovative teaching and research initiatives span all campuses, and collaboration among the faculty and students in the undergraduate, graduate and professional programs across the university is widely encouraged.
