Athens, Ga. – Due to overwhelming response, registration has been closed for the Friday, Jan. 19 academic portion of the conference, “The Carter Presidency: Lessons for the 21st Century.” Registrations still are available for the Saturday and Sunday, Jan 20 – 21, portions of the conference in which former President Jimmy Carter, former Vice President Walter Mondale, members of the Carter administration, other high-ranking government officials, scholars and journalists will gather at UGA for the 30th anniversary of Carter’s inauguration as the 39th president of the United States.
In three days of discussions and speeches, they will explore the major issues of the Carter presidency and how those experiences can be applied to the challenges the U.S. and the world are facing today.
Key conference participants, along with Carter and Mondale, include Rosalynn Carter, former First Lady; Madeleine Albright, former U.S. Secretary of State; Howard Baker, former Senate Majority Leader and Tennessee senator; Nancy Kassebaum Baker, former senator; Michael Beschloss, presidential historian; Stephen Breyer, U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice; Zbigniew Brzezinski, Carter’s principal foreign policy advisor and national security advisor; Stuart Eizenstat, Carter’s chief domestic policy advisor; Jay Hakes, director of The Jimmy Carter Presidential Library and Museum; John Hardman, executive director of the Carter Center; Peter Hart, public opinion analyst; David Hawkins, director of the Natural Resources Defense Council’s Climate Center; John Head, journalist and recipient of the Rosalynn Carter Fellowship for Mental Health Journalism; Kay Jamison, leading researcher and writer on manic-depressive illness, mood disorders and psychotherapy; Tom Johnson, former president of CNN; Hamilton Jordan, Carter’s chief of staff; Chris Matthews, host of Hardball with Chris Matthews; Jon Meacham, editor of Newsweek; Robert Pastor, former director of Latin American affairs on the National Security Council; Jody Powell, Carter’s former press secretary; Gerald Rafshoon, Carter’s White House communications director; Robert Rubin, former U.S. Treasury Secretary; Stansfield Turner, former director of Central Intelligence Agency; Brian Williams, NBC Nightly News anchor, Judy Woodruff, television news anchor and PBS contributor; and Jim Wooten of ABC news.
The three-day conference is attracting leading scholars, Carter administration officials and journalists to the UGA campus to discuss the lessons learned from the Carter years on such issues as energy policy, the Middle East, Islamic fundamentalism, environmental concerns, human rights, regulatory reform and mental health.
UGA students also will participate in the conference during the student panel entitled, “Lessons Learned: Policy Advice for the 21st Century,” on Friday afternoon. A group of 26 UGA students has worked with faculty volunteers to research topics of importance to the Carter administration. The following students will serve as panelists with Carter: Sarah Bellamy, a third-year Foundation Fellow from Austin, Texas majoring in international affairs; Ben Cobb, a third-year Foundation Fellow from Huntsville, Ala.; Yannick Morgan, a fourth-year Foundation Fellow from Tampa, Fla. majoring in international affairs and French; Balaji Narain, a third-year Honors student from Macon majoring in economics and finance; Deep Shah, a third-year Foundation fellow from Duluth majoring in international affairs and biology; and Helen Smith, a fourth-year Foundation fellow from Charlotte, N.C. majoring in international affairs.
In addition to academic presentations and panel discussions, the conference will include a town hall meeting with the president and First Lady Rosalynn Carter. The meeting is free and open to the public, but with limited seating. Overflow seating with a closed circuit feed will be available in other rooms of the Georgia Center and at Stegeman Coliseum. The town hall meeting also will be broadcast live on University Channel 15 on University Cable and Charter Cable.
Tickets to the Saturday dinner, where Carter will deliver a keynote address on the 30th anniversary to the day of his inauguration, are available for purchase separately from conference registration.
Those registered for the Saturday and Sunday portions of the conference are invited to the Friday evening reception which honors Mondale and his wife, Joan.
The conference is co-sponsored by Cox Enterprises, Inc. and The Coca-Cola Company. It is organized by UGA’s School of Public and International Affairs (SPIA) and the Carl Vinson Institute of Government. For more information on registration and the conference, visit http://www.uga.edu/carterconference/registration.html.
