MEDIA CONTACT: Polly Burks
561-297-2595, pburks@fau.edu or
Michele Brown, Kaliah Communications, Inc.
561-641-8760, kaliahpr@kaliahpr.com
BOCA RATON, FL (December 11, 2006) – Best-selling author David Halberstam will address the headline-making combination of war, media and the presidency as the featured guest speaker at Florida Atlantic University’s first annual Alan B. Larkin Symposium on the American Presidency, February 15-16, 2007. Halberstam will kick off the two-day symposium, which will explore the public/private roles of America’s commanders-in-chief during wartime and how the mass media have portrayed the wars and those who waged them.
Halberstam will speak on Thursday, February 15, beginning at 4 p.m., at the University Theatre on FAU’s Boca Raton campus, 777 Glades Road. His keynote address is titled “Selling War in a Media Age: The Presidency and Public Opinion in the American Century.” Halberstam’s well-known and compelling books include examinations of the Vietnam War during the Kennedy Era, the Korean War, and the state of America in the aftermath of the September 11 terrorist attacks under the Bush administration.
On Friday, February 16, a full schedule of presentations and discussions will begin at 9 a.m. at the Live Oak Pavilion in the University Center on the Boca Raton campus. The sessions, featuring noted historians, professors and political analysts from across the country, will cover topics such as the Cold War, Ronald Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative and selling the Iraq wars.
“We are thrilled to be able to offer such a high level of speakers for our inaugural Alan B. Larkin Symposium,” said Stephen Engle, chair of the FAU department of history. “We have every expectation that the symposium will become the central event in the study of the American presidency in the historical field, attracting and featuring the nation's foremost authorities on the American presidency."
The symposium is part of a generous endowment to the Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters history department by the family of Alan B. Larkin. Larkin, a magazine publisher who died in 2002, had a true passion for American history, particularly the American presidency. During his lifetime, Larkin collected original signed letters from every U.S. president from George Washington to George W. Bush. The Larkin family hopes the symposium will explore different components of the American executive branch of government and its significance to the political culture of the United States, as well as expand FAU’s public profile both locally and nationally.
For more information on the two-day symposium, visit www.fau.edu/larkin or call FAU’s history department at 561-297-3840. All lectures and presentations are free and open to the public.
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