Valerie Plame Wilson And Joseph Wilson To Inaugurate Lecture Series

FAIRFIELD — The famously outed former CIA spy Valerie Plame Wilson and her husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, who challenged one of the chief claims underpinning the Bush administration’s case of the US invasion of Iraq in an op-ed piece in The New York Times — that Iraq had sought uranium for nuclear weapons from the African country of Niger — will initiate Fairfield University’s recently established annual lecture series, The Students’ Forum.

The premiere event is presented by the Fairfield University First Year Experience Program in collaboration with Open Visions Forum (OVF) of University College. The Wilsons will be at the university’s Quick Center for the Arts on Tuesday, November 27, at 7 pm.

The evening is primarily for the benefit of Fairfield students, however, a limited number of tickets will be made available to the public through Open Visions Forum at $45 each.

Each year, The Students’ Forum will bring to the campus speakers who have had a major impact on some facet of American life. The appearance of Valerie Plame Wilson and Joseph Wilson as the first guests presents a significant and immediate opportunity for students to delve into the political, personal, and judicial ramifications of a controversial and multilayered case, currently on appeal, that touches the highest offices of power in the United States and by extension, represents an opportunity for the exploration of its consequences for society.

As if to underscore the continued manifest importance of the case, recently at federal judge ordered the White House to preserve copies of all its e-mails, “an issue that first surfaced during the leak probe of administration officials who disclosed Valerie Plame’s CIA identity to reporters,” according to ABC News.

And, former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage told CNN in an interview broadcast on November 11 that he was “extraordinarily foolish” to leak Plame Wilson’s name to the columnist Robert Novak who later cited Armitage and Karl Rove, then President Bush’s top political adviser, as his sources.

The audience will enjoy personal access to the Wilsons, making it possible to seize a rare moment for spontaneous interaction with two high-profile citizens whose lives and work have been at the center of a national debate on the war in Iraq.

Fairfield University Student Association (FUSA) President Hutchinson Williams ’08 anticipates a large turnout for this premiere event. “We are very fortunate to have such topical headliners as Valerie Plame Wilson and Joseph Wilson to inaugurate this annual event,” he said. “With a kick-off this strong, this event will prove to be an academic and intellectual tradition for years to come.”

The format for the evening is much the same as that of OVF, which features director Dr Philip Eliasoph as moderator of a discussion following each speaker’s remarks. Representatives of two political campus clubs, The College Democrats and The College Republicans, will be onstage to participate in the discussion and finally, questions will be taken from a limited number of audience members.

Tickets are available through the Open Visions Forum website www.fairfield.edu/openvisions, or by calling the Quick Center box office at 203-254-4010 or 877-ARTS-396.