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LAWRENCE - One of Washington's most prominent journalists will visit the University of Kansas campus next week as the inaugural speaker of the Dole Forum lecture series, sponsored by KU's Dole Institute of Politics.
Brian Lamb, C-SPAN chair and CEO, and host of the network's "Booknotes" program, will give a public lecture at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, Sept. 17, at Woodruff Auditorium in the Kansas Union.
The lecture is free and open to the public, but seating is limited and tickets are required for admission. Tickets are available at all KU ticket offices: the Lied Center, (785) 864-2787; Murphy Hall, (785) 864-3982; and SUA in the Kansas Union, (785) 864-SHOW.
Earlier in the day, Lamb will meet with a group of KU journalism students for an informal discussion. Two Lawrence High School students also will participate in the discussion.
Richard Norton Smith, director of the Dole Institute, said Lamb was the perfect person to help launch the Dole Forum lecture series.
"No one has done more than Brian Lamb to realize the promise of 'electronic democracy'," he said. "Few have done as much to connect Americans to their government, or demystify the political process."
Smith and Lamb have been friends since 1993, when Smith appeared on "Booknotes" to discuss his biography of George Washington. In the course of their conversation, Smith revealed that he had visited every presidential gravesite, prompting Lamb to repeat the feat for himself and paving the way for their joint book, "Who's Buried in Grant's Tomb?" published in 1999.
The Dole Forum will be a periodic lecture series featuring prominent people in the fields of government, politics and media, said Smith.
The Dole Institute, established at KU in 1997 to honor former presidential nominee and Senate majority leader Bob Dole, is designed to encourage student participation and citizen involvement in public service. Its 28,000-square-foot permanent home, under construction since last October, is scheduled to be dedicated on July 22, 2003, Dole's 80th birthday.
This fall, the Institute also will inaugurate its Presidential Lecture Series at KU, with Pulitzer Prize winners Edmund Morris and David McCullough plus noted biographer Michael Beschloss. Morris, author of biographies of Theodore Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan, will speak Sunday, Nov. 3. Beschloss, author of books about Lyndon Johnson and Abraham Lincoln, will speak Nov. 10, and McCullough, author of books on Harry Truman and John Adams, on Nov. 17.
Lamb helped found the Cable-Satellite Public Affairs Network in 1979 to broadcast live gavel-to-gavel coverage of Congress. A nonprofit company supported by the cable industry, C-SPAN is available in more than 81 million households and offers three C-SPAN channels. It is available online at www.c-span.org as well as on WCSP, a Washington D.C., FM station that broadcasts nationally via satellite radio.
Lamb has hosted "Booknotes" on C-SPAN since its inception in 1989 and has interviewed more than 600 nonfiction authors. He has published three books based on the "Booknotes" series.
Before helping found C-SPAN, Lamb served in the Navy and was a freelance reporter for UPI Audio, a Senate press secretary, a White House telecommunications policy staffer and Washington bureau chief for Cablevision magazine. He is a Purdue University graduate.
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