"Who Stole the American Dream?"

(Lucile Speer Memorial Lecture in collaboration with the Phi Beta Kappa Association of Montana)

8:00 PM Thursday, April 28, 2016
Dennison Theatre

"Can We Reclaim the American Dream?"

3:40 PM Thursday, April 28, 2016
Gallagher Business Building Room 123

Please join us for a seminar and lecture with Hedrick Smith. After graduating from Williams College and doing graduate work at Oxford University, in 1959 he joined United Press International. For the next three years, he worked as a journalist in Memphis, Nashville, and Atlanta. From 1962 to 1988 for The New York Times, he covered Martin Luther King, Jr., and the civil rights struggle, the Vietnam War from Saigon, the Middle East conflict from Cairo, the Cold War from both Moscow and Washington, and six presidential administrations. In 1971, as chief diplomatic correspondent, he was a member of the Pulitzer Prize-winning team that produced the Pentagon Papers. In 1974, he won the Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting from Russia and Eastern Europe. The Russians, his book based on the years he spent in the Soviet Union as New York Times Bureau Chief from 1971 to 1974, became a No. 1 best-seller. Translated into sixteen languages, it has been widely used in university courses. His next book, The Power Game: How Washington Works (1987), was another major best-seller.

For PBS since 1989, Mr. Smith has created twenty-six specials and mini-series on such varied topics as terrorism, Wall Street, Soviet perestroika, Wal-Mart, Enron, tax evasion, educational reform, health care, the environment, jazz, and Washington power structures. His programs have won Emmy awards and the Columbia-Dupont Gold Baton, or grand prize, for the year’s best public affairs program on U.S. television. Along with George Polk, George Peabody, and Sidney Helman awards for reportorial excellence, his programs have won two national public service awards from journalism’s Sigma Delta Chi. His television work also includes a long-time stint as a panelist on Washington Week in Review and as a special correspondent for The Newshour with Jim Lehrer.

Mr. Smith’s current best-selling book is Who Stole the American Dream? It has been praised by reviewers for its analysis of the forces shaping contemporary political and economic trends with their self-evident threat to the long-term prosperity and stability of the country.

The seminar and lecture are free and open to the public.