Award-winning journalists Ted Koppel, Mara Liasson and Eugene Robinson will speak on “2016 Elections: Voting as an Informed Citizen” on Wednesday, March 23 at 7 p.m. in Hanner Fieldhouse.
“We could not be more excited to welcome Ted Koppel, Mara Liasson and Eugene Robinson to Georgia Southern University,” said Teresa Thompson, Ph.D., the university’s vice president for Student Affairs and Enrollment Management. “At Georgia Southern, our goal is to integrate learning, service and leadership to empower our students to become global citizens who lead with a lifelong commitment to service. This panel of speakers will certainly open the eyes of our students to the current political climate and help to educate them on the issues they will be voting on in the fall.”
Complimentary tickets may be picked up on a first-come, first-served basis until the day of the event at the Office of Leadership and Community Engagement at Georgia Southern, inside the Russell Union. It is open Monday through Friday, 8 a.m. - 5 p.m.
During more than 50 years working as a professional journalist, Ted Koppel has embodied the term “eyewitness to history” through his coverage of important historical events including President John F. Kennedy’s funeral, Barry Goldwater’s presidential campaign and Martin Luther King Jr.’s civil rights march from Selma to Montgomery, Ala., to name a few.
Mara Liasson is the national political correspondent for National Public Radio (NPR) and a contributor to FOX News Channel. Liasson joined NPR in 1985 as a general assignment reporter and newscaster, covering Congress and serving as the White House correspondent during all eight years of the Clinton administration. Now, as the national political correspondent her reports can be heard on the award-winning newsmagazines, “All Things Considered” and “Morning Edition.”
Eugene Robinson, a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for The Washington Post, was born and raised in Orangeburg, S.C. He was educated at Orangeburg High School, where he was one of a handful of African-American students on the previously all white campus; and the University of Michigan, where during his senior year he was the first black student to be named co-editor-in-chief of the award-winning student newspaper, The Michigan Daily. His experiences and his remarkable storytelling ability have won him wide acclaim, most notably as the winner of the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for his commentary on the 2008 presidential race.
The panel of speakers is part of Georgia Southern’s Leadership Lecture Series, developed to offer students insights from world-class leaders.
The March 23 panel joins a list of leaders to appear at Georgia Southern’s Leadership Lecture Series that includes Archie Manning, former first lady Laura Bush, former President Jimmy Carter and first lady Rosalynn Carter, former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and political consultants James Carville and Mary Matalin.