4/1/98
ATTENTION EDITORS, NEWS DIRECTORS: Both speakers are announced in this release, superceding earlier release today announcing only one commencement speaker.
ATHENS, Ohio -- The Honorable Newt Gingrich and journalist and former hostage Terry Anderson have accepted Ohio University's invitation to speak at two undergraduate commencement ceremonies June 13.
President Robert Glidden joined the Senior Class Council in inviting Gingrich and Anderson to speak at commencement. "I am pleased for our graduates that we will have two such attractive speakers for our baccalaureate ceremonies," Glidden said. "Both speakers will bring important messages from personal and professional experiences that are profound in their implications."
Terry Anderson, a former Associated Press chief Middle East correspondent and seven-year hostage in Lebanon, will speak at the 10 a.m. ceremony. Anderson will become a visting professor at Ohio University in July.
Gingrich will speak at the 2 p.m. ceremony. Now serving his 10th term in Congress, Gingrich is the first Republican to be re-elected Speaker of the House of Representatives since 1928. Gingrich served as House Republican whip from 1989-1994. He represents the 6th Congressional District of Georgia.
Acknowledged as the chief architect of the Republican "Contract with America," he served as chairman of the 1996 Republican National Convention in San Diego. Gingrich was called the "Hottest Entrepreneur in America" by Peter Drucker in Inc. Magazine. Drucker noted, "The most visible innovator and entrepreneur in this country today is neither in business nor the social sector. He's in government. It's Newt Gingrich. If I've ever seen a real entrepreneur, he's one. An entrepreneur is someone who gets something new done."
Time magazine, in naming Gingrich "Man of the Year" for 1995, said, "Newt Gingrich belongs in the category of the exceptional....Today, because of Newt Gingrich, the question is not whether a balanced budget plan will come to pass, but when." Forbes magazine said, "Never in American history has a speaker of the House pushed through so much sweeping, substantive legislation as Newt Gingrich is doing."
Gingrich received his bachelor's degree from Emory University and a master's and doctorate in modern European history from Tulane University. He taught history and environmental studies at West Georgia College for eight years before being elected to Congress in 1978.
Terry Anderson, a native of Lorain, Ohio, gained worldwide renown after he was captured in 1985 and held captive by the radical Islamic Jihad in Lebanon for nearly seven years. Anderson and his wife, Madeleine Bassil, are co-authors of the national best-seller "Den of Lions," the story of his years of captivity. He also wrote, narrated and co-produced "Return to the Den of Lions," a CNN documentary on Lebanon today.
A graduate of Iowa State University, Anderson joined the AP as a broadcast editor in Detroit in 1974. He later worked as the state editor for the Kentucky AP in Louisville, before joining the foreign desk in New York as an editor.
He reported for the AP from Tokyo and Southern Africa before transferring to the Middle East in 1982 to cover the Lebanese civil war and the Israeli invasion of Lebanon. After his release from captivity in 1991, he was a fellow at the Freedom Forum Media Studies Center in New York. He joined Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism as an associate professor in 1996.
Anderson writes a weekly syndicated column for King Features. He is chairman of the Vietnam Children's Fund, which builds elementary schools in Vietnam, and vice chairman of the Committee to Protect Journalists that monitors attacks on the press worldwide.
Three weeks after his commencement speech, Anderson will join the faculty of Ohio University's E.W. Scripps School of Journalism as a Scripps Howard Visiting Professional.
At the time of his acceptance of the visiting professorship, Anderson said: "The Scripps School has a great reputation and both the university and I have the expectation that I will be there for a long time."
Both commencement ceremonies will be held in the 13,000-seat Convocation Center. As in past years, the morning commencement will be for the colleges of business, communication, fine arts and health and human services. The afternoon commencement will be for Honors Tutorial College, University College, and the colleges of arts and sciences, education, and engineering and technology.