ATHENS, Ohio (Feb. 28, 2005) -- Ohio University's 2005 Baker Peace Conference, scheduled for April 21-22, will bring to campus some of the nation's most prominent intelligence specialists to explore the topic of "U.S. Intelligence, Terrorism, and Homeland Security."
As previously announced, former Central Intelligence Agency Director R. James Woolsey will be the keynote speaker for the event. Woolsey will speak at 7:30 p.m. on Thursday, April 21, in Templeton-Blackburn Alumni Memorial Auditorium.
Among the notable speakers who will participate in panel discussions Friday, April 22, in Baker University Center Ballroom are David Kay, head of the Bush administration's weapons inspection team in Iraq in 2003-2004, and Michael Scheuer, chief of the CIA Counterterrorist Center's Osama bin Laden Unit from 1996-1999. Kay is currently a senior research fellow at the Potomac Institute for Policy Studies, and Scheuer has written two books, "Imperial Hubris: Why the West is Losing the War on Terror (2004)" and "Through Our Enemies' Eyes: Osama bin Laden, Radical Islam & the Future of America (2003)."
"Each year the Baker Peace Conference assembles a diverse group of leading experts to discuss a significant national policy issue related to peace," said Michael Grow, director of the Contemporary History Institute, which organizes the conference in collaboration with the Baker Peace Studies Program. "This year's conference examines one of the most important issues confronting the United States today: the capability of our intelligence agencies to protect the American people from terrorist attacks. Panels on "9/11 and Iraq: What Went Wrong?" "Intelligence and Civil Liberties" and "The Future of American Intelligence" will feature nationally prominent speakers of differing viewpoints debating the topics under discussion."
The first Baker Peace Conference took place in 1984, two years after Dr. John C. Baker, the University's President from 1945 to 1962, and his late wife Elizabeth established the John and Elizabeth Baker Peace Studies Endowment to encourage the education of students and the general public in the means by which peace can be established and maintained throughout the world.
Recent Baker Peace Conferences have included luminaries such as former U.S. National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski and former U.S. Secretary of the interior Bruce Babbitt and have focused on "The United States and Global Hegemony," "U.S. Energy Consumption and the Environment," "War Crimes, Justice and Peace," "Prospects for Peace in the New Millennium: Lessons from the 20th Century" and "Chaos, Complexity, and Contemporary History."
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Media Contact: Contemporary History Institute Director Michael Grow, (740) 593-4356 or grow@ohio.edu, or Media Specialist Jack Jeffery, (740) 597-1793 or jefferyj@ohio.edu
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