2006 John F. Kennedy Library Forums

A tribute to Barbara Jordan and Shirley Chisholm | >>Click here to listen (RealAudio)
Martin Luther King Day, Monday, January 16, 2006, 2:00 to 3:30 p.m.
Cokie Roberts, Ann Richards and Congresswoman Barbara Lee will share their memories of these two remarkable women. Callie Crossley of WGBH's Beat the Press, will moderate. Barbara Jordan, who died ten years ago, was elected to the Texas Senate in 1966 and was the first African-American woman from a Southern state to serve in the U.S. House of Representatives. Shirley Chisholm, who passed away a year ago, was the first African-American woman elected to the U.S. Congress and the first African-American to run as a democratic presidential candidate in 1972.

Richard Reeves on Presidents Kennedy, Nixon and Reagan | >>Click here to listen (RealAudio)
Presidents Day, Monday, February 20, 2006, 2:00 - 3:30 p.m.
Richard Reeves, the biographer of Presidents Kennedy, Nixon and Reagan will discuss their legacies.

Vietnam and the Presidency: Inside the White House | >>Listen to hour 1 | Listen to hour 2 (RealAudio) Saturday March 11, 2006.
Panel: General Alexander Haig commanded a battalion in Vietnam from 1966 to 1967; he was Military Assistant to President Nixon’s National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger, eventually becoming Nixon’s White House Chief of Staff. He was Secretary of State from 1981 to 1982 under President Reagan. Henry Kissinger served as Secretary of State from 1973 to 1977. He was President Nixon’s National Security Advisor from 1969 to 1973. He was a co-recipient of the 1973 Nobel Peace Prize for negotiating a ceasefire between South and North Vietnam. Theodore Sorensen was Special Counsel to President Kennedy from 1961 to 1963. He is Senior Counsel for the New York City law firm, Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison. Jack Valenti was Special Assistant to President Johnson from 1963 to 1966. He was president of the Motion Picture Association from 1966 to 2004. (Moderator: Brian Williams.)

Vietnam and the Presidency: The Media | >>Click here to listen (RealAudio)
Saturday March 11, 2006.
Panel: Steve Bell, news correspondent for ABC News from 1967-1986, reported from Vietnam and Indo-China in the early 1970s. Frances Fitzgerald, non-fiction author and journalist, received both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award for Fire In the Lake: The Vietnamese and the Americans in Vietnam. Dan Rather, CBS News anchorman from 1981 to 2005 and 60 Minutes II correspondent, covered Vietnam for CBS News in the mid 1960s.

Frank McCourt | >>Click here to listen (RealAudio)
Monday, April 10, 2006
Frank McCourt, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Angela's Ashes, discusses his Irish heritage.  This forum is one of several that is in conjunction with our new exhibit, "A Journey Home - John F. Kennedy and Ireland."  Kevin Cullen of The Boston Globe moderates.

The Irish Tenors in the Kennedy Administration | >>Click here to listen (RealAudio)
Monday, May 1, 2006
Charles Daly, Richard Donahue, and Jack McNally, all members of President Kennedy's White House staff, will share stories of working in the Kennedy White House. Political commentator and humorist Dick Flavin moderates.

Singing for Justice: Arlo Guthrie | >>Click here to listen (RealAudio)
Monday, May 15, 2006.
Arlo Guthrie looks back at the cultural impact of protest music that began during President Kennedy's administration and continues in America today.  Dick Pleasants, host of The Morning Express at WUMB, will moderates.

Robert Dallek: J.F.K. in His Own Words | >>Click here to listen (RealAudio)
Sunday, June 11, 2006.
Acclaimed biographer Robert Dallek plays and comments on excerpts from some of President Kennedy's most memorable speeches, press conferences and debates. Boston University historian Bruce Schulman moderates.

The Pentagon and the Presidency: James Carroll | >>Click here to listen (RealAudio)
Monday, June 12, 2006.
James Carroll  discusses his new book House of War in which he argues the Pentagon has, since its founding, operated beyond the control of any force in government including the President himself.  Sarah Sewall , Director of the Program on National Security and Human Rights at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, and Retired Colonel Douglas Macgregor, author of Breaking the Phalanx and Transformation Under Fire, joins him.  NPR National Security Correspondent Tom Gjelten moderates.

Brokering Peace: Senator George Mitchell | >>Click here to listen (RealAudio)
Monday, September 18, 2006.
Senator George Mitchell, who served as Chairman of the Peace Negotiations in Northern Ireland that led to the historic Good Friday Peace Agreement, analyzes the primary issues involved in resolving the conflicts in Northern Ireland and the Middle East.  Kevin Cullen of the Boston Globe moderates.

Rebuilding Afghanistan: Chayes and Junger | >>Click here to listen (RealAudio)
Monday, September 25, 2006.
Former National Public Radio correspondent Sarah Chayes, who has been living in the former Taliban stronghold of Kandahar, and award-winning journalist Sebastian Junger, who has covered Afghanistan for ABC News and other publications, discuss efforts to help reconstruct Afghanistan after 9/11. Jessica Stern, an expert on terrorism who teaches at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government, moderates.

Michael Patrick MacDonald | >>Click here to listen (RealAudio)
Tuesday, October 3, 2006.
Michael Patrick MacDonald continues his memoir, All Souls, of growing up in South Boston in a new book, Easter Rising: An Irish American Coming Up from Under.  Maureen Dezell, a former staff writer for The Boston Globe and author of Irish America: Coming into Clover, moderates.

Barack Obama | >>Click here to listen (RealAudio)
Friday, October 20, 2006.
Senator Barack Obama will discuss his new book, The Audacity of Hope, with New York Times columnist Bob Herbert.

Religion and Politics in America | >>Click here to listen (RealAudio)
Monday, October 23, 2006.
Rev. Richard Cizik, Vice President of Government Affairs for the National Association of Evangelicals; retired Senator John Danforth, author of Faith and Politics; and Rev. Barry Lynn, Executive Director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State and author of Piety & Politics, examine the evolving role of religion in American politics.  Renee Loth, editor of the editorial page of The Boston Globe, moderates.

Operation Homecoming | >>Click here to listen (RealAudio)
Saturday, November 11, 2006.
Operation Homecoming is a program created by the National Endowment for the Arts to encourage returning soldiers to write about their wartime experiences.  Their poems, essays and stories will soon be published in a literary anthology.  Soldiers having recently returned from Iraq who have participated in this program read from their works.  Andrew Carroll, editor of the anthology and author of the bestselling War Letters, moderates.

Interpreting the Mid-Term Elections | >>Click here to listen (RealAudio)
Wednesday, November 15, 2006.
Robert Blendon, Director of the Harvard Opinion Research Program, and Andrew Kohut, Diretor of the Pew Research Center, interpret the results of the Novemer 7th elections.  NECN host, Jim Braude, moderates.

Tribute to Arthur Schlesinger | >>Click here to listen (RealAudio)
Monday, November 27, 2006.
Historians Alan Brinkley, Doris Kearns Goodwin, and Sean Wilentz look back at the extraordinary life and career of one of America's foremost historians.   John Seigenthaler, founder of the First Amendment Center, moderates.  Arthur Schlesinger was special assistant to President John F. Kennedy and won the Pulitzer Prize for A Thousand Days, his biography of President Kennedy .

Patrick Hemingway | >>Click here to listen (RealAudio)
Sunday, December 3, 2006.
Patrick Hemingway, the son of Ernest Hemingway, discusses his father's writing and legacy with Stanley Katz, President Emeritus of the American Council of Learned Societies and chair of the Societies' Social Research Council Working Group on Cuba through which he has done extensive work with the Hemingway materials remaining in Cuba.  The Kennedy Library is the major repository of Ernest Hemingway's papers.

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