Mikhail Gorvbachev, who led the Soviet Union out of Communist rule, will speak later this year at Lafayette College.
According to an announcement posted on the school website, Gorbachev is scheduled to give an address Oct. 19 to mark the opening of the Oechsle Center for Global Education.
The center will be part of a new academic building that features, "faculty offices, seminar rooms, and state-of-the-art classrooms with international connectivity, in addition to space for public lectures and common areas to encourage dialogue about global issues."
Gorbachev was general secretary of the Communist Party from 1985 to 1990, and president of the Soviet Union from 1900 to 1991. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1990.
Tom Tee
6:20 pm on Wednesday, May 25, 2011
Hmmmm. ...Wonder if there'll be the faculty directed protests against this speaker the way there were back several years ago that caused the college to withdraw the invitation to speak to Jean Kirkpatrick? LOL, somehow I think not.
Bruce Wachter
8:18 am on Thursday, May 26, 2011
"We cannot join the world economy without a steady transition to a free market," declared Gorbachev before departing for the G7 meeting in London. But then, giving his audience a bad case of double bind, he added that the anticipated transition to a free market does not mean, though, that we are departing from socialist ideals. On the contrary, through democracy we'll assert the principle of socialism. " -- As reported by David Remnick, Washington Post, 13 July 1991
"During a late-February address in Brussels, former Soviet dissident Vladimir Bukovsky warned that the European Union -- referred to by former Soviet dictator Mikhail Gorbachev as the 'new European Soviet' -- represents a continuation of the totalitarian vision he had fought against in Russia.... The former Soviet president Mikhail S. Gorbachev put it more succinctly when he told the official Russian news agency, Ria Novosti, last week that 'It is all about influence and domination in Europe.'" (New York Times, 4-18-07)
“Dictatorship can be established only by a victory of socialism in different countries or groups of countries, after which there would be federal unions of the various groupings of these socialist countries, and the third stage would be an amalgamation of these regional federal unions into a world union of socialist nations.” --1936 Communist International
Tom Adams
10:01 am on Thursday, May 26, 2011
This is huge for the college and the city. Regardless, he is an international leader and responsible for helping to lead the world out of the Cold War. Kudos to Lafayette and especially for their new Globakl Education intiative. Our world gets smaller and smaller. This is very progressive.