NASHVILLE, Tenn. – Public tickets for Vanderbilt University’s annual Impact Symposium go on sale today and are available through Ticketmaster. Former U.S. senator and 2004 Democratic vice presidential candidate John Edwards and conservative journalist Peter Brimelow, known for his controversial writings on immigration policy, are the event’s featured speakers.
The theme of this year’s lectures is “Disappearing Borders.” Brimelow will speak Monday, March 20, at 8 p.m. in Vanderbilt’s Langford Auditorium. Edwards will speak Tuesday, March 21, at 8 p.m. in Langford.
Tickets for both events are free to Vanderbilt students, faculty and staff and are available at the Sarratt Student Center box office.
A British-American financial journalist and author, Brimelow has written for Barron’s, Forbes, the Financial Post and the National Review. His books include Alien Nation: Common Sense about America’s Immigration Disaster, The Worm in the Apple: How the Teacher Unions Are Destroying American Education and Wall Street Gurus: How You Can Profit from Investment Newsletters. Brimelow did a brief stint as a securities analyst before becoming a business journalist, and from 1978 to 1989 served as an aide to Sen. Orrin Hatch in Washington, D.C.
Following his 2004 vice presidential bid, Edwards joined former congressman and vice presidential candidate Jack Kemp to co-chair the Council on Foreign Relations‘ task force examining U.S. policy toward Russia. The council charged the group with reviewing existing policy and making recommendations regarding future policy on issues ranging from global security to Russia’s evolution as a democratic state.
Recently, Edwards accepted an appointment at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill as director of the Center on Poverty, Work and Opportunity, which was established to bring together the best minds in the country to explore ways to end poverty in America.
This year’s Impact Symposium continues a long-standing tradition at Vanderbilt. Impact, one of the oldest university lecture series of its caliber in the nation, began in 1964 when a group of Vanderbilt students saw the need to increase the campus’s exposure to current issues by providing a symposium in which intellectually challenging – and sometimes controversial – speakers could be heard.
In 1968, the series passed a milestone when Robert Kennedy drew a record attendance of 16,000 people from more than 100 college delegations across the United States. Over the years, successive Impact programs have brought speakers such as George McGovern, Robert McNamara, Jesse Jackson, former presidents Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter and George H. W. Bush and former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher to campus. Last year’s event featured political activist and former Democratic presidential candidate the Rev. Al Sharpton; Ann Coulter, best-selling author and conservative commentator; and Howard Dean, chair of the Democratic National Committee.
For more information about Impact, call the Office of Student Activities at 615-322-2471.
For more news about Vanderbilt, visit VUCast – Vanderbilt’s News Network at www.vanderbilt.edu/news.
Media Contact: Princine Lewis, 615-322-NEWS
princine.l.lewis@vanderbilt.edu