Attorney General Eric Holder to Present UMaine Cohen Lecture

Contact: Joe Carr at (207) 581-3571

ORONO — United States Attorney General Eric Holder will visit the University of Maine on Friday Oct. 23 to deliver a William S. Cohen Lecture.  The talk is scheduled for 11 a.m. at the Collins Center for the Arts.

Cohen, the Bangor native who represented Maine in Congress for 24 years and served as Secretary of Defense in the Clinton administration, will also participate in the event, making introductory remarks before Holder’s lecture.

Holder is a New York City native who earned both a bachelor’s degree and a law degree from Columbia University.  He became an associate judge of the Superior Court of the District of Columbia in 1988.  In 1993, President Clinton nominated him to serve as U.S. attorney for Washington, D.C., a post he held for four years until becoming deputy attorney general. He moved to the private sector in 2001, taking a position with the law firm Covington and Burling, LLC.  Holder joined President Obama’s cabinet at the beginning of the president’s term earlier this year.

The lecture series is a function of UMaine’s William S. Cohen Center for International Policy and Commerce, established in 1997.  Cohen, who is a former UMaine business faculty member, donated his collection of papers chronicling his Congressional career to UMaine’s Fogler Library when the center was established.  In January of 2001, Cohen gave the papers from his tenure as Secretary of Defense to the university.

Cohen delivered the first lecture in the series in March of 1998; Madeleine Albright, then Secretary of State, followed in October of1999; retired U.S. Senator and former astronaut John Glenn delivered the Cohen Lecture in May of 2001, followed two years later by former Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney. Former CBS News correspondent gave a Cohen lecture presentation in 2005; Washington Post journalist and author Bob Woodward gave the most recent talk in the series, in 2007.

The Cohen Lecture was established to bring to UMaine a distinguished speaker with informed perspectives on matters related to international policy and commerce.

Free tickets to the event are available, on a first-come, first-served basis. Those interested in attending should contact the Maine Center for the Arts Box Office at 581-1755 or 1-800-MCA-TIXX. Box office hours are Monday-Friday 9 a.m.-4 p.m.