After an unusually inactive fall semester, the Tufts Lecture Series has announced that it will bring prominent conservative author P.J. O'Rourke to campus on Feb. 27. The speech will mark the first event fully sponsored by the student-run group during the 2001-2002 school year, and the beginning of what Series committee members say will be a period of fewer, albeit more prominent, speakers.
Fans describe O'Rourke - whose most recent works are 2001's The CEO of the Sofa and 1998's Eat the Rich - as a right-wing writer who even left-wingers can appreciate and enjoy.
O'Rourke has received notoriety as a New York Times best-selling author after two books, Parliament of Whores and Give War A Chance, held the number-one spot. He is known for his uncanny tactics of traveling to high-intensity, even dangerous areas of the world, and writing about his experiences with tactful humor.
"O'Rourke lobbed one-liners on the battlefields of the Gulf War, traded quips with communist rebels in the jungles of the Philippines, and went undercover at the Dome of the Rock Mosque as P. J. of Arabia," reads his official website.
Senior Jonathan Perle, co-chair of the Lecture Series, said that the topic of O'Rourke's Tufts lecture has not been decided. O'Rourke was nominated and voted on by Lecture Series committee members, and procured through an agent after the committee submitted a bid. O'Rourke will receive $17,500 for speaking at Tufts.
The Series was less active during the fall semester because "we felt we wanted to get one or two well-known and good speakers, as opposed to a number of smaller ones," Perle said. The committee must first arrange an appropriate time and place to hold events before attempting to fit Tufts into a lecturer's engagement schedule.
According to senior co-chair Ben Rouda, Lecture Series members are planning a debate to be held at the end of the semester between students from Oxford University and Tufts. The Series will cosponsor events as part of the annual Education for Public Inquiry and International Citizenship (EPIIC) symposium. The committee will also arrange another speaker once they have voted on nominations and will continue to co-sponsor events throughout the spring semester.
The Lecture Series is funded solely by the Tufts Community Union (TCU) Senate, and is the only University entity allowed to pay more than $50 for a speaker. It is for this reason that the Series is approached to cosponsor many events, as other campus programs do not have the ability to host lecturers that come with a high price tag.
In recent years the Lecture Series has hosted John Deutch, former director of the CIA, and Helen Thomas, a reporter formerly with United Press International. In the past few years, Lecture Series events have not required tickets, as "we feel that the student activities fee, which is used to pay for these lectures, entitles all students to come for free," Perle said. Events are open to all students. In order to accommodate more University community members, however, the general public is typically not invited.
