January 4, 2008
Contact: Caroline Jenkins Hanna
Director of Media Relations
413/542-8417

audio Photos and audio of this event

AMHERST, Mass.—Dee Dee Myers, former Clinton White House press secretary, and Nicolle Wallace, former Bush White House communications director, will participate in a discussion titled “Hot Buttons—and Who’s Pushing Them” at a forum at Amherst College on Wednesday, Jan. 16. The event, which will take place on campus at 4 p.m. in Fayerweather Hall’s Pruyne Lecture Hall, is part of the Amherst College Colloquium Series (ACCS) and is free and open to the public.  

Serving under former President Bill Clinton, Myers is the first woman and youngest person ever to hold the position of White House press secretary. Since leaving the post in late 1994, she has worked as an analyst and writer and is currently a contributing editor of Vanity Fair magazine and a frequent political commentator on NBC and MSNBC. In addition, she has been a consultant to the NBC series The West Wing and co-host of the CNBC talk show Equal Time, discussing daily political developments with co-hosts Mary Matalin and, later, Bay Buchanan.

Now a political analyst for the CBS Evening News, Wallace is former White House communications director for President George W. Bush. She has also served as communications director for the 2004 Bush-Cheney election campaign and as special assistant to the president and director of media affairs at the White House, where she oversaw regional press strategy and outreach. Before joining the Bush Administration, she was Florida Governor Jeb Bush’s press secretary and communications director for the Florida State Technology Office. She served California’s Assembly Republican Caucus from 1997 to 1998 and worked for the California Republican Party in 1998.

Amherst’s ACCS explores pressing societal concerns in depth and features renowned speakers taking divergent positions. Each colloquium includes two days of lectures by the speakers and culminates in an open forum that is free to the general public. It is sponsored by the Office of the President at Amherst College.

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