March 24, 2008
Contact: Emanuel Costache '09
Media Relations Intern
413/542-2321
Caroline Jenkins Hanna
Director of Media Relations

413/542-8417

audioPhotos and audio of this event

AMHERST, Mass.—Wesley K. Clark, 2004 presidential candidate and retired four-star U.S. Army General, and Andrew J. Bacevich, Boston University professor of international relations and former U.S. Army Colonel, will participate in a discussion titled “Reinstating the National Draft” at Amherst College on Saturday, April 5. The event, which will take place on campus at 1 p.m. in Johnson Chapel and will also include a book-signing at its conclusion, is part of the Amherst College Colloquium Series (ACCS) and is free and open to the public.  

Clark served 34 years as an officer in the U. S. Army. As a captain, he led an infantry unit in Vietnam, where he was seriously wounded. Over the next 30 years, he helped train, organize and equip the U.S. Army, participated in the negotiations which ended conflict in Bosnia and, in his final duty as Supreme Allied Commander, Europe, led the forces of 19 nations in a successful military campaign to end Serb ethnic cleansing in Kosovo. He is currently Chairman and CEO of Wesley K. Clark & Associates, a strategic advisory and consulting firm he started in 2004.  He is also Chairman of Rodman and Renshaw, an investment bank based in New York and London, and a Senior Fellow at UCLA’s Burkle Center for International Relations. He remains an avidly sought speaker and writer and serves as an MSNBC commentator on foreign policy and military affairs. In addition, he is a member of the boards of directors of several private and public companies.

Bacevich is professor of international relations at Boston University and former director of BU’s Center for International Relations. A graduate of West Point, he received his doctorate in American diplomatic history from Princeton University. Before joining the faculty of BU in 1998, he taught at West Point and Johns Hopkins University and served for over two decades in the U. S. Army. During his time in the service, he participated in tours in Vietnam and the Persian Gulf, achieving the rank of Colonel before retiring in the early 1990s. He is author of numerous books, including The New American Militarism: How Americans Are Seduced by War (Oxford, 2005). On May 13, 2007, Bacevich’s son was killed in action by a suicide bomber south of Samarra in Salah Ad Din Province in Iraq. Two weeks later, his piece “I Lost My Son to a War I Oppose. We Were Both Doing Our Duty” appeared in The Washington Post.

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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