Harold Brown, former U.S. Secretary of Defense, will speak Thursday, Jan. 19, at 7:30 p.m. in the Madsen Recital Hall at Brigham Young University for this semester’s Distinguished Lecture in International Affairs.
He will speak on “The U.S. and China: 1980, 2012 and 2030.” Admission is free, and the public is welcome. The lecture is sponsored by the Wheatley Institution and the David M. Kennedy Center for International Studies.
Brown was nominated by President Jimmy Carter to be Secretary of Defense Jan. 20, 1977. He was confirmed by the U.S. Senate the same day, took the oath of office Jan. 21, 1977, and served until Jan. 20, 1981. He graduated from Columbia University with a bachelor's degree in 1945, a master's degree in 1946 and a doctorate in physics in 1949.
Previously, Brown served as director of defense research and engineering, Secretary of the Air Force, and he is president emeritus and a life member of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. Among his many honors, he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1981 and the Fermi Award in 1993. He is the author of “Thinking about National Security: Defense and Foreign Policy in a Dangerous World (Westview, 1983) and editor of “The Strategic Defense Initiative: Shield or Snare?” (Westview, 1987).
A counselor with the Center for Strategic and International Studies, he is also a member of the board of directors of Evergreen Oil, Inc. and an honorary director on the board at the Atlantic Council.
Named for Jack and Mary Lois Wheatley, the Wheatley Institution at BYU enhances the reputation and scholarship of BYU by seeking creative and powerful ideas that lead toward practical and constructive solutions to real societal issues.
For more information, contact Erlend Peterson at erlend_peterson@byu.edu or 801-422-1802 or visit wheatley.byu.edu.
Writer: Charles Krebs
