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VEISHEA Opening Ceremony with Ann Bryant Borders
12:00 PM – Campanile Stage. Central Campus (Rain Location: Campanile Room, Memorial Union) - Ann Bryant Borders, a 1994 VEISHEA General Cochair, will deliver this year's opening remarks, "VEISHEA: Learning to Make a Difference." Borders graduated from Iowa State University with a B.S. in biology in 1994. At Iowa State she participated in the Honors Program and was a member of the Pi Beta Phi sorority. Borders graduated from Harvard Medical School in 1999 and completed a Masters of Science in Health Policy at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. She completed a residency in obstetrics and gynecology in Boston in 2003. During her residency she spent a clinical rotation working at the Kenyatta National Hospital in Nairobi, Kenya. Following residency Borders completed a fellowship in maternal-fetal medicine and a postdoctoral fellowship in health services research at the Institute for Healthcare Studies at Northwestern University. She is currently an assistant professor of obstetrics and gynecology in the Division of Maternal-Fetal Medicine at Northwestern University.

The First Amendment and the White House - Helen Thomas
8:00 PM – Great Hall, Memorial Union - Helen Thomas, a Hearst Newspapers columnist, served for fifty-seven years as a correspondent for United Press International. As White House bureau chief, she has covered every president since John F. Kennedy and is often referred to as "the First Lady of the Press." Thomas was the first woman officer of the National Press Club, the first woman member and president of the White House Correspondents Association and the first woman member of the Gridiron Club. In 1998 she received the International Women's Media Foundation Lifetime Achievement Award and was honored by President and Mrs. Clinton as the first recipient of the Helen Thomas Lifetime Achievement Award. She is the author of four books: Watchdogs of Democracy? The Waning Washington Press Corps and How It Has Failed the Public; Thanks for the Memories Mr. President: Wit and Wisdom from the Front Row at the White House; Front Row at the White House: My Life and Times; and Dateline: Whitehouse. The 2007 First Amendment Day Lecture.

Catholic-Muslim Relations: A View from Jordan - Fr. Nabil Haddad
7:00 PM – Gallery, Memorial Union - Fr. Nabil Haddad is a Melkite Catholic priest who is a member of the Jordanian Royal Commission for Human Rights. He is the executive director of the Jordanian Interfaith Coexistence Research Center (JICRC) in Amman, Jordan. The JICRC is a non-governmental organization that promotes coexistence on national and international levels through the establishment of intercultural understanding between communities, groups, and individuals. It's work is based on the common values inherent in the Abrahamic faiths of Islam, Christianity, and Judaism. JICRC has three educational programs: Imams for Coexistence, Women for Coexistence, and Youth for Coexistence. Part of the World Affairs series.

Journalists in Jeopardy: The Hazards to Freedom of the Press - A Panel Discussion
2:00 PM – 102 Science I - Featured panelists include Dan Ehl, managing editor and writer for the Daily Iowegian in Centerville, Iowa, who was assaulted by a local business owner over editorials he wrote; Dennis Chamberlin, assistant professor in the Greenlee School of Journalism and Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist who worked in Poland and Russia; and John Carlson, columnist for the Des Moines Register who spent a month in the fall of 2005 reporting on Iowa troops stationed in Ramadi and Tikrit, Iraq. Part of the First Amendment Day Celebration.

A Young Star's Road to Recovery - "Full House" actress Jodie Sweetin
8:00 PM – Sun Room, Memorial Union - Jodie Sweetin, best known as Stephanie Tanner on the sitcom Full House, got her start in show business at the age of four doing television commercials. She graduated from Los Alamitos High School in 1999 and after a two-year absence from television landed a repeating guest starring role on Party of Five and guest appearances on such shows as Brotherly Love and Yes, Dear. Sweetin admitted to a methamphetamine addiction and a problem with alcohol and following a reported intervention staged by former Full House costars checked herself into a rehab facility in March 2005. She has been clean and sober since. Sweetin will discuss how her life changed after the end of Full House and how she got sober after her battles with alcohol and drugs.

Kremlin Rising: Vladimir Putin and the Russian Counter-Revolution - Peter Baker
6:00 PM – Sun Room, Memorial Union - Peter Baker has been a reporter for the Washington Post for eighteen years and currently serves as White House correspondent covering President Bush. He served as the Post's Moscow bureau chief from January 2001 through November 2004, covering Russia and fourteen former Soviet republics. After the 9/11 attacks, he was the first American newspaper journalist into Afghanistan, where he lived with anti-Taliban rebels and spent eight months covering the conflict and new government. He reported from Saddam Hussein's Baghdad and was embedded with the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force during the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Prior to his foreign assignments, Baker served as the Post's White House correspondent, covering the Clinton Administration, including the Monica Lewinski scandal. He is the author of The Breach: Inside the Impeachment and Trial of William Jefferson Clinton. His most recent book is Kremlin Rising: Vladimir Putin and the Russian Counter-Revolution, coauthored with fellow Moscow bureau chief Susan B. Glasser. The Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies Program Distinguished Speaker; part of the World Affairs Series; and part of the First Amendment Day Celebration.

A Conversation with Wendell Berry
7:00 PM – Great Hall, Memorial Union - Poet, essayist, farmer, and novelist Wendell Berry will be joined by daughter Mary Berry Smith and area farmers to discuss the changing landscape of American agriculture and its relationship to local economies and rural life. Berry, who has taught English at New York University and at the University of Kentucky, lives on a farm just five miles from his birthplace in northern Kentucky. He is celebrated not only as a writer but as a philosopher, ethicist, and conservationist. Mary Berry Smith lives in north-central Kentucky, not far from her father, on a traditional cattle and tobacco farm. She has diversified her operation to include grape growing and wine-making in the centuries-old tradition of family farms in Europe. This lecture commemorates the 20th anniversary of the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture. It is also the 2007 Shivvers Memorial Lecture, in memory of John Shivvers, who farmed near Knoxville, Iowa.

Africa and the Curse of Foreign Aid - Andrew Mujuni Mwenda
3:00 PM – Sun Room, Memorial Union - Andrew Mujuni Mwenda is currently a Knight Fellow at Stanford University. Since 2004, he has been political editor for the Daily Monitor newspaper, Uganda's leading independent daily. In addition to supervising a staff of reporters, Mwenda writes two columns a week. He also hosts a prime time current affairs radio talk-show every weekday evening. He began his journalism career at Monitor Publications Limited, first as a reporter, then assistant editor for investigations. From 2002 to 2004, Mwenda was general manager of KFM radio. He earned his bachelor's degree in mass communication from Makerere University in Kampala, Uganda. He also studied at the University of London's School of Oriental and African Studies. Mwenda is the coauthor, with Roger Tangri, of a forthcoming book on corruption in Uganda.

Restoring Constitutional Government - Congressman Ron Paul
7:00 PM – South Ballroom, Memorial Union - Presidential Caucus Series Congressman Ron Paul is a physician, congressman, and presidential candidate from the state of Texas. A Republican, he has represented Texas's 14th congressional district in the U.S. House of Representatives since 1997, and previously served as the representative from Texas's 22nd district in 1976 and from 1979 to 1985. Paul presently serves on the House Financial Services Committee, the International Relations Committee, and the Joint Economic Committee. He works for limited constitutional government, low taxes, free markets, and a return to sound monetary policies. Paul declared his candidacy on March 12 as a guest on Washington Journal on C-SPAN.

Law and Economics: A Catholic Critique - Mark A. Sargent
8:00 PM – Sun Room, Memorial Union - Mark A. Sargent, Dean and Professor of Law at Villanova University School of Law, specializes in securities regulation and corporate law, and he has published extensively in those fields. Sargent has held appointments as editor of The Business Lawyer and as a former member of the National Adjudicatory Council of the National Association of Securities Dealers, Inc., the national self-regulatory organization for the brokerage industry. He also has served as an arbitrator in securities and corporate law disputes; an administrative hearing judge in state securities enforcement actions; and an expert witness for the Securities and Exchange Commission, state securities regulators, and private litigants. He is editor-in-chief of the Villanova Journal of Law and Investment Management, a peer-reviewed journal he founded in 1997. This lecture is made possible with the assistance of Commonweal magazine. The Msgr. Supple Endowment Spring Lecture.