Smith President to Speak at White House

March 15 event to be featured live on C-SPAN and the Internet

Smith College President Ruth J. Simmons has been invited by President Clinton and First Lady Hillary Clinton to be a featured speaker at a Millennium Evening at the White House. The event will take place at 7:30 p.m. EST Monday, March 15, and is scheduled to be broadcast live on C-SPAN, the Internet (www.whitehouse.gov), and at town meeting events around the world.

In addition to Simmons, historians Nancy Cott and Alice Kessler-Harris will speak, addressing the theme "Women as Citizens: Vital Voices Through the Century." The Millennium Evening coincides with National Women's History Month.

The format of the 90-minute program is an interactive discussion that will include the President, Mrs. Clinton, the presenters, the invited audience, and questions from the Internet. The speakers' remarks--on women as volunteers and reformers, women's struggle for rights, and women in public life-will be interspersed with video clips.

This is the sixth Millennium Evening. Other featured guests have included physicist Stephen Hawking; poets laureate Rita Dove, Robert Hass and Robert Pinsky; musicians Wynton Marsalis and Marian McPartland; and professors Bernard Bailyn, Natalie Davis, and Martin Marty.