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Release: Feb. 17, 2000

Nobel Laureate John Hume scheduled to visit UI in April

IOWA CITY, Iowa -- John Hume, a 1998 Nobel Peace Prize winner, who shared the award with David Trimble for their efforts to find a peaceful solution to the conflict in Northern Ireland, is scheduled to give a public address Friday, April 28 at Macbride Auditorium at the University of Iowa.

Burns Weston, emeritus professor, UI College of Law, and director, UI Center for Human Rights, says Hume's visit is a result of the successful "Global Focus: Human Rights '98," a yearlong

conscience-raising human rights issues program that in 1998 commemorated the 50th anniversary of the U.N. Declaration of Human Rights. Hume's visit is made possible by the College of Law's Richard S. Levitt Distinguished Lectureship fund and International Programs, in cooperation with the UI Center for Human Rights.

Weston said the unpredictable events that continue to shape the Northern Ireland peace process may again change Hume's visit date. Hume was to visit in April 1998 as an HR '98 speaker, but was forced to cancel after a breakdown in talks between the fractious Protestant and Catholic groups that had some months prior agreed to a peace accord.

Among the UI guests to be invited to hear Hume's 4 p.m. talk, "The Struggle for Peace and Justice in Northern Ireland," are Gov. Tom Vilsack, Sen. Tom Harkin , Rep. Jim Leach, former Sen. Dick Clark, and UI professor emeritus and former president, Willard "Sandy" Boyd. All five are honorary executive council members of the new UICHR, an organization that in light of HR '98, was created to address human rights issues locally and abroad through scholarship, education, direct action and other means.