Los Angeles will be hosting two internationally recognized leaders Wednesday afternoon. With Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu already in town, former Secretary of State, New York Senator, and First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton will be in Westwood to speak at third Luskin Lecture for Thought Leadership.
The lecture will be given at UCLA’s Royce Hall at 12:30 p.m. on Wednesday, March 5. Clinton will also be given the UCLA Medal, the highest honor given by the university.
Lynn Vavrek will host a question-and-answer session after Clinton’s lecture.
Clinton was a presidential candidate in 2008 before joining Barack Obama’s cabinet as Secretary of State during his first term. She remained the top U.S. diplomat until Feb. 1, 2013. Prior to joining Obama’s cabinet, Clinton was the junior senator from New York from 2001 to 2009 and the First Lady between 1993 and 2001.
John Kerry succeeded Clinton as Secretary of State.
The Luskin Lecture for Thought Leadership was established in 2011 by UCLA supporters Meyer and Renee Luskin as an attempt to connect the university and City of Los Angeles to iconic “thought leaders.” The aim of the lecture series is to spark a dialog “among scholars, leaders and the Los Angeles community on pressing national and global issues.”
Established in 1979, the UCLA Medal has been awarded to national and international leaders in several sectors, including education, government, industry, science, and the arts.
The first UCLA Medals were given to William Coit Ackerman and John E. Canady.
Other recipients included Tom Bradley, Lawrence Olivier, Carol Burnett, John Wooden, Toshiro Mifune, James Earl Jones, Bill Clinton, Francis Ford Coppola, Shimon Peres, Benazir Bhutto, Janet Reno, Quincy Jones, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Jimmy Carter, and Frank Gehry, among others.
Former President Bill Clinton and the previous United Nations Secretary General, Kofi Annan, were the series’ past lecturers.
UCLA’s College of Letters and Science hosts the lecture.
Seating and other information is available on the Luskin Lecture for Thought Leadership website.