EVENT:
Gara LaMarche, vice president and director of U.S. programs for the Open Society Institute, will present “What If We Had Real Democracy in the United States? A Time for Imagination,� as part of the 2003-04 UC Irvine School of Social Sciences Distinguished Speaker Series. The Open Society Institute is a foundation established by philanthropist George Soros to promote open societies around the world. This lecture is free and open to the public.

DATE:
Wednesday, Jan. 28, 2004

TIME:
5:30 p.m.

LOCATION:
Social Sciences Lecture Hall 100, UCI
Parking is available for $5 in the Social Science Parking Structure

INFORMATION:
(949) 824-2511 or www.socsci.uci.edu/events/lamarche.htm

BACKGROUND:
The Open Society Institute serves as the hub of the Soros foundations network, a group of autonomous foundations and organizations based in 50 countries. OSI and the network are dedicated to promoting open societies through support of education, the media, public health, and human and women’s rights, as well as social, legal and economic reform.

LaMarche oversees programs in the United States that deal with a range of human rights issues, such as care of the dying, drug policy reform, inner-city education and economic development, fair treatment of immigrants, crime and incarceration and democratic reform. Before joining the OSI, LaMarche worked as associate director of Human Rights Watch and director of its Free Expression Project. His articles about human rights and social injustice issues have been published in the New York Times, Washington Post and Los Angeles Times, among others, and he is the editor of “Speech and Equality: Do We Really Have to Choose?�

The School of Social Sciences Distinguished Speaker Series is sponsored by UCI’s Center for Global Peace and Conflict Studies and the International Studies program.