Yale alumnus Dick Thornburgh, who served as attorney general of the United States under Presidents Reagan and Bush and is a former Pennsylvania governor, will present the Lustman Fellowship Lecture on "The U.N. Under Siege" on Thursday, Oct. 24, at 8 p.m. in the common room of Davenport College, 248 York St. The public is invited to attend the free event. Mr. Thornburgh is currently counsel with the Washington, D.C. office of the Pittsburgh-based law firm of Kirkpatrick & Lockhart LLP. Elected governor of Pennsylvania in 1978 and re-elected in 1982, he is the only Republican ever to serve two successive terms in that office and was named by his fellow governors as one of the nation's most effective big-state governors in a 1986 Newsweek poll.
He served three years as U.S. attorney general 1988-91, during which time he worked with law enforcement agencies around the world to help combat drug trafficking, money laundering, terrorism and international white-collar crime.
From 1992 to 1993 he was in charge of personnel, budget and finance matters at the United Nations; during his time there he was the highest-ranking American in the organization. He authored a report to the U.N. Secretary-General on reform, restructuring and streamlining efforts designed to make the United Nations' peacekeeping, humanitarian and development programs more efficient and cost-effective.
Mr. Thornburgh earned his undergraduate degree at Yale in 1954 with a major in engineering. He obtained his law degree from the University of Pittsburgh. He served as director of the Institute of Politics at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government and has lectured at numerous institutions, including Moscow State University.