NBC Political Analyst Tim Russert To Speak On Campus
Tim Russert, NBC political analyst and moderator of its "Meet the Press" program, will give a talk at Virginia Tech on Thursday, March 13, at 7:30 p.m. in Burruss Auditorium.
Russert is the featured speaker for the Cutchins Distinguished Lecture, sponsored by the Maj. Gen. W. Thomas Rice Corps of Cadets Center for Leader Development in the Pamplin College of Business. His talk, "An Inside View from Washington," is open to the public at no charge.
Russert, who joined NBC News in 1984, is a senior vice president at the network and its Washington bureau chief. He also anchors "The Tim Russert Show," a weekly program on CNBC that examines the media's role in American society, and is a contributing anchor for MSNBC.
He began moderating "Meet the Press" in December 1991. Now in its 55th year, the Sunday morning interview show is the nation's longest-running program on network television. In 2001, The Washingtonian magazine named Russert the best and most influential journalist in Washington, D.C., and described "Meet the Press" as "the most interesting and important hour on television."
Russert's "Decision 2000" interviews on "Meet the Press" with George W. Bush and Al Gore won the Annenberg Center's Walter Cronkite Award and the Radio and Television Correspondents' highest honor, the Joan S. Barone Award. He is also the recipient of the John Peter Zenger Award, the American Legion Journalism Award, and the Allen H. Neuharth Award for Excellence in Journalism.
He has received 22 honorary doctorates and has lectured at the Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, and Reagan presidential libraries. A native of Buffalo, N.Y., he graduated from John Carroll University and the Cleveland-Marshall College of Law. He is admitted to the bar in New York and the District of Columbia. Before joining NBC News, he was a counselor in the New York governor's office in 1983 and 1984 and a special counsel in the U.S. Senate from 1977 to 1982.
He is a trustee of the Freedom Forum's Newseum and a member of the boards of directors of the Greater Washington Boys and Girls Club and America's Promise-Alliance for Youth.
The Center for Leader Development at Virginia Tech aims to educate students about leadership and prepare them to be leaders of integrity and ability. The Cutchins Distinguished Lecture series is named for the late Clifford A. Cutchins III, a Virginia Tech alumnus who had a distinguished career in banking and once served as rector of the university's Board of Visitors.
