September 4, 2001
Contact: Roman Baratiak
(805) 893-2078
e-mail: baratiak-r@sa.ucsb.edu
Bruce Babbitt,
Former Secretary of the Interior,
to Lecture at UCSB
Summary Facts:
- Bruce Babbitt
- Lecture: An Environmental Agenda for the 21st Century
- Former Secretary of the Department of the Interior
- Former Governor of Arizona
- Friday, October 5
- 5 pm / UCSB Campbell Hall
- Free event
- For information: UCSB Arts & Lectures at 893-3535
In preserving America’s heritage—from the Statue of Liberty to Alaska’s Arctic Wildlife Refuge—former Secretary of the Interior Bruce Babbitt has made it his duty to protect the beauty and integrity of our national parks and federal lands. Babbitt will present a lecture, “An Environmental Agenda for the 21st Century,” on Friday, October 4 at 5 pm in UCSB Campbell Hall. This free event is presented by UCSB Arts & Lectures and the Donald Bren School of Environmental Science and Management. President Clinton, who named Babbitt to the Interior Department, hailed the former Secretary as “tough enough to standup to powerful interests, skillful enough to integrate environmental concerns and the needs for economic growth.”
A member of a family descended from northern Arizona pioneers, Babbitt was born in Los Angeles. He attended Flagstaff schools, majored in geology at Notre Dame University and earned a master’s degree in geophysics at the University of Newcastle, England. Having developed a keen interest in law, and he took his J.D. degree at Harvard University’s Law School in 1965.
Babbitt ran successfully for the office of Arizona Attorney General in 1974 and earned a national reputation in that office as a legal scholar and writer. Following a distinguished career as Governor of Arizona, Babbitt became the nation’s environmental scorekeeper upon his appointment to Secretary of the Interior by President Clinton in 1993. During his eight-year tenure, Babbitt used old tools to open new chapters in conservation history and breathe life into the Endangered Species Act. His recovery plans resulted in bringing back from the brink of extinction the peregrine falcon, Aleutian Canada goose, bald eagle and gray wolf. As Interior Secretary he drafted plans to restore the Florida Everglades; helped enact the massive California Desert Protection Act; and negotiated the largest land swap in the history of the lower 48 states in order to protect the new Grand-Staircase monument and other parks in Utah.
Throughout he has remained a controversial figure, raising the ire of property owners and loggers who see him as too willing to sacrifice the economy for environmental protection. Babbitt has also been attacked from the left, particularly for joining Latham and Watkins, a law firm that represents the Hearst Ranch at San Simeon and the Ahmanson Ranch in Ventura County, two large land developers often at odds with environmentalists.
In an interview on PBS’s Newshour with Jim Lehrer, Babbitt claimed, “We have an obligation to live in harmony with creation, with our [natural] capital...with God’s creation.”
Bruce Babbitt is presented by UCSB Arts & Lectures and the Donald Bren School of Environmental Science and Management.
For tickets or more information,
call UCSB Arts & Lectures at (805) 893-3535.
Editor: For photos, please call
Roman Baratiak at (805) 893-2078.