The CU-Boulder Distinguished Speakers Board is pleased to announce its second event of the year: former National Security Agency system administrator Edward Snowden is coming to the University of Colorado Boulder via video chat on Tuesday, Feb. 16. Ron Suskind, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and former Wall Street Journal reporter, will moderate the event live from the Macky Auditorium. Attendees will have a chance to ask questions of Snowden.
鈥淭he DSB makes an effort to host speakers who we think will be thought-provoking and intriguing,鈥� said CU student and DSB chair Emma Woodyard. 鈥淓dward Snowden was at the top of our list 鈥� not because we think he鈥檚 right or wrong 鈥� but because we think he has interesting things to say.鈥�
The Distinguished Speakers Board, a CU Student Government cost center managed and funded by students, strives to continue the campus tradition of hosting speakers of the highest caliber who will intellectually stimulate and challenge both the student body and the Boulder community. A subject of international controversy, Edward Snowden has simultaneously been labeled a traitor, a whistleblower, a hero and a patriot. In 2013, Snowden began releasing top secret documents centered around the extent of the NSA's and the CIA's global surveillance, along with nearly 1 million Department of Defense documents. Within months, major news outlets around the world began to break stories based on the leaked documents, which have sparked international debates over information privacy, mass surveillance and government secrecy. 听Snowden is the recipient of the Right Livelihood Award and the Stuttgart Peace Prize, and was a key figure in the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service earned by The Washington Post and The Guardian.听 听
Ron Suskind is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, best-selling author and a Harvard Center for Ethics Fellow. He has been a contributor for The New York Times Magazine and previously was a senior national affairs reporter for the Wall Street Journal.
The event will run from 7 to 8:30 p.m. on Feb. 16 in the 2,000-seat Macky Auditorium. Ticket prices are as follows: $2 CU-Boulder students, $10 CU-Boulder faculty/staff and $20 for the public. Tickets for the public will go on sale on Feb. 1 at . Students, faculty and staff (with Buff OneCard IDs) can purchase tickets at a table in the University Memorial Center starting Feb. 1. Look for more details in January in the CU-Boulder Today newsletters.
Snowden has recently appeared via videochat at other universities, including the University of Iowa, Princeton and Stanford. For more information about the event, please contact the Distinguished Speakers Board at dsbchair@gmail.com or visit or .
