Contact:  Rick Peterson, Manager of News Services, 920/832-6590
For Immediate Release                                           August 23, 1999 

Lawrence University Welcomes Peace Negotiator, Conductor, Historian and
Author for 1999-2000 Convocation Series


     APPLETON, WIS. -- Former U.S. Senator George Mitchell, whose leadership
of the 1998 peace negotiations in Northern Ireland earned him a Nobel Prize
nomination, joins two noted authors and one of the world's leading
orchestral conductors as speakers for Lawrence University's 1999-2000
convocation series.
     Lawrence President Richard Warch opens the year-long series on Sept. 23
at 11:10 a.m. with his annual matriculation address.  All convocations are
held in the Lawrence Memorial Chapel at 11:10 a.m. and are free and open to
the public.
     Heinz Fricke, who has conducted many of the world's leading orchestras,
visits the campus Tuesday, Nov. 2.  He was appointed musical director of the
Washington Opera in 1991 after directing the Berlin State Opera for 30 years
and the Norwegian National Opera for six.  Best known for his
interpretations of operas by Wagner and Strauss and symphonies by Beethoven,
Brahms and Bruckner, Fricke will direct the Washington Opera's upcoming
productions of "Rigoletto" and "Tosca."  Prior to his address, Fricke will
conduct the Lawrence Symphony Orchestra in a performance. 
     James McPherson, America's pre-eminent Civil War historian, speaks
Tuesday, Jan. 25.  A professor of American history at Princeton University,
McPherson has written 12 books on the Civil War and Restoration period.  He
earned the 1989 Pulitzer Prize for his work, "Battle Cry for Freedom: The
Civil War Era" and his book, "For Cause and Comrades: Why Men Fought in the
Civil War," earned him the 1998 Lincoln Prize.  He is currently completing a
book on the battle of Antietam.
     George Mitchell, who represented Maine in the U.S. Senate for 14 years,
including six as senate majority leader, takes the Memorial Chapel stage
Tuesday, April 4.  Mitchell brokered the historic "Good Friday" peace
agreement in Northern Ireland in 1998, earning the Presidential Medal of
Freedom, the United Nations Peace Prize and a Nobel Peace Prize nomination
for his efforts.  The most recent of the four books he's written, "Making
Peace," is an account of his Northern Ireland experience.  Mitchell recently
served as chair of a special commission that investigated allegations of
improper bidding for the site of the 2002 Olympic Games in Salt Lake City.
     Isabel Allende, author of five international best-sellers, concludes
the convocation series Thursday, May 23.  The niece and goddaughter of
former Chilean President Salvador Allende, she was forced to flee Chile in
1973 for Venezuela during a bloody coup that killed her uncle.  One of Latin
America's most celebrated authors today, her first novel, "The House of the
Spirits," which started out as a long letter to her dying grandfather in
Chile, was hailed as "possible allegory of the past, present and future of
Latin America" by the New York Times.  Her novel, "Aphrodite," won the 1998
Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize.  In addition to her novels, she has written
children's stories and plays for the Chilean theatre.