New York Times columnist to deliver talk on Afghan war

New York Times columnist Bob Herbert will deliver the University of Wisconsin Law School’s annual Robert W. Kastenmeier Lecture on Thursday, Oct. 21.

In his lecture, called “Afghanistan: What are we fighting for?” Herbert will speak about the physical and psychological toll the nearly-decade long war in Afghanistan has taken on American service members, as well as the ways the war has undermined efforts to take on the nation’s most serious domestic problems.

The lecture is scheduled for 4 p.m. in Godfrey & Kahn Hall, Room 2260, of the UW–Madison Law School, 975 Bascom Mall.

Herbert joined the New York Times as an op-ed columnist in 1993, and his column covers politics, urban affairs and social trends.

Prior to joining the Times, Herbert was a national correspondent for NBC, reporting for “The Today Show” and “NBC Nightly News.” He began his career as a reporter with Newark’s Star-Ledger newspaper in 1970.

Herbert has won many awards, including the Meyer Berger Award for coverage of New York City and the American Society of Newspaper Editors’ award for distinguished newspaper writing.

The lecture is supported by a fund established to honor Kastenmeier, a graduate of the Law School who represented Wisconsin in the U.S. Congress from 1958 to 1990. During his tenure, Kastenmeier made special contributions to the improvement of the judiciary and to the field of intellectual property law.

The Kastenmeier Fund was created to recognize these contributions by fostering important legal scholarship in the fields of intellectual property, corrections, administration of justice and civil liberties.

“This year’s topic of the Afghanistan war is fitting given that Rep. Kastenmeier was an early and courageous opponent of the Vietnam War who held historic grass-roots hearings in 1965 to raise critical questions on the war,” says Bill Kaplan, a member of the committee planning the lecture.

For more information about the lecture, visit http://law.wisc.edu/alumni/kastenmeier.html.