Former Vermont governor and Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean will speak Monday, April 13, at 7 p.m. in Memorial Chapel.
Dean’s lecture is free and open to the public. Doors open at 6 p.m. Seating is limited and priority will be given to members of the campus community.
In January, Dean stepped down after four years as chairman of the Democratic National Committee. Dean was the architect of the “50-state strategy,” in which Democrats compete for votes in traditionally Republican states. The strategy played a role in helping Barack Obama to a landslide win in November.
Dean recently joined the Washington law and lobbying firm, McKenna Long & Aldridge, as a consultant. He will serve as a strategic adviser to its health care and energy clients.
He also returned to Democracy for America, the political action committee he founded nearly five years ago.
The former governor sought the Democratic presidential nomination in 2004. But many experts believe his campaign was derailed, in part, by his infamous “scream speech” after the Iowa caucuses. Dean insists the speech did not cost him the nomination.
“The scream speech is not why I didn't win the presidency,” he recently told an audience at Brown University. “I didn't win the presidency because I came in third (in the Iowa caucuses) when I was supposed to come in first.”
Dean’s name continues to surface for a possible Cabinet position in the Obama administration.
This is the second straight year the Speakers Forum has sponsored a lecture featuring a former presidential candidate. Exactly one year before Dean’s scheduled talk, Mike Huckabee addressed a packed house in Memorial Chapel. Huckabee had sought the 2008 Republican nomination.