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Sir Brian Urquhart, a former U.N.undersecretary general, will give the Ralph E. and Doris M. Hansmann Lecture inPublic Policy on Thursday, April 10, at 8 p.m. The lecture, "Ralph Bunche:Public Service and the Struggle for Racial Justice," will take place in theHamilton Chapel and is free and open to the general public.

Urquhart's professional life has been in many respects, a history of the U.N.In 1945 after serving in the British Army, he was recruited in London to serveas the personal assistant to the first secretary-general, Trygve Lie. From1954 to 1971 he served in various capacities under American undersecretaryRalph Bunche. He was involved in the Congo crisis in the early 1960s, andpeacekeeping in Cyprus, Kashmir and the Middle East. After 1972, Urquhart wasone of the principal political advisors of the secretary general, and served asthe under-secretary general for special political affairs, working on Lebanon,Israel and Palestine and Namibia among others. He retired from the U.N.secretariat in 1986.

The author of several books, Urquhart's last major work was the biography,Ralph Bunche: An American Life. He wrote the book, he said, becausethough Bunche was one of the most important people of the last century,society has totally forgotten him. Bunche was the first African-American to bean official in the State Department and was the most senior U.N.

official. Urquhart has said of him, "He was quite remarkable. He inventedpeacekeeping, he wrote two chapters of the United Nations Charter, he won theNoble Peace Prize and he also wrote a great deal of the basic literature in the1930s of the Civil Rights movement. He was a

remarkable, absolutely extraordinary man."

The Ralph E. and Doris M. Hansmann Lecture Series was established in 1993 tohonor Hansmann, Class of 1940, and his wife. The series supports annuallectures in the field of public policy.

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