Former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, named Time Magazine's Man of the Year after his handling of the September 11 crisis, will be the next guest in the Sacerdote Series, Great Names at Hamilton. He will speak at the College less than two weeks after the first anniversary of the World Trade Center attacks, on Monday, Sept. 23, at 7:30 p.m., in the Margaret Bundy Scott Field House.
The Sacerdote Series, Great Names at Hamilton, is named in recognition of a significant gift from the family of Alex Sacerdote, a 1994 Hamilton graduate.
During the September 11 crisis, Giuliani was dubbed "America's Mayor." He was credited with calming, consoling and reassuring the public, while urging people to return to normal lives and not to let the terrorists achieve their aim of disrupting life. In one of the saddest times in American history, Giuliani's leadership and the extraordinary heroism of his fellow New Yorkers restored faith in the ideals that are vital to a free society.
Giuliani was first elected mayor of New York in 1993, when his campaign focused on quality of life, crime, business and education. In 1997 he was re-elected by a wide margin, carrying four out of five of New York City's boroughs.
As mayor, Giuliani returned accountability to city government and improved the quality of life for all New Yorkers. Under his leadership, overall crime was down 57%, murder was reduced 65%, and New York City - once infamous around the world for its dangerous streets - has been recognized by the F.B.I. as the safest large city in America for the past five years.
Giuliani implemented the largest and most successful welfare-to-work initiative in the country, cutting welfare rolls in half while moving more than 640,000 individuals from dependency on the government to self-sufficiency.
He created the Administration for Children's Services, recognized as a national model for protecting the city's most vulnerable children. He was a leader in getting health insurance to children through the innovative HealthStat initiative, which uses computer technology to coordinate a citywide effort to enroll children in existing health insurance programs.
Under Giuliani's ledership, New York City's law enforcement strategies have become models for other cities around the world, particularly the CompStat program, which won the 1996 Innovations in Government Award from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. CompStat allows police to statistically monitor criminal activity on specific street corners as well as citywide, holding precinct commanders accountable for criminal activity in their neighborhoods.
Giuliani also worked to restore accountability and raise standards throughout the city's schools. Student-teacher ratios are at an all-time low, while the operating budget for New York City's public schools increased from $8 billion to $12 billion.
Giuliani was born to a working class family in Brooklyn in 1944. He graduated from Manhattan College in the Bronx and New York University Law School. Upon graduation he clerked for Judge Lloyd McMahon, United States District Judge for the Southern District of New York. In 1970, Giuliani joined the office of the U.S. Attorney. At age 29 he was named chief of the narcotics unit and rose to serve as executive U.S. attorney. In 1975 he was recruited to Washington, DC, where he was named associate deputy attorney general and chief of staff to the deputy attorney general.
From 1977 to 1981 Giuliani returned to New York to practice law at Patterson, Belknap, Webb and Tyler. In 1981 he was named associate attorney general, the third highest position in the department of justice. In that position he supervised all of the U.S. attorney offices' federal law enforcement agencies, the Bureau of Corrections, the Drug Enforcement Agency, and the U.S. Marshals.
In 1983 he was appointed U.S. attorney for the southern district of New York, where he spearheaded the effort to jail drug dealers, fight organized crime, break the web of corruption in government, and prosecute white-collar criminals. He recorded 4,152 convictions with only 25 reversals.
Under Giuliani's leadership New York City has become a prime example of the resurgence of urban America. From his success at cleaning up Times Square and other public spaces around the city to closing the Fresh Kills landfill on Staten Island, Giuliani has worked to pass New York to the next generation better and more beautiful than it was before he entered office.
Previous Great Names at Hamilton speakers include Madeleine Albright, Jimmy Carter, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Lady Margaret Thatcher, Colin Powell, Mary Matalin and James Carville, Elie Wiesel and F.W. deKlerk. In 1998, jazz and blues singer/musician B.B. King was the first artist to appear as part of the series.
Further details about Giuliani's visit and information about group reservations will be forthcoming. For updated information, call the Hamilton College Great Names information line at (315) 859-INFO.
FOR THE MEDIA:
A print-quality photo of Rudy Giuliani is available for download.
