West Virginia University announces the 2000 Festival of Ideas schedule, a nine-event lecture series that runs from late February through April. The series, now in its fifth year, features a variety of speakers who will share thought-provoking issues from todays headlines with WVU students, faculty and staff, as well as the surrounding community.

The series begins Tuesday, Feb. 22, when veteran Associated Press special correspondents George Esper and Peter Arnett present Media Warriors: Battling for the Stories from Saigon to Kosovo at 7:30 p.m. in the Mountainlair Ballroom.

The 2000 series also includes presentations by Dr. Lori Arviso Alvord, the nations first female Navajo surgeon; Morris Dees, founder of the Southern Poverty Law Center; former Sierra Club president Adam Werbach; and human rights activist and former World Championship boxer Rubin”Hurricane”Carter, subject of the recently released box office hit”The Hurricane.”

Festival of Ideas audiences will also hear from award-winning presidential historian Michael Beschloss; gay and lesbian rights activist Urvashi Vaid; and Lonise Bias, mother of Len Biasthe University of Maryland basketball player whose 1986 drug-related death, just two days after being drafted by the Boston Celtics, shocked the nation.

Also on the 2000 schedule is The Spitfire Tour: Musicians, Actors and Activists Speaking Out on Global Affairs which will feature messages from actress Rosie Perez; conservative journalist and editor of the National Review Online Jonah Goldberg; musician, producer and activist Michael Frantiformerly of the rap group Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy; and former MTV vee-jay Kennedy.

“As part of our WVU 2000 celebration, this years Festival speakers will remind us of our past as well as touch on the future, as they bring important topics to the forefront,”comments WVU President David C. Hardesty Jr.”It is extremely important that we share these thought-provoking presentations with our students as well as the citizens of West Virginia.”

All Festival of Ideas presentations are free and open to the public. Seating is limited. For more information, call 304-293-SHOW (7469).