MEAD TREADWELL: Good evening and welcome to Commonwealth North's October Forum. My name is Mead Treadwell and I'm CEO of Venture Ad Astra, commissioner on the Arctic Research Commission, and a senior fellow Institute of the North, but also a member of the board of Commonwealth North. And I'm not Alice Galvin who was in your program this evening, but she is out ill. But we're so delighted that you could join us this evening on Alaska Day. And we're looking forward to hearing from this evening's guest of honor, John Whitehead.

I'd like to thank Professor Steven Haycox and Professor Jim Muller and the University of Alaska Anchorage Polaris Lecture Series for bringing Dr. Whitehead to Alaska. And we'll start his presentation at about 7:30, but we've got just a little bit of other business attend to.

I'd like to acknowledge that some of our -- we have a number of special guests with this. First I'd like to welcome Fran Ulmer's students from the Masters of Public Administration program at UAA. Thank you all for being here this evening. Fran, are you here?

FRAN ULMER: I'm here.

MR. TREADWELL: Also here this evening is University of Alaska Anchorage Chancellor Elaine Maimon who is also a board member of Commonwealth North. Chancellor, would you like to come up and say a few words?

CHANCELLOR ELAINE MAIMON: Good evening, and thank you, Mead. It's wonderful to see this partnership. It's just the right way to do things between Commonwealth North and University of Alaska Anchorage. And it's so good to see our students in the audience, our 49th State Fellows and also the students in Fran Ulmer's class.

Happy Alaska Day, everyone. It certainly was an excellent purchase. The United States gained greatly by the purchase of Alaska from our Russian neighbor. And it's wonderful to be here today. And it is always moving to me to hear the Flag song. And I just think it's a great tradition of our 49th State Fellows that they have learned the Flag song and they sing it at these events. Ceremony is important. History is important.

And I have to say that I like to sing the Flag song. I'm one of these people who loves to sing but has no talent in song. And I must say that our two children grew up in constant fear that their mother would embarrass them by bursting into song at particular moments, so it's always a great pleasure to have a legitimate reason to sing and to sing the beautiful Alaska Flag song.

UAA is a public square. It's not an ivory tower. It is a university that relishes the sponsorship of the Polaris Lecture Series and of an evening like this. I had the pleasure today at lunch time to hear our speaker, John Whitehead, at Rotary. He was talking about Bob Atwood, that Great Alaskan, and one part of his talk from lunch really struck me and then it connected with something that happened later in the afternoon. John, there was a part of your talk where you described your coming here as a newcomer and being in Fairbanks and the attitude of you're a cheechako, what do you know, and then coming down to Anchorage for a visit and being so graciously welcomed into Bob Atwood's Anchorage home. And immediately being asked advice and opinion and that kind of inclusive spirit that my husband and I have also found in this city.

And then that quotation from Bob Atwood that Anchorage is the most hopeful town in Alaska. The most hopeful town in Alaska. And that's certainly something that we have found.

As fate would have it later this afternoon when I returned to campus we were having our very important accreditation visit from the Northwest Commission that makes it so that we can accept federal grants. It's very important. And so we have had evaluators on campus for the last day and a half and they were talking to everybody, students, faculty, staff trying to get the story on us. And they had some wonderful things to say in their exit interview. But one comment in particular struck me because it fits so well with the most hopeful town in Alaska.

The accreditors said that in all of their experience at many universities doing accreditation visits they had never encountered before a campus with so much hope. And that was really very moving to me to hear. And as I look out and see our 49th State Fellows, our future leaders of Alaska, our students at UAA, in Professors Ulmer's class I know that they got it right. So thank you very much. And thank you all for just making this such a hopeful place. (Applause)

MR. TREADWELL: Now tonight I'd like to welcome some of the newest members of Commonwealth North, the 49th State Fellows from the University of Alaska Anchorage which Elaine just referred to. And this point I'm going to ask that Professor Haycox to tell us a little bit about that program and then have each of the Fellows introduce themselves. Professor Steve Haycox, thank you for being here.

PROF. STEVE HAYCOX: The 49th State Fellows program is a brand new program at the University of Alaska Anchorage this year. It is a subset of the University Honors program under the direction of Dean Ron Spatz. The 49th Fellows are entering freshmen. They will concentrate their elective credits and much of their general education requirement credit through their four years at the university in a leadership program with the curricular component being history and politics and Alaska.

It's a tremendous commitment on the part of these young people. They will do summer internships. They will complete the regular honors credits. The 49th state is not an honor major. They will major in the fields of their choice, we have theater major, and physical therapy major, physics major, political science major. So this is a tremendous commitment on the part of these young people who have chosen to stay in Alaska even though all of them could have gone to college Outside with lots of support. And who once they complete their college and whatever further professional training they will undertake, we anticipate mostly will come back to Alaska and contribute their creative intelligence and their training and their energy to helping us meet Alaska's many, many challenges, so we're just delighted to have them.

And I would like them to stand and in turn introduce themselves to you tonight. If you would, please, 49th State Fellows. (Applause)

(49th State Fellows introduced) (Applause)

MR. TREADWELL: This is great. Thank you for joining Commonwealth North. This is actually a magnificent idea to have the 49th State Fellows as members with us and I think from Commonwealth North and not only extend a welcome, we might call on you to sing especially if there's an event with our Japanese friends, but we're going to make it a very rich experience for you I'm sure.

At this point I'd like to also just to ask Jim Muller who is also with the 49th State Fellows program as well as a professor of political science at the University of Alaska to say a few words about the sponsorship of the Polaris Lectures.

PROFESSOR JIM MULLER: Thank you very much, Mead. I got up yesterday morning in London and I don't quite know what time it is, but it must be the right time because you're all here.

The Polaris Lecture Series was begun in the mid 1980s in anticipation of the bicentenary of the American Constitution which we duly celebrated and examined with a series of lectures at the university and around the state open to the public. This lecture series has been resuscitated this fall as part of the University Honors program at UAA and in association with the 49th State Fellows program. We have a number of lectures coming up still in the National Park series. Those are listed on the back of your program and I draw your attention to them. They'll be on campus. They begin at 7:30 which coincidentally is the hour after which you don't have to pay to park at the university. And there are always places at that hour in our new parking garage. Just beware of the poles which have sometimes come into contact with cars.

We hope very much that you'll be able to come to some of these lectures. There will be another half dozen lectures in the spring, four in the National Park Service series, which has been generously co-sponsored the Alaska Region of the National Park Service. One also by a faculty member. And a final one on Shakespeare by a visitor, but we look forward to the Polaris Lecture tonight.

We've circulated throughout the audience a blank sheet of paper which I hope is filling up on which we hope you'll give us your name and address and especially your e-mail address which will be used for no other purpose than to notify you of upcoming Polaris Lectures. And one of the things that has made these lectures a success in the past has been support from the general public, so we're hoping for that. And there are some particulars inside your program. Thanks very much.

MR. TREADWELL: The last preliminary I wanted to just let you know about before we get started and introduce the main course, is that Professor Whitehead will be available after his talk to sign books and books are for sale in the museum store which will stay open for half an hour or so after the lecture is over.

And with no further ado I'd like to ask Steve Haycox up to introduce John. And I'm going to say that I was a student of our speaker tonight at a small college in New Haven, Connecticut before John came up here. And one of the best things I would say this to the Fellows here that you can get out of your university experience is to get to know people who are on the cutting edge of research. And I've enjoyed my friendship with Steve Haycox and John Whitehead for a long time. And stay with them on the cutting edge of research and you'll find livelong friends who are just super people. Steve, with all that come on up.

PROFESSOR HAYCOX: Thank you so much, Mead. I would like to acknowledge the sponsorship of Commonwealth North and also the Alaska Humanities Forum as well as the UAA Honors program, 49th State, Polaris Lecture Series.

John Whitehead began in Georgia which has not been driven down yet. And he went to Yale where he did his undergraduate work and where he studied history of the American West under perhaps the premier western historian in the United States today, Professor Howard Lamar.

We were very blessed that John chose to do his career in Alaska at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. For me personally he has been a somewhat long distant but dearly felt friend, colleague and supporter throughout my career in Alaska. John had the opportunity to serve on what was called the Statehood Commission, I think it was 1982, which was created by the Alaska Legislature to investigate of all things the relationship of Alaska to the United States. To some people that seemed not to be perhaps the most advantageous relationship for Alaska.

Well, the Statehood Commission investigated that whole issue and reached a number of important findings about the federal/state relationship and about Alaska's future. That gave John the opportunity to begin to interview people who were part of the Statehood battle, the Constitutional Convention, and the struggle to get the Alaska Statehood bill through the United States Congress. And from that John published some very important and useful articles and now has gone on to complete what really is a magnum opus and career-long study Completing the Union: Alaska, Hawaii and the Struggle for Statehood.

We're just delighted to have John Whitehead with us tonight. I want to thank you so much, John, for taking time out of your schedule to bless us with your presence on of all days, Alaska Day. Professor John Whitehead. (Applause)