The Miller Center Forum presents more than sixty speakers each year, drawn from high-ranking public officials and others involved in shaping public policy, from the academy, and from journalists covering national and international events. Forums attract a large audience of faculty, students, and interested citizens. They offer a unique opportunity for speakers to engage in stimulating public policy discussions in a beautiful setting that encourages direct interaction between speaker and audience.

The Miller Center's Forum Room is modeled on the Virginia House of Burgesses and allows participants to fully engage in the dialogue. This approach, evocative of a time when speakers spoke directly to their audience, actively fosters personal engagement in our country's public affairs.

Miller Center Forums are webcast live. To watch, click on the screen at the top of the home page. The programs are archived online about two weeks after their initial presentation. Past Forums are available via the Full Archive of Forum Webcasts link in the Public Programs section of the home page.

Forums are broadcast on Charlottesville-area public access television (channel 13) on Wednesdays at 9:00 p.m., Thursdays at noon, and Saturdays at 9:00 a.m. They are also broadcast on PBS affiliates including: WVPT–Virginia's Public Television, in central Virginia and the Shenandoah Valley; WCVE in Richmond; WHTJ in Charlottesville; and WHRO in Tidewater. Please consult local listings for times and topics.

Radio IQ broadcasts Miller Center Forums during the second half of its Evening Edition program – a public affairs program airing at 7:00 p.m. each Saturday and Sunday. Radio IQ is a public radio service offering BBC news and NPR talk programs to listeners in central, Southside, and western Virginia, and is heard on 89.9 in Ferrum; 89.7 in Roanoke; 89.5 in Lynchburg; 89.7 and 91.5 in Charlottesville; 90.7 in Emory; 91.5 in Lexington; and 1260 AM in the New River Valley.

Miller Center Forums are non-partisan, free, open to the public, and no reservations are required.

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Next Forum:

Face-to-Face with Osama Bin Ladin

Peter Bergen

Friday, September 12, 2008

11:00 AM

Peter Bergenis a print and television journalist, and produced the first television interview with Osama bin Laden for CNN, where he has been a terrorism and national security analyst. He has traveled to Afghanistan, Pakistan, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia to report on al Qaeda. He is a Schwartz senior fellow at the New America Foundation in Washington, D.C., and Adjunct Lecturer at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, and a research fellow at New York University's Center on Law and Security. Bergen has written for a variety of publications, including the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post, and the Wall Street Journal. He has also worked as a correspondent for National Geographic Television and Discovery Television, and is on the editorial board of the scholarly journal Studies in Conflict & Terrorism. Bergen's books include Holy War, Inc.: Inside the Secret World on Bin Laden (Free Press, 2001) and The Osama bin Laden I Know: An Oral History of al Qaeda's Leader(Free Press, 2006), both of which were made into documentaries for National Geographic Television and CNN. A book signing will follow his Forum.