February 16, 2011
By Staff Reporter
By Jim Smith
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — Sinn Féin President Gerry Adams is now expected to speak at Boston College on Tuesday, Nov. 16.
Adams was due to deliver a major speech at B.C. earlier this month, but his U.S. visit was drastically shortened because of the urgency of peace negotiations in Belfast.
Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government has also announced that Adams will be the featured speaker in a Northern Ireland study group at the school’s Institute of Politics on Nov. 17.
The weekly study groups at Harvard, which began on Oct. 5, are being led by Jean Kennedy Smith, who served as U.S. ambassador to Ireland from 1993 to 1998.
The other November sessions will include presentations on Nov. 2 by Martin O’Brien, a member of the Committee on the Administration of Justice in Northern Ireland, and Dr. Gerry Lynch, president of John Jay College in New York and a member of the Patten Commission, which recently issued its report on reform of the Northern Ireland police force, the Royal Ulster Constabulary..
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On Nov. 9, Dermott Nesbitt of the Ulster Unionist Party and David Ervine of the Progressive Unionist Party will discuss the goals of Unionism and the status of the peace process.
Sean O’hUiginn, Irish Ambassador to Washington, D.C., will address the study group on Nov. 16. The presentation by Adams will be held on the following day at a special time of 2-3:30 p.m. All of the other sessions run from 4-5:30 p.m.
Admission to all study groups is free and open to the public. For more information, call the Institute at (617) 495-1360.
FOSF fund-raiser
Meanwhile, Adams is expected to preside over a Friends of Sinn Féin fund-raising event in Boston and attend the annual American Ireland Fund dinner during his visit.
Other parts of October’s curtailed tour are also being put back into place. Adams is expected to return to New York for a community-based event. He will also attend two events in Philadelphia and probably go to Washington, D.C., for discussions with members of the Clinton administration.
The Canadian leg of the revamped visit, which had originally included stops in Ottawa and Toronto, was still up in the air Tuesday as the Echo went to press.