Southeastern professor to moderate Nixon panel in California
Press Release Date: 04-14-2010
SE professor Brooks Flippen to moderate Nixon panel in California
DURANT, Okla. – Southeastern Oklahoma State University history professor J. Brooks Flippen will moderate a panel discussion at the Richard Nixon Library in Yorba Linda, Calif., on April 22 (Earth Day).
Flippen will moderate a forum entitled "Richard Nixon and the Rise of the Environment." Panel members scheduled to participate are three former Nixon administration officials/presidential advisors: Chris DeMuth, American Enterprise Institute Senior Fellow and Nixon White House staffer for environmental policy; William Ruckelshaus, the first Environmental Protection Agency Administrator; and John C. Whitaker, Domestic Council Associate Director for Environmental Policy and Under-Secretary of the Interior.
Flippen is the author of two books on environmental policy during the Nixon era, Nixon and the Environment (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2000) and Conservative Conservationist: Russell E. Train and the Emergence of American Environmentalism (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2006).
He holds degrees from Washington & Lee University, the University of Richmond, and the University of Maryland. Flippen joined the Southeastern faculty in 1995.
The event is co-sponsored by the Richard Nixon Foundation and the Nixon Presidential Library and Museum. The Nixon Presidential Library and Museum, a nonpartisan federal institution, is a part of the National Archives and Records Administration.
In his first State of the Union address, President Nixon made the environment a major domestic issue when he proposed "making the 1970s a historic period when, by conscious choice, we transform our land into what we want it to become." He signed the National Environmental Policy Act, on January 1 and three months later a demonstration of 20 million Americans in favor of environmental reform on April 22, 1970, created what is now known as Earth Day.
These distinguished speakers spearheaded Nixon’s far-reaching initiatives including the Environmental Protection Agency, the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts, the Endangered Species Act and development of more than 80,000 acres of National Parks.