Chilean President Ricardo Lagos to Deliver Duke's Commencement Address

Ricardo Lagos, president of Chile, will deliver Duke University's 2005 commencement address on Sunday, May 15, Duke President Richard H. Brodhead announced Thursday.

Lagos, who received a Ph.D. in economics from Duke in 1966, was elected in 2000 to a six-year term as Chile's president. He is Chile's third president since the nation's return to democracy.

"President Lagos has shown remarkable courage and commitment in his many years as a dissident and a political leader. In particular his unwavering support of human rights has a deep resonance at this difficult time in history," Brodhead said. "I will be pleased to welcome him back to Duke and am honored that he will share his experiences and insights with our graduates and their families."

Lagos is known for his long opposition to the military regime of Gen. Augusto Pinochet, and was jailed in 1986 after an assassination attempt against the military strongman. In one dramatic incident, he criticized the dictator on national television when Pinochet was still in power, defiantly pointing at the camera and chastising Pinochet for years of torture, murder and human rights abuses.

"President Lagos is a man of achievement, resolution and charisma," said Avery Capone, president of the senior class and a member of the selection committee. "I'm looking forward to hearing from this former Blue Devil."

Duke literature professor Ariel Dorfman, a Chilean author, Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright and human rights activist, said he was pleased that Lagos, whom he has known for many years, would be speaking at commencement.

"It will be wonderful for the graduating class, the parents and the whole Duke community to listen to a man who led the opposition against General Pinochet in Chile and who, as president, has successfully led Chile toward a true transition to democracy," said Dorfman, who was forced into exile following the Chilean military coup of 1973. "I greatly admire his independent stance in foreign affairs, which is symbolic of a new maturity in Latin American politics."

Lagos was born on March 2, 1938, and attended the University of Chile, where he received a law degree. After receiving a Ph.D. from Duke, he returned to Chile and was set to become ambassador to Moscow in the Salvador Allende government when Allende was killed in a 1973 coup. After the coup, by which Pinochet came to power, Lagos went into exile in the United States, where he was a visiting professor for two years at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and then an economist at the United Nations.

He returned to Chile in the 1980s, where he headed a coalition opposed to Pinochet and formed the Party for Democracy, which is now part of the ruling Concertacion alliance. After Chile's return to democracy in 1990, Lagos served as education minister and public works minister, working for educational reforms to improve access to education, as well as for improvements to the highway system.

After being elected to a six-year term as president, Lagos has pushed to redress the human rights abuses of the Pinochet era and to improve the Chilean economy. He is regarded as a moderate leftist who has supported free trade and improved international relations.

Lagos is married and has three children.