THE WHITE HOUSE

                     Office of the Press Secretary
                         (New York, New York)
________________________________________________________________________
For Immediate Release                                 September 21, 1999

            PRESIDENT CLINTON NAMES W. ROBERT CONNOR TO THE
         PRESIDENT'S COMMITTEE ON THE ARTS AND THE HUMANITIES

     The President today announced his intent to appoint W. Robert 

Connor as a member of the President's Committee on the Arts and the Humanities.

Dr. W. Robert Connor, of Hillsboro, North Carolina, is the President and Director of the National Humanities Center, a private independent center for advanced study located in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina and is also a Professor of Classics at Duke University. Dr. Connor came to the Center in 1989 from Princeton University where he was the Andrew Fleming West Professor of Classics and Chair of Princeton's Council of the Humanities. He served on the Princeton University Board of Trustees from 1993 to 1997, and has worked closely with boards or visiting committees at other institutions, including Athens College and the American School of Classical Studies in Greece, Harvard University, Yale University, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Asheville, and Stanford University. Dr. Connor is also a trustee of the Glaxo Wellcome Foundation.

Dr. Connor received a B.A. from Hamilton College, studied at the University College Oxford on a Fulbright scholarship and received a Ph.D. from Princeton University. Dr. Connor's principal scholarly interests are at the intersection of political history and the literary, artistic and religious experience of the ancient Greeks. Among his books are Theopompus and Fifth Century Athens, Thucydides, Greek Orations and The New Politicians of Fifth Century Athens.

The President's Committee on the Arts and the Humanities was established in order to advise the President, the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities concerning ways to promote private sector support for the arts and the humanities, especially at the state and local level.

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