July 12, 1999 Volume 21, No. 17

Impeachment Colloquium to Feature Attorney for Monica Lewinsky An attorney for Monica Lewinsky and an alumnus who served frequently as a television commentator during the special prosecutor’s investigation of the Clinton-Lewinsky affair will both take part in a colloquium at the College on Monday, July 19. Titled "Constitutional Law: The Impeachment Trial of William Jefferson Clinton," the program will be held at 9:30 a.m. in Textor 101. It is free and open to the public. The featured speakers will be Nathaniel Speights, who continues to represent Lewinsky on legal matters, and Keith Watters, a 1976 graduate of Ithaca College and former president of the National Bar Association. Watters has made over 20 appearances each on CNBC’s Rivera Live and CNN’s Burden of Proof and has been a repeated guest or commentator on the Fox News, Court TV, and MSNBC networks. The colloquium is part of the summer academic orientation for incoming students in the Higher Education Opportunity Program, which provides access to college for students whose prior academic experiences do not reflect their true potential, and in the Ithaca Opportunity Program, which recruits academically qualified students from groups that have historically been denied access to higher education because of their ethnic or racial background. While Lewinsky attorney William Ginsburg was frequently in the public spotlight during the first months of the controversy that eventually led to the president’s impeachment, Speights was a silent partner, quietly negotiating with independent counsel Kenneth Starr. Though Lewinsky later replaced Ginsburg with lawyers Plato Cacheris and Jacob Stein, she kept Speights on her legal team. He most recently has represented her in connection with a Maryland grand jury investigation into the secret taping of her telephone conversations by Linda Tripp. Speights has worked as an assistant U.S. attorney, served as chief of the law enforcement section of the Washington, D.C., corporation counsel’s office, and headed the Washington Bar Association. Left: Speights with William Ginsburg.   Keith Watters '76 After earning a degree in accounting from Ithaca College, Watters attended Georgetown University law school while working at Deloitte & Touche and the General Accounting Office. He founded his own Washington firm, Keith Watters & Associates, in 1980. He served on several committees investigating racial and gender bias in the court system, prompting the National Association of Black Women Attorneys to give him its Achievement Award in both 1990 and 1994. While serving in 1995–96 as president of the National Bar Association — an organization representing African Americans in the legal profession — Watters became a sought-after media commentator on news stories with racial reverberations. After the verdict in the O. J. Simpson case was announced, he appeared on ABC’s Good Morning America and in USA Today and the Los Angeles Times, among other newspapers. His media savvy, combined with his knowledge of the political and legal landscape of the nation’s capital, made him a popular television guest when the Lewinsky scandal captured the public’s attention. Former faculty member Kevin McMahon will present two workshops prior to the July 19 colloquium, giving students some insight into constitutional law to help prepare them for the colloquium discussion. This is the third year that the Office of Opportunity Programs has sponsored a colloquium highlighting legal and ethical issues. Previous speakers have included an administrator with the National Bioethics Advisory Commission who spoke on cloning and an assistant district attorney who discussed the Fourth and Fifth Amendments to the United States Constitution.