Reid Buckley to be Orator-in-Residence at University of Richmond October 4-5
October 2, 2001
Reid Buckley, author, lecturer and founder of the Buckley School of Public Speaking has a message: only the articulate succeed.
Business people who communicate clearly make more money than those who don't. Eloquent students receive better grades and land better jobs than their less articulate classmates. Politicians whose ideas resonate with their audiences get elected.
Buckley, who heads a school that Investor's Business Daily calls "a boot camp for American executives," will deliver those and other messages to students, faculty, staff and the Richmond business community Oct. 4-5, when he serves as orator-in-residence at the University of Richmond.
Dubbed "the brutal tutor" by Business Week, he often plays the role of hostile journalist, in challenging and harassing his students at his school in historic Camden, S.C. His pupils have included Fortune 100 executives and candidates for Congress and the presidency, whom he also immerses in a world of ideas. The Wall Street Journal says the Buckley School teaches people from all walks of life the importance of "thinking fast under pressure."
At the university, Buckley will give classes and seminars offering students, faculty, staff and business leaders a taste of his most-sought-after instruction. He also will speak himself, giving a public address to 200 local business executives and community leaders at an Oct. 5 luncheon in Jepson Alumni Center. For information and reservations, contact Linda Hobgood, director of the university's Speech Center, at 289-8814 or lhobgood@richmond.edu.
"As far as we know, this is the only orator-in-residence program of its kind in America," Hobgood said.
The program "was designed to recognize that the pursuit of articulate behavior is a lifelong endeavor," said President William E. Cooper. "By bringing to campus distinguished scholars, dignitaries, public officials or corporate leaders noted for their eloquence, we hope to underscore its importance to one's own life and relationships, to career achievements and to the health and direction of the entire civic sphere."
Buckley, author of several books on public speaking, including "Strictly Speaking," "Speaking in Public" and "Sex, Power, and Pericles," is also a novelist and a seasoned debater, having taken on Nat Hentoff, Max Lerner and Eugene McCarthy.
The Speech Center is sponsoring the visit, which is being funded by a gift from the Suhor-Graham Foundation and contributions from various schools at the university.