The Georgetown University Lecture Fund will be hosting Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, the man behind the controversial Park51 mosque.

The Park51 mosque, commonly referred to as the Ground Zero mosque, became a controversy this past summer because of its proximity to the location of the World Trade Center.

As reported by The Hoya, Rauf will be part of a panel at Georgetown University’s Berkley Center on March 1. The panel is mainly geared toward graduate students and faculty members.

Lecture Fund has informed the Voice that they have also been able to schedule Rauf for a lecture at 6 p.m. that evening in Lohrfink Auditorium geared toward undergraduate students.

According to Jon Askonas (SFS ’13), the student in charge of the event for the Lecture Fund, they have been in talks with the Cordoba Initiative since November to try to have Rauf as a speaker.

Rauf will be speaking about the separation between religion and politics in both the United States and in the Muslim world. A moderated question and answer period will follow the speech.

As of now there are no plans to do a live webcast of the speech, but the speech is likely to be recorded.

Tuesday night, Georgetown University Lecture Fund hosted Bob Woodward, The Washington Post reporter and best-selling author who, with Carl Bernstein, broke the Watergate story.

Woodward was at Georgetown to discuss his recent book, Obama’s War.

In the book, Woodward tries to determine what exactly Obama thought about the war in Afghanistan. He concluded that Obama opposes the war, and that he wants to rechannel resources to domestic issues. He ultimately described Obama as a “divided man,” who must lead his country through a war he fundamentally hates.

Woodward explained that sometimes knowing the actual truth is impossible. While interviewing President George W. Bush for his book Plan of Attack, Woodward asked Bush how history would judge the Iraq War. The response he received would later be called fatalist and unbecoming of a president by Hillary Clinton. Bush said “History? We won’t know. We’ll all be dead.”

Woodward described his experiences with former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, explaining that Rumsfeld’s memoirs try to push blame for the war on to others. Woodward recalled a 2002 interview with Rumsfeld in which he made comments stricken from the record that show a different side of the story.

Woodward also provided his own opinion into issues plaguing the world. Government secrecy, he insisted, “will do us in.” He explained that the habits of unnecessary secrecy and the tendency of the White House to “think [they’ve] got the power” damage our country.

As a final word of warning, Woodward reminded the crowd that “democracies die in darkness.”

Photo: Max Blodgett

Last night, Bradley Cooper (COL ’97) spoke in Gaston Hall. And by “spoke,” we  mean “gracefully dodged cringe-worthy advances from giggling females.”

The Hangover star opened up the evening by briefly reminiscing on his three years at Georgetown. (Cooper transferred from Villanova after his freshman year). While visiting Georgetown in high school, Cooper said he thought the campus was a “utopia.”

“There were tons of Frisbees and golden retrievers,” he said, “All the women were from California.”

So when Cooper’s application was rejected, he was devastated. More determined than ever, he applied as a transfer student and spent his three years at Georgetown feeling like he “didn’t deserve to be here.”

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