POTSDAM – Actor Gregory Peck’s son and Potsdam resident John Lancaster will deliver the Van Sickle Endowed Lecture as Clarkson University celebrates the start of the 2011-2012 academic year with a convocation on Monday, Aug. 29, at 7 p.m. in Cheel Arena.

Stephen Peck is the president and CEO of the United States Veterans Initiative.

Lancaster, a Potsdam resident, is a civil rights attorney and disabilities rights advocate, and has retired as executive director of the National Council on Independent Living.

Peck and Lancaster's presentation will focus on the themes expressed in Tim O'Brien's award-winning Vietnam testament “The Things They Carried.” The book was the 2011 summer reading selection for incoming first-year students at Clarkson University.

This event is free and open to the public.

Peck was appointed president/CEO of the United States Veterans Initiative (U.S.VETS) in 2010. He joined U.S.VETS in 1996 to start its largest site where he was the inaugural site director. U.S.VETS - Long Beach (Calif.) grew to house 550 veterans and is the largest residential veterans program in the country. He was a Marine Corps lieutenant in Vietnam, serving with the 1st Marine Division near Danang.

Lancaster has been a civil rights attorney and disabilities rights advocate since 1974. He has served on committees and within organizations such as the National Council on Independent Living, a group which represent grassroots disability organizations run by and for people with disabilities, and Handicap International Federation, an organization that works to improve the rights and conditions of people living in disabling situations in post-conflict, post-disaster and low-income countries around the world. He has also worked within government offices toward the same goals, including serving within President Clinton's administration in the formulation of disability employment policy as the President's Committee's executive director. As a second lieutenant in the United States Marine Corps, Lancaster commanded an infantry platoon in combat during the Vietnam War earning a Purple Heart and Bronze Star in 1968. Following military service, he returned to the University of Notre Dame for a law degree. He received an honorary doctor of science degree from Clarkson this past spring and was recently nominated by President Barack Obama for the board of directors of the United States Institute of Peace. Confirmation of his nomination is pending in the United States Senate.

Peck and Lancaster's discussion will be moderated by Clarkson Humanities Professor Joseph Duemer. Duemer was a Fulbright Research Fellow in Hanoi, Vietnam, in 2000-2001.

For more information, contact Christina Lesyk, director of university events, at 268-6425.