The University of Montana’s 2021 Mansfield Lecture Series will present ‘A Conversation with Dr. Anthony Fauci’, on Wednesday, February 17 at 12:00 noon via ZOOM.

Executive Director of the Maureen and Mike Mansfield Center Deena Mansour said Dr. Fauci will be appearing virtually.

“He's scheduled virtually,” said Mansour. “We certainly did not want to put his life at risk, nor put the lives of risk of people here with having someone fly into our community, but it is it's really quite astounding. I have to say that to have one of the most important figures in this moment in history dealing with the pandemic is just a great honor for the University and for the Mansfield Center and for Montana.”

Mansour gave credit for Dr. Fauci making room for his visit here at the University of Montana primarily due to his colleagues at Rocky Mountain Labs in Hamilton.

“It's really because of Rocky Mountain Labs,” she said. “The director there, Dr. Marshall Bloom is heavily invested in the community in Ravalli County and statewide, and he gave me a tip on how to reach out to Dr. Fauci at his office, and then they (Rocky Mountain Labs) followed up and they said, this is a really important audience for you to reach out to rural America; to reach out to the people of Montana; and to reach out to Native American communities, so I think that Dr. Fauci is really excited at the opportunity of speaking directly to Montanans.”

Mansour laid out the format for the discussion with Dr. Fauci.

“The first 25 minutes of the discussion will be Robert Saldin (Director of the Mansfield Center's Ethics and Public Affairs Program and a Professor of Political Science) and Dr. Fauci engaging in questions from the community,” she said. “But we will have time during the last 20 minutes to provide the opportunity for people to ask questions live and be featured as part of the discussion, and we hope that we'll have time for at least four people to post their questions and those also will be selected from pre-submitted questions on our website.”

Mansour said registration for the event is limited, but there is still some capacity for participants.

“We are taking advanced registrations, so people should go on our website umt.edu\Mansfield,” she said. “We have upped our webinar license quite a bit but we're at nearly 3,000 registrations now, so we encourage people that want to be part of it to join, but we do have limited capacity. We'll be sending out the link and at the same time people can submit their questions.”

Dr. Fauci is Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the U.S. National Institutes of Health.

 

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