FARMINGTON – The highlight of a two-day global affairs forum will be keynote speaker Thomas Pickering of the Boeing Co.

Pickering is senior vice president for international relations at Boeing and former U.S. ambassador to Russia, India, Israel, El Salvador, Nigeria and Jordan, and ambassador to the United Nations. He will discuss globalization as it pertains to U.S. politics and today’s world. He will speak at 6 p.m. Friday in the north dining hall of the university’s Olsen Student Center.

Armenian, Turkish, Arabic and Greek classical and folk music will be performed by the Alan Shavarsh Bardezbanian Middle East Ensemble after Pickering’s lecture at 8 p.m. in Nordica Auditorium.

The conference will kick off with a panel discussion titled “Issues and Strategies for Schools to Meet Diverse Needs of Immigrant Populations in Maine” at 3:30 p.m. Friday in Lincoln Auditorium. Panelists will include Ken Kunin, former principal of Portland’s Reiche Elementary School; Margurerite MacDonald, program coordinator for the Portland School Department Office of Multilingual and Multicultural Programs; Philip Nadeau, assistant of administration for the city of Lewiston; Pirun Sen, parent-community specialist in multilingual and multicultural programs for Cambodians; Beth Stickney of the Immigrant Legal Advocacy Project; and Deborah Baker, University of Maine at Farmington student teacher supervisor.

Saturday’s programs will begin at 9 a.m. with topics including “The Economic Impacts of Globalization and NAFTA on Maine” and “Immigration, Emigration and Maine’s Labor Market.” Panelists for Saturday’s forums include Clyde Dyar, current state Senate candidate and economic development professional; Vaughn LeBlanc, foreign labor specialist for the Maine Department of Labor; Edmund McCann, secretary-treasurer of the Maine AFL-CIO labor organization; and several other professionals and UMF professors in fields as diverse as economics, anthropology and geography.

GO AND DO:

WHAT: Global Affairs Forum

WHEN: From 3:30 p.m. Friday to 4 p.m. Saturday

WHERE: University of Maine at Farmington

WHO: Keynote speaker Thomas Pickering and others

COST: $30 for entire conference. Contact Julianna Acheson at 778-7573 or [email protected]