McGovern kicks off conference

In the opening address of a University conference on world hunger, former Democratic presidential candidate George McGovern urged U.S. officials on Thursday to fight the war on terrorism by feeding the starving people of the world.

Speaking to an audience of scholars and students in Dodds Auditorium, McGovern said humanitarianism constitutes a counterterrorism strategy because it eases discontent in developing nations.

"Instead of going to war in Iraq and smashing that country," McGovern asked, "would we have done better . . . if we had spent that money on reducing hunger?"

McGovern's speech was the keynote address of "Trading Morsels, Growing Hunger, Decimating Nature," a three-day conference emphasizing an interdisciplinary approach to the problem of world hunger. Sponsored by the Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies, the Princeton Environmental Institute and the Wilson School, the conference will feature panels considering the influence of trade, development and environmental policies on the distribution of food.

McGovern said he was "appreciative of the braininess and social consciousness of this conference" and proud of the organizers' intentions.

President Tilghman called it "a very special and personal honor" to introduce the former South Dakota senator and congressman. She said he was "a spokesman for the hundreds of millions of men, women and children who are chronically hungry in the world."

Tilghman said she was especially happy to see McGovern in Princeton because his collected papers are held in the Mudd Manuscript Library.

McGovern is currently traveling on a publicity tour for his newest book, "The Third Freedom: Ending Hunger in Our Time." The book outlines a plan for the United States and the United Nations to collaborate in ending world hunger, but also includes personal anecdotes about McGovern's own work to fight hunger.

Before winning a Senate seat in 1962, McGovern served in the Kennedy Administration as the first director of the Food for Peace Program.

A former member of the Senate agriculture and foreign relations committees, McGovern won the 1972 Democratic nomination for president, but lost the election in a landslide to Richard Nixon, who resigned during the Watergate scandal two years later.

Since leaving the Senate, McGovern has worked for several humanitarian causes, serving the United Nations global ambassador on hunger since 2001.

Sara Curran, a sociology professor who organized the conference, said the conference would draw on the insights of scholars from various disciplines to develop solutions to the global food problem. Scholars from Princeton, the University of California and the Environmental Defense Fund will present papers on food commodity problems and their possible solutions in Robertson Hall today and tomorrow.