Gale Norton will discuss her perspectives and experiences as current head of the U.S. Department of the Interior during a free public program Nov. 23 at the University of Colorado at Boulder.
As part of the Center of the American West's "Inside Interior" series, Norton will be interviewed at 7:30 p.m. in the University Memorial Center's Glenn Miller Ballroom by CU-Boulder law Professor Charles Wilkinson and the center's faculty director and board chair Patricia Limerick.
Norton's appearance is the final program in the 2003-04 Wren and Tim Wirth Forum on the American West, which also brought five former secretaries of the Interior to campus to discuss their policies toward and thoughts about the public lands in the American West. The series is sponsored by the CU-Boulder Center of the American West, The Nature Conservancy and the Denver law firms of Brownstein, Hyatt and Farber, and McKenna, Long and Aldridge.
Norton became the first woman to lead the Department of the Interior after taking office in January 2001. She describes the cornerstone of her tenure as the "Four C's:" communication, consultation and cooperation, all in the service of conservation. At the heart of the Four C's is the belief that federal management on behalf of conservation must engage, consult and involve the people who live and work on the land.
From 1991 to 1999, Norton served as attorney general of Colorado. She represented virtually every agency of the Colorado state government. She argued cases before the U.S. Supreme Court and other appellate courts and testified on several occasions before congressional committees. As a negotiator of the $206 billion national tobacco settlement, Norton represented Colorado and 45 other states as part of the largest lawsuit settlement in history.
Prior to her election as attorney general, Norton served in Washington, D.C., as associate solicitor of the U.S. Department of the Interior, overseeing endangered species and public lands legal issues for the National Park Service and the Fish and Wildlife Service. She also worked as assistant to the deputy secretary of agriculture and, from 1979 to 1983, as a senior attorney for the Mountain States Legal Foundation.
Norton graduated magna cum laude from the University of Denver in 1975 and earned her law degree with honors from DU in 1978. She and her husband, John Hughes, are avid hikers and outdoor enthusiasts. They reside near Washington, D.C.
For more information on the lecture series, contact the CU-Boulder Center of the American West at (303) 492-4879 or visit or The Nature Conservancy at (303) 444-2950 or .