<p>LA DOLCE VITA 57th
Produced by the Committee
for the Conference on World Affairs
CONFERENCE
ON WORLD AFFAIRS
APRIL 4-8, 2005
University of Colorado at Boulder
All Events Free and Open to the Public
Sponsored
by the
THE CONFERENCE ON WORLD AFFAIRS IS GRATEFUL
FOR SUPPORT RECEIVED FROM
Welcome
to the Fifty-seventh Annual Conference on World Affairs
Jim Palmer, Director
PRESIDENT, UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO
CHANCELLOR, UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO AT BOULDER
DEAN, COLLEGE OF ARTS & SCIENCES
ELIZABETH HOFFMAN.......................
PHIL DISTEFANO.............................
TODD GLEESON..............................
The Fifty-seventh Conference on World Affairs is our town meeting, and CU and Boulder become
the community where we celebrate our values, our commitment to free speech, and ideas of every
stripe. We dare to call the CWA a celebration, but without abandoning the truth of Thomas Hardy's
words, "If a way to the better there be, it lies in taking a full look at the worst." Knowing what we
know of the world's poverty, wars, and natural disasters, some folks might puzzle over our "La
Dolce Vita" theme.
La Dolce Vita certainly carries a host of associationsa virtual Rorschach inkblot. For some, the
sweet life connotes family and friends, good work and good works, conversation and camaraderie
pleasures simple and not so simple. For others, the phrase is only ironic and invokes the despoiling
of the environment and the concentration of the world's wealth and resources in a handful of countries. This is sweet
life gone sour, a decadent world of alienated people living misdirected lives in search of money, fame, and power.
This ground will certainly be covered in Roger Ebert's "cinema interruptus" of Fellini's 1961 classic, La Dolce Vita.
Whatever your take may be on La Dolce Vita, the Conference offers you Persian poetry, great jazz, and storytelling.
If you want to worry the knotty issues, we address nuclear proliferation and creeping McCarthyism, as well as speci-
fic panels on Africa, China, Iraq, Lebanon, a