Winthrop Rockefeller Distinguished Lecture Series: Two Free Central Arkansas Events March 13 and 17

LITTLE ROCK (Friday, Feb. 24, 2023) – The University of Arkansas at Little Rock and the Winthrop Rockefeller Institute (the Institute) are pleased to announce two Winthrop Rockefeller Distinguished Lectures in March 2023.

Kim Zetter, an award-winning journalist and investigative reporter, will give a talk on cybersecurity and national security with a focus on election security at 4:30 p.m. Monday, March 13, in the Stella Boyle Smith Concert Hall in the Fine Arts Building at UA Little Rock. A question-and-answer session with the audience, book signing, and reception will follow the lecture, “Stuxnet and Beyond: The Age of Digital Warfare and the Future of Our Cities.” Pre-registration is not required.

Peter G. McCornick, Ph.D., executive director of the Daugherty Water for Food Global Institute at the University of Nebraska, will deliver a keynote lecture at 9 a.m. Friday, March 17. The lecture, “Securing Water & Food in a Changing World,” will be presented at the Institute’s Petit Jean Mountain campus near Morrilton.

Attendees will also hear from a panel of local experts about the State of Water in Arkansas. Panelists will join moderator Dr. Deacue Fields, vice president for agriculture for the University of Arkansas System, to discuss innovative solutions for water use in the state. Lunch, provided by the Institute, will be available following the program. Registration is required; sign up at rockefellerinstitute.org/water.

Both Winthrop Rockefeller Distinguished Lecture Series events are free and open to the public. The Winthrop Rockefeller Distinguished Lectures Series is a program established in 1972 and endowed by friends of Governor Winthrop Rockefeller with the purpose of stimulating public discussion, intellectual debate, and cultural advancement.

Kim Zetter
Zetter is an award-winning investigative journalist and author who has covered cybersecurity and national security for more than 15 years for publications including WIRED, the New York Times Magazine, Politico, and the Washington Post. She has been repeatedly voted one of the Top 10 security journalists in the country by security professionals and her journalism peers.

Zetter has broken numerous national stories about NSA and FBI surveillance, nation-state hacking, the hacker underground, the Russian sabotage of Ukraine’s power grid and its use of that country as a testing ground, and election security. She has also written extensively about cyber warfare and wrote an acclaimed book, “Countdown to Zero Day: Stuxnet and the Launch of the World’s First Digital Weapon,” about a sophisticated virus/worm developed by the U.S. and Israel to covertly sabotage Iran’s nuclear program

Additionally, she publishes a Substack newsletter called Zero Day, which features original stories on spies, security, and surveillance topics. She is currently a visiting scholar for the spring 2023 semester at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies.

The event is held in memory of Dorothy Stuck, a longtime Arkansas newspaper editor, publisher, and civil rights advocate. Stuck and her husband Howard owned three Eastern Arkansas newspapers, and she served as editor of the Marked Tree Tribune for decades. In 1970, Dorothy moved to Dallas to become regional director of the Office of Civil Rights for the Department of Health, Education and Welfare. She was a founding member of Arkansas Press Women, a founding board member of Southern Bancorp, a board member of the Winthrop Rockefeller Lecture Series, and an inductee in the Arkansas Women’s Hall of Fame.

Peter G. McCornick, Ph.D.
Dr. McCornick is the executive director of the Daugherty Water for Food Global Institute at the University of Nebraska, where he leads the institute in delivering on its vision of a water- and food-secure world, building its partnerships and collaborations in Nebraska, nationally in the U.S., and other key food-producing regions in the world. He is a tenured professor in the Department of Biosystems Engineering at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and the Robert B. Daugherty Chair of Water for Food.

With an international career focused on improving the sustainable management of water resources, he has led interdisciplinary research and development programs on water, agriculture, and the environment in Africa, Asia, the Middle East, Canada, and the U.S.

Dr. McCornick is a licensed professional civil engineer in the state of Colorado and a member of the American Academy of Water Resources Engineers. He was recently elected to the Board of Governors of the World Water Council and is a member of the steering committee of the Water Scarcity in Agriculture initiative, a global partnership organized by the Food and Agricultural Organization of the UN.