Vaclav Havel, former president of the Czech Republic, will present a public lecture at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, titled, "A Conversation with former Czech Republic President, Vaclav Havel," at 4:30 p.m. Nov. 13.
The lecture will take place in Dodds Auditorium in Robertson Hall on the Princeton University campus.
Mr. Havel was the last president of Czechoslovakia and the first president of the Czech Republic. He is also a writer and dramatist. In his earlier years, Mr. Havel studied drama by correspondence at the Theatre Faculty of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague. He performed in a number of plays.
Following the 1968 suppression of political liberalization in Czechoslovakia, in which the Soviet Union and its Warsaw Pact allies with the exception of Romania invaded the country, Mr. Havel was banned from the theater and became politically active. His political activities resulted in multiple stays in prison, the longest four years, after which he wrote "Laargo Desalato," a play about a political writer who fears being sent back to prison.
A supporter of nonviolent resistance, he became a leading figure in the Velvet Revolution of 1989, which resulted in the communist government being overthrown. In that same year, Mr. Havel was voted president by the Federal Assembly and retained his position after the 1990 elections. He resigned his position in 1992.
When the Czech Republic was created in 1993, Mr. Havel ran for president again and won. He was re-elected president in 1998 and left office following his second term.
This event is co-sponsored by the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, the Center for Human Values and the Princeton University Walter Edge Lecture series, which is part of the Princeton Public Lecture Series.

