The President, Mrs McAleese, will tonight give the main address at the Harvard/Irish Times Colloquium at the John F Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. Mrs McAleese's speech, on "The Law and Society - Freedom of Speech and the Victims' Freedom to Talk Back", will be followed by a question and answer session from an audience composed of students, politicians and academics, moderated by the editor of The Irish Times, Mr Conor Brady.
Mrs McAleese and the Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, Ms Liz O'Donnell, yesterday met representatives of the Irish Immigration Centre and the Irish Pastoral Centre who brought to her attention the issues facing Irish immigrants in the Boston area.
The President also had a private meeting with Cardinal Bernard Law at his residence in Brighton, a suburb of Boston.
Last night she addressed a dinner in her honour hosted by Senator and Mrs Edward Kennedy at the Kennedy Library and Museum. She paid tribute to the former ambassador to Ireland, Mrs Jean Kennedy Smith, who, she said, had become a pivotal figure in the struggle for peace, and thanked Massachusetts and Boston for their sustained efforts over the years to promote economic development in the North.
Mrs McAleese said that it meant a great deal to her at a personal level that her first official event in Boston as President of Ireland should be at the Kennedy Library.