President Neil L. Rudenstine announced preliminary plans yesterday for a two-day conference event kicking-off the long-awaited $2 billion capital campaign.

"We're going to try to make it as substantive-and that means as intellectual and academic-as we can," Rudenstine said. "A lot of it, we hope, will be not heavy in the sense of putting people 10 sleep, but real intellectual stimulation."

The May 13-14 event will feature 25 to 30 discussion panels of faculty ,students and invited guests. The panels are designed to spotlight "the University in action," Rudenstine said.

"The goal will be in some sense to make the University come alive," Rudenstine said. "We will be inviting a lot of people who will be helping us in the campaign, not necessarily donors, but people who are willing to work for us."

One of the campaigns primary purposes is no educate campaign fundraisers about the University's mission.

"[Fundraisers] have to reignited and reattached to the living institution," Rudenstine said. "The whole idea is to create that kind of symbiosis."

Faculty will lead one series of panels, which will be devoted to prob- lems relating both to the academic mission ofthe University and the outside world.

Possible topics include environmental studies,public service, health care and public education,according to Rudenstine.

"There will a chance to talk about some of theresearch and teaching being done on the campus,"he said.

University graduates, will lead another set ofpanels, which will discuss the issues faced byHarvard students after they graduate.

Rudenstine said panelists will discuss"problems facing either institutions or societyand issues of leadership..[and] reflect a littlebit on the way in which education and theUniversity experience can or cannot be useful."

The president said he thinks that using amixture of graduates and faculty speakers willhelp bring the practical and academic aspects ofHarvard together.

The program is to "try to see [Harvard] fromboth ends of the telescope," Rudenstine said.

Although Rudenstine said he expects about 1,200participants in the two-day gala, those inattendance will only be together for a briefwelcome, lunch and dinner in Memorial Hall.

Campaign Finance Targets

Despite rumors from University insiders thatfundraisers will have raised half of the $2billion goal by the May 13 kick-off, Rudenstinesaid the campaign organizers will be lucky to havea quarter of the total.