Former President William Jefferson Clinton this afternoon will make his first official appearance on campus since he was elected to the nation’s highest office in 1992.

In a speech sponsored by the Institute of Politics (IOP), Clinton will address a crowd of approximately 5,000 on topics ranging from globalization to the aftermath of Sept. 11 at the Albert H. Gordon Track and Tennis Center. Shuttles, labeled “Clinton event” or “Gordon Track Center,” will run every 10 minutes from the Square, stop at the IOP, and head to the speech.

University President Lawrence H. Summers, who served as Clinton’s secretary of the treasury, will introduce his former boss.

“Since President Summers was a member of President Clinton’s cabinet, it was natural for Summers to be involved in this trip,” said Gordon Li, the the IOP’s director of communications and outreach.

The venue’s size allowed for thousands of tickets to be distributed among Harvard’s schools.

“Everybody who wanted to see Clinton is going to get to see him, and that’s an amazing accomplishment,” said Joshua I. Weiner ’03, a member of the IOP’s Student Advisory Committee (SAC).

Although the speech is slated to begin at 2:30, crowds are expected to form far in advance.

“The doors open at one,” said Rob McCarthy, SAC President. “Because [most of the seating] will be first-come-first-serve, I do expect people to come a lot earlier than 2:30.”

No one at Harvard, either in Summers’ office or at the IOP, has seen the text of Clinton’s speech—although the topics will likely be public service, globalization, and the aftermath of Sept. 11.

“No one’s really going to be sure what he’s talking about until he says it tomorrow,” McCarthy said.

McCarthy said the speech’s topic, which was originally about the importance of public service, did change after Sept. 11 to include the attacks.

“We all realized that it would be innappropriate not to address the topic,” he said.

Because the athletic department lent the IOP a high-capacity indoor venue, a historically large crowd will be able to see the IOP speech, Li said.

“This is the first time we’ve had an event at the athletic center, I believe,” he said.

Unlike before the recent speech by former Vice President Al Gore ’69—when undergraduate tickets were snapped up for the event in the ARCO Forum at the Kennedy School of Government in a matter of hours—ticket distribution for today’s event lasted for more than two days.

“For the Gore event, we ended up having to turn so many people away,” said Caroline E. Adler a member of the SAC.

“The Gordon Track Center was a way for us to get more people.”

Afterwards, a conversation with Clinton in the ARCO forum will be held at the IOP for about 200 Kennedy School students and professors, as well as about 100 undergraduates involved with the IOP and a few University administrators and donors.

—Staff writer Lauren R. Dorgan can be reached at dorgan@fas.harvard.edu.